Troublemaker

CHAPTER 11

PITIFUL. THE WORD CLANGED ANGRILY AROUND inside Morgan’s skull. She thought he was pitiful. Maybe he wasn’t as okay with it as he’d thought. Even worse was the accuracy of her assessment; his ass had definitely been dragging the ground when he’d arrived here, but he was doing a lot better. Some, anyway.

He’d try his ever-lovin’ best to look pitiful for her tomorrow, so no one would think he could possibly get it up or that she would even consider crawling between the sheets with him. After tomorrow, though, he was going to start getting back in shape. He knew how. He’d gone through training that broke most men. Tomorrow would be pushing it some, so he’d have to be smart about it. His sternum and chest muscles were still healing, and he didn’t want to tear anything loose.

Then he considered the almost military straightness of her back as she walked into the house ahead of him, and he had to wonder if she’d used the word deliberately to alienate him. No man liked being described as pitiful. The tactic would have worked on most men, but he wasn’t most men. He was aggressive, intelligent, and he didn’t say, “Oh, well,” when presented with a problem or a challenge; he met the challenge and solved the problem.

Yes, she had chosen that word with, if not malice, definite intent. He knew it instinctively. It was those walls again; he had been careful not to make a comment that could in any way be regarded as sexual, but she’d still felt the need to reinforce the distance between them. Was it simply because he’d been here for several days now and was a part of her home life? She’d wanted to make certain he stayed a temporary intrusion.

From what he’d seen so far, her home really was her sanctuary. Officer Tucker had followed her out to interrogate him, and also to make sure she got home safely after bumping her head, but no one else had visited. No one had even called, other than Officer Tucker’s nightly check-ins, which were very brief.

She was a solitary person; he got that. She was also candid and open about her past, how she’d ended up here, what she was thinking. Maybe being so candid was another defense mechanism: tell people so much that they wouldn’t suspect she was hiding anything, such as a key part of herself.

She turned on the top wall oven to start preheating and got out Tricks’s food. He eased onto one of the stainless steel and wood bar stools at the counter, watching as the dog excitedly pranced around her. When she had it prepared, with little pieces of turkey on top, she set it down and he waited for the weird ritual he’d noticed at every one of the dog’s dinnertimes. Tricks didn’t do it any other time, but at dinner she had to be coaxed to eat.

This time, however, Tricks ignored the food bowl and came to lie down beside the stool where he was perched. She crossed her front paws and appeared to be waiting.

Bo made an exasperated sound in her throat and picked up the food bowl. “Yes, your majesty,” she said, as if the dog had spoken. As she approached, Tricks uncrossed her paws. Bo placed the bowl between them, right in front of her. Tricks wagged her tail and began eating.

Morgan had to laugh. She and the dog were a never-ending comedy act. “Exactly which one of you is trained?”

“I am, up to a point,” she admitted without hesitation, slanting a quick smile at him. “She’s done this her whole life. She eats without a problem the rest of the day, but she wants her supper how she wants it. Sometimes she wants to be praised before she’ll eat. Every so often she’ll pick out the spot where she wants to be, and I have to put the bowl in front of her or she won’t eat.” She bent and gently caressed Tricks’s head. The dog stopped eating to give Bo’s hand a lick. “She’s worth the trouble.”

Straightening, she washed her hands and got a pizza pan out of the cabinet, then extracted a large frozen pizza from the freezer. “It’s a supreme. Want me to pick anything off it before it cooks?”

“No, I like it all.” Except for anchovies. He’d tried them, though in his opinion whoever had come up with the idea of a fish pizza should be taken out and shot. Some things just shouldn’t be.

The oven beeped, signaling that it was hot, and she slid the pizza pan into it. He watched her for a minute, liking how fluid her movements were. She moved like a dancer, each step precise and graceful.

