Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Calvin had just wanted to see if Adelaide Gable’s caramel sticky buns were as good as he remembered. Besides, he figured being seen at the market would be good for his image. He could make small talk, have the residents see him in his civvies, and start ingratiating himself with the community. That way, they’d forget his past transgressions and see him as the upstanding public servant he’d become—against all odds.
The job was easier when people weren’t afraid of him. He preferred forging bonds with the people he was meant to serve and protect. He’d grown up in the years since he’d left Fernley; he wanted to know if people could look beyond his past and see him for who he was now.
And if they didn’t, well, he wasn’t obligated to run in the election in the fall. He could go back to his old job and leave these shores for good.
So the Fernley Winter Market was meant to be an easy Sunday-morning stroll filled with polite small talk and maybe a delicious treat.
He hadn’t expected to have to stop a thief.
And he certainly hadn’t expected to watch Daphne Davis get slugged in the face either.
His heart gave a lurch as Daphne’s head snapped back, blood spraying from her nose in a grisly crimson arc. The thief stumbled forward, his shoulder banging into hers, and he made to push her out of the way.
But the crook underestimated Davis. She let out a battle cry worthy of a Valkyrie and clung to him, tripping him over her outstretched foot as she went down. He landed on top of her, and Calvin lost sight of them in the crowd.
Feet pounding on the squeaky wooden floors, Calvin shouted for people to move out of the way as he sprinted toward the action.
“Get him!” an elderly lady screamed. “Kick him in the balls, Daphne!”
“Police!” Calvin shouted, which had precisely zero effect on the fight beyond.
The crowd parted as he approached, and he saw the thief clamber to his feet, but Daphne reached for him and grabbed his belt. The thief yelled as his jeans were dragged down, and he was forced to drop the cashbox to cling to the front of his pants, lest he flash the farmers’ market crowd with a full-frontal assault.
Blood gushed from Daphne’s face. Her eyes flashed as she hung on to the belt, and she was dragged three feet while the thief tried to stumble away. The front of her jacket was covered in slick red blood. It coated her lips and teeth.
She looked feral. Calvin had never seen that expression on her face before. Not studious, good-girl Daphne, who bristled and looked down her nose at him whenever he’d poked her. Not the girl whose eyes had narrowed when he’d dared speak to her directly. Not the girl who stuck her nose in her books and ignored the world around her like it had done her wrong, when in reality she should’ve been thankful for everything she had.
That Daphne was gone, and in her place was a snarling, screaming beast clinging on to the thief’s belt like she’d die before letting go.
He hadn’t known she’d had it in her. He would’ve expected her to shy away from a fight that had nothing to do with her. The Daphne Davis he knew was selfish. She only cared about herself and her future.
The thief turned and tried to break Daphne’s hold. His foot wound back, and Calvin could tell he wanted to kick the woman currently preventing his escape.
Strength rushed through Calvin. In two strides he was on them, wrapping his arms around the thief’s torso as he wrenched him away from Daphne. He took the thief down to the ground and held him there, then glanced at Daphne.
Panting, he took in her bloodied snarl. “You good?”
She flopped onto her back on the gym floor, tongue darting out to lick her lip. She grimaced. “What do you think, Einstein?”
“Not the time, Cupcake,” he shot back through clenched teeth. “Are you injured?”
“My face hurts,” she said.
“Not surprised,” he answered. This couldn’t happen when he was on duty and had all his gear, could it? No. That would be too easy. He had some plastic cuffs in his truck, but he wasn’t walking away until he knew Daphne was all right.
It took a few minutes to get everything settled and the perp fully subdued, by which time Daphne was surrounded by old ladies trying to blot the blood from her face and clothes. As he dragged the thief to his feet, he glanced over at the woman who’d helped him take the man down.
Her face was still smeared with blood, but most of it had been wiped away. Her shirt was a disaster. What in the world had possessed her to get in the middle of this? Calvin had been right there . She could have been seriously injured because of her stupidity, which was something he never thought he’d ever think about a brainiac like her.
Anger burned away the last of his worry for her. “You’re coming to the station,” he told her.
Daphne lifted her gaze to his, her nose pinched between her fingers. “Is that an order?”
She had to be the most irritating woman on the planet. You’re goddamn right it’s an order, he wanted to bark. Instead, he took a breath and did his best to cool his temper. “I need you to make a statement, and we can get your nose looked at while you’re there.”
Her eyes were already swelling, and she’d have nasty bruises come morning. Calvin wished he’d run a bit faster to stop her from getting hit in the first place.
No.
On second thought, he wished Daphne had used that big brain of hers to rustle up some common sense and dodge the punch when she had the chance.
“Go ahead,” one of the old ladies said, helping Daphne to her feet. “You did good, honey.”
“Thanks, Grandma.”
“I still think you should’ve kicked him in the balls.”
“I’ll try that next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Calvin cut in, voice harsh. “I’ll drive.”
“Yes, sir.”
His scowl didn’t seem to cow her, but she followed as he walked the thief to his truck, tightened the plastic cuffs on his wrists, and loaded him into the back seat of the cab. Daphne got in the front, and he circled around to get behind the wheel. She held a tissue to her nose and struggled with the seat belt until he huffed and clipped it in for her.
“Thanks,” she said, and sighed as her head hit the headrest.
