Loving the Texas Lawman_A Texas Lawman Romantic Suspense

by Mary Connealy

  “Here it is, Scott.” Ben forced his face into a smile when he wanted to throw the report, all fifteen unstapled pages of it, in Scott’s face. Instead, he extended the forms politely and told the truth. “I finished it up when I first came in at six this morning. I got sidetracked when that double murder came in and forgot to deliver it to you. I apologize.”

  Scott, reaching for the form, snatched his hand back. “What’d you do, put a bomb in the report?”

  Ben clenched his jaw. He’d grind his teeth down to nubs before he’d tell Scott to take a flying leap. He was turning over a new leaf after all.

  “You want the report or not?” Okay, that wasn’t a soft answer. He scrambled for something else to say. Something that wasn’t so phony his boss would report him to Internal Affairs, or so sweet the whole stationhouse would need an insulin shot. He came up blank.

  The rudeness must have reassured Scott because he took the report and, extending it as far from his body as his arms would reach, he flicked the file open. When it didn’t blow, he pulled the paperwork close, studied it a second, and nodded. “Thanks for this, man. I know you’ve been swamped.”

  Scott turned and strode back into his office.

  Ben sank into his chair, shocked. “What do you know, it works.”

  “Garrison!” Detective Daisy Yarrow, a heavy-set black woman that had been carping at everyone in the department since before there was a department, waved an empty coffee pot in the air like it was the starting flag at a demo derby.

  “You took the last cup of coffee, you worthless, lazy, sludge-sucking cockroach. How many times have I told you how things work around this dump?”

  Maybe ten thousand times? She crabbed at anyone who didn’t make coffee. She crabbed at anyone who did make coffee because the coffee tasted awful. That made it easier to just let her do it and take his turn in the getting-yelled-at rotation.

  Instead of yelling back like he usually would, he smiled and sweetly said, “Make your own coffee, Yarrow.”

  Yarrow yammered at him some more.

  Ben told her to shut up but he did it quietly, then he ignored her while she yapped some more. He didn’t want her distracting him from all he’d learned about using a soft answer to turn away wrath.

  He smiled as he pulled the next file toward him. He had to get Tru in about thirty minutes and he didn’t want any sign of a crime anywhere near her. Tru wouldn’t be able to believe it when she saw him in action.

  He’d become a gentleman with the manners of an angel.

  Ben had the manners of a pig.

  Trudy couldn’t believe it when she saw him in action.

  “And then we enter all the data into the computer so it’s accessible.” Ben hovered behind her while she sat in front of the computer. He’d spent his morning giving her a guided tour of the police station, which was fine, very interesting, perfect for third graders on a school field trip. Except…

  “Did you drain this pot again, Garrison?” A woman wielded a coffee pot as if it were a deadly weapon. “I’ve about had it with you. Why is it always my job to take care of things like this? You left a mess in the break room, too. I’m not your mama. I’m not going to clean up after you for the rest of your life. One of these days I’m gonna…”

  Trudy’s mouth fell open at the woman’s manner.

  “Beat it, Yarrow.” Ben straightened from where he’d hovered by Trudy ever since he’d plunked her in his chair and spent the morning telling her about police procedure as if this was ‘Take your Therapist to Work Day’.

  “Go nag your husband for a change and get off my back. I don’t have time to…”

  “Ben!” Trudy rose from her chair and planted herself directly between Ben and the lady swinging the coffee pot. For a second, it reminded her of the morning with Liz and Ben, except this lady was armed. She had a coffee pot…and a gun.

  Trudy faced Ben. If she got whacked with the pot, at least she wouldn’t have to see it coming. Besides, Ben was her patient. Maybe she should sign Miss Yarrow up for a course later. Assuming Trudy lived through the day.

  Ben looked away from Yarrow and grinned at Trudy. “What?”

  “Try again.” Trudy waited.

  “Try what?” He had a look of such confusion on his face, Trudy considered giving up on writing and teaching. Maybe she’d move to a nice quiet convent somewhere, one where she had to take a vow of silence. She might as well because, so far, everything she’d said and done with Ben had made absolutely zero impact on him.