He could have silently watched her until the pizza was ready, but he wondered if she’d be as candid about the rest of her life as she had been about her stab at flipping houses. Maybe he could learn some more about what made her tick. The only way to find out was to do some verbal poking around and see if she’d answer. “What’s the deal with you and Mac? Axel,” he amended.

“He’s a jerk,” she said without hesitation.

“Yep. Not arguing that. I mean, what’s the history?”

“My mother and his father got married. I wasn’t thrilled. Neither was he. We hated each other on sight.”

“How long were they married?”

“Seven-no, eight-interminable months. Interminable for all four parties.”

“Not a long time to develop an undying hatred for someone.”

She leaned against the cabinet on the other side of the bar. “It was plenty long where Axel is concerned. I was thirteen and insufferable, he was eighteen and insufferable. At least I had the excuse of being thirteen. I gather he’s still insufferable.”

“He has his good points. Not many, but some. He isn’t good with people, but he’s damn good at his job. When my life depends on good intel and good equipment, I appreciate the last part.”

She gave a small grunt of acknowledgment. “I guess so.”

“Trust me-I know so. Axel’s father was your mom’s second husband?” He kept his tone casual, wondering how much more she’d divulge.

She had a variety of noises that expressed a lot of feeling, and this time she used a snort. “Second? More like fourth. I think.” Looking at the ceiling, she counted them off on her fingers. “Dad, Wilson, Hugh, Douglas-yes, he was the fourth.”

“Damn. Four marriages and you were just thirteen? That’s rough.” He still kept it casual because he suspected she wouldn’t appreciate sympathy.

“Mom is a serial bride. She’s on number seven now, but she’s getting older so she may hold on to this one for a while-unless she’s divorced him since the last time I heard from her, which has been a while. We aren’t close. Not enemies, just not close. She’s got her own thing going on, and I’m here in West Virginia. She likes big cities.”

The scenario was getting clearer. Bo had had no stability in her life, no one on whom she could rely, so she’d learned to count on herself and no one else. His psychology skills weren’t even at armchair level, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out how disruptive the musical-chair stepfathers had been in a young girl’s life. His own childhood had been steady, thank God.

“After Douglas she was single for a while-long enough for me to finish high school without moving again, though she had a couple of steady boyfriends. After I started college, she married… Adam. I think. He didn’t last long, so I never met him. Adam, Alan, something with an A. I’m not sure about number six, either. Number seven is William, and I’ve actually met him. They’ve been together a few years and live in Florida.”

“How often did you change schools?”

“Every time she married, but after Douglas I was in the same school until I graduated. I was able to join the swim team. I love swimming. All of the apartment complexes we lived in had pools, and that’s where I spent my summers.”

Yeah, he could see her as a swimmer, with her aerodynamic build. She’d be the sprint swimmer, while he was an endurance swimmer, able to swim for miles. That is, normally he could swim for miles; now he’d probably drown after twenty yards.

“What about your dad? You close to him?”

“No. He pretty much forgot about me when he left. He remarried, adopted his new wife’s kids, had a couple more of their own, and that’s his family now. I think they’re living in Sacramento, but that was years ago so they may well be somewhere else by now.”

He got the picture. It wasn’t awful, but neither was it pretty: ignored, abandoned, jerked around from place to place. No wonder she had walls.

“What about you?” she asked, slanting him a sideways glance from those dark eyes, turning the tables on him. “Have you been married? What about your family?”

“My dad is dead, from a fall in the kitchen. He hit his head on the corner of the cabinets. That was almost fifteen years ago. My mom remarried year before last, to an okay guy. He loves her and takes care of her, and that’s good enough for me.”

She waited a minute, probably to see if he’d answer her first question. “What about marriage?”

“Never been married, no kids. I came close to getting hitched once, but it didn’t work out. It’s hard on a wife when the husband is in my line of work. I’m out of the country more often than I’m in it.” His heart hadn’t been broken either, because the truth was he could remember his fiancée’s name, but not really how she looked.

“I can see where that would be a problem,” she admitted.

“How about you? Ever been married?”

