Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Fuck.
Everything was not going to be all right.
“I don’t know why you are arresting me,” she stated, turning to glare at Happy as he put her in handcuffs.
Was this really necessary?
And Wyatt was wrong. She did not like Happy, despite his cool name. The guy was an asshole.
“I warned you not to loiter around,” he said. “And disturb the peace of the fine citizens of this town.”
Fine citizens?
Right? Like who?
Jeb the snitch?
How dare he call the cops on her? And tell them that she was high? She’d never taken drugs in her life.
Hell. She barely managed to take painkillers when she needed them.
All right, so maybe she hadn’t been thinking straight when she’d offered his son some candy. And she probably shouldn’t have been hanging around a kids’ playground. And perhaps she should have given Wyatt the swing.
Yeah, she could see how everything she had done seemed weird. But she’d just been . . . lonely. She’d wanted to talk to someone.
But a seven-year-old kid wasn’t who she should be talking to.
Even if his dad had lost him. Something that wasn’t her fault. She’d just been hanging with him until his dad found him so no one could do anything bad to him.
Hell, she was practically a hero.
Yep, screw Jeb Wilder.
He was a dick.
And so was this idiot deputy.
“I wasn’t disturbing the peace!” she said as he led her to his car. “I was sleeping.”
“Sleeping in your car in a public park in Oddity is illegal. Do you have permission to sleep here?”
“Illegal?” she whispered as he pushed her into the backseat.
“Yes,” he said pompously.
“Look, I didn’t know that. My car broke down and I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I was going to call a mechanic tomorrow and have them come and fix it. Then I would be on my way. So could you please just let me go?”
He glared down at her. “You said you were going to be on your way earlier. When I let you go.”
“You had nothing to arrest me for! And I was going to leave but my car broke down.” Was this idiot hard of hearing?
“You were on drugs!”
“No, I wasn’t! And if I was, should you have let me drive?” she asked him.
“No one likes a smartass,” he said stiffly.
“And no one likes to be arrested when they haven’t done anything wrong!” she exclaimed.
Happy shut the door before she could say anything more.
Wait. Shit!
He got into the driver’s seat.
“My keys! You can’t leave the keys in my car.”
“I thought you said it didn’t run,” he replied.
Was he kidding her?
“That doesn’t mean that there isn’t stuff in there that I can afford to lose. You need to lock it up and bring the keys with you.”
“I don’t have to do anything for you,” he sneered as he gazed back at her. “I don’t do nice things for criminals.”
“I am not a criminal! I could sue you for this!”
“For what?” he asked. “Now, be quiet. I can’t drive with lots of noise. It’s distracting.”
Oh god.
Was this it? Was this her turning point? Was this town and the people in it going to send her running back to Connecticut and her asshole father?
Maybe she should call one of her brothers. Have them put some money into her account so she could fix her car.
Please let everything be inside it in the morning.
Jeb’s phone rang as he was headed out the door to get to work. He frowned as he saw that it was Tex.
“I’m just headed to work,” Jeb said.
“Hello to you too,” Tex replied easily.
“What do you want?” Jeb asked.
“You’re only going to work now? That’s late.”
“I had to get Wyatt off to school. Had to walk him to the bus to make sure he got on.”
“Ahh, still having trouble finding a new nanny?” Tex asked.
“The last one ran off in tears,” Jeb muttered. “And the agency said they wouldn’t send anymore until Wyatt could behave himself better. I even offered to pay double!”
“What was it? Spider in the shoe? Snake in the bed?”
“Worse. Rat in the shower,” Jeb said with a grimace.
Tex burst into laughter. “Oh god. That’s truly awful. Can’t blame her for running after that.”
But Jeb did blame her. It wasn’t that bad. Just a small rat. And she’d acted like it was going to eat her.
In hindsight, perhaps she hadn’t been the best fit for their family. But he’d been desperate.
And maybe you shouldn’t choose a nanny based on desperation.
“Why are you calling, Tex?” he snapped.
“Wow. Can’t a man call to chat with the guy he considers a brother?”
“Get on with it,” Jeb said. “Some of us have things to do.”
“Hey, I’m already at work, asshole. Going through the paperwork for your issue.”
“My issue? What do you mean, my issue?” Jeb frowned.
“I mean the girl that you messaged me about yesterday.”
“Oh, you mean the one that you didn’t bother to come and deal with? Instead you sent that idiot, Happy.”