Calvin ground his teeth and glanced at the man in the back seat. He was curled up against one of the doors, looking crumpled and unlikely to try anything stupid. At least one of them was reasonable. Calvin drove to the station.
When they got there, he let one of the deputies on duty handle the paperwork and walked Daphne to his office. She slumped into a chair and winced as her hand jarred against her nose.
“I’ve never gotten punched in the face before,” she said, pulling the tissue away from her face to look at the blood soaking into it. Her blue eyes looked a bit wider than usual when she met Calvin’s gaze. “How bad do I look?”
She looked awful. “I’ve seen worse.”
She prodded at her face. “Everything hurts.”
He batted her hands away and used his fingers to tilt up her chin. She blinked up at him with those clear blue eyes, but he kept his gaze on her injuries. He ran his fingers over the sides of her nose as gently as he could, his stomach clenching as she hissed. “Doesn’t look broken, but you should get some ice on it for the swelling. You’ll have nasty black eyes for a while.”
Daphne grunted in response. For reasons Calvin couldn’t quite explain, he kept his fingers on the edge of her jaw as he tilted Daphne’s face to inspect her wounds. Her skin was softer than he’d expected, like silk. Her jawbone felt almost delicate as his finger pressed into it to get her to turn her head. There was a drop of dried blood below her earlobe.
He should have run faster, and she should have stayed out of the damn way.
“You should get checked out at the medical center,” he told her. “You could have a concussion.”
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t be stupid, Davis.”
“I’m fine .”
“Still stubborn as ever, huh.”
She glared at him, and Calvin felt his lips twitch at the corners. She’d always been easy to rile up, even though she tried to hide it. Tried to pretend she was levelheaded and bookish. Now that his blood had stopped thrumming so hard and he could think a little more clearly, he figured it made sense that Daphne had gotten her face in the way of the cashbox thief’s fist. Her temper was brittle and likely to snap, and those book smarts of hers didn’t seem to extend to the real world.
He let go of her face and leaned against the edge of his desk as he folded his arms. “What possessed you to get involved?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He was robbing the jam man. I like the jam man. The thief was coming right at me, so I hit him with my purse. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Clearly.”
That earned him a glare. “I stopped him, didn’t I?”
“Next time, you let me handle it.”
“You weren’t there, genius.”
“I was on the way.”
“What if he got away? I slowed him down long enough for you to catch up.”
“Davis, I’m serious,” Calvin said through gritted teeth. “You can’t put yourself in the line of fire like that.”
“That’s a funny way of saying thank you.”
Calvin grunted and stalked out the door. She drove him crazy. There was no way he’d be able to do his job with her working in the building. Just the sight of her would send his blood pressure skyrocketing, never mind if she opened her mouth. And she would. The good-girl act was total bullshit, as far as Calvin was concerned. How she’d convinced everyone that she was the responsible sister was a mystery. At least Ellie was predictable in her unpredictability.
But the department couldn’t afford any wasted time finding someone else. Money was tight, and he needed to figure out if there were any snakes in the grass the feds had failed to sniff out. Daphne, for all her faults, was an intelligent woman and an accomplished accountant, of which there weren’t many on the island. He needed her to stay here and tell him where all the sheriff’s department’s money had gone so he could do his job. It was seven months until the election, and Calvin had to know what was going on under the surface. He’d be damned if he left this place worse than he’d found it, even if he didn’t end up as the island’s permanent sheriff.
There was no way people would look at him, shake their heads, and say that they’d made a bad call in asking him to be acting sheriff. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. He’d changed , damn it.
He needed Daphne, so he’d need to deal with her presence, as irritating as it would be.
By the time he got an ice pack and the first aid kit, his anger had dialed down a few notches. He cracked the ice pack to get it working and handed it over. “Put that on your face. You’re already swelling.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t become a doctor, Flint, because your bedside manner sucks.”
“When you hear my bedside manner, you’ll know, Davis.”
She snorted and put the ice on her face.
“Now. Start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”
By the time Daphne was done, Calvin had paced the length of his office two dozen times. It was his day off. He shouldn’t have had to deal with this on his day off.
And every time he looked at Daphne with all the blood and swelling, he got a funny pinch in his chest. He should’ve been faster, or at least followed her down the aisle of the farmers’ market, like he’d wanted to in the first place.
“And the worst part is, I dropped my caramel sticky bun on the ground,” Daphne finished, “ and my multigrain loaf.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a mason jar filled with pink jam. “But at least this survived.”
“I’ll have to confiscate that as evidence.”
She clutched the jar to her chest. “Don’t you dare.”
A smile tried its best to curl at the corner of his lips, but he turned away so she wouldn’t see it. “Keep the ice on your face as long as you can manage. You’ll look like hell tomorrow.”
“You sure know how to make a woman feel good about herself.”
“Just telling you the truth so you’re emotionally prepared for it.”
She dragged herself to her feet with a snort. “Right.”
“You need a ride home?”
“I’ll manage. One police escort was enough for my first week back on the island.”
“See you tomorrow, Davis.”
“Unfortunately,” she mumbled, and walked out of his office. He glanced out the window to see her shuffle outside, that jar of pink jam still clutched in her hand, the other busy holding the ice pack to her face.
Shaking his head, Calvin tore his gaze away and resigned himself to a few hours of work on his only day off.