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  Besides, this wasn’t a job you joined to buy cool tech and live in the lap of twenty-first-century luxury — there wasn’t much pay in being a police officer, I assumed. This seemed like a job you joined not for the healthcare, but because it was a calling.

  He came back from what I presume was his desk and I got to have a good look at him without his jacket on.

  The manufacturer had made the police-issued department T-shirt fabric blessedly clingy. I could see definitive outlines of firm pecs, maybe even the tops of some abs. I was able to focus in on his T-shirt riding up, and the small strip of hard, tanned skin emerging. Who the fuck is tan during winter in Wisconsin? The more I stared with abandon, the more convinced I was that he was not of this Earth.

  My reverie was broken by Dylan explaining that he needed to take my prints.

  “Sorry about this,” he said. “I know it seems ludicrous, but it’s protocol.”

  “Don’t apologize for doing your job,” I replied, with a graciousness I didn’t quite feel. If he was surprised at my sudden generosity of spirit, he didn’t show it. I envied him the ability to hide his emotions so well. I wore mine like fresh laundry, newly starched and visible for the whole world to eyeball.

  He trotted me over to a counter where a smudge of black ink stood at the ready. He took my hand in his, and pressed my fingers into the smudge, then onto a piece of white paper. Even though I was being booked, my earlier feelings of raging sex were beginning to return with the proximity of the officer. I worried that he could feel my pulse throbbing in the webbing between my thumb and index finger. His touch raised my ancient, animalistic instincts. I thought of how wonderful it would be to consume him, to take my ink-smudged fingers and grasp his face, leaving my mark along the angles of those perfect cheeks.

  And his ring caught the light. I pulled my hand back. Right. I was still getting arrested, and he was still married.

  “Hey, careful,” he said, grabbing my still inky fingertips. He extracted a white linen handkerchief from his pocket.

  “You don’t have to get that dirty on my behalf,” I offered. “I’ll just wipe it on my jeans.” The pants had seen worse, and I didn’t want to once again forget my previous resolve to treat him like the cheating bastard he was. Because if he continued with his touch and used his old-timey handkerchief, I reckoned I would just about change my mind about being angry with him.

  He tsked. “Don’t be crazy.” The linen, led by masterful hands, began to dab at my fingertips, rubbing away all traces of the stamp. He worked swiftly and tenderly, so much so that for a moment, I forgot I was in a police station, and not in bed. I imagined those hands tracing circles on my naked back and following the length of my spine down to the dip just above my ass.

  Oh God. Why was my mind playing cruel tricks on me? Focus, Zoe. Remember that he’s a cheater. Remember that you hate cheaters. Don’t think about what he’d look like in your rumpled sheets. Definitely don’t think about what he’d look like beneath you.

  “I gotta go talk over your papers and intake with Officer Morton,” Dylan said. “If I leave you here, do you promise to behave? No running out the front door?”

  What, he was just going to take my word on this? Pretty lax police work, if you asked me.

  “Sure,” I replied. “I’ll be good.”

  “Great. When I get back, you can be bad all over again.”

  I desperately needed his handkerchief to pat other, ah, wetter parts of myself. Dylan turned, and strutted down the aforementioned ill-lit corridor, leaving me to mosey over to a stiff wooden bench, take a begrudging seat and contemplate my predicament.

  Because while I might have been preoccupied with those big blue eyes — and the cheating, Zoe, don’t forget the cheating — there were other pressing matters that demanded my attention. Like, how the fuck was I going to fill the cake order now? My loan payment was due in a week and a half. If I didn’t have the money for a second month, sharks were going to start coming after me. As it was, they were already scenting blood in the water.

  I’d moved to here to pursue my dreams — opening a bakery. A simple dream, I know. But if I couldn’t even manage that much, if I couldn’t keep a bakery afloat in a tiny town with rental prices less than a tenth of what they were charging in NYC… well, I was screwed. In other words, if I couldn’t hack it here, I couldn’t hack it anywhere. Would I have to move back in with my parents? It seemed like a real and daunting possibility.

