Chapter 11 Teething
ELEVEN
Teething
Hutch
“Keep going,” Hutch ordered Mabel. “Keep going.”
Mabel took another step back.
She was a good twenty feet away from Tonks, who was sitting like a good girl and watching her momma retreat without even twitching.
“Okay, release her,” Hutch instructed.
Mabel clapped her hands and bent toward Tonks, chanting, “Come here, Tonks. Good girl. Such a good girl.”
Tonks raced to Mabel, and she gave the dog a full rub as Tonks shimmied against her legs.
Hutch watched, knowing two things.
She worked with the dog when he wasn’t there.
It was Friday. Tonks had now had four sessions with him. But she had “stay” down.
On Monday, they could add “heel.”
The second thing he knew was that Mabel Adams was the single most fuckable woman he’d ever met.
He knew that the first moment he saw her, that was why he’d fucked her.
However, that thought only strengthened with every time he was with her.
He had to fight getting hard when he watched the loving and enthusiastic way she worked with her dog.
He had to fight getting hard when she was throwing sass at him, and that was the fuck of it, because she threw sass all the time.
He had to be a grouch so he could fight getting hard when she called him grouchy.
And she was not only beautiful, she had great style.
He hadn’t seen her in anything but jeans, wide leather belts, attractive, feminine button-downs or collarless three-quarter buttoned shirts with silver necklaces stacked around her neck, sometimes complemented with long strands of beads.
That was if she wasn’t wearing sweaters that hugged her full tits coaxing Hutch’s hands to touch them.
She always wore low-heeled boots, and if he had to make the call, he’d say she’d been a mountain girl since she came out screaming.
And she almost always wore her thick, long, dark hair down so it got in her eyes, stuck to her lips, swayed when she walked, did it more so when she jogged, or it just caught the wind.
He’d seen her workshop. She worked with her hands, which, until then, Hutch didn’t know was a turn on for him when it came to women.
Now, he knew.
And he never showed when she didn’t have something making her house smell insanely good. A candle burning. A cake in the oven. Something in the slow cooker.
This was not good.
He was a man who didn’t struggle with getting himself some if he wanted it.
But that was all it was ever going to be.
He’d learned, since birth.
That didn’t mean he didn’t give it a shot.
He had.
Three times.
Three spectacularly dramatic outs.
He’d hung up his bat two years ago.
Reminding himself of that, he looked at his watch and said, “That’s time.”
She didn’t stop bending or petting her dog as she lifted her healthy, honey-gold tanned face to his, her hazel eyes shining, her pretty mouth smiling.
And yeah.
Hutch was fighting getting hard.
“Okay, but can I ask you something?” she requested.
“If you’re quick about it,” he replied.
She heaved out a big breath and caught herself before doing the full eye roll.
Then she and Tonks came to him.
Tonks snuffled his hand, so he idly petted her as Mabel started talking.
“The paper mill is opening tomorrow.”
He stiffened.
Fuck, she was going to ask him out.
As noted, he was attracted to her. He wanted to go out with her.
Also as noted, he’d hung up that bat, so he was not going to go there.
She noticed his reaction, and he firmly buried how it felt to watch the hurt shift through her face, telling himself he much preferred the annoyance that came in after.
“Easy, hotshot,” she snapped. “I already have a date.”
Fucking fuck.
That didn’t make him feel better.
Nope.
It felt far worse.
“I’m meeting Abigail and her family there. We’re scoping out the artists.”
He had no clue who Abigail was, but if she had a family, she was not a date.
“Right,” he replied, now refusing to allow himself to relax with the relief it brought to know she hadn’t hooked up with another guy.
“I wanted to know if you thought Tonks would be able to handle going with me.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I…”—she gazed down at the dog and came back to him—“don’t know.”
“It sucks she was surrendered, Mabel. It was uncool. Uncalled for. At least, she’s a six-hundred-dollar dog.
At most, fifteen. But even if money’s the point for many, it’s not the point.
But she’s home now. You click. You know what she needs.
You give it to her. You have to stop babying her.
Animals do experience trauma. But just like humans, they can heal from it. ”
“Okay.”
“So take her.”
“Okay.”
“You get worried, I’ll be there with Hannibal.”
Now, why did he say that?
Her gaze sharpened on him. “You will?”
“Stony Bluff has a booth. We’ll have some dogs and cats we hope will get adopted, and we’re selling organic pet treats Winona makes.”
“Right. A fundraiser.”
“It’ll be busy, the whole town will be there—”
Before he could finish, she asked, “The whole town?”
“MP turns out when there’s shit to do,” he explained.