“Once. I tried it when I was twenty-one, fresh out of college. It lasted less than six months before he cheated.”

“Ouch.” He’d been keeping an eye on the clock and he had a good idea how long frozen pizzas were supposed to heat, having eaten more than a few of them in his life. He slid off the stool. “Sorry I haven’t been paying more attention, but I don’t know where you keep stuff. Point me in the direction of the plates and things and I’ll set the table.”

She looked surprised, dark brows arching. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“Carrying two plates?” he asked testily. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Don’t get cranky about it. The plates are there-” She pointed toward one of the cabinet doors. “The glasses are there, and the silverware is there.”

“Why do we need silverware?”

She chuckled. “I don’t guess we do.”

As he collected the plates and glasses he said, “I like the barn. You did a good job.” The kitchen cabinets were kind of beat up, but it was like they were supposed to look that way. Big industrial-looking lights hung from the high ceiling, as well as steel ceiling fans. Considering how high the ceiling was, the fans were a necessity. The layout was open from one end to the other, the only real privacy either in the bathroom or the rooms upstairs. It would be a great bachelor pad, out here in the middle of the country, nothing restricted or fussy about the building.

“Thanks. It wasn’t renovated in my taste, but I suppose over the years it’s become mine. It’s my furniture, and that helps. Plus no one else has ever lived here, and in a way that makes it more mine.”

“Except for the cows.”

That got a smile from her. “Cows don’t count.”

He set the plates on the table, added napkins. As he headed back to get the glasses he said, “What do you want to drink?”

“Grab a couple of beers from the fridge.”

His head came up, his attention laser-focused on her. “Beer? You have beer?” She’d been giving him milk when there was beer?

“If you’re steady enough on your feet to carry crockery, you’re steady enough to have a beer. Plus you aren’t on any pain meds; I wouldn’t let you mix them.”

“Beer,” he muttered, opening the refrigerator door and yes, thank you, Jesus, there were five dark brown bottles there. He hooked his fingers around the necks of two of them and pulled them out. They weren’t Bud or Miller; there was a pig on the label. He tilted the bottles up to look at them. “Naked Pig? Never heard of it.”

“Back Forty is a little brewery in Alabama. One of the guys in town is a truck driver and every time he goes through there he stops and picks up an order for the devotees here. I like Naked Pig.”

She was into microbreweries. He didn’t care. She was a beer-drinking woman, and life was looking better by the minute.

She pointed toward a bottle cap opener that was stuck on the stainless steel refrigerator by a magnet. He popped the tops off, tossed them in the trash. “You want yours in a glass?”

“Yes, please.”

“Girly.”

She grinned. “That’s my beer, so watch your mouth or you won’t get any.”

He chuckled and poured the beers into glasses-his, too, though he’d have been just as happy to drink it out of the bottle. Her beer, her rules. He’d buy the next delivery.

He almost moaned aloud as the first cold sip slid down his throat. The bubbles snapped on his tongue, and the crispness of the taste made him want to down the whole glass at one go. “Damn, that’s good,” he sighed.

She checked the pizza. “Just another minute or so.” Tricks had trotted over when she opened the oven door and stood looking up, hope in every line of her furry pale gold body. “No, nothing for you,” Bo said. “You’ve already had your dinner. I’m not baking cookies.”

He said, “You bake cookies?”

“She gets cookies for her birthday.”

“That’s tomorrow, right?”

“No, it’s quite a while until her birthday.”

“Mine’s tomorrow,” he lied.

“It is not. I saw your driver’s license, remember?”

“It’s a fake.”

“I’m not baking cookies.”

Morgan consoled himself with the beer, silently pleased at how well the last half hour of conversation had gone. They’d teased each other-a little-and she’d given him an insight into what had made her so reserved and self-protective. He hadn’t made a big deal of it, she hadn’t made a big deal of it, but he knew damn well it was a big deal because it had to be. Kids needed stability, and she hadn’t had that.

