Once a Lawman

by Lisa Childs

  “Nothing…”

  She closed her eyes. “That word again.”

  “I’ll change it to something.”

  “Something?” She sighed. “You want something.”

  “I need to get in my hours.” He spun the key ring again. “I can’t get my license until I get in more practice driving.”

  “Kevin…” She shook her head. Despite it being Saturday, she was still busy. “I can’t right now. I have some errands to run. I have to go.”

  “Let me drive you for your errands,” he persisted. “I’ll be your chauffeur.”

  “I like to drive myself.”

  Kevin snorted again. “Yeah, look where that got you—almost thrown in jail.”

  And she had thought Audrey the overly dramatic one. “I’m not in jail.”

  “You have to take that class.”

  “I like that…” She trailed off, stunned by her involuntary admission. “I like that class.”

  “Good,” Kevin said, “you should do something you like for once.”

  “This class isn’t the only thing I do that I like,” Tessa insisted. “I like my job.”

  “You just like working there because you need the money,” Kevin said. “For us. You have to watch us…since Mom’s never around.”

  “She’s around when she’s not working,” Tessa defended their mother. “She may be around more. I talked to a friend about getting her a job as a day-shift bartender.”

  “That would be good,” he said, then met her gaze. “For all of us.”

  “Yes.” Touched that he seemed so concerned about her, Tessa reached out and passed her hand over his spiky hair the way she did with her smaller brothers.

  The lanky teenager ducked away from her. “Hey, don’t mess with the ’do, Tess!”

  She lifted both arms and ran her hands through his hair, then grimaced and wiped her gel-covered fingers on his shirt. “You know what else would be better for everyone?” she teased. “If you never got your license.”

  He ignored her comment and her sticky handprints and goaded her, “Come on, Tess, I’ll race you to the Suburban.” He pulled open the patio door and headed up the stairs to the driveway.

  “Kevin!” she yelled as she grabbed her briefcase and headed out after him. “Come back here!” The SUV engine started, and she ran faster. “Kevin!”

  Before he could pull out of the driveway, she jerked open the passenger’s door and jumped inside. “Okay, I’ll let you drive, but you have to take it slowly and carefully.”

  “What’s this? Do as I say, not as I do?” he quipped with a cocky grin.

  “Smartass.”

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Don’t drive so fast!” she warned him as he pressed on the accelerator.

  “Hey, who’s got more tickets?”

  “You better not have any,” she threatened him.

  “You’re the one who gets all the tickets, Tess,” he said, without really answering her question. “You’re the lousy driver.”

  “If I’m so lousy,” she challenged him, “how come you want to drive with me?”

  “It’s safer for me to drive you than have you drive me.” He grinned. “I think you really do need a chauffeur.”

  “Smartass—”

  This time the wail of a siren cut her off. She turned her head and glimpsed red and blue lights flashing through the rear window.

  “What do I do?” Kevin asked, his voice shaking with panic.

  “Pull over,” she advised, “slowly and carefully.”

  “B-but there’re never any cops on our street,” Kevin protested as he steered the SUV to the curb and shifted it into Park.

  She wouldn’t put it past Chad to have set up a speed trap on her street to catch her exceeding the limit again. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see him if he was the officer who’d stopped them.

  “Tess!” Kevin whispered urgently. “What do I do?”

  “Roll down the window,” she directed.

  “License, please,” a masculine voice requested.

  Tessa sighed with relief and opened her eyes. It wasn’t Chad. She glanced to the window and the young officer leaning close to it.

  “I just have a permit,” Kevin said as he pulled it from his pocket.

  “Then, Miss, I’ll need to see your license and registration and your certificate of insurance.”

  Tessa pulled them from her briefcase and passed them to Kevin who, his hand shaking as badly as his voice, passed them to the officer. The guy glanced at the license and then leaned closer to the window, peering at Tessa. “You’re the lieutenant’s lady.”

  “What?”

  “You’re Lieutenant Michalski’s girl,” the officer insisted with a wide grin.

