Chapter Fourteen –Little Bit Trouble
Chapter Fourteen
Cooper
LITTLE BIT TROUBLE
Performed by Brothers Osborne
What the hell was I doing?
That question was on repeat as I ladled a bowl of soup and placed it in the microwave.
Right now, Andie was looking through the books and old DVDs filling the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, learning whatever she could about me from the selections Luca and I had made.
I’d opened my doors, literally and figuratively, to a woman I couldn’t trust and who had a target on her back that she refused to tell me about.
It was too late to go back now. I’d offered her dinner, and I’d provide it. I’d spend the next few hours at her side, send her home, and then figure out how to reassemble the walls she’d poked holes in.
I was just setting the food on a tray so she could take it out with her to the porch when the doorbell rang.
She gave me a questioning look with an almost innocent excitement on her face that wormed further beyond my shield.
“Go ahead and answer it,” I said.
She hurried over to the door and opened it to a pair of little kids in brightly colored costumes I didn’t recognize. With Luca too old for most of the kids' shows, the new slew of “it” characters was beyond me.
“Trick-or-treat!” they screamed excitedly, holding out neon bags the fire department had given away so the kids could carry something reflective in the dark.
“Don’t you both look adorable,” Andie said, delving into the ginormous bowl of candy I’d poured and handing one singular mini-bar to each. I nearly laughed, biting my lip to hold it in.
I strode up behind her, leaned around her to dig my hand in the bowl, and tossed a few more candies into each bag.
“Thanks!” the kids said and then ran down the porch steps to join their parents waiting on the curb.
As soon as they were gone, I realized my next mistake. My intent had simply been to ensure the kids didn’t report to the entire town that the sheriff was a stingy sucker, but it meant I’d practically wrapped myself around Andie.
The alluring combination of flowers and spice that was uniquely her scent wafted over me.
And when Andie turned slightly to look at me, and I found her lips mere inches from mine, I ached to eliminate the remaining distance.
To place my mouth on hers and finally get the taste I’d been craving for weeks now.
She was an addicting combination of bravery and vulnerability. Beauty and scars. Kindness and strength. I wanted to know what that complexity would feel like in my arms, under me, over me, and up against the door.
Screw her past. Screw the danger she brought to my life.
Sampling her seemed like all that was important. Any pain that might follow would be worth a taste of heaven.
My head bent, the space between our lips becoming mere millimeters, and then feet pounding up the porch steps yanked us apart.
Two little kids dressed as Wednesday and Pugsley Addams skipped toward us with more neon bags that were already nearly full to the brim.
“Trick-or-treat!”
“Oh. I love your costumes,” Andie said.
She looked at me questioningly as she grabbed a handful of candy, and I nodded at the small pile. She smiled and dropped a similar stack into each bag.
“Thank you!”
The duo hurried off toward the sidewalk while shock kept me rooted in place.
I’d almost kissed her. I’d almost thrown caution to the wind and invited unknown risks into my house, into Luca’s life.
It was bad enough she lived next door. Kissing her would allow all her secrets and fears to become mine—Luca’s.
What kind of screwed-up father was I? Willing to endanger his son for sex.
Clearing my throat, I backed up and grabbed the tray I’d set on the side table. I practically shoved it into her hands. “Let’s take this out onto the porch.”
I didn’t wait for her response. I picked up the candy bowl and stepped outside just as more kids came running up my walk.
As I dealt with this round of kids, Andie sank into one of the chairs.
While she ate, I handled the candy bowl, but she smiled at each set of kids, commenting on their costumes.
After she finished eating and had returned the tray to the house, she took over dispensing the candy while I sat and watched.
Some of the parents came all the way up to the door with their kids and asked about Dad’s health and how things were going at the station.
None of the conversations lasted long, with the kids begging to move on to the next house, but it was the type of conversation you only had in a close-knit community like Rivers.
In LA, I’d rarely known any of the kids who’d shown up at my door.
Next door, Beckett and Maisey’s porch light was out like Andie’s, so I was a little surprised to find so many of the trick-or-treaters willing to hike all the way down to our end of the cul-de-sac.
When I mentioned it, Andie said, “Maisey had to work, and Beckett said he wanted to cover a shift for one of the firefighters so he could go trick-or-treating with his kids.”