She took the pizza out of the oven and briskly zipped the pizza cutter through it, then brought the pan to the table and set it on a pot holder. As she sat down, she turned her head to check on Tricks, and the late afternoon light fell on her right cheekbone. It looked as if she had a faint smear of dirt on her face. He started to say something, then realized she’d done a damn good job of covering the lingering bruise. Some of the makeup had worn off, or he might not have noticed either. Then he realized she’d been covering up the bruise all along because he hadn’t noticed it since Friday night.

She didn’t want people fussing over her, or thinking she was anything except one hundred percent okay.

She could have been milking it for all she was worth, and he knew a lot of people who would have. Instead she preferred to be left alone.

They concentrated on the pizza and beer, and for the first time since he’d been shot, Morgan felt as if he was himself again, rather than a patched-up wreck. Did things get more normal than beer and pizza? He was still a patched-up wreck, but he was a wreck who was starting to get back to being human.

After dinner, she cleaned up and headed out with Tricks for their last walk of the day. He stood in the large windows and watched until they were out of sight, partly to make certain he knew in what direction they’d gone and partly because he liked looking at her curvy little ass.

While he had some privacy, he decided to test the limits of his strength. He wasn’t expecting miracles, but he wanted some kind of parameter he could judge his progress by. Going over to the stairs, he held firmly to the steel banister and began climbing.

The first step was okay; the second one was okay. The third one was mostly okay, but by the sixth one his knees were weak and he was breaking out in a sweat, which he took as a signal not to push his luck. He eased back down while he could still do it without having to scoot on his ass like a toddler. Tomorrow he would try it again, and maybe he could make the seventh step.

When he was back on the ground floor, he turned around and counted the steps. It was a long flight, more than a standard floor. There were twenty steps. If he could improve one step a day, in two weeks he’d be sleeping in a bed.

It was ridiculous how much he looked forward to going to Hamrickville. It was a small town-a very small one. But he’d spent five nights here, and he needed a change of scenery to relieve his growing boredom. Bo had lent him her laptop, yeah, but he couldn’t electronically check on the things he wanted to check on without tripping an alert, so he was reduced to checking regular news sources and playing dumb-ass games that he wasn’t any good at.

When it came time to leave, Tricks bounded out and raced madly around the yard as if she was overjoyed he was going with them. Bo unlocked the Jeep and called Tricks to her; while she was clipping on the harness, Morgan slid into the passenger seat. She led Tricks around to the driver’s side and said, “Tricks, up.”

The dog didn’t move.

“Tricks, up.”

No response.

Morgan glanced over at the dog standing motionless in the open driver’s side door, staring at him with what he could only describe as an appalled expression, if a dog could be appalled.

“Tricks, come on,” Bo said, then she too froze and stared at him.

“What?” he asked, impatience leaking into his tone. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew he wanted to be on the road.

“Oh, my God.”

“What?” He looked around for a threat, any threat, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there in the holster he wasn’t wearing.

“You’re in her seat.”

He went still. Had he heard that right? He looked at the woman. He looked at the dog. She had to be shitting him-the woman, not the dog. But Bo’s expression was earnest and kind of deer-in-the-headlights as if no way had she anticipated this, and Tricks was still looking appalled as she stared unblinkingly at him. The two pairs of dark eyes were unnerving.

What was he supposed to do? Obviously, even on short acquaintance he knew Bo placed the dog way above most, if not all, humans, but still-he looked at the backseat. The Jeep wasn’t the four-door model. The backseat was small, and just the idea of contorting himself to get back there made his chest hurt.

“I know,” she said helplessly. “I wouldn’t ask you to try.”

That was something, at least. Or he could drive and she could get in the backseat, since Tricks obviously wasn’t going to, but he was supposed to look pitiful-just thinking the word grated on his nerves-and pitiful people didn’t drive. But the Tahoe was sitting right there, and it was a four-door. “We can go in mine. Will it matter to her which seat she’s in then?”

