Just Kidding (SWAT Generation 2.0 Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

Then the husband finally arrived, and he looked pissed.

  “What’s going on over here?” he snapped.

  “Listen, Gary…” Dax started.

  “It’s Jerry, not Gary,” Jerry not Gary snapped. “Rachelle, let’s go. I didn’t realize you needed to talk to him for more than five seconds to get him to sign the damn book. You know that we don’t need this. I can afford to take us on vacation.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dax asked, sounding confused.

  Hell, I was confused, too.

  “Let’s leave,” Jerry ordered, grabbing Rachelle by the arm and hauling her away.

  That was about when the waitress showed up with a refill on our drinks.

  “Love your calendar,” she said. “Where can I get me one of those? I’d for sure love the chance to win five grand. Enough of you come into the diner that I could likely get all of your autographs without having to leave the comfort of my own business.”

  “Autographs?” I asked.

  “People that get all twelve months signed by the SWAT cops posing get entered into a raffle to win five thousand dollars and a trip to Cabo,” the waitress said. “I’ve heard that it’s legit, too. The mayor is the one funding it.”

  All I could do was shake my head.

  “Thank you for the drink,” I said, sounding odd.

  When she did finally leave, Dax was looking at me with worry.

  “This is about to get bad,” he pointed out.

  Yes, yes it was.

  Chapter 12

  Evidently I always manage to take the path that has the most shit to trip over.

  -Dax’s secret thoughts

  Dax

  I watched as Rowen fairly launched herself at an older man that was just as tattooed as me.

  Though, he didn’t bother to cover them up anymore.

  “Uncle Michael!” Rowen cried, jumping down off the steps and running full tilt for the man.

  Michael caught her and wrapped her up in his strong arms, grinning like a fucking loon.

  “What the hell happened to your hair, Rowen?” Michael asked her.

  Rowen pulled back with a grimace and looked worriedly at me.

  I raised my brows, wondering what it was that she wanted.

  “Well…” Rowen began. “It started like this.”

  Michael’s face was like thunder when Rowen finally finished explaining…as was her mother’s.

  “If it wasn’t illegal to kill someone, I’d be driving to San Antonio right now,” Reese muttered.

  I barely contained the urge to laugh.

  The only reason I didn’t was because she was being very serious. The only thing keeping her in check was her daughter’s desire for this not to go any further, and Luke’s insistence that she calm down.

  Though, saying ‘calm down’ hadn’t really worked in his favor. Something in which I’d witnessed twice over the course of our meal together.

  We were eating lunch at The Back Porch.

  I wasn’t sure how or why it’d come to be—me getting invited to the family dinner with Rowen—but I was glad that she’d asked me to come.

  I was even more glad that I’d come considering our waiter seemed to have a thing for Rowen, bald head and all.

  “Do you know the waiter?” I asked curiously.

  She looked at where the waiter had disappeared, then looked back at me.

  “I graduated with him,” she answered. “It’s been a really long time since I saw him last. He’s put on a lot of weight. I almost didn’t recognize him at first.”

  “Man doesn’t look like he used to be skinny,” I found myself saying. “He looks like he’s always been jacked.”

  And by jacked, I meant on steroids. The motherfucker was huge. Even bigger than me, and I worked out a lot to get what I got.

  But our waiter? He looked like he downed steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  “Do you think he can even take his shirt off?” Reese wondered. “I wouldn’t think his massive arms would contort into that small of a space.”

  Luke snorted then took a gulp of his beer.

  “Why are we talking about our waiter, anyway?” Michael asked. “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do to this bitch that did this to our girl.”

  All eyes were once again on Rowen.

  “I agree,” Katy snapped. “Surely there’s something we can do.”

  She looked at Luke, and Luke sighed.

  “Like I’ve already told your mother and your sister, there’s nothing that can be done,” Luke explained. “There’s no evidence that she did it. She doesn’t even live there any longer. And to top it off, we’re not stooping to her level.”

  “You’re being awfully level-headed about this,” Michael surmised.

  Michael’s wife, Nikki, snorted.

  “He’s pissed just like the rest of us are,” Nikki said. “The only difference is, he’s trying to be diplomatic and not get arrested. It would look bad if the chief of police was arrested.”

  She did have a point.

  It would look incredibly bad.

  I curled my arm around Rowen’s chair, and the move didn’t go unnoticed by any man at the table. Not Derek, who’d been surprisingly quiet throughout the lunch. Not Michael, and for sure not Luke.

  The one that surprised me the most, however, was Logan. Katy’s husband.

  He looked like he wanted to rip my arm off and beat me with it.

  Instead of moving my hand, I curled it around her tighter and squeezed her shoulder.

  “Listen to this. Our lovely mayor just posted it on his Facebook page,” Rowen said, sounding distracted. “We encourage each and every one of you to take time out of your day to greet your new SWAT team. Each person that collects all twelve autographs will be entered into a contest to win a trip for two to Cabo as well as five grand in pocket money to spend while you’re there. Buy your calendar today!”

  I felt my stomach sink.