Damn. Should I have done that too? Offered to cover for one of the deputies like Beckett had for his people? I wasn’t even sure which of my deputies had kids. I hadn’t spent enough time getting to know the people who worked for me yet.
In LA, I’d known everything about my partner and our homicide unit. Here, I’d kept a wall up, and I wasn’t sure why.
Maybe because losing my LAPD family had hurt too much.
Or because getting too close might blind me to whoever had leaked our raid the other night.
Dad had insisted it had to have been a fluke.
He couldn’t believe any of his officers would be involved.
He knew every one of his officers and every family in town, right down to when they’d move here and who all belonged to whom.
Andie turned back after handing out more candy, and her smile hit me square in the chest. In the fading light, her scars vanished. She looked untouched. Untouchable.
Was I keeping her at arm’s length for the same reasons I kept my deputies? More afraid of what closeness would cost me than what it would do to Luca? Was I expecting the worst instead of the best?
My heart tightened. Had that been why Luca was acting out? Had he thought I was expecting him to screw up again?
Sometimes this job made it hard to see the good in people. Bitterness had followed me to Swift Rivers—disgust with Eden, resentment over the loss of the career I’d built. I didn’t want a closed-off, angry man to be the one my son woke to every morning.
“Your frown is going to scare the kids more than if you had a monster sitting here,” she teased, eyes sparkling.
I forced a smile just as two kids bounded up the steps. She gave them their candy, but after they’d disappeared, the street turned quieter—the maddest rush behind us.
She sat down in the chair next to me, running a hand over the carvings I’d made in the pine logs. “These chairs are beautiful. I’ve been wanting something unique for my porch but haven’t found anything worth investing in yet. Where did you get these?”
“I made them.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “You did?” She looked over to the pumpkins Luca and I had carved. “I guess that means you did those too. I bet it was all by hand. No stencils or programmed laser cutter, right?”
The surprise in her voice had the wall inside me cracking more. Eden had hated that I’d worked with my hands. She’d wanted glamour and glitz, not sawdust and stains. “Carving, especially with wood, is a hobby of mine.”
“Wow.” She remained baffled.
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“It’s just… You’re so…” she trailed off.
“So?”
“Cop like.”
I stared at her for a moment. I’d expected something different. Something that would have spewed from Eden’s lips. It was unfair of me to expect Andie to be the same shallow person that Eden had ended up being, but it was hard to keep old wounds from reemerging.
I raised a brow. “Cop like?”
“Stiff and growly and all black-and-white. It takes a lot of color…a lot of imagination and creativity to do something like this,” she said, again stroking the horns of the buck on the chair’s arm.
“I’ll try not to take offense.”
She gave a choked laugh. “You’re upset because you feel like I’ve judged you, but isn’t that exactly what you’ve been doing with me ever since we met?”
She was absolutely right. I’d looked at her beauty, her decade-younger-than-me age, as well as the secrets and trauma surrounding her, and made a judgment. One that said all she was capable of doing was wounding anyone close to her.
I’d done a lot of judging since landing in Swift Rivers, when I was usually the first person in the LAPD to call others out on it. Irritation bloomed, all self-directed.
I looked at the beautiful woman sitting on my porch and tried to let go of everything I thought I knew about her for a few moments.
“You’re right.” I leaned forward, offering her my hand. “Hi, I’m Cooper Wylee. I’m acting sheriff, so cop by day and woodcrafter by night. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
That lovely smile grew again, and she put her hand in mine. Smooth and soft and so very fragile, except for a scar I felt along the palm. I hated knowing someone had injured her. That was one truth I hadn’t misconstrued. She was running from someone.
“Hi, I’m Andie Nealy. I’m a hotel manager by day and…
” she trailed off, brows furrowed. I wondered if she was holding back or if she just didn’t know how to fill in the remainder of that sentence.
If the empty house next door was more because she hadn’t figured herself out yet rather than her being ready to run.
She didn’t get a chance to respond as my phone rang—Luca’s ringtone. I jerked it from my pocket and swiped to answer. “Luca. You okay?”
“Dad…” His voice cracked, and a thousand horrible images filled my brain. “It’s Wysteria.”
“Where are you?” I demanded.
“We’re outside Jack’s. They called an ambulance.”
“I’m on my way.”