Chapter 7

As for me and my house, we will serve tacos.

-Wall hanging

Tyler

I knew she was there.

What I didn’t know was why she was there.

I watched her for twenty minutes or so unloading bag after bag of mulch. Then she started on flowers.

It was only when she started taking out the shovels that I got up and walked outside.

I found her on her hands and knees, tugging weeds out with her bare hands.

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to sound as unwelcoming as I could possibly make my voice sound. Even if I was feeling satisfaction that she was actually here, even though I shouldn’t be.

She wasn’t supposed to be here.

I’d been serious when I said that what we did could only be the one time, even though I couldn’t stop replaying the sequence of events in my mind.

Usually me saying what I said would mean that she’d leave me alone.

Apparently, I was going to have to get meaner.

“I’m putting in a flower bed,” she answered like it was the most normal thing in the world to do.

I blinked. “At my house? Go put a flower bed in at your house.”

She stood up and grabbed the shovel closest to her, then started digging up my grass.

If I’d been more on my game—and hadn’t been watching her ass and thighs while remembering what they looked like when I had been pounding away inside of her—I might’ve been able to tell her to stop before she’d completely massacred my lawn.

Instead, I was riveted in place, watching those ass muscles flex with each movement as she stepped down on the shovel. It was only when two huge hunks of grass were gone that I finally snapped out of it.

“Stop,” I ordered.

Too late, way too late.

She smiled at me. “Don’t worry. I don’t want your reimbursement.”

I snorted. “You weren’t going to get that anyway. I didn’t ask you to come here and I didn’t ask you to do that.”

I hadn’t. I’d made sure of it, even though I had wanted to call her, to stop by, to stay in her bed all day, every day.

She rolled her eyes. “I need this for my thesis. I can’t do it at my place because I don’t own it. I won’t do it at Janie’s because I’ll have to talk to her every time I go over there and I don’t want to. I’ll literally only be coming over here to do this. I won’t talk to you. You don’t have to worry that I’ll strip you down and climb on your peenie weenie again. All you have to do is let me come over here to do my thing, leave me alone while I’m doing it and don’t bitch when I leave the sprinklers on a little too long. M’kay?”

Then she went back to removing the grass.

And I shrugged.

Seriously, when she put it that way, I didn’t see the harm in her being here. Especially when I didn’t plan on staying here much longer myself—I had to be at work.

What I didn’t expect was her to be here all hours of the day and night—for the next three weeks—in nothing but a goddamn tiny piece of fabric that she called a bathing suit.

Sweating. Moving. Jiggling.

Making my dick hard.

Yeah, let’s just say those three weeks were the hardest of my life and I didn’t even realize it.

It was on day twenty-one that I finally lost my shit.

I came into the office in a bad mood.

Katy stood up once she saw me and started to fix me a cup of coffee.

I waved her off before she could get my mug down. “Don’t. I want something else today.”

Something stronger that would hide the fact that I might possibly be adding whiskey to it.

“I can grab you a drink from the Coke machine,” she offered.

I waved her away. “No.”

Katy frowned. “Is there something wrong?”

I thought about that for a moment.

Was there something wrong?

Not necessarily.

My yard was looking better than ever.

I’d gotten home yesterday to Reagan mowing my grass.

I’d gone inside, pissed off because she was always at my place when I was at my most vulnerable—like after a hard day at work when I wanted nothing more than to find someone to let me take my bad day out on, preferably in a way that meant I didn’t have any clothes on.

Yet, I knew that I couldn’t go that route with her.

I just couldn’t. Morally. Ethically. Physically.

She was trouble and I didn’t need trouble in my life. I was too old, too set in my ways and unwilling to compromise in any way.

A girl like her, one so young, who acted like Reagan did? Yeah, there’d be compromises across the board and I just didn’t have the desire to do that.

I wanted what I wanted and I made no apologies for that.

And let’s not forget that I knew her father.

Say Reagan and I did get together. Family get-togethers would be awkward as hell because Bennett knew me. Knew my likes and dislikes and he also knew that I wasn’t easy on my girls.

Not that any of them had complained or anything. It just was what it was and I liked it rough. Sue me.

Yeah, so needless to say, it was in everyone’s best interest that I just stay away.

I could feel my walls encasing my heart shaking each time she got near.

And this morning, with what she’d been wearing as I walked out the front door? Let’s just say that image of her in those tight-ass unicorn bike shorts, pink tank top and pink ball cap over her messy, unruly, curly hair would be forever burned in my brain.

There’d been one tendril that had slithered over her shoulder and had curled around her breast and stuck to her sweaty…

“Chief Cree?”

I looked over at Katy.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I asked if you needed anything,” she repeated her earlier question that I’d apparently missed.

I shook my head. “If you could make Reagan Alvarez disappear from my life, yes. If you can’t, then no.”

Katy frowned. “Reagan? What’s wrong with Reagan?”

I sighed. “Nothing. She’s just driving me nuts. We live really close to each other and she’s using my place in her experiment. Needless to say, she’s there every single morning and I haven’t gotten much sleep.”

Katy snickered. “That sounds like Reagan. She’s all day, every day. There is no rest for the wicked. She’s been like that since she was a kid, though.”

Her words caused me to look at her more closely. “You know Reagan?”

She nodded. “Her dad and mine work together. They’re both on the SWAT team.”

I thought back to her last name and winced. “You’re Luke’s kid?”

Katy grinned. “I am.”

“Shit, small world.” I just shook my head. “I used to work with them quite a bit when I was first out of the marines. They took me under their wing. I was on the SWAT team for about eight months before I transferred over here.”

Katy smiled. “I remember, actually. You used to come over to our house for team meetings. I was usually out with my boyfriend or friends. But I saw you once or twice in passing.”

I sighed. “So, do you know Reagan well?”

Katy nodded. “I do.”

“Was she always such a bulldozer?”

Katy snickered. “You have no idea.”

Unfortunately, she was right. I didn’t.