  “No—no, I’m not.” Had someone seen them in the parking lot the other night?

  Kevin reached across the console and pinched her arm. “Yes, yes, she is.”

  The officer nodded. “I thought that was you—from the elevator.”

  The elevator. She fisted her hands to prevent herself from burying her warm face in her palms. “Oh…”

  His grin widened. “Although you were exceeding the speed limit by seven miles, I’ll let you off with a warning this time.”

  “The lieutenant wouldn’t.” Pain shot up her arm as Kevin pinched her again, harder.

  The young officer laughed as if she was joking. Didn’t he know Chad? Apparently not very well as he waved at her and walked back to his car.

  “What are you trying to do?” Kevin asked. “Oh, yeah, you want me to get a ticket so that I never get my license.”

  “This isn’t about you,” she said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t Chad’s girlfriend. How could she continue the class with everyone thinking that she was, or that she was like the starstruck Amy and wanted to be?

  “That’s good,” Kevin said as he studied her face. “You need something that isn’t about me or the rest of the kids.”

  “You said that earlier about the class,” she remembered, “What’s gotten into you? Have you been watching Dr. Phil with these invisible friends of yours?”

  He pinched her again before putting the SUV back in Drive and pulling away from the curb. “The class is good for you, but it’s even better that you’re dating,” he said. “With the lousy way you drive, you’re really smart to date a cop, too.”

  “I’m not dating him,” she insisted.

  “Maybe you should,” he suggested. “Until this class, I don’t remember the last time you went out for anything besides work. You never date.”

  “I don’t have time,” she said, wondering if it was really true or just an excuse she used to keep from getting hurt the way her mother always did. Certainly she wasn’t that much of a coward?

  “I’m always busy with you guys,” she insisted. Nana had always put her family first, so Tessa intended to do the same.

  “Talk Mom into letting me get my license and then I can drive everyone around and you won’t need to worry about us,” Kevin urged her. “You can have your own life finally, Tess.”

  “I have my own life.”

  “All you have right now is that class.”

  With Chad so obviously still in love with his dead wife, the class and the new friends she was making were likely all she’d have. That was fine with her. Great, really; she didn’t want anything more. She had her family, her career, her friends now—she didn’t need a man. She was not her mother’s daughter.

  DESPITE THE WATCH COMMANDER telling her the week before had been the last of Chad’s class participation, she glanced toward the front of the room, scanning the officers’ table for him. But she caught no glimpse of dark hair, no glint of green eyes. He was gone.

  Gone from the class and gone from her life.

  While they spent the first half of the night listening to the director of the 911 call center and the second half listening to actual 911 calls in the command center itself, Tessa felt none of the excitement her fellow classmates
did. For her, without Chad, the spark of interest she’d had in the CPA had been snuffed out.

  She barely paid attention as they wrapped up the evening back in the third-floor meeting room.

  “Before we conclude for the night,” Lieutenant O’Donnell said from the officers’ table, which he shared with only Kent Terlecki now, “I’ll hand out the ride-along assignments.”

  At the watch commander’s insistence, Tessa had finally turned in her release form. She didn’t remember which had been more daunting, signing away her right to sue if she were hurt on the ride-along or choosing a couple of dates she’d be available. Ultimately she’d put off the inevitable, and had chosen dates as close to the end of the program as she’d been able.

  Tessa pulled out her PDA. While she hadn’t wanted to participate in the program and especially not in the ride-along, she had actually changed her mind. She wanted to know more than the videos had shown about the day in a life of an officer, but not just any officer. She wanted to know what a day of Chad’s life was like. Somehow she suspected all his days were only about work now.

  “First I’ll read out the citizen’s name,” O’Donnell said, then the date and then the officer to which the citizen has been assigned.”

  Amy leaned close and whispered, “No offense, but I hope I get Lieutenant Michalski.”