  She leaned close enough so poor Miss Yarrow wouldn’t hear. Then maybe the woman would think the new polite Ben was his own idea. “Try responding to her again. This time, use a soft answer.”

  Ben shook his head, his brow furrowed, and whispered back, “But the only soft answer she wants is for me to say I’ll make the coffee. I don’t make coffee.”

  “Why not?”

  “Uh…‘cuz I don’t want to?” Ben looked at her as if she were stupid.

  For a woman with a doctorate, the youngest tenured professor in the history of Bella Vista Christian College, and a bestselling author, being thought of as dumb was an experience so unique, she almost enjoyed it. A whole blonde side of herself seemed to blossom when Ben looked at her like that.

  Still, she was going to have to kill him.

  “Do it, Ben.” Trudy did her best to channel authority and domination. “Be nice.”

  Ben grinned at her. “My coffee stinks. We’ll have a riot on our hands if I make it.”

  “If you refuse to make new coffee, then you shouldn’t take the last cup.”

  Beside them, Yarrow said, “Garrison, quit flirting with your girlfriend and get in there and refill this pot.”

  Trudy frowned and turned.

  Ben caught her by the shoulders and whispered in her ear, “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”

  Yarrow stood a couple of feet away from them, looking like she might empty the bitter black dregs in the bottom of the pot over Ben’s head. Ben definitely wasn’t the only one in this building with inter-relative issues.

  Trudy backed up a step as Yarrow advanced on them. “Do it, Ben. Offer to make the coffee.”

  “Can’t.” Ben held Trudy in place when she tried to slide sideways away from the coffee pot wielder. Suddenly his grip wasn’t supportive. He was using her as a human shield.

  “She’ll kill me,” he whispered in Trudy’s ear. “She’d see it as weakness and go after me like a shark after blood.”

  “Do it,” Trudy said over her shoulder. “You offer to make the coffee right now, or I’m bringing Liz, Ethel and Ralph over for dinner tonight for group therapy sessions.”

  Ben’s hands dug into her shoulders. After a long second, he hissed into her hair, “Fine. But I’m going to make you drink a cup of my coffee.”

  “Fine,” Trudy snipped back.

  He let go. “You’re absolutely right, Yarrow, uh…I mean Daisy.”

  Trudy looked at the woman, big enough to play center for the Cowboys, and wondered what had possessed her mother to name her Daisy. The poor policewoman had to have weighed twenty pounds at birth. On the other hand, she’d make a great back-up if a fellow cop were arresting someone.

  Yarrow’s eyes narrowed. “What are you up to, Garrison?”

  The pot seemed to quaver as if Daisy kept herself from hurling it at Ben’s head by sheer will power.

  “I’m up to nothing. You’re always carping…”

  Trudy reached behind her and sank her claws into Ben’s arms. Too bad for him, he’d taken off his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves.

  14

  “Ouch.” Ben jerked his arm free. “Uh…what I mean is you’ve reminded me of the rules. I’ll admit I don’t take my turn, and that’s going to end. I’ll never leave the coffee pot empty again.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Trudy saw Ben raise his right hand, as if being sworn in for a trial. “So help me, uh…well, that is, I just promise.”

  Ben stepped
up beside Trudy. “And Daisy, this isn’t my girlfriend.”

  The carafe jabbed forward. “Call me Yarrow, or you’re gonna be swallowing this pot in one bite.”

  Trudy thought Ben might know full well Daisy didn’t like her name and used it to undo his gallantry, hoping Trudy wouldn’t catch on. If that was the case, then he was a rat fink and Trudy would have to claw him again. She polished her nails against the front of her shirt.

  “I’m just trying to help this poor, victimized woman.”

  Trudy heard the exact words she’d told Ben to say coming out of his mouth. They didn’t sound half bad. He might have overacted a little on the poor-victimized-woman line, but it might not be the actor, it might be the lines. After all, she wasn’t a playwright.

  “She’s being stalked by a rich idiot with a good lawyer.”

  Daisy Yarrow’s eyes softened. She lowered the pot. “A man is after you, huh?”

