Chapter Five
“Pond is in your office and he doesn’t look happy,” Carrie Jo told Colt as he came through the door Tuesday morning.
It wasn’t even nine yet. On Monday, the mayor had been in Sacramento for a meeting and Colt missed him as much as a bad case of food poisoning.
“What does he want?”
“Beats me.”
Whatever it was it couldn’t be good, otherwise he would’ve just used the phone. Colt went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, Carrie Jo trailing after him.
“Go in there and get it over with,” she said.
Colt pinned her with a look. “I’ll go when I’m good and ready.” He leaned against the counter, sipping his morning caffeine.
Carrie Jo shook her head. “Do you want to fight or do you want to win? Because taking your sweet-ass time is bound to piss him off.”
“Do I look like I care?”
“You’re an obstinate man.”
He couldn’t argue with that. All Garners were. You didn’t make it up the mountain, ski the roughest courses, ride the biggest rapids, or jump off the tallest cliffs without being obstinate. Although he’d prefer to call it determination.
“What’s your point?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “My point is, this”—she pointed at his languid position—“is childish. Go in there and meet him head on.” She punctuated her pep talk with a jab to his shoulder and walked out of the kitchen.
He finished the rest of his coffee and ambled into his office like he didn’t have a care in the world. Childish or not, Colt didn’t want the mayor to think he could push him around. There had to be some autonomy as police chief, otherwise there’d be no checks and balances.
“It’s about time,” Carter Pond said, pointedly gazing at his watch.
“I didn’t realize we had an appointment.”
“I’m the mayor, I don’t need one.”
Colt moved around his desk and sank into his chair. “What can I do for you, Mr. Mayor?”
“Because of your little stunt on the river walk Saturday, we’re getting sued.”
“What stunt would that be?”
“The spectacle you made with the couple from Southern California.”
“You mean the guy who socked me in the stomach after smacking his wife around?” Colt hadn’t known where they were from.
“They claim that wasn’t the case ... that you rushed in like a cowboy, caused a scene, and used unnecessary force.”
“And you’re willing to take their word over mine?” Not that he was surprised, but it still stung to be second-guessed by Pond, again.
“What I’m not willing to do is cost this city money because you can’t restrain yourself.”
The SOB looked so self-satisfied that Colt wanted to throw a fist in his face. See? I can restrain myself, he almost said. Otherwise you’d be flat on your ass right now.
“I want you to talk to Benjamin and work this out,” the mayor continued. “I don’t care if you have to apologize to the couple or offer them something complimentary from your family’s company. Just make this go away.”
Pond rose from his seat and stormed out of the office.
Colt shook his head, then picked up the phone and called the city attorney. “Hey, Ben.”
“I tried to talk him off the ledge,” Ben said, clearly anticipating the call. For the last fifteen years Benjamin Schuster had represented Glory Junction in everything from public sidewalk slip and falls to accusations of sexual harassment. Before that, he was the city attorney for Berkeley but decided that he wanted to raise his family in a small town, away from crime and smog. “He’s adamant about making nice with these people.”
“Do you know what kind of precedent that sets? The man sucker punched me after knocking his wife around. How do I explain to my officers that we now have to let tourists beat us up so we don’t get sued?”
Benjamin let out an audible sigh. “Let me work on it, see what I can do.”
“What the hell is wrong with him, Ben? I’ve dealt with some prickly council people in my time, but we’ve never had a mayor like this.”
“He’s different, that’s for sure. But we both serve at his whim, so let’s keep our cool. I’m talking with the couple’s attorney later today and will call you.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. You know me, I wouldn’t ever use unnecessary force.”
“I know,” Ben said. “Hold tight.”
“Thanks.”
Not five minutes after hanging up, Colt got called out on a six-car pileup on the outskirts of town. It was a mess. Paramedics triaging at the scene because so many were injured. And firefighters using the Jaws of Life to cut open cars smashed beyond recognition to rescue motorists and their passengers.