  “I just don’t understand,” I muttered, scrubbing my hand over my eyes.

  “That makes two of us,” Rowen admitted. “Why bother with all that extra shit? Those calendars were going to sell anyway, regardless of if there was a prize attached to it.”

  I agreed.

  Not to mention I was about to be signing freakin’ calendars every time I was out in public.

  There wouldn’t be a single man, woman or child in Kilgore that didn’t know who I was by the end of all of this. And they’d likely know that it was my bare ass that’d been spread like wildfire just as fast.

  Perfect. Just perfect.

  I’d only thought that I’d gotten out from under that cloud of embarrassment.

  Speaking of embarrassments, my life’s biggest regret walked through the front door with her husband in tow.

  She looked so out of place here that it was comical.

  “Speak of the devil,” Rowen said, spying what I’d just seen seconds before.

  “We weren’t talking about the devil,” Katy said. “What…oh.”

  Rachelle cased the room, and her eyes landed on us.

  “Son of a bitch,” Logan muttered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This woman is a fucking nut job,” Logan said. “I pulled her over for speeding a few weeks ago. She came in and filed a complaint about me to the department supervisor. Said I was ‘inappropriate’ with her.”

  Katy snorted.

  “Yeah, right. She’s delusional,” I said. “But, saying that, her going in there and filing a complaint is just like her. She’s not used to getting into trouble. She could always manage to weasel out of it because of her good looks or her money when I was dating her.”

  “Why did you date her?” Katy asked curiously.

  I looked over at Rachelle, who was still just as beautiful today as she was when we were in high school.

  “I was a teenage boy,” I told them. “There are things that I do
n’t want to talk about, and why I was with Rachelle while I’m out to eat with my girlfriend’s family is one of them.”

  There was silence at the table after that for all of two point five seconds, and then Derek said, “Hey, Dad. Did you know that Dax and Rowen are living next to each other?”

  The little shit-stirrer.

  “Actually, yes,” Luke said. “Now, what are we getting to eat?”

  “Excuse me,” a soft, feminine voice said from beside me. “But would you mind signing my calendar?”

  So it began. I guess the only reason they weren’t asking Derek was because it wasn’t his month yet. That, or they didn’t realize who he was.

  Dax gave the table at large a long-suffering glance, then took the calendar.

  After signing, she asked him for a picture.

  He stood up, smiled, and looked downright constipated.

  Something in which I gave him hell for after we left the restaurant.

  “And when she asked you for a selfie, I thought you were going to self-combust,” I snickered.

  Dax pulled his truck into the spot in front of his duplex and got out.

  I started to bail out of my side, but before I’d even swung my legs around, he was there, pinning me in.

  “You find my torture amusing?” he challenged, smoothing two rough hands up the length of my thighs.

  I’d worn a dress to dinner.

  I wasn’t sure why, really. I didn’t usually wear dresses period, but while I’d been unpacking, I’d seen the dress in the closet and thought, huh. That’s interesting.

  What was interesting was that I’d bought it because it was so cute and so not me. Meaning that my family would approve because I was so anti-dress.

  I hadn’t been planning on wearing it to dinner, but when the black slacks that I’d wanted to wear weren’t clean, I’d gone to my closet and looked at the dress for five minutes contemplating whether it was too sexy for a dinner out with your family.

  I’d just decided on not wearing it when Dax had come into my bedroom.

  He was dressed and ready to go.

  Wearing a nice white Oxford shirt, faded blue jeans that were faded from use and not from the store, and a black hat with a white clover on the bill that said ‘Get Lucky.’

  “You ready?” he asked me, raking his gaze over me in a long sweep.

  I snorted and looked past my hips, which were the only thing covered at this point in time, and said, “Yep. All I need is shoes.”

  He chuckled and walked up behind me, his gaze locking on my breasts in the mirror.

  “You have anything that you can let these beautiful things go free?” he’d asked.

  And that was why I’d worn the dress.

  I’d also enjoyed the look on his face when he’d gotten a good look at the back neckline.

  A neckline that was more of a waistline seeing as the line didn’t start until midway down my back.

  “And this dress,” he said as he squeezed my hips right above where he’d stopped his hands. “I thought I was going to die when I saw you walk out in this earlier.”

  I squirmed in my seat. “You didn’t even look affected,” I argued.

  He scoffed. “You were looking at the wrong part of my anatomy, then. I was affected then, and I’m sure as fuck affected now.”

  I let my gaze trail down to his affected area and grinned up at him.

  His cock was straining the seam of his pants, and there was no way that he could be comfortable with his dick crammed in at that awkward angle.

  “Did you know the majority of the male population tuck their cocks to the left side of their pants?” I wondered.

  Why was I saying this? Because I spoke when I got nervous.

  Things just sometimes poured out of my mouth with me least expecting them.

  “No,” he admitted. “Where did you learn that from?”

  I opened my mouth to say that I’d overheard one of his fellow cops discussing it when he lowered his mouth to touch the tip of my nose.

  I swear he took the words right out of my mouth the moment he laid his lips on my skin.