  “No offense taken,” Tessa assured her. Instead of jealousy over the girl’s blatant interest in Chad, pity filled her. Maybe she should warn the girl that no living woman was going to get Lieutenant Michalski’s interest.

  When O’Donnell read off Amy’s name, he followed it with a female officer’s name. Tessa bit her lip to keep from laughing at the girl’s deflated expression. Erin, sitting on the other side of her, wasn’t as successful at holding in a soft chuckle of amusement.

  “Erin Powell,” the watch commander announced, causing the reporter to tense. “Your participation in this academy has compelled me to change one of my rules.”

  Erin sucked in a breath and murmured to Tessa. “He’s not going to let me go out on a ride-along.”

  While Tessa liked the young reporter, she could understand why—the woman hadn’t actually made any friends in the department or necessarily with the rest of the class. Instead of meeting Lieutenant O’Donnell’s gaze, though, Erin stared straight at the man sitting at the table next to him—the golden-haired public information officer.

  When O’Donnell read off a date, Erin turned back to him. “The exception to my rule,” he continued, “is that I’ll be taking you out myself.”

  “I can attest,” Kent Terlecki spoke up, “that since his promotion, it takes a lot to get Paddy out from behind his desk.” He winked at Erin, almost as if flirting with her.

  The reporter, her face flushed with color, turned to Tessa. “Nothing gets him out from behind his desk.”

  While the rest of the class clamored for ride-alongs with the CPA leader, Erin Powell was disappointed. Obviously she would have rather ridden with another man.

  “Tessa Howard.”

  She glanced up and smiled at Lieutenant O’Donnell, then punched in the date he read off. While she had a couple of appointments already lined up for that evening, she’d move them to another time.

  “You’ll be riding along with Lieutenant Michalski, our EVO expert.”

  Apparently the lieutenant wasn’t out of her life just yet. Somehow she suspected he wouldn’t be any happier about that than she was.

  CHAD REACHED for the bowl of pretzels and peanuts; he’d eaten his burger and fries a while ago. Now he sipped a glass of ginger ale and waited. I should be at home.

  But the condo he’d bought after he’d lost his family wasn’t a home. He wasn’t quite ready to call it what the chief had, though. It wasn’t limbo, it was just a place to sleep—when he could sleep. Thoughts of Tessa and kissing her kept him awake.

  Because the condo was so quiet, he’d also come to the bar for noise, but he’d gotten more than he’d bargained for. The karaoke machine had been turned on again, and what was coming out of it could hardly be considered singing. A feminine voice shouted out the lyrics of “I Fought the Law.”

  A rookie walked up to the bar, ordered a beer, then caught sight of Chad and grinned. “Your lady—she’s not much of a singer,” he said, pointing toward the game area. “But she sure is hot.”

  “My lady?” He cocked his head, listening to the off-key voice.

  “You don’t recognize her?” Paddy asked, as he joined them, sliding onto the empty stool next to him.

  Chad stood up, but for all the people gathered around, clapping, he couldn’t catch a glimpse of the woman singing. “Tessa? That’s Tessa singing?”

  “Yeah, your girl is the hottest thing in the bar,” the rookie said with an appreciative, lusty sigh.

  Chad turned to the younger man with a glare. “She’s not my girl.”

  “But—but…”

  Then Paddy laughed. “That denial came a little late, Chad.”

  The rookie laughed, too. “She said the same thing when I pulled her over the other day.”

  “She said what?”

  “That she wasn’t your lady.”

  Of course she wouldn’t think that she was. She would know that the kiss meant nothing…

  “Wait a minute,” he said, grabbing the kid’s arm before he could walk away. “You pulled her over? You pulled her over?”

  The rookie nodded. “Yeah, but I’m sorry. I—I didn’t know who she was—”

  His grip tightened on the other guy’s arm. “What did you pull her over for?”

  “Speeding,” the young officer answered matter-of-factly, probably because everyone knew her driving record.

  “Damn it!” She was never going to slow down—just as he’d feared. Just like Luanne. He released the kid and curled his fingers into a fist.