“A trucker fell asleep at the wheel and veered into oncoming traffic,” one of the first-responding officers told Colt during a briefing.
Colt had suspected something like that. The semi now sat on its side in the middle of the highway. The driver appeared uninjured but was being taken to Sierra General to be checked out. A couple of kids had been fitted with neck braces and were being carried by stretchers. Colt threaded his way through the chaos, trying to keep out of the medics’ way.
He didn’t recognize any of the victims, but given how many cars were involved, some had to be local. A little girl was standing off to the side, unattended, crying, while her mother was being worked on. Colt went to the child and picked her up.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Your mom’s gonna be fine.” The woman looked alert and was talking, so Colt didn’t think it was too much of a stretch.
The girl wrapped her arms around Colt’s neck and hung on for dear life. He went looking for a firefighter or one of his officers to see about calling a relative or the girl’s father.
“The husband is on his way,” one of the paramedics told him.
He tried to put the girl down but she wouldn’t let go. That was okay. He kept her with him until her father showed up and gave the man time to check in with his wife, who was being loaded into one of the ambulances.
His officers, along with Colt’s help, eventually got traffic moving through the area again, diverting it to one lane. Though cars moved at a snail’s pace, it was better than nothing. Someone tooted his horn and Colt looked up to find his brother Josh waving.
“You need any help?” he called from his truck.
“I think we’ve got it under control. Just waiting for some more tow trucks.”
The ambulances had left for the hospital and the crew was in cleanup mode, getting vehicles and strewn debris off the roadway. A crew had already started on moving the semi.
“All right. See you later, then.” Josh pulled away.
Colt didn’t get back to the station until later in the day, and was starved when he finally did. After scrounging through the staff refrigerator with no luck, he decided to grab something at the Morning Glory diner, which stayed open all day. Deb was waiting tables and led him to a booth in the back. The restaurant looked like a throwback to the 1950s. Red pleather and chrome bar stools, black and white checked floor, and Formica tabletops. The owner, Felix, couldn’t keep a cook to save his life, but the tuna melts and olallieberry pie were consistently solid. They must’ve been Felix’s personal recipes. Colt knew the diner’s owner mostly from the slopes; he was a champion snowboarder.
“Just you, Chief?” Deb sat on the bench across from him.
“Yep.” He ordered an egg salad sandwich and a side of steak fries.
“Were you out at the accident? I heard it was awful.”
“Yeah, pretty nasty, but no fatalities.” At least not yet. Two people—a driver and his eighty-year-old passenger—were in critical condition.
“Horrible.” She scanned the front of the restaurant to make sure no one else had come in and needed seating. It was late in the day, so the place was quiet. “I met your neighbor, the fashion designer, Monday. I didn’t think I would like her, but it wound up I did.”
“Why didn’t you think you’d like her?”
Deb had grown up in Glory Junction and was Hannah’s best friend. Since middle school, she’d had a thing for Win, but as far as Colt could tell, that wasn’t going anywhere. Win was too busy playing the field.
“I thought she would be snooty, being a big designer and all. Plus, I wanted to be loyal to you as far as the parking situation. But she’s nice ... not stuck up at all, even though one of her dresses cost more than my car.”
Colt had seen Deb’s car and that wasn’t saying much. Like a lot of people in Glory Junction, she suffered from ski bumitis and had trouble holding down a steady job. Felix, hard up for good servers, let her play hooky so she could get time in on the slopes. In the summer, she spent as many hours on the lake and river as the Garner brothers.
“Thanks for wanting to have my back, Little Debbie.” He grinned because she hated when he called her that.
“Lord knows why I do. But she said you guys kissed and made up.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Although he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that he’d thought about kissing her in her kitchen the other day. She’d had on a long gauzy shirt, a pair of white stretchy pants, and high-heeled sandals. He knew nothing about fashion, but the outfit was incredibly sexy without showing a lot of skin. What red-blooded man wouldn’t have wanted to kiss her? “Let’s put it this way, we’re learning to share.”
“I bet you are.” She waggled her brows.