  My hands did their own exploring then, moving up the silken length of his neck to cup his jaw with both hands.

  When I had him where I wanted him, I placed a gentle kiss on his lips. Just at the corner where he usually kicked it up when he brought that deadly smirk out to play.

  “Take me inside,” I urged.

  “Your place or mine?” he asked, still not moving anything but his hands.

  And all those were doing was running up and down the length of my thigh, as if he was trying to distract me.

  “I don’t care as long as my back hits a bed,” I told him bluntly.

  He picked me up then and started walking toward the front door.

  I felt my dress fall down to cover my ass, but his hands were still firmly placed right on them as he moved.

  “The truck door,” I reminded him before placing kisses on his throat.

  He growled as he stopped, turned, and kicked.

  The truck door slammed with a loud crash just as a pair of headlights turned in our direction.

  At first, Dax didn’t stop or even acknowledge the truck that’d pulled in, but when they stayed on us as he quickly worked to open the door while holding me to the wall, Dax cursed.

  I looked over his shoulder at whoever was spotlighting us and prayed it wasn’t my brother.

  That would be something he’d do for sure.

  Dax slowly let me fall from his grip, his mouth on my ear. “Wait here.”

  I didn’t have a choice as he turned his back on me and started down the stairs.

  Instead of following him with my feet, I followed him with my eyes.

  He’d barely made it to the front porch steps that separated the entrance to our places from the sidewalk that was in front of every place when the feminine voice spoke up.

  “Dax, do you have a moment to speak?” Rachelle spoke, voice unsteady.

  I looked past her car’s headlights, hoping to get a good view of her, but couldn’t find her in the darkness.

  Dax obviously had no problem finding her, though.

  Arms crossed tight over his chest, he said, “Now’s not a good time.”

  Rachelle let out a long sigh then said, “I just wanted to apologize for how I treated you in high school. That wasn’t nice.”

  That wasn’t nice? What a crock of shit.

  “You’re not forgiven,” Dax said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, you interrupted something.”

  When he turned his back on Rachelle, she finally came forward enough that I could see her.

  “Dax, stop being a dick and let me talk to you,” she snapped.

  I stiffened as did Dax.

  He didn’t stop walking until he was at my side, though.

  Once there, he looked at me as if I could help solve the predicament he found himself in.

  And that was when I realized that he was giving me free rein. To do what I would with it.

  Protect him or disappoint him. The choice was up to me.

  I turned away from his gaze and stared down Rachelle as she came even closer.

  “We have plans, Rachelle,” I said softly. “Plans that don’t include you and whatever your purpose here is.”

  Rachelle stiffened at my words.

  “This particularly pertains to Dax and what happened when we broke up when we were teenagers,” she said. “I owe him an apology.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “The time for an apology should’ve been when it happened all those years ago,” I told her bluntly. “Do you know what he could’ve done to you?”

  Rachelle frowned.

  “If Dax wasn’t a better person, you could’ve been in some serious shit,” I told her. “You could’ve had to spent up to fifteen years in prison for that stunt you pulled.”

  Her mouth fell open.

&nbs
p; “What?” she yelped. “Why?”

  I looked at her like she was a bit slow.

  “Tell me,” I said. “How old were you when you did that? Sent that picture out to everybody?”

  She swallowed, looking as if she’d rather punch herself in the face than answer my question.

  “Nineteen,” she answered.

  I nodded. Good.

  “Dax was seventeen,” I told her. “Technically a minor according to the law.”

  Her eyebrows pulled down as she looked at me with a confused expression on her face.

  “Yeah, so?” she pushed, not quite understanding yet.

  “So when you sent that picture to everyone, technically, you as the adult in the situation would’ve been tried as an adult if Dax had decided to pursue it,” I told her. “You could’ve faced a minimum of fifteen years in prison. You could’ve had to pay fines. Then, when you got out of prison, you would’ve been required, by law, to register as a sex offender.” I tilted my head. “And if that’s not bad enough, each time you moved, it’s your duty to inform your neighbors that you’re a sex offender. All over a naked picture of Dax’s backside you felt you needed to share.”

  It took Rachelle a long moment to comprehend the severity of what she’d done.

  “And he was nice and a lot more understanding than I would’ve been,” I continued. “Do you honestly think that you should’ve gotten away with what you did? And to top it off, years later, you’re just now apologizing for it?”

  Rachelle didn’t have anything to say to that.

  I kept going, though.

  “And now you’re at his house, way past an acceptable time to randomly show at a person’s house, demanding to apologize. How does that make any sense whatsoever?” I wondered.

  Rachelle clenched her fists.

  “And honestly, I’m not really in the mood to deal with this right now,” I continued on as if she wasn’t looking like a lost little girl. “Now it’s time for you to run on home to your hubby. Get away from here and don’t come back.”

  Rachelle stiffened.

  Turning my back on Rachelle, I took the silent man’s hand that was beside me, pushed open the door he hadn’t yet had the chance to open all the way, and dragged him inside with me.

  “Now where were we?” I teased, my hands splaying over his chest as I leaned into him.