“It shouldn’t,” Bo replied, though there was a tiny hint of doubt in her voice.

He got out of the Jeep and she went back inside the house to get his keys. She used the remote to unlock the doors and he got into the passenger seat before Tricks could beat him to it, just in case. Bo retrieved her weapon from the Jeep and circled around to the driver’s side, where she opened the back door and said, “Tricks, up.”

Thank God, Tricks bounded up into the backseat and sat down as if she were Queen Elizabeth in the royal carriage. He looked back at her, and she turned her head away. Outrage was in every line of her furry golden body.

Bo stifled a laugh as she fastened the harness to the seat belt. “You are so on her list.”

Tricks was an intelligent dog, no doubt about it, but dogs didn’t plot vengeance so he wasn’t worried about it. Besides, he’d sneak a treat to her and all would be forgiven. He wouldn’t tell Bo about the treat, though; he knew better.

He’d bypassed Hamrickville on his way to her house, so he paid attention to the route she took, noting the highway numbers and landmarks. The Tahoe had GPS and a navigation system, but he’d rather rely on his own knowledge than that of a bunch of people he didn’t know, who might or might not have been paying attention to detail when this section of the country was mapped. As it turned out, the drive was a grand total of twelve minutes, not bad at all. If he were driving in D.C., twelve minutes might take him a couple of blocks, depending on the direction and time of day.

There was no hint of civilization to come; she rounded a curve and there it was, compact, most of the buildings looking as if they’d been built in the 1940s or ’50s, sidewalks, no parking meters. Most of the intersections just had stop signs. He saw a bank, a hardware store, a barbershop, other small shops, and the bakery that must have been where the fight took place last week because he couldn’t imagine the town could support two bakeries. Some of the shops had flowerpots in front of them, or little bushes, but for the most part it wasn’t a fussy town.

“The school is about a mile in that direction,” she said at one intersection, pointing south.

He was a little surprised the town was big enough to have a school. He kept that thought to himself. They passed city hall, a compact, one-story redbrick building with white columns by the double doors. Then he saw the sign that said HAMRICKVILLE POLICE STATION on another redbrick building without any columns to fancy it up. She parked in back beside a white Dodge pickup with rust spots on it. “That’s Loretta’s truck,” she said as they got out.

He couldn’t wait to meet Loretta. He was also aware he had a part to play; he’d been playing it since he arrived at Bo’s house, and that was to dial back the acuity of his senses, intellect, personality-everything that made him a lethal weapon. He’d slipped up when Bo had startled him awake, but since then he’d kept himself at a simmer instead of the rolling boil at which he normally functioned. He had to convince the good townsfolk of Hamrickville that he was Bo’s weak and sick old friend, and that he was essentially harmless. The weak and sick didn’t need much exaggeration, though it was mostly just weak; the harmless required concentration, and his audition was with the infamous Loretta Hobson.

She lived up to her billing. She was damn near as tall as he was, and outweighed him; she was built like a tank. But she had a sweet smile, and it was evident she liked Bo. Tricks, who was still ignoring him, bounced into Loretta’s cubicle for some petting and sweet talk from the dispatcher. Bo had to tell about him getting into Tricks’s seat, and Loretta sorrowfully shook her head. “She’ll make you pay.” She eyed him, as shrewd a look as he’d ever received before. “I heard you’ve had some health issues.”

“Some,” he said, admitting to it but not going into details because hell, he was tired of thinking about it.

“You’ve come to a good place to get some rest. The folks around here will take care of you. I reckon you’re here this morning because you’ve got cabin fever?”

“You’d be right about that,” he admitted.

“It’s usually pretty quiet around here, last Friday and yesterday being the exceptions rather than the rule. Still, it’s a change of scenery.”