“Now, don’t go spreading rumors. She’s not my type.”
“Why’s that?”
Because the next time he fell for a woman, she wasn’t going to up and leave him for the bright lights of the big city. For fame and fortune and all the other clichés that made for a bad chick flick. This time he was sticking with his own kind: a small-town girl.
“I prefer blondes,” he said with a grin. “You think you could get my food? I’m a little hungry here.”
“Sure thing, Chief.” She saluted him, walked to the order window, and shouted, “Chicken in the hay and a side of Joan of Arc.”
After his late lunch, Colt went back to the office, where he spent the rest of the day returning calls, checking over reports, and listening to Carrie Jo espouse the benefits of a new cleanse diet Foster had told her about. Something about the healing qualities of lemon juice and cayenne pepper. It sounded like a load of crap to Colt, which he’d told her, and had tried to persuade her to go running with him again. She’d come up with a hundred and one excuses. “My knee hurts.” “It’s too hot.” And his personal favorite: “Running gives me diarrhea.” Colt didn’t want to push too hard and have Carrie Jo see him as a tyrant. Her ex had given her enough shit about her weight.
He got home to find Delaney’s Tesla on the easement pad and begrudgingly drove to the top of his drive and exercised the pain-in-his-ass three-point turn. Exhausted, he sincerely hoped the next twelve hours would be crime and accident free. Inside, he stripped out of his uniform, put on a pair of basketball shorts, and planted his ass in front of the flat screen with a beer and a bag of chips, otherwise known as dinner, and spent an hour channel surfing.
Colt fell asleep, woke up to the news, turned off the TV, and hauled himself upstairs to bed. As tired as he was, he couldn’t fall asleep again, not with the light from Delaney’s window shining through his curtains. What does she have, a freakin’ spotlight up there? He rolled over to the opposite side, away from the window, and pulled the covers over his head. But it was hot as hell. After a half hour of tossing and turning, he got up, put on clothes, and went over to Delaney’s. He didn’t care that it was close to midnight.
He banged on her door, ready to rip her a new one. But when she answered in skimpy pajama shorts and a thin tank top, his tongue went numb. Or maybe he had swallowed it. Don’t stare.
“Hi,” she said. “Everything okay?”
He pointed to the side of the house at the offending bedroom. “You left your light on.... It’s shining in my room.”
She walked out onto the deck, barefoot—and braless—and craned her neck to look at what he was talking about. “That’s my studio. I’m working.”
“At midnight?”
“Yes. When I’m designing I don’t pay attention to time.”
“Well, I’ve got to be up at the crack of dawn and I can’t sleep. Don’t you have shades or something you can pull closed?” Then she could work 24/7 for all he cared.
“Don’t you?”
“I have drapes, but the light shines right through. It’s like you’re making a motion picture up there.”
She rolled her eyes. “It is not. Maybe you’re just hypersensitive.” She said it like there was something wrong with him and he should get over it.
Under ordinary circumstances he would’ve found her challenge amusing, but he was sleep deprived. “Let me see.”
She opened the door and led him inside the house, which was hopped up on steroids. The other day, when they’d had a beer in her kitchen, he’d compared. He was pretty sure his entire house could fit in her pantry.
He followed her up the stairs. Don’t look at her ass. Instead, he kept his eyes pinned on the industrial-looking metal railing, which he actually liked. It reminded him of an auto body shop. At the landing, she took a right down the hallway to a large room that could’ve been the master suite but was set up as an office. It had a desk, a bank of file cabinets, a wall covered in cork with pictures and drawings of clothing stuck to it. By the window that faced his bedroom sat a huge drafting table and a lamp that shined as bright as a monster quasar. A person could light the entire earth with that much energy.
He walked over to the switch and turned it off.
“Hey!” She flicked it back on.
“You really need it to be this bright while you’re working?”
“No, I just keep it on to annoy you,” she said dryly.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he muttered, and went to examine the window. “Why don’t you have blinds?”
“Because I don’t want anything to interfere with the view. Besides, it isn’t a standard-sized window.”
