Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 1

“That’s him!”

Clarine hissed her exclamation as if she needed to keep her voice down. Not necessary, given our confinement. The windows on my Prius were closed tightly and tinted deeper than the law allowed.

“That’s him,” I confirmed with the patience of a master. I could call myself that now that I had an apprentice. Clarine Harp wanted to learn the art of catching cheaters and I’d been Green Valley’s finest infidelity investigator going on six years.

“What’s your first priority?” I quizzed.

“To squeeze as much confirmation as possible into a single frame.” Clarine set down binoculars she’d been looking through for two hours and picked up the Nikon in her lap. Her gaze was back on our mark as she thumbed on the camera and lifted the viewfinder to her eye. “I don’t have a great shot.”

Not yet, she didn’t. Vernon Sharp was busy jogging down nondescript outdoor stairs and tapping his fingers jauntily on the railing as he descended. He hadn’t been at Harrah’s for a poker tournament like he’d told his wife. He was leaving Room 207 of a no-tell motel at one a.m.

Cheating bastards weren’t very original. This one was parked right out front of the C’mon Inn. Vanity plates with the word SWAGR made him that much easier to follow. Smarter cheaters rented Airbnbs and kept secret apartments they paid for in cash. We hadn’t even needed to leave the county to catch Vernon.

“He’s about to step into the money shot,” I coached. “It’ll give us the motel sign, the front office, and him getting into his car.”

The shutter went off in rapid succession. The telephoto lens looked heavy in her small hand, but Clarine was tough. The woman had a brown belt in Krav Maga. She’d taken it up after a confrontation with the mistress of her two-timing ex. Said mistress had seen it fit to show up at Clarine’s job and start a hair-pulling catfight over “her man.” The next morning, Clarine had dumped every item he owned on the woman’s lawn and chalked a message on her driveway: I dare you. Come for me again.

For a solid minute, I was quiet as her camera clicked away. She didn’t stop until Vernon was down the road. She’d been my apprentice for six months, but I’d had her on payroll for two years. A trained makeup artist, Clarine was a veritable master of disguise who transformed me whenever I needed to change my look. She’d learned all about the PI business as we’d chatted and gabbed whenever she made me up.

“That was…” She was bright-eyed and breathy as she let the camera fall back to her lap. Tonight was her first stakeout and I could tell she was going to be good.

“Just the beginning.” I handed her my notebook. “We need to log the whole night.”

“What do I write?” Clarine produced a pen.

“Our time of arrival, 11:13. Write that we spotted our mark at 1:24 a.m. Get down the room number. Then write, Confirmed CB.”

“CB?”

My gaze had wandered back to the door of Room 207, but I threw her the briefest of looks. “CB means Cheating Bastard.”

“Are there other kinds of bastards?”Clarine cocked her head.

“Oh, there are. But CBs are the absolute worst. Upstanding and forthright to family and friends. Respected in their jobs. Most Sundays, you’ll even see them at church. SBs—scumbags—make no bones about their cheating, but CBs are betrayers. They’re orchestrators of lies.”

I kept a lid on the rest, though I did have my own fully baked acronym lexicon. Soon enough, she’d hear about the double-Cs (closet cases), the OBs (oddballs), and the vice squad. The motivations of the side pieces were even more complex, though the DGAFs and the MCs were every bit as guilty as the CBs. The former did not give a fuck that they were sleeping with people who were taken. The mutual cheaters had spouses of their own.

This one looks like an SB.

In addition to standing for scumbag, SB also stood for “sugar baby.” Shopping bags from the Pretty Pop Boutique in Knoxville came in a telltale pink. The other bag in her hand—a small green one—was from a place called Luscious Locks. The frightening shine and shampoo commercial bounce of her ombre waves proved he’d also taken her to the salon.

“She’s young.” Clarine drew out the end of her last word.

“If you frame it up right, you can get the room number in the shot,” I supplied.

My calm logic was designed to distract us both. Grounding myself in the job herded me away from memories of the SB who had started it all. Floyd had been my lying, cheating, double-life leading husband who had the audacity to die before I could divorce his ass.