He agreed and took a seat in the visitor’s chair by Bo’s desk. She asked if he wanted coffee and took some to Loretta before bringing a cup to him. Then she got a bottle of water for herself and settled in front of an ancient computer, one so old the monitor was a separate unit and was half the size of a footlocker. It had been a while since he’d seen one of those, but she booted it up and after what seemed like half an hour of clicking and whirring, it was good to go.

He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. “What happens if this thing crashes?” he asked, indicating the computer. “Are parts still made for it?”

“No, but so far we’ve been able to scrounge spare parts from other old units. Our luck is still holding.”

She dove into a stack of paperwork, and he shut up so she could concentrate. The quiet Loretta had touted didn’t last long. Officer Jesse came in the back door and said, “Hey, Chief. Hey, Morg. How’re you feeling?” Which played well to the impression that Morgan was an okay guy in Officer Jesse’s book. The guy was sharp. Mentally Morgan elevated him to Officer Tucker, because he was no one to dismiss or underestimate. He’d have fit in on any big-city force if he’d wanted to.

“Better,” Morgan replied. Then followed the usual male stuff about baseball; he normally didn’t follow sports much because he was so often out of the country, but he’d been watching some baseball in the few days he’d been at Bo’s house so he could hold up his end of the conversation. So far, so good.

Then, by some kind of osmosis, word spread through town that he was in Bo’s office. He didn’t know how because he could hear every word Loretta said and it wasn’t her. Bo hadn’t called anyone. Jesse hadn’t called anyone. The only explanation was that someone had seen them arrive even though she’d parked at the back of the station.

The door opened and a short, plump, white-haired woman with bright eyes and a beaming smile came in, bearing a covered platter and accompanied by the smell of heaven.

“Miss Doris,” Jesse said, springing to his feet to take the platter from her.

“I heard your visitor came to town with you,” Miss Doris the baker said to Bo, her cheeks flushing pink as she looked pointedly at Morgan. Maybe she was excited because there weren’t many strangers who visited Hamrickville.

“He did. Miss Doris, this is Morgan Rees. Morgan, this is Doris Brown, the owner of the bakery and the best cook in the county.” By now, Morgan knew Bo well enough to hear the amusement in her tone, though no one else appeared to notice. Maybe they were too interested in the platter. God knows, his own interest was high.

Miss Doris’s cheeks flushed even pinker. “Oh, I don’t know about that. But I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Rees. I brought you a welcome basket-actually it’s a platter, but I didn’t have any baskets. Maybe there’s something there that’ll tempt your appetite.”

Morgan could feel the saliva gathering in his mouth. Damn, he was all but drooling at just the smell coming from that platter. “Ma’am,” he said, “I got tempted the minute you walked through that door.” He didn’t clarify, letting the comment stand as it was. Miss Doris got so flustered she couldn’t talk, and her flush deepened all the way into a full-out blush.

Bo made a low sound in her throat that could have been either laughter or a muffled snort. He suspected the latter, but he ignored her and took Miss Doris’s hand, lifting it for a light kiss on her knuckles. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Her mouth was an O, and she blinked several times. “Oh,” she said weakly. “Oh, my. You’re so welcome, Mr. Rees.”

“Call me Morgan,” he invited. “When you feed a man, first names are called for.”

Bo planted her hands on her hips and said, “Just when did you start kissing hands, Morgan Rees? You never did before.”

Again, she’d hit just the right note that spoke to old acquaintance. In return he managed a little smirk while still striving to look “pitiful.” “You were never around when circumstances called for hand-kissing.”

“Stop talking, and let’s see what’s on that platter,” Loretta ordered. The woman was sensible.

Miss Doris removed the cover and revealed several cupcakes, individual little fruit pies, a lumpy something that turned out to be monkey bread-he knew because Bo said, “Oh! Monkey bread!”-and some cream-filled doughnut holes. There were also several bone-shaped treats that she told Bo she’d baked just for Tricks, using only stuff that was good for dogs. Tricks’s sense of smell was much better than theirs, of course, and she was dancing around the platter, her doggie expression one of great happiness and expectation.