Nope. It was more like a wall of glass.
He rubbed his hand down his face. “C’mon, Delaney, work with me here.”
“Seriously, how bad can it be?”
He motioned for her to follow him downstairs. When he crossed her deck and headed toward his house, she balked.
“Wait. I’m not dressed.”
How had that not been a problem at her house? “Put on a robe, then.”
She disappeared, only to reappear in a silky kimono thing that hugged her curves as much as the tank had. But it was the slippers that killed him. High heels. Fluffy feathers. Totally impractical. Bordering on ridiculous. So why were they rocking his world?
“All right. Let’s go.” She let him take the lead.
As they walked through his house and up the stairs he wondered if she thought he was a slob, then wondered why he cared. The last woman inside his bedroom had been Lisa. Since her, he’d made it a point to date and hook up out of town. As far away as San Francisco if possible.
As soon as she stepped over the threshold, he pointed toward the window. “See what I mean?” He shielded his eyes to make his point.
She gazed around the room, lingered on his messy bed, then focused on the window where the drapes were drawn. “Huh. I never realized how close our houses are.”
He wanted to say, You mean how you encroached on my property when you decided to build Xanadu, but refrained.
“It’s a little bright,” she said.
“Are you freaking kidding me? It’s like having Eta Carinae two feet away.”
She gave him a look. “This is going to be a problem because I work a lot at night. It’s when I’m the most creative.”
“Okay. Get some blackout shades.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Why don’t you?”
“Because I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a good neighbor to turn off her klieg lights at midnight.”
She sat on the edge of his bed and his instant reaction was to think about sex. With her. Which wasn’t good because pretty soon she’d look at the lower half of him and see what he was thinking. Shouldn’t have worn basketball shorts.
“I guess I don’t have a choice then,” she said, clearly clueless of his predicament. “They’ll have to be custom, due to the size and shape of the window. That could take some time.”
It was a miracle he’d heard what she said at all, since he could see that her nipples were hard where the fabric of her robe puckered. Avert your eyes, asshole. “I’d, uh, just appreciate you taking care of it.”
She let out a breath. “Between the parking and the lights, you’re the most high-maintenance neighbor I’ve ever had. You know that, Garner?”
He laughed at her use of his last name. It was very football coach for a fashion designer who wore pink feathers on her feet. “That’s what you get for living next door to a police chief who likes to occasionally sleep.”
“I heard about the accident on Highway Eighty-nine . . . pretty bad, huh?”
“Yep, though it could’ve been worse.” By the time Colt had left work, one of the victims had been upgraded from critical to fair condition.
“Awful when something like that happens.” She shook her head. “According to the news, the driver who caused it fell asleep.”
“That’s what he says.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Trust but verify,” he automatically recited. “Though it’s more than likely what happened. There was no evidence of drinking or drugs.”
Delaney continued to inspect his room, making no move to leave. His place must’ve appeared pretty modest compared to all the high-end furnishings she had. Colt put his money into ski equipment and climbing gear, which didn’t leave a lot left over for decorating. Her eyes landed on his guitar case, which leaned against the wall. “Hannah says you play.”
“I used to.” He shrugged. “Don’t really have time for it much anymore.”
“You miss it?”
He missed the way it used to be. Before Lisa took that part of him with her when she left. “Sometimes. But I’ve got my hands full.”
“I thought Hannah said you performed recently.”
“I did, Thursday night. But I don’t have anything else planned.” Since they were getting quasi personal, he asked, “How’s the designing going?”
“Great. Really, really good,” she said a little too enthusiastically.
He raised his brows. “Yeah?”
“Actually, no.” She scooted up to lean against one of his pillows, dropped the porno slippers on the floor, and tucked those amazing legs under her. The robe parted as she moved, showing a good amount of thigh. “I’m completely blocked. Every idea I come up with looks like something I’ve already done.”
Despite it being an exceptionally bad idea, he sat on the bed next to her. “What’s wrong with that? You’ve got a style that’s well received, why not stick with it?”
“Because you should constantly grow as a designer. And then there’s the fact that I don’t want my new lines looking exactly like Robert’s.”
“But Robert’s stuff is . . . was ... your stuff. Everyone knows that, right?”
“Yes. I still need to rebrand myself, however. That’s the difficulty of starting over.”
He saw the strain around her eyes and recognized that she must be under a lot of pressure. No wonder she worked late at night. “Is that why you’re working at midnight?”
“I need investors. In order to get investors, I have to show them something.”
“Even with the track record you have?”
“I’ll get some on that, I suppose. But it’s not just the designs, it’s the track record of running a profitable business. And that was all Robert.”
At least she gave her ex his due, Colt thought. Lisa never had.
“Maybe you’re pushing yourself too hard. Maybe it’ll come back to you when you stop focusing on it so much.”
“That’s what I keep thinking and then ... nothing. I’m sure something will happen eventually. But if it doesn’t, I’ll miss fashion week in late September.” Colt hitched his shoulders because he didn’t know what fashion week was, so she explained. “That’s when houses showcase new collections to buyers and the media.”
She swung her feet down and sat upright. “I should let you go to bed. Until I get window coverings I’ll try not to use the lamp.”
“I’d appreciate that.” He noticed she wasn’t completely committing, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say Why don’t you use another room? But like the parking situation, he decided to take one victory at a time.
When they got downstairs and he started to follow her out, she said, “What are you doing?”
“Walking you home.”
“Why?” she asked. “I only live next door.”
Colt didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer. Instead, he saw Delaney to her door. “Good night.”
“’Night.”
He stood on her front deck for a few minutes, then walked back to his house. By the time he got to his room the light in her studio was out. He was about to crawl into his bed when his cell rang. Five teens had been arrested for vandalizing the high school. Ordinarily, he would’ve let the graveyard shift handle the kids’ irate parents. But knowing that Pond was gunning for him, he decided to deal with it himself.
Two hours later, he sat at his desk in the police station, filling out the last report. The kids had been returned to their parents, but everything had to be documented for the district attorney’s office. Because they were juveniles, no charges would be filed. They’d likely just be cited and ultimately ordered to pay a fine and perform community service. Some of the kids involved were self-entitled shit heads and Colt fully expected the parents to complain that little Johnny or Jane wasn’t getting a fair shake. That’s why he was crossing every T and dotting every I. Otherwise, he’d have the mayor crawling up his ass again.
Instead of going home, Colt slept on his office couch and was awakened by Carrie Jo, who brought him a steaming cup of coffee.
“No thanks necessary, but a raise would be good.”
Colt sat up and took the mug from her. “What time is it?”
“Nine. There’s a clean uniform in the closet if you want to shower and dress here.”
“Nah, I’m gonna run home. If anyone is looking for me, tell them I had a long night and that I can be reached on my cell.”
Colt drove to his house, noted that Delaney’s car was gone, and snagged the parking space, not planning to stay long. After a hot shower, he headed back to town, stopping at Garner Adventure to check in. He hadn’t seen his parents in a few days. There was a new receptionist at the front desk and TJ was showing her how to use the computer system.
“What’s up?” TJ asked, preoccupied. “Heard the high school got trashed.”
“Yeah. Kids. Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“Dad’s waterskiing with a group of seniors and Mom’s in her office. Meet Darcy, Colt.”
“Hi, Darcy.”
Darcy smiled shyly. She was cute in a librarian kind of way, but sort of intense, chewing her bottom lip and jotting down everything TJ said on a steno pad.
“Hey.” Win came into the reception area and shoulder checked him. “I thought I heard your voice. Want to grab coffee?”
Colt’s stomach rumbled. “I could do that. TJ?”
“Sure. Let me finish up with Darcy.”
“I’ll go say hello to Mom quick,” Colt said. “See if Josh wants to go too?”
He was headed to his mother’s office when his cell rang with a call from the mayor. Gritting his teeth, he ground out, “What now?”