Chapter 8
I’ve accepted the fact that I’m getting older. But my body seems to be taking it badly.
—Ellodie to Quaid
ELLODIE
“Me first,” he growled as he pushed past me into my apartment.
I watched him go down the hallway, surprised as he stalked through the house with efficient, long strides.
My gaze went to his backside as he moved his way through my place, and I watched as those magnificent muscles pushed him through every single room until he was standing back in front of me.
Pulling me gently inside by my wrist, he closed the door and then stated, rather simply, “I’m staying here with you tonight.”
“I’m sorry, but what?” I asked, looking at Quaid like he’d lost his mind.
“I’m staying here tonight,” he repeated. “Unless you want to come to my place.”
I tilted my head up to look at him. “Whereis your place?”
I may have asked the question as if I was considering it, but I didn’t plan on actually going there. It was to buy me time to figure out a way to get out of this.
I could not have this sexy beast of a man in my apartment while I slept. I just couldn’t.
I’d die of sexual overload.
“It’s a new build in the Melissa area.” He expounded, “I have one set of plates. Four forks. Four spoons. A steak knife. A sectional. One bed, and a really fuckin’ awesome shower.”
“You almost had me with the shower,” I lied. “ButI’m not sharing a bed with you.”
“There’s the couch,” he offered.
I thought about it long and hard before answering.
Honestly, he wasn’t going to let me stay here by myself. I could read that by the set of his shoulders, and the way he crossed his arms over his chest, as if he was readying for a fight.
“I want to stay here tonight and think about how this is going to work logistically.” I paused and really looked at him. “You really think he’s going to try again?”
Maybe if I bought myself time, I could figure out a way to have him under the same roof as me without throwing myself at him.
“Yes,” he confirmed with very little hesitation. “I think that he’s going to try again. And the bad thing is, I think you need to keep your dating profiles up. Keep accepting dates… but string it along. Get to know them first. Don’t accept any actual dates, though. Maybe as you get to know them the guy we’re looking for will show his hands, use some of the same mannerisms as he did before when you were talking to him. You can’t really change your personality, and that sounds like he’s allowing it to bleed into his conversations with these girls.”
My shoulders drooped. “You can have the bed.”
“I will not sleep in the bed while you sleep out here. That’s non-negotiable.” He dismissed my offer.
“I really meant something more along the lines of, we’ll both sleep in the bedroom but separately. I have a pullout oversized chair in there. It’s actually pretty comfy.” I looked at him. “Is that okay?”
“Perfectly,” he agreed. “I don’t have to work tomorrow. You don’t either, correct?”
“No.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “ButI have an online class I have to take around eleven. I could skip it, but it’s the review before the test on Friday.”
“Then that works.” He braced his feet apart, as if ready to hit me with another surprising verbal blow. “I have to go back to work for three more hours. Go get changed, you’re doing a ride along with me.”
So that was how I found myself in the front seat of Quaid’s police cruiser, riding along with him, while he did his job.
At first it was a little boring.
We started out driving around the area.
“Tell me. Is this what you do all day?” I asked.
“Nope,” he answered as his eyes looked at his computer as he typed the license plate of the car in front of us into the program. “I usually pick up one or two shifts a week, but I’ve gotten into a more desk job position over the last six months after I hurt myself. I took over for our old sergeant when he went out for neck surgery. Only, he doesn’t plan on coming back, and apparently, I’ve done too good of a job at running the ship at the station. Therefore, from now on, I’ll do a lot of the leg work at the station when it comes to the patrol units. If something arises, like it did tonight with one of my officers, then I’ll pick up a shift.”
Something beeped, and I looked at the gibberish on the screen.
“What’s that mean?” I asked curiously.
“It means he has a warrant out for his arrest,” he said. “Whatever happens after this, you stay in the car.”
My eyes widened as he flipped on the lights, and the man in front of him sped up for a second.
Only, the speeding up thing he did was just so he could get over into the lane that would spit him out into a parking lot beside us.
Quaid called the stop in, then got out of the car.
I watched with an excitement that I didn’t think I would ever feel.
This was the coolest thing ever!
And, twenty minutes later, the man who was sitting in the back of the police cruiser was grumbling.
“I swear to Christ, Officer,” the older gentleman said. “I returned that car to the airport!”