  Trudy nodded.

  Daisy reached out and ran one finger, surprisingly gentle for a potential line backer, down Trudy’s scraped cheek. “He do this to you, honey?”

  Moved by Daisy’s maternal concern, Trudy couldn’t talk. She just nodded again.

  “It’s not over,” Ben said. “He dodged the search warrant, but we arrested him and are hoping the judge binds him over for trial.”

  Trudy forgot all about play acting in the face of Yarrow’s kindness. She got a little teary. “He’s already got two felony convictions for hitting women, but the judge wasn’t allowed to consider that for some reason.”

  “Three strikes, huh?” Yarrow studied Trudy’s face a moment longer, crossed her arms, and looked up at Ben. “You can introduce criminal history if you’re going for a third felony. How’d he dodge the search warrant?”

  All of a sudden, Ben wasn’t being polite or rude, and neither was Yarrow. They were just being cops. Trudy had a moment to consider that probably neither of them took the whole coffee issue very seriously.

  “His lawyer’s slick.”

  “Which judge?”

  “Patinkin.”

  Yarrow snorted. “I coulda guessed. You should’ve got your mom. She’d’ve nailed him.”

  “I really will start making coffee, Yarrow,” Ben said. “I just got so much guff because my coffee’s so bad, that I quit.”

  “Yeah, right, like anybody else’s coffee’s any good.”

  “Yours is the best. That’s why we all stick you with it.”

  “I know.” Yarrow turned, pot still in hand.

  Trudy reached out and caught Yarrow’s shoulder. “I’ll teach him how to make it right.”

  Daisy turned and her sharp cop eyes studied Trudy for a minute, then with a huge smile handed over the pot. “Good luck with that.”

  She looked past Trudy to Ben. “You sure she’s not your girlfriend?”

  Ben stepped up beside Trudy and grinned in a way that made Trudy’s heart flip flop like a politician during election season.

  “Nah, she’s way out of my league.”

  “Who isn’t?” Yarrow smirked and shook her head of tight black curls.

  “Good point. No, I’m trying to keep her safe until we get this jerk who’s bothering her. She had the day off, so she came into work with me. She’s trying to improve me, teach me how to watch my mouth. She’s a psychologist who specializes in people with amoral travesty. She’s doctoring me.”

  “Moral poverty,” Trudy interjected. “And he isn’t my patient.”

  “Sure I am.”

  Trudy pivoted and faced Ben. “I’m not your doctor. Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  Trudy started to answer and that left her with her mouth hanging open because she realized she couldn’t say the answer out loud. She couldn’t be Ben’s doctor because doctors can’t get involved with their patients, and she had just now realized that she was, ever so slightly, involved with Ben Garrison.

  “You’ve never paid me so I’m not your doctor. I’m just a friend helping you out. Okay?” She clamped her mouth shut.

  “You want me to pay you? I never thought of that. What do you charge?”

  “I don’t want you to pay me. I just said I didn’t.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged.

  The way he did it told Trudy that he’d never considered the ramifications of a doctor-patient relationship being a problem. Which meant he’d never considered her in any way that was personal. Her stomach sank and she fixed her eyes firmly on the floor, not wanting either of these astute students of human nature to see how upset she was.

  Trudy needed to grow a brain back since hers had abandoned her. She wasn’t interested in any man, anyway. She already failed God by writing and teaching when she should be helping people personally. She couldn’t take on more distractions until she got her spiritual house in order.

  “She’s not my doctor. She’s just a nag.”

  Trudy elbowed him. Yarrow laughed.

  “Give me the pot, and I’ll put some coffee on.” Ben reached out.

  Trudy handed it over.

  Ten detectives hooted and yelled insults at Ben.

  “We’ll die if he’s in charge of coffee.”

  “Just shoot me now.” A piece of wadded up paper sailed past them.

  One officer pulled his handcuffs off his belt and threatened to arrest Ben if he went near the break room.

  Minding your manners with this crowd might be a little harder than Trudy had imagined.

  Ben slammed his fist on Scott’s desk. “How am I supposed to tell her this?”