“Here’s one for you, darling,” Miss Doris cooed; for a shocked second Morgan thought she was talking to him. Shit, had she taken his flirting seriously? But no, she was talking to the dog. He should have known.

Tricks gobbled down the offered treat and immediately looked for more. Bo said, “You can have your chew bone while we have our treats.” She produced what looked like an antler from her desk and gave it to Tricks, who pounced on it and immediately took it to her bed, where she lay down and started some serious gnawing.

Everyone-except Tricks-seemed to be waiting for Morgan to make his selection, given that the platter had been brought in his honor. He wasn’t much of a cupcake guy; they seemed kind of sissy to him. He wanted one of those pies. But the lumpy brown thing was interesting. “What’s monkey bread?” he asked.

“It’s like a bunch of little cinnamon rolls stuck together,” Bo replied.

All right! He liked cinnamon rolls. Miss Doris pulled off a few of the lumps and put them on a paper plate that she’d been thoughtful enough to also provide. Miss Doris was rapidly becoming his favorite person in the town.

Coffee was poured for those who wanted it-that would be him and Loretta-and they all made their choices. For a few minutes the only sounds in the office were chewing and a few little mmms of appreciation. Jesse went for the pies, Bo for a cupcake, Loretta for the monkey bread, while Miss Doris looked on with a beaming smile.

For a few minutes Morgan was too taken up with the melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon-y lumps of monkey bread to notice anything else, but when he did look around it was to see Bo delicately licking the icing off her cupcake.

A savage kick of lust almost paralyzed him. He froze, every muscle locked on target. He managed to look away and pretend he was concentrating on his monkey bread, but fuck, all he could see in his mind was the pink tip of her tongue licking almost gently at the icing. His skin was too hot and tight, his breathing restricted. Holy shit. Just like that, he had a hard-on like iron, and he needed to sit down before someone noticed, if he could only fucking move.

He did, somehow. He all but collapsed in the visitor’s chair, which was the best he could do because his hard-on made it impossible for him to sit down normally without making some major adjustments in his pants, which he wasn’t about to do in front of the ladies. Loretta and Bo might take it in stride, but Miss Doris might faint.

“Are you okay?” Bo asked, her attention snapping to him.

“Yeah, fine,” he muttered. Maybe they’d think he was embarrassed by how weak he was. He set his paper plate on his lap to cover the evidence, and prayed a sudden throb didn’t knock the plate sideways. Damn it, didn’t women know better than to lick things in front of a man?

There followed a flurry of attention from Miss Doris and even from Loretta, who volunteered her brothers to help him with some workouts when he felt better, to rebuild his strength. He had to verbally appreciate Loretta’s offer and fend off Miss Doris’s intention of slapping a cold wet cloth over his face. He was sweating, but not from sickness. At least all that took his attention off Bo’s tongue and gave his hard-on time to give up and start subsiding.

Miss Doris had to get back to the bakery, and she left in a flurry of thank-yous. Jesse had another pie, though he did slant a look at Morgan that made him think maybe the officer had seen enough that he had a good idea about the true cause of Morgan’s “weakness.” Probably every man alive had had the same thing happen to him. Unruly body parts in your pants just came with the territory.

Thank God, Bo didn’t want to lick a second cupcake; she didn’t even eat the cake part of the first one. A call came in about a four-year-old stuck in a tree, and Jesse left to go do some tree-climbing. Bo began wading through all the paperwork on her desk, and Tricks napped, worn out from her antler-gnawing.

A pretty blonde, who was introduced as Bo’s friend Daina, dropped by with slushies for them all as an afternoon treat. Morgan began to feel as if he was going to die from sugar overload. Daina was there purely out of curiosity, of course. She didn’t stay long, but long enough to get in a little impersonal flirting.

Then a bunch of vehicles pulled to the curb outside, several pickup trucks and cars. A gaggle of high school kids exited; the door opened and the whole gaggle poured in, all of them talking at once. “Chief Bo! Mr. Cummins said we needed to practice driving Tricks around.”