The warrant the man had out on him was for a stolen car from a rental company.
“Actually, I believe you,” Quaid said. “There’s a class action lawsuit going on right now from this same exact thing happening to other people. But unfortunately, you still have a warrant out for your arrest. It’ll get sorted out, but I definitely think you need to find that lawyer everyone else is using and hop on the bandwagon. This is gonna be a shit show.”
I walked into the station a couple minutes later with Quaid escorting the man to the booking area.
I waited out of the way for him to do his thing—and had to wipe the drool off my face when he finally turned around to give me his attention.
The man was incredibly exciting to be around.
Not only was he gorgeous with dark blond, almost brown hair, all unruly and wind-blown, but the way he treated everyone around him was refreshing.
I could tell he was the big man on campus—or at the police station—but he treated every single person he ran into on the way into and out of the station like he was a great friend.
We were just walking out of the booking area when an officer called out for help.
Quaid moved fast, pushing through the door of the station so fast I didn’t see him move until he was already gone.
Seconds later, he and a female cop came through the door all but dragging a man who was way less agreeable about being arrested than Quaid’s guy.
The man shook off the female officer’s hold, but Quaid’s was rock steady and yanked him until he was sitting on a chair beside another officer who was doing the booking process.
It took two seconds for the man to be seated and cuffed to the chair that was bolted to the ground.
“IfI come back in here and find out that you’re fucking with my officers again, I’ll make this process a hell of a lot harder than it needs to be.” He pointed his large finger in the man’s face.
The man tried to spit on him, but Quaid was prepared for it, pulling a helmet of some sort out of a pile next to the desk and shoving it onto the man’s head.
It was breathable, yet impossible for the man to do any spitting. Which was obviously the reason for them to be where they were.
Quaid slapped the booking officer on the shoulder and said, “Have fun with this one.”
Then he was jerking his head at me to follow him.
I did, and we were back out the door and on the streets in two minutes.
He got on his radio and said, “Unit 1-0-9-3 back in service.”
The woman on the radio replied, but I didn’t quite hear what she said.
I was too busy studying the man at my side.
And, before I could stop myself, I said, “That was pretty hot.”
He looked over at me with raised eyebrows.
“What was?” He looked adorably confused.
“The thing you did back there, dragging that guy into the station.” I flicked up a finger. “How you arrested that guy but still treated him like a person.” I flicked up a second finger. “When you got in the car and did your seatbelt up, you were also pulling away, so you were looking at the road, and your arms were all muscley and stuff.” I flicked up another finger. “Then you went and grabbed that mic and brought it up to your face, all the while merging onto an interstate.”
I knew I wasn’t making sense.
But literally everything he did was doing things to me, and sometimes I blurted things out without thinking.
I inwardly winced.
“Also, you can ignore me.” I hunched my shoulders and sort of curled in on myself, hoping that if I made myself smaller, maybe he wouldn’t call me on my weirdness.
My mom was always telling me I should think before I speak. Truthfully, that was probably why I didn’t have any girlfriends. I was blunt, inherently honest, and abrupt.
My mom said I got it from my dad.
Truthfully, I said what I wanted, when I wanted, and hoped that I didn’t get in trouble for it after.
“Calamity, look at me.”
I felt things inside me tighten at his deep voice.
He could literally read audio books and have ladies panting after him.
He’d probably have a following like TeddyHamilton in no time.
Also, TeddyHamilton. Rawr.
That man could read an audio book like no other.
ButQuaidCarter? He could give Teddy a run for his money.
I looked over at Quaid and found his eyes on the road. But when he felt my gaze on him, he glanced over and said, “Never change.”
My lips tipped up at the corner and a feeling of peace washed over me.
I was just about to say something, probably inappropriate, when my phone rang.
I looked at it and groaned.
“What?” he asked as he changed lanes behind a fast-moving car.
“It’s my mother,” I grumbled.
“Why did you groan because it’s your mother?” he wondered as he multitasked by typing in a license plate while also driving and periodically glancing at me.
“I guess it’s easier to just let you listen,” I grumbled. “I might’ve mentioned the serial killer in our last text message before I had to go to work today, and she’s been painfully patient with me, but I imagine that patience has come to an end.”
I was right.
I answered the phone on speaker and said, “Hello?”
The moment that my mom heard my hello she started in. “EllodieCassandraSolaire.”
I looked over at Quaid to see a grin fully in place. When he caught me looking, he pointed out, “She middle-named you.”
“Who is that?” my mom snapped.
“The man that I’m wildly in love with,” I blurted.
Quaid’s brows rose to his hairline.
My mom, who I knew was gearing up to yell at me about my earlier text message, paused.
Then said, “I’m not going to address that right now. WhatI am going to address is your text of: Hi, Mom. Doing well. I just wanted to let you know that I may have dodged going out on a date with a serial killer.”
The man at my side snorted.
“So how about you tell me what’s going on, daughter? BecauseI’m about two seconds away from getting in my ‘Hoe and driving your way,” she fumed.
My mom and her ‘Hoe, better known as a Tahoe, didn’t drive far.
My mother was the ultimate passenger princess. I didn’t think she’d driven herself farther than the mailbox since she married my dad thirty-two years ago.
For her to say she’d make the drive… Yikes.
“Mom,” I started, but the man on the other side of his own ‘Hoe interrupted me.
“Mrs. Solaire,” Quaid said. “I’m officer QuaidCarter with the DallasPoliceDepartment.”
“You’re in love with a police officer?” my mom squeaked.
I opened my mouth to deny it, but Quaid had other plans.
“She’s moving in with me, and we’re going to make sure she’s very safe,” Quaid promised. “We met when we found out that she’d turned down a man on a dating app…”
He then went on to explain everything, not sparing her the smallest of details.
He treated my mother like an equal, and I knew that would go a long way with her.
Though, I wouldn’t have given her all of the details.
She didn’t need to know that I was thinking about working with the DPD to find this guy.
“Your dad is going to have a coronary,” Mom said. “I can’t believe I have to tell him all of this. You know he’s going to want you to come home.”
“Going home isn’t happening,” I replied. “I have clinicals that I have to get done soon. I have work. I have an apartment that isn’t going to pay for itself, and Quaid’s here.”
Technically, Quaid wasn’t exactly what I made him out to be, but she didn’t need to know that.
All she needed to know was that I was safe and protected here.
So she didn’t freak out and hire a bodyguard for me; that would make life a hell of a lot harder than it needed to be.
Because she would.
“Okay, well we’ll talk more about this later.” She groaned. “I hate that I’m about to have this conversation. Call me a lot. Check in so I don’t worry. And send me this Quaid’s number. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about him. Honey, we tell each other everything.” She sighed. “Love you, bye.”
We didn’t tell each other everything.
She told me everything.
But there was only so much information that you wanted from your own mother. AndI wasn’t going to tell her everything there was to know about me.
It was obvious I’d made a mistake in telling her about the serial killer this morning. ButI’d done it in a moment of weakness, feeling scared and alone in my apartment all by myself.
“Your mom sounds like a hoot,” the man at my side said. “Go ahead and send her my number.”
I snorted. “Technically, I don’t have your number. Just your office number.”
He winked. “Send the office number to her. That may be the easiest for her to get in touch with me. Use my phone to send it. The passcode is 1221.”
I snooped on his phone for twenty minutes, because right after he gave me his code to get in, he pulled a car over for nearly slamming into him.
He was currently giving the poor old lady a sobriety test.
Truthfully, what she needed was a retest on her driver’s license.
After sending his number to me and my mom, I then programmed myself into his.
Or tried to.
Because he already had all my information.
I figured he got it when he had my phone to look at the dating app.
Speaking of the dating app, I signed into it on his phone so he would be able to read everything that I got as I got it.
AfterI was done with that, I took a selfie and replaced his generic background with a selfie of me blowing a kiss.
I then moved his home screen around because it wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing.
OnceI was bored of it, I put his phone down and watched the poor old lady try to walk a straight line using her walker.
The rest of the night was just as exciting as the beginning, and by the time we arrived home, I was beat.
It was two in the morning, and sadly, the last thing on my mind was doing anything besides falling face first in bed.
Which, of course, I couldn’t do because I had to make up the pull-out bed.
In the end, I decided to say ‘fuck it’ and sleep in the chair itself.
I was already dead to the world when HotCop came to bed.
ButI didn’t stay that way.