Chapter 14
Martinez was late for roll call, and I was just manic enough worrying about Goldie and Tanner and their night together that I was likely to snap his head off, just for the principle of being late.
His being late wasn’t anything new, it was, however, becoming more frequent. And him rolling up to the front of the station almost twenty minutes later, in a flashy black SUV, with a flashy blonde in the passenger seat, literally made my head want to pop off my shoulders.
The man was gross, even when he remembered to shower. But even he could find love.
While I had to compete for it.
Fucking unfair.
The SUV came to a rest, parked in front of the bay as the rest of our crew stood around drinking our coffee as the sun came up finally, and I almost choked on the caffeine when the two of them got out together.
She was tall and polished, wearing neutral colors with minimal but high-end makeup done to her obviously surgically enhanced face. The boring fabric of her professional clothing was one thing, the height on the shiny heels she obviously didn’t walk far in was another.
Something was just… off about her.
Her expression when she came up to us was pleasant. It wasn’t warm or affectionate, just pleasant. She was giving high-end sex doll facial features, and I couldn’t unsee it after the thought crossed my mind. There was just no emotion there.
Martinez jogged around the front of the SUV that he would have had to work three years straight, without being late, to afford, and he looked like a kid showing off a brand-new toy.
I just wasn’t sure if it was the car or the woman he was so giddy about.
“Sorry, Sarg!” He called out. “Traffic into the city for coffee was a bitch,” Martinez threw his arm around the stiff woman standing before all of us. “But worth it.”
I felt my jaw tense even more at his very public display of affection, which pissed me off even more. Since when was I such a hater of others?
“Everyone,” Martinez called out as if we needed to gather around for whatever stupid thing he was about to say, “this is Celeste. Celeste Howard.”
And that clicked it into place, the missing thing in my mind. The thing that was off about her. Her name. It was a name you’d read on a business card somewhere but never hear in normal day-to-day conversation.
“My girlfriend,” Martinez pushed on, squeezing the woman around the shoulders. “She’s incredible.”
Celeste smiled on cue, but it didn’t move her face at all.
“Hi,” She said with an unnatural purr to her voice, “I’ve heard so much about all of you.”
Her eyes skimmed the group of us, not lingering on anyone, but touching on each and every person somehow. When her gaze landed on me, it flickered somehow, with something different. It wasn’t interest or recognition, but there was something there, and it put me on edge.
Assessment, maybe.
Martinez kissed her on the temple as a few of the men said hello, making small talk with her, but I didn’t miss the way she stiffened as his lips left a smear in her perfectly polished hair line.
No one else noticed. But I did.
“I forced her to come meet you all,” he went on, unbothered by the awkwardness burning through the air like dense smoke. “She’s practically part of the family now.”
Celeste’s smile didn’t meet her eyes as she turned to him, “You’re so sweet.”
“Since when do you bring dates to roll call?” I asked, voicing what everyone was thinking but not saying.
Was it a bitch move? Yes.
Did I care? Not today.
Martinez laughed, tightening his hold on Celeste. “Jealous Dalton?”
His girlfriend turned back to me, head tilting just slightly. “You must be Rhea.”
Something about the way she said my name made my skin prickle and my ears tune in like satellite dishes on my head. So, I clapped back in true Rhea form. “And you must not be from around here.”
“I’m visiting. For now.” She said with a tight smile.
Martinez beamed, clueless to the tension. “She’s thinking about sticking around.”
Instead of confirming that, she glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get going.”
“Already?” Martinez whined, as if he weren’t already twenty minutes late for work and counting.
Celeste slipped from his arms smoothly as if she were shedding a jacket, not the touch of her lover, and turned away without another glance. “Positive. Lovely meeting you all.”
Martinez watched her go like she hung the moon from her G-string.
I puked in my mouth a little and rolled my eyes. “You’re punching above your weight with that one.” I muttered.
Martinez, too obtuse for his own good, stared off after her as she tore out of the parking lot without so much as a wave. “That’s what ambition looks like.” He replied absently.
“That’s what acting looks like,” I replied under my breath as I walked away.
He laughed it all off, clapping backs in an overly manly way as we all headed inside, talking about how Celeste called Cedar Bluff things like ‘ripe’, and ‘full of potential’.