On the face of it that didn’t make sense because he doubted Bo would let them practice their driving with Tricks on board. But she seemed to know exactly what they meant, because she said, “What do you have?”

“We thought we’d start off with a pickup,” one of the boys said. “Get her used to riding in the open. If you get in back too, we know she’ll stay.”

Tricks had jumped up when the kids entered and was in the middle of the group, getting her required petting. One of the girls said, “We even have a tiara and a feather boa for her.”

“She’ll do okay with the boa, but I don’t know about the tiara,” Bo said, not blinking an eye. “I tried putting a cap on her once and she wouldn’t have it. But she did like the Christmas bow I stuck on her head.”

Morgan kept his mouth shut. The conversation was getting weirder by the minute. What the hell were they doing?

“Let’s get her loaded up and see what she’ll do,” the boy said. “I’ll drive really slow, Chief.”

Bo and Tricks and the whole group went outside. Loretta left her cubicle to stand on the sidewalk and watch, so Morgan joined her. The boy lowered the tailgate of his truck and tried to get Tricks to jump up in the bed, but she was too busy with the petting. Bo said, “Tricks, up,” and patted the tailgate. Tricks obediently jumped up, then immediately jumped down again.

“Tricks, up.”

Same result.

Sighing, Bo climbed into the bed of the pickup, sat down, and said, “Tricks, up.”

With the center of her life sitting there, Tricks jumped up and covered Bo’s face with a mad flurry of licking. A couple of the girls climbed in the back with them. One had the aforementioned tiara and boa. She looped the pink boa around Tricks’s neck, and carefully set the tiara on her head. With one shake, Tricks had the tiara off. It was tried again, with the same result.

“I think there’s a sticky bow in the break room,” Loretta said, and went inside to see if she remembered right. She didn’t bother explaining why a sticky bow might be in a police station.

She returned with a slightly crushed and mangled glittery green bow. The backing was peeled off and the bow carefully stuck on top of Tricks’s head.

The boy closed the tailgate and got into the cab. Bo scooted against the back of the truck bed, and the two girls flanked Tricks in the middle, each with an arm around her. “Go!” the boa girl said, and all the vehicles slowly pulled into the street like a parade, their lights on, and blowing their horns.

Morgan looked around to make sure he was still on Earth. Or maybe this was just some weird small-town custom; his small-town experience was thin, so he had to allow for that. “What the hell is going on?” he asked Loretta.

“They’re practicing for the Heritage Parade,” she explained. “The junior and senior classes get to each decorate a float for the parade. The seniors this year want Tricks to ride on their float, but the chief said she probably wouldn’t unless they got her used to it first, so they’re practicing with her. The real floats aren’t ready yet, not that they’d show them ahead of time anyway. My guess is the next time they’ll use a hay-hauling trailer, get her used to the size.”

Well, that explained the tiara and boa.

The sidewalks began filling as shopkeepers and customers came outside to watch the little parade. People began bellowing, “Tricks!” and waving. The two girls flanking Tricks waved, practicing their parts. Tricks woofed left and right, her doggy face beaming.

“She looks like a homecoming queen,” Loretta said happily, stepping into the street so she could continue watching. Bemused, Morgan went to stand beside her.

A few blocks down, at the traffic light, some man stepped into the middle of the intersection and stopped traffic coming from all four directions, not that there was that much, but still. Waving, he directed the little procession to make a U-turn so they could head back toward the police station. The kids, driving carefully with their precious cargo of police chief and dog, sedately swung around in the intersection to reverse course.

As they neared, he could hear the happy “Woof! Woof!” and see the golden head adorned with a bedraggled green bow turning from side to side with each woof, as Tricks accepted the applause and cheers of an entire town.

Somehow, Morgan thought, getting shot had thrown him into the fucking Twilight Zone.

What the hell. Might as well fit in.

He began waving and clapping too.