Clarine’s shutter went off again in short bursts. My gaze followed the woman as she flitted down the stairs, smiling and checking her phone. The predictability of it all got to me sometimes. It had been six years since seeking answers about my own marriage led me to find my calling as a PI—to starting my agency, Sniffing Around. Some days, it felt like six years too long.

“Why doesn’t she look—” Clarine cut herself off. “I don’t know. Sorry? Ashamed?”

But the psychology of cheating was too complex to explain. So I opted for an answer that was true, if incomplete. I smiled sadly.

“Because she’s not.”

Detox Charcoal or Hydro Boost?

The matter of which sheet mask to reward myself with was hard to decide when my legs were stiff and my brain was slow. No matter how tired I was at the end of the night, I insisted upon the ritual. Practicing intense self-care to counterbalance the things I saw in both my jobs was the only way I could keep doing them.

And then, there was the other matter. Proper skin care was essential. Clogged pores didn’t care what time it was. They didn’t want to hear your sob story about how busy you were. Dry skin didn’t want excuses—it wanted proper hydration. Just because Black don’t crack didn’t mean I could let myself go.

Do the charcoal, I scolded myself, knowing I should go for a deep cleanse even though the Hydro Boost smelled so, so good. I was still headed home in my car, busy thinking on whether to start with a hard exfoliation versus a micellar cleanse as I turned onto my block. A strange flickering on my side of the street distracted me from skin care musings.

Is that light coming from my house?

Squinting was no help, dark as it was outside. I took my foot off the gas and slipped back into PI mode.

Not my house. The house next door.

Only, the Jenkins house was empty. They’d set off on a yearlong RV tour of the United States. As it stood now, they were only six months in. Last week, they’d texted me pictures from Mount Rushmore. No RV in the driveway was another clue they hadn’t made a sudden return.

It has to be a burglar.

I cut my headlights and craned my neck as I floated by the house. A closer look corroborated my theory. A truck I’d never seen was parked in the driveway with its tailgate down. The moon was bright enough for me to make out some of the contents: boxes, a TV, and an oil portrait of the Jenkinses’ beloved Chinchilla cat.

Stopping two doors past the Jenkinses’, I turned my engine off, thumbed my radio on, and kept my eyes on the rearview mirror.

“This is Loretta Boggs to dispatch, calling in a 4-5-9.”

I knew the code for a burglary in progress from my day job. When I wasn’t in hot pursuit of CBs and SBs, I was a crime scene processor with the county sheriff. The police radio I’d been issued stayed in my car.

“Hey, Loretta. What you got out there?” came the congenial voice of Diane Rutherford, a dispatcher who worked nights. Diane—a single mother—had become more than a bit bored since her girls had gone off to college. She liked to say the night shift was better than reality television.

“I’m on my own street, Poppy Seed Lane. The 4-5-9 is at 721, the Jenkins’ place.”

“The Jenkins’ place?” Diane parroted back in disbelief. “They ought to be gone another six months.”

“Which is why someone’s over there trying to rob them. They’ve probably been casing the place for weeks.”

The thought gave me a shudder. Anyone watching the Jenkinses’ place had been watching mine.

“You know...” Diane started in preachily. “I’d think if the Jenkinses didn’t want that sort of thing to happen, they ought to have gotten timers for their lights. You can do your whole house for no more than thirty-five dollars if you go down to Eager Beaver’s.”

“You got any cars nearby?” I kept my eyes glued to the mirror.

“There’s a pileup eastbound from Knoxville,” she answered. “Most of my patrols went off-beat to handle that.”

“How soon can you send somebody?”

“Boone’s who I’ve got left in town, but he’s in the middle of a call.”

There were three ways that this could end: with Boone catching him, with me catching him, or with the guy getting away. I wasn’t going to let that last one happen. My plan wasn’t to confront him. It was to do the thing I knew how to do better than anybody: I’d get a positive ID.

“I’ll stay here and hold it down,” I told Diane. “Send Boone when you can.”

I ran through a mental checklist of items I had on my person: my phone for taking pictures; a Taser, just in case I needed to strike; a tracker pin app on my phone in case things got ugly.