  Dylan returned and I noticed he’d taken off his hat, revealing close-cropped brown hair. It was full, with a slight wave to it, and I melted. Men with brown hair were my weakness. My eyes were so absorbed with his hair that they took their time getting to his arms, which were now exposed. The jacket apparently was discarded in the back. His pecs bulged in the tight black sleeves of his shirt. I thought I should probably write a thank-you note to the manufacturers of that garment for what they had done for humankind.

  “So,” he said, sauntering up to me. “Got some good news.”

  “Oh yeah?” I replied, moving in, like a moth to a flame.

  “We’re gonna let you go. Theoretically, we’re supposed to make you stay the night, so let’s keep this our little secret, okay?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir, understood.”

  “Call me Dylan.”

  “Yes… Dylan.”

  “Besides,” he added, “it sounded like you have big stuff going on at your bakery. We don’t wanna keep a small business owner down. That’s not what we’re about in this department.” He said this last bit with an undercurrent of pride, and I smiled.

  “But,” Dylan continued, “you’ll still have a court date. Shouldn’t be too big of a deal.”

  I sighed, nodding my head reluctantly. Not worth the fight. “I understand.”

  “Meanwhile, I can give you a ride to your car, if you’d like. Officer Morton is busy with some paperwork.”

  Fuck, of course, it was still on the side of the interstate. That was a pain, but I relished the notion of spending more time in Dylan’s presence.

  “Okay,” I replied a little too eagerly. “I’d hate to leave it by the highway all night.”

  “Oh uh… it’s not there.”

  “What? What happened?” I questioned urgently. “Did it get stolen?”

  “No, no, not stolen.” He scratched at his neck and averted his gaze, like a schoolboy caught with gum under his desk. “Um… impounded.”

  “Uh, why?”

  “Protocol.”

  I groaned at this non-answer. Protocol. Not helpful. I resigned myself to the situation.

  “All right,” I responded. “Let’s go get it.”

  No sooner had the words left my mouth then he was jogging back out of sight, and shortly thereafter, returning with his jacket. I mourned the fact that he’d be covering those arms back up, but I supposed I’d also feel bad if he froze.

  He grabbed the keys off the desk, and we walked back outside into the chilly air. It was late afternoon, and because it was wintertime, the sun was already beginning to set.

  Dylan hit the key fob, and his squad car beeped a reply.

  “We’re going in that?” I asked, pointing at the vehicle.

  “Don’t worry,” he replied. “You can sit in the front this time.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Dylan

  I’m iffy on the legalities of giving a ride to a recent “criminal” — using a squad car, no less. But that didn’t stop me from doing it. This is a small town and sometimes you need to work within or bend the rules. The person you are dealing with today might in a week be the person you are sitting next to at the local high school basketball game or your next-door neighbor’s kid or the man who runs the local pizza joint. Every case in this town is handled as a case-by-case basis. You know most everyone, or you know their friend or a family member of theirs and they likely know you. Helping people is what got me interested in being a police officer and so it made sense to help Zoe. The fact that I wanted
to get to know her better was just something extra.

  In fact, even if I’d known for certain that it was against the rules, I think I might have done it anyway. And that’s considering that I’d barely driven in a year, not since… but that’s beside the point. I was quickly realizing there was little I wouldn’t do to get to know this girl better.

  We got in, and I revved the engine, which was slow going because of the temperature. At last the car started, and I shifted gears. Anxious to break the proverbial ice between Zoe and me, I launched into some friendly conversation.

  “So, you been in town long? I saw that your license is from out of state,” Not particularly deep, but I had to start somewhere.

  “Just a few months,” she said. “Moved in November.”

  “Oh yeah? What for?”

  “A man.”

  My heart sank. Of course there was a man, there’s always a man. I managed, “You living together now?”

  “I moved here to get away from a man,” she said defiantly.