  Scott, his ebony skin gleaming under the florescent light of his office, vibrated with anger as he grabbed the sheet of paper out of Ben’s hand. “The judge made his ruling. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “He left marks on her. Bruises on her arms and that scrape on her face. That’s assault anywhere on this planet.”

  “Watson has a top-notch lawyer. He spun the story to the judge just the way he did to you that first night. You know Trudy believed it at first. Why wouldn’t the judge?”

  “Trudy never believed it. She knew the guy was a nut job. She’s just a bleeding heart. She wants to save the world.”

  Scott shrugged. “You just described Patinkin.”

  “Watson has priors.”

  “The judge refused to admit them as corroborating evidence. All the charges were dropped.”

  Ben gritted his teeth. “We land felonies on people for less than this every day.”

  “Not rich people.”

  “Rich man’s justice.” Ben grabbed the phone off the hook, then snapped it back in the cradle. “If you can afford a good enough lawyer, the law doesn’t apply to you.”

  “You’ve got to tell her.”

  “She’s going to have to hire a bodyguard.”

  “That’s the way it works. When the going gets tough, the rich hire bodyguards.”

  “That wacko is going to keep coming. He’ll be even more brazen now that he got off.”

  “We did come away with a restraining order. If he approaches her again, we can take it back to the judge.”

  “Great, so Trudy gets a piece of paper to protect her. Maybe she can roll it up and whack him with it next time he attacks.”

  “Where’s she going to get a bodyguard?”

  Ben looked up from his desk and thought he caught a faint twist to Scott’s lips. “Is anything about this funny?”

  Scott raised both hands in front of him. “Not a thing. Don’t start in on me.”

  Ben narrowed his eyes at Scott’s feigned innocence and waited for the next crack.

  “You know, I really like that woman.” Scott looked open, honest and sincere, so Ben knew he was up to something. “She’s a sweetheart. Brave and beautiful, too. I think she kind of liked me. Not like you, she was always fighting with you about something. But you have no finesse, Garrison. Me? I’m oozing with charm.”

  “You want to see something ooze?” Ben threatened.

  Scott’s s
mile grew. “I thought she had you working on your people skills. Comments like that are the reason you’re still a detective sergeant and I’m a high and mighty lieutenant. I know how to work and play well with others.”

  Scott was teasing him, but they’d been over this ground before. Scott was right. Ben had gotten so cynical that he couldn’t even pretend to play the political games necessary to get ahead on the force.

  Ben could have lived with that. He hated office politics. But it went deeper than that. Ben had forgotten how to be a good friend. And he’d forgotten how important a kind word was to an exhausted fellow officer.

  But since he’d been spending time with Tru and all her warm and fuzzy ideas, he’d become sensitized for the first time in years.

  It was a real pain in the neck.

  Scott didn’t let him dwell on the dead end of his career. He threw another punch. “You think a classy dame like that’d go for a lowly cop? I could play bodyguard. She’d be so grateful she might…”

  “Shut up, Sheridan.” Ben lifted the phone again, then hung it up. “I’d better drive over to the campus. She needs to hear this from me in person.”

  The cheesy grin faded from Scott’s face. “Sorry you’ve got to be the one to tell her.”

  “What I’m sorry about,” Ben said, “is that I’m condemning her to a life of fear.”

  “The way the judge left it, there’s only one way we’re going to get this guy.” Scott stacked things on his desk with sharp precise movements, which Ben had seen him do a million times when he was unhappy with a case.

  “Yeah.” Ben snagged his sports coat off the back of his chair as he stood. “Watson is going to have to do something bad to her.”

  As Ben left the station, he knew telling Tru wasn’t the bad part. The prisoner would go free and Tru-Blu would find herself in prison.

  15

  “It’ll be like I’m locked up in prison.” Trudy sank into her office chair, dismayed at Ben’s news.

  “It’s no problem for me to pick you up and drop you off every day. Once Eleanor gets that new front door, your house will be secured.” Ben stood in her office, early for class, and prepared to drive her home afterward, just as he had for the past three weeks.