Ready as I would ever be, I exited my car and made my way toward the familiar house. The Jenkins’ place was like mine—a wide rambler with low-pitched gabled roofs, large windows, and a covered front porch. A well-groomed lawn separated the house from the street, but I wouldn’t move in from that angle. Knowing my terrain, I slipped into the Jenkinses’ backyard.

Creeping below the trellis, under cover of night and bougainvillea, my suspicions were further confirmed. From inside the Jenkinses’ kitchen window, a strong flashlight beam bobbed and wove. I stole toward the property line, toward the safety of my own back wall. The potted ficus I would hide behind was already in my sights.

I prepared myself mentally, catching my breath as I flattened my back against my brick wall. When the thud of footsteps coming down the Jenkinses’ back patio stairs interrupted my thoughts, I turned toward my target. A sense of danger hit me twice as I realized how little I knew about my mark. This person could be more than a thieving lowlife. There could be more than one of them. And they could have a gun.

Hold it steady, Loretta. No one knows you’re here.

I thumbed on my phone, pointing my lens toward where the burglar would come into view. It would be another ten seconds before they were close enough for a good shot, so I glanced up from the display, thinking to get a good look with my naked eye.

Ho-ly. Shit.

I drew out the expletive as I spoke it in my own mind. The man who emerged from the shadows was stunning—tall and broad-shouldered, muscular and trim. He had the pouty lips of a model and was clean-shaven. Even in low light, I could make out his chiseled jaw.

I had never seen a burglar who looked anything like this, not in all my years of logging arrest records; not in all the time I’d spent at my desk in the sheriff’s office as handcuffed felons were led by. Most burglars I’d seen were addicts, strung out and desperate to steal in order to use. But this burglar...he was the picture of vitality, and masculinity, and good health.

The box he carried was wider than his hips and the top stopped halfway up his chest, at a height that drew attention to his muscled arms. My gaze followed their lines and I thought to drink him in. Before I could scold myself to focus, the light over my garage came on.

Shit. My motion sensor.

I had forgotten all about it. Instinctively, my thumb that hovered over the shutter button took the shot. The resulting sound—a digital imitation of mechanical shutter motion—caused the burglar to frown in the direction of the ficus. With the floodlights on, I wasn’t as hidden as I needed to be.

“Did you just take my picture?”

His voice matched the rest of him, dangerous and deep. Preparing to flee in case I needed to, I stood. I didn’t answer his question, but I did shift my gaze to his hands. My only assurance that I wouldn’t be shot in a matter of seconds came from the fact that he still held the box.

“Just what do you think you’re doing, robbing the Jenkinses like this?”

The man changed his trajectory, no longer making his way toward his truck, but heading to where I stood. He squinted, as if wanting a closer look at my face.

“You just stop right there,” I warned, louder, left-handing my phone and putting my free hand in my pocket until I felt my Taser. Not once did I take my eyes off of what he was doing with his.

“Ma’am, I’m not a burglar.”

He did look clean and fresh, his spotless, suntanned skin nearly glowing against his navy crewneck tee. It was a simple enough garment, but there was nothing simple about the way he filled it out. His hair was brown, with a bit of sun in it just like mine, but cut short with the softest wave. In the shadows, he’d seemed older, but the light revealed youthful features—big blue eyes and a bit of a baby face.

“Telling me you’re not a burglar is exactly what a burger would say,” I informed him tartly.

“It’s also what a not-burglar would say.”

“Then I guess I’m just gonna have to trust my instincts.”

“And what do your instincts tell you?” Now he looked amused.

My fingers tightened around the handle of my Taser.

“That only the worst kind of person would steal an oil portrait of a cat.”

“Ma’am—” He moved to relieve himself of the box.

“Nobody told you to put that down,” I scolded firmly, though real panic tore through my chest. Maybe getting this close had been a bad idea. I wanted to catch this guy, but I didn’t want to die over Mr. Whiskers.

“Ma’am,” he repeated, setting his box down. “If you’d just let me?—”

But I didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. With his hands free, he could be seconds away from pulling out a real gun. So I stopped negotiating and I did what I had to. I aimed my Taser at the oddly sexy but clearly dangerous burglar. I aimed my Taser at him. And I shot.