  “She wasn’t the one actually speeding. She was the passenger,” the officer explained. “When I saw it was her, I let them go with a warning.”

  Them? Who the hell had she been with? He’d be damned if he’d ask a rookie more about the woman everyone considered his lady, though.

  He settled back onto his stool. “I wouldn’t have let her go…”

  “That’s what she said,” the young officer replied as he walked away from the bar.

  “Well, that was a lie,” Paddy said as he reached for the bowl of peanuts and pretzels.

  “What?” Chad asked, sparing his friend a glare. “You know Tessa Howard is not my lady.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about.” Paddy tossed a peanut into his mouth. “You did let her go.”

  “She wouldn’t be in the class if I let her go,” he pointed out.

  “I’m not talking about a traffic stop, Chad, and you know it,” the watch commander insisted. “She’s interested in you, but you let her go.”

  He shook his head. “She’s not interested in me.”

  “Do you know why I told her about Luanne?”

  “No. But I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” He just hadn’t been ready yet, so he’d been avoiding Paddy as much as possible during the past week.

  “I told her,” Paddy explained, “because she asked me.”

  “So,” Chad said, not quite ready to forgive his friend for interfering, “would you have told Kent’s reporter if she asked?”

  “Erin Powell wouldn’t have asked about you,” the watch commander pointed out. “Tessa did. Because she’s interested in you.”

  Chad sighed. “She hates me because I forced her into this class.”

  “Yeah, she looks like she’s having a horrible time.” Paddy gestured toward the long table where the CPA had gathered.

  While she hadn’t sat down yet, Tessa crouched among the others with one arm around Jimmy and the other Bernie. Her hair poured like gold down her back. She’d ditched her jacket again so that she wore just a lacy tank top in an off-white color nearly the same hue as her creamy skin. Her skirt was red and short.
r />   His hand shaking slightly, he reached for his ginger ale and downed it in a thirsty gulp. His mouth was still dry. The rookie was right—she was the hottest woman in the bar.

  “She’s going to have a great time on her ride-along, too,” Paddy said.

  “I hope you don’t still have some crazy idea that she needs to ride-along with me,” Chad said. Suddenly his body tensed with dread—or maybe anticipation—because he knew his friend was all about crazy ideas lately. Tessa Howard interested in him? Yeah, right…

  On the other hand, she had kissed him back.

  “You’re the only officer I could assign her to,” Paddy insisted.

  “C’mon…”

  “You’re the reason she’s in the program,” Paddy reminded him. “And you’re the one who can teach her the most about safe driving.”

  Apparently she hadn’t learned anything about that yet since she had recently been riding in a speeding car.

  So whom had she been riding with when the rookie pulled her over? Jealousy formed a hard knot in his stomach as he considered the possible choice.

  HER FACE warm with embarrassment, Tessa tightened her hold around Jimmy’s and Bernie’s necks. “I can’t believe I let you two talk me into that.”

  “It was a thrill, wasn’t it?” Bernie asked with a chuckle.

  Tessa wished it had been as big a thrill as Chad’s kiss, then maybe she could get it—and him—out of her mind. “I’m not sure what I’d call that.”

  “You got a standing ovation,” Bernie persisted.

  “That wasn’t for her singing,” Jimmy murmured.

  “Oh, Jimmy, you sweetie,” Tessa said as she bussed a kiss on the bald spot atop his head. “You better be careful, Bernie, or I’m going to try to steal him from you.”

  Bernie chuckled again. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to try.”

  “And fail,” Jimmy reminded her. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m a one-woman man.” He grabbed his wife’s hand and squeezed. “This woman’s.”

  Tessa smiled at the obvious love between the older couple and wished she would one day find such a love for herself. She knew it wouldn’t be with Chad. Like Jimmy, he was a one-woman man, too. Luanne’s. So Tessa would forget about his kiss—and she’d forget all about him. Once their ride-along was over—unless she could talk Lieutenant O’Donnell into switching her to another officer.