“Last year, Lillian, Harry’s wife, and her neighbors got into a big outside Halloween decoration fight that got so much attention, Harry had to put cruisers on each end of the block to shut it off from traffic because everyone with a kid, and just everyone, showed up on the night to trick or treat.
This year, it’s happening again. They’re making a thing of it, and I talked Lillian into giving all her neighbors a donation bucket for the rescue. ”
“Smart idea.”
He knew it was.
What fucked him was, he liked to hear she agreed.
“What I’m sayin’ is, we don’t have many big city ways here, but we find shit to keep us busy, and when that’s on offer, people take advantage of it.
It’ll be a good test for you both. Tonks, to see how she manages crowds.
You, so you know you can manage Tonks. Worst that can happen is you have to leave. But I doubt that’ll happen.”
“Great, then I’ll take her.”
“Can I go?”
As he planned, their always-short détente ended swiftly.
“My apologies for keeping you,” she sassed.
“Maybe see you tomorrow,” he said, then gave Tonks some extra pets, walked to his truck, swung in and didn’t hazard looking at her as he pulled out.
But he didn’t turn right at the end of her drive.
Because he was a moron, he turned left and headed into town.
Several times on the ride into MP he considered turning around.
Each time, he didn’t.
So he found he was parked outside the sheriff’s department before he could do the smart thing and get his ass home to his dogs.
That said, if this got sorted, he wouldn’t worry so much about Mabel, and they might be neighbors, as such, but he doubted he’d see her very often.
Oh yeah.
And he wouldn’t allow himself to think about how that made him feel either.
Rus was talking with Polly behind the counter when he swung in.
He thought he’d get some resistance, but surprisingly, Rus just jerked up his chin, then jutted it toward the swinging door.
Hutch used that door.
“Let’s go see if Harry’s in his office,” Rus said as greeting.
Hutch was not going to look this gift horse in the mouth.
“Heya, Hutch,” Polly greeted.
“Hey, gorgeous. You ready to leave Pete so we can drive off into the sunset?”
She blushed, but hit him on the arm and warned, “You know, one day, hot stuff, you’re gonna be in trouble when I take you up on that offer.”
She’d never leave Pete.
But one thing Hutch knew, Polly Pickler was one of the good ones.
She was old enough to be his mother, but he was happy for Pete (the owner of the Double D diner, and a good, solid man) that he found a loyal, loving woman.
He smiled at her then turned and followed Rus.
Harry was in his office.
Another surprise, he didn’t offer any resistance either, so Hutch found himself sitting in a chair opposite Harry, Rus in the one at his side.
Harry started it. “How’s Mabel?”
“Good,” Hutch replied.
“No other incidents?” Harry asked.
Hutch shook his head.
“Not even a sighting?” Harry pushed.
Hutch again shook his head.
“Right, so it’s my prerogative to communicate any part of an investigation that I see fit to communicate, but even with that preamble, I’m going to tell you I want a tight circle on this.”
“I can keep my mouth shut, Harry.”
Harry looked to Rus, so Hutch turned to Rus.
“I’ll start by sharing we got roadblocks. Not easy to get warrants on stuff we want to see, bank accounts, utility bills, IRS filings, without giving some reason to have them.”
This wasn’t starting out great.
“So we went back to the beginning,” Rus said. “Lars Enstrom was born Amish. Pennsylvania. Rumspringa came around for him, and Cade did some research into this, and he shared it isn’t the wild free-for-all people think it is.”
Cade was Cade Bohannan, the retired FBI profiler Ray Andrews matched wits with several years ago, a game Cade didn’t want to play, but Ray ultimately lost.
Even so, everyone lost, particularly a couple of people, because Ray and his bud killed two girls during this bullshit.
One of them was eight years old.
“That said, Lars took it that way,” Rus continued. “Off the rails, off the hook and off the legal path.”
“Christ,” Hutch muttered.
“He was young, it wasn’t too serious, no priors, got off with a hand slap from the authorities. But that wasn’t what his community decided for him,” Rus said.
“He was shunned,” Hutch guessed.
Rus nodded.
“I thought Rumspringa was a no-questions-asked type of thing,” Hutch remarked.
“We’ve only got what Cade gave us. Though, Cade tends to be thorough.”
Hutch had no doubt.
“In this case, it’s that each community has their own rules,” Rus continued.
“Some don’t even let the kids do it. But Cade thinks that what he got caught doing by the police was not what his fellow Rumspringa buds saw him doing.
Whatever that was, it was reported. And whatever that was could not be countenanced by that community. ”
“You’re thinking…bad,” Hutch said low.