Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
DAKOTA
I had been two weeks since Roe and I officially got back together, and I’d spent the entirety of that time feeling like I was floating on air.
This was what it meant to be happy. I had a job I loved, working for myself. I had Roe, and with him came Cassi. I was steadily rebuilding my relationship with my father. I lived on the greatest street in the entire freaking country. And I was making some incredible friends.
If you’d have told me a few months ago that this was the path my life would end up taking, I would have laughed bitterly in your face, but now I couldn’t imagine ever wanting anything else.
There was one tiny thing that might have been able to put a dull on the shine that was my life lately, but that was only because what I saw could have potentially rendered me blind.
I mean, no daughter wanted to walk into her home and catch her father making out with a woman.
I might have had a teensy, minor freak-out in which I screamed about needing bleach for my eyes, but then I saw who he was kissing, and my whole tune changed.
I’d fully planned on playing matchmaker to set Ezra up with Bea, only, it turned out I didn’t need to.
Because my old man was already making moves.
Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled by that development, and I made sure they both knew I was totally okay with them getting together. On the stipulation that I never, ever had to see them necking and rutting around on each other for as long as I lived.
Everything was perfect, a word that I never thought I would use to describe my life, so it only made sense that there would be something waiting in the wings to try and ruin all the good I’d managed to grab onto. Or more accurately, some one .
I was on my way to Roe’s after meeting up with Lennon, Iris, and Phoebe at Toni’s Tavern for a couple drinks. I was riding a high of a great night out with friends when it was ruined by the flash of blue and red lights in my rearview mirror.
The siren on the cop car behind me bleeped, warning me to pull over. I slowed down, using my blinker to pull over on the side of the rode. My heart rate increased as I waited for whoever was in the cruiser behind me to make their way to my window.
“Ah shit,” I hissed under my breath as soon as I made out Tolliver Brady heading for my driver’s side window.
The asshole had a lot of nerve pulling me over after all the shit he’d been pulling with those photos.
I hadn’t received another envelope since I moved my father into Lennon’s with me, and I could only assume that was because the man was a giant coward.
Like some kind of bad, cliched cop show, he tapped on my window with the end of one of those ridiculous flashlights that cops carried. “License and registration,” he ordered as soon as I put the window down.
I knew it wasn’t smart, especially given the fact that I was alone, at night, with a man who’d been trying to scare me away, but I felt my attitude coming out, claws sharpened, and there was no way of pulling it back in. Not with this bastard.
I cut my eyes at him, narrowing them into vicious slits as I gripped my steering wheel. “Can you tell me why you pulled me over first?”
Brady’s face went hard. “License and registration. You make me tell you again, we’ll be taking a trip down to the station.”
He had no reason to pull me over. I hadn’t been speeding or breaking any other rules of the road. I knew better in this town. But the crooked assholes who were supposed to be in charge of keeping the peace and protecting their citizens didn’t give a shit about following the law.
Leaning over, I pulled my wallet from my purse for my license, then flipped open the center console for my proof of insurance.
He snatched them out of my hands as soon as I extended them his way and headed back to his cruiser.
While I waited for him to finish up and give me whatever bullshit excuse he had for pulling me over, my phone chimed in the cupholder with a text from Roe.
Roe:
You on your way, Honeybee?
Before I could type out a response, Brady returned to my window. With one arm braced on the roof of the car and the other resting on the ledge of the open window, he leaned in, his face coming way too close to mine. He passed my insurance and license back to me, a smarmy grin on his face.
“I heard you’ve started spreading your legs for that piece of white trash again. If I knew you wanted to slum it, I could have given it to you down and dirty just how you like it.”
“Is this your new tactic?” I spat at him. “You figured those stupid photos didn’t work, so you’d try to run me out of town by, what? Scaring me?”
For a moment, I thought I saw confusion move across his features, but before he could get another word out, a second cruiser pulled up beside Brady’s.
“That motherfucker,” Tolliver hissed under his breath just as North Hastings came up beside him.
“Everything okay here?”
“Nothing for you to worry about, Hastings,” Tolliver growled back. “You’d do well to stay in your lane. Wouldn’t want something bad to happen to you.”
I couldn’t tell by North’s blank expression whether or not he took Brady’s threat seriously, but I had to hand it to him, the man had serious guts, because instead of backing down from his boss, he looked at me and said, “Everything okay, here, ma’am?”
“She’s fine,” Brady spit.
North slowly turned his head. “I was asking her.”
“I’m fine,” I answered, breaking through the tension between the two men that was dangerously close to boiling over.
I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of their pissing match.
I just wanted to go home to Roe and Cassi.
As it was, Tolliver looked like the back of his head was about to blow clean off.
“Glad to hear it.” He shot a glare back at his boss. “Pretty sure traffic stops are below you, Chief. I’m happy to take over here.”
Tolliver let a few choice curse words out low under his breath before puffing out his chest as he turned and started heading for his cruiser. “Better learn to remember your place, Hastings, or you won’t make it in this department.
North stood there quietly, and I got the impression he was putting himself in the role of my protector. As soon as the cruiser went flying by, spitting up dust and debris, North turned his attention to me? and inclined his chin to me. “You have a good evening, ma’am.”
He started to walk away when I leaned out my window and called out after him. “You didn’t have to do that, you know. The Brady’s aren’t a family you want to cross. They’ll go out of their way to make your life hell.”
Something moved across his expression then that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “They can do their worst, ma’am. But I can’t abide bullies. It’s just not in me.”
It was in that moment that I realized Iris had been right about him being a good man. It was nearly on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he knew my gorgeous, sweet, redheaded realtor friend, but something told me he wasn’t in the mood for a fix up.
Another time, then, I thought to myself as I put my car in gear and headed for my man and his precious girl. Another time for sure, because a man like that needed a good woman to have his back. And I couldn’t think of anyone better.