“I was busy dealing with real issues and Happy isn’t an idiot. He’s just . . . overly enthusiastic.”
That was one way to put it. Another was that he was an incompetent idiot. Which was Jeb’s preferred way to describe him.
“Well, what about the girl?” Jeb asked, sick of this conversation. He was already behind in his work and he didn’t have time for this.
Why would Tex be calling about her? As soon as Jeb had left the playground, he’d put Casey out of his mind.
That’s not quite true, though, is it?
No, because all evening Wyatt had kept talking about her, asking him if she would be all right and what she was doing.
Things Jeb couldn’t answer. And didn’t want to. Because she wasn’t his problem, and he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I’m sure she’s long gone out of town and I have better things to do than talk about her. So if that’s all, I’ll—”
“Actually, that’s not all,” Tex interrupted firmly. “She happens to be sitting in a cell in my jail.”
Jeb froze for a moment at those words. “In jail?”
“Yes. In jail. A young girl in her mid-twenties sat in my jail all night and I’d like to know why you messaged me about her in the first place.”
Tex’s voice was firm and slightly annoyed.
“I thought she was on drugs and hanging around a playground, annoying children.”
“You have proof that she was on drugs?”
“No, of course not,” Jeb said, irritated. “Why the hell did Happy arrest her? He must have his reasons. Why call me?”
“So, no proof, then. What was she doing that was so bad that you messaged me?”
Jeb ran his hand over his face. “I don’t know. She was acting strange. Being irrational. She gave Wyatt candy.”
“And you just stood there and let her?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Right, who was with Wyatt so I can talk to them?” Tex said.
“No one. He left me at the diner and headed to the playground to go on his favorite swing.”
“Wyatt was there alone?” Tex asked without any judgment in his voice.
But Jeb heard it.
“Yes, I found him quickly. But she was there, giving him candy and talking to him. It wasn’t right.”
“Or maybe she stayed there because a child turned up on his own and she didn’t want to leave him alone.”
“She was on his swing and wouldn’t get off,” Jeb argued.
“Right. Sure.”
“Look, maybe she wasn’t on drugs and perhaps I shouldn’t have texted you. But she was a strange woman hanging around a playground and I thought Happy was just moving her on, not arresting her.”
“He did,” Tex said. “Until he found her later that evening while on patrol. Sleeping in her car.”
That wasn’t concern he felt.
It wasn’t.
Once upon a time, he would have been worried about her. He’d always been protective over women. It was the way that he’d been raised. A part of who he was.
Prior to things going wrong with Elise, he’d loved taking care of her. Being her Dom. Before Elise had started to find him to be too much. Too controlling and domineering.
So he’d pulled back that part of himself until they both grew apart. That’s when things had truly begun to unravel between them. He’d worked longer hours while she’d started drowning her issues in alcohol.
Not that he’d known that for a long time.
And when he had discovered what was going on, he’d done what he could to help her. But by then it had been too late.
Shit. He guessed that he might have quickly jumped to a false conclusion about that girl. Why would she be sleeping in her car, though?
“Why?” Jeb asked.
“Why did he arrest her? She was sleeping in her car in a public park. That’s illegal without permission.”
He knew that. “I meant, why was she sleeping in her car?”
“She said it broke down and that she didn’t want to pay for a motel since she might need that money to fix it.”
Ouch.
He didn’t know why that was a punch to the guts but it was.
“For fuck’s sake. And he didn’t help her to a motel instead of arresting her?”
“He did not. Like I said, Happy is enthusiastic. Now, I’m looking through his report wondering how the fuck this mess happened and what I’m going to do with this girl who likes swings and has shitty luck with cars.”
“Let her go,” Jeb suggested.
“Sure. I could do that. But it occurred to me that she’s down on her luck. Maybe she needs a job. A place to live. You have a job that is live-in. You have a son that also likes swings.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jeb spat out. “You expect me to hire a stranger to take care of my child?”
“That’s what you do when you hire one of those nannies.”
“They’re vetted, Tex! It’s hardly the same fucking thing. That girl is completely bonkers.”
“And yet she was quizzing me just now about whether I knew Wyatt. If I thought he was all right. And what happened to his mama. I ran a background check on her. No priors. Not even a speeding ticket.”
So she was nosy? That didn’t mean anything. Most of this town were nosy assholes.
“I am not hiring her. End of story.”
Tex had lost his fucking mind if he thought he was going to do that.