But even though those words rubbed me all the way in the wrong direction, I didn’t keep going on with him. I had other things on my mind.
Like Goldie.
Tanner.
And how everything in my life felt like it was going to tip over and fall off the edge of a cliff at any second. Little did I know my shitty morning was going to morph into a downright lousy day.
The universe could be a real cunt when it wanted to be. And it was serving me a steaming platter of karma and bullshit like it was her fucking job.
I wasn’t trying to run into Tanner; I wasn’t trying to actively avoid him either. But at every turn, there he was.
Four different calls in the same shift left us existing in the same air. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t look away from the easy, relaxed tension in his shoulders as he did his job. Or the smug smirk on his lips when he caught me staring at him—again.
I hated him.
I wanted to wipe it right off his face with a wide-open fire hose.
Okay, maybe not that extreme, but I wanted to get the upper hand on him to level us back out. Goldie spent the night at his place last night, and it was throwing me off. Not because I was jealous, I wasn’t, not really. Not because I was mad, I was definitely not that either.
Hell, I didn’t even know what I was.
Envious? Sure.
Longing for another hit of Goldie’s attention? Most definitely.
But there was something else there, under the surface of my skin, making me itch and burn with every glance the golden boy’s way.
Curiosity.
I hated that.
I hated wanting to know how they spent their time.
I hated the images that burned in my mind as I wondered if they fucked. How they fucked.
Did she like it? Did he? Was it better than when we were together?
Was she hooked on him and uninterested in me?
Was she still committed to spending her time equally with us?
“Dalton!” My captain barked from the truck cab as he glared my way. “Get moving! This scene isn’t going to clear itself! We need to get the road opened back up!”
I nodded, waving my hand at him as I grabbed the push broom off the truck and walked back over to the pavement that had crushed car parts lying across it. “It’s a dead-end road,” I muttered under my breath as I pushed a taillight against the curb. “How much traffic is backing up?”
“None,” An annoying voice answered, and I glared out of the corner of my eye at the infuriating man of the hour as he leaned on the push bar of his police cruiser, watching me.
Tanner Brooks.
I was convinced his only purpose on Earth was to irritate me.
“No shit.” I barked back, and his smirk deepened as I kept sweeping up debris.
“Rough shift, Dalton?” he asked, as if we were friends.
I rolled my eyes, “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.” He replied.
That grin on his face was infuriating. Not cocky exactly—no, that would have made dealing with him easier. I could deal with cocky. This was worse.
This was gentle amusement. He was humoring me in a caring way.
Gross.
“Something funny?” I snapped, pushing harder on the broom and sending a dust cloud at his shiny black boots.
He shrugged, standing up and brushing his boot off. “You look like you’re about to either bite my head off or cry. And I don’t really want to witness either one.”
I blinked, “Do you think this is a game?”
“No,” he said softly. “But it seems that you’re playing one with yourself. And losing.”
That hit me square in the chest. I opened my mouth and closed it.
And then again.
Damnit.
I didn’t do speechless.
I did snark and sarcasm like it was my fucking job.
But there I was, flustered, furious and, worst of all…confused.
“Fuck you.” I snapped, pushing more debris off the road. He didn’t rise up to that barb, or clap back with his own. Which pissed me off. Just once, for fuck's sake, just one time, I wanted Tanner Brooks to fight back with me. To yell. To snap. To say something mean.
Just one time, I wanted his composure to slip and show his true thoughts and feelings.
But he didn’t. He never did. Instead, he stood there, watching me like he could hear my thoughts firsthand and knew how fragile I was at that moment.
I muttered something under my breath, shoved past him, and marched straight for the truck.
He didn’t stop me.
He just watched me; I could feel his eyes on my back.
As I got to the truck and stored the broom away in its compartment, he called out after me with that maddening calm demeanor of his, “Tell Goldie I said, hey.”
I told myself he was wrong, and that running directly to Honey & Hearth wasn’t what I was going to do after my run-in with Tanner.
But the first moment I had free time, I was walking into the warm, sugar-sweet atmosphere of Goldie’s bakery like it hadn’t just felt like the whole damn world shifted under my feet the moment I walked in.
The place smelled of cinnamon and lemon zest.
And home.
Goldie was at the back counter, flour on her cheek and stress in her posture, her whole body moving like someone with three thousand things on her to do list and no time to breathe.