  The tightness in my chest loosened, and I was simultaneously shocked to see how quickly the rhythms of my heart had become dependent on this woman.

  “How come I haven’t seen you around before?” I asked, prodding her for more information. I wanted to keep those lips talking, if only so I could see her mouth make O’s. “I thought I knew every pretty girl in town.”

  She laughed, a hearty guffaw that was much bigger than what I’d expected that petite body to produce.

  “You’re a pretty slick operator,” she replied. “You know that?”

  My lips curved upwards. “I don’t think I am, but I’ll take the compliment.” I’d also take her, if she’d let me. Jesus, I had a dirty mind. Guess it was just from sex starvation. The hunger was more powerful than my usual good manners.

  “Have you lived here long?” she asked. I suspected we were both rusty on casual conversation.

  “Depends, does ‘my whole life’ qualify as long?” I retorted.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Okay,” she returned. “That’s pretty long.”

  I chortled. “Is thirty old to you?”

  “No, not at all. I like my men with a little age and wisdom.”

  “Age and wisdom, hmm?” I looked in the mirror and ran a hand over my cheek. “Maybe I’d better grow out my facial hair more. This trimmed beard thing is for the youngins.”

  “Oh, don’t do that,” she countered quickly.

  Well my my, somebody had certainly come to play ball. You’re still on duty, a voice in my head reminded me. Start acting like it. Stupid head voices, always bringing reason into the equation.

  But my inner voice lost out to the mounting arousal in my body. I took the bait, replying, “And why not?”

  She flushed, and muttered, “Seems a waste to hide those cheekbones under a full beard.”

  I couldn’t help it, my eyebrows shot up to my hairline. In Fallow Springs, women were generally raised to be flirted at, not the ones doing the flirting. But I was quickly learning I didn’t mind a gal with a libido and a big mouth.

  “How old are you?” I asked, changing the topic back to more neutral ground. I had noticed her birth year when looking at her license as I had been trained to do, but I didn’t want to come across as creepy, so I tried to keep the conversation going. If talks continued in this flirtatious vein… well, I wasn’t sure what I would do.

  “Twenty-seven,” she said.

  That warmed me up a bit. I would’ve lost my resolve if she was much younger. Once you have a child, the idea of sleeping with younger women just loses some of its luster. But that being said, in my life, everybody was paired off and having babies by the time they were twenty-five. For her to have run away from home, to a town like this, with no family at all — well, the country boy in me struggled to comprehend it.

  “And you’re rebuilding your whole life from the ground up in a backwoods town in the deep heartland of Wisconsin?” I asked, trying to figure her out. “Seems extreme.”

  She looked mildly affronted, and I regretted my phrasing.

  “I’m sorry,” I tacked on. “I don’t mean to be rude I’m just — it’s very different than what I’m used to, so I suppose I’m curious ‘bout it.” That was the honest to goodness truth.

  “I figure,” Zoe said slowly, “it’s never too late to make your life what you want it to be.”

  Her words triggered something deep in the folds of my brain. But what if, I thought, your life had already been exactly what you wanted it to be? And what if you had all of that taken away from you in the blink of an eye? My mind grew foggy as I was pulled into the past.

  “Hey, you okay?” she asked, and I turned to catch the look on her face. By the mounting concern I read there, I must have appeared pretty distant.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m all hunky-dory.” I raced to say something lighter, in case she realized how deeply her statement had pierced me. “You liking the town?”

  She hesitated, carefully weighing her answer before at last saying, “I think so.”

  “Oh yeah? You don’t sound so sure about that,” I joked. “I won’t be offended, Fallow Springs ain’t for everyone. If you can hack it in the woods, though, I’d be mighty impressed.”

  “I’m not sure about it yet. Haven’t made up my mind,” she clarified. “But I most definitely like the people.”

  She turned to face me, and her sparkling eyes invited me to join the innuendo. I was rusty, but for a body like that, I’d make the damn effort. I pictured myself cupping her perfectly shaped breasts, closing my hands around her miniature waist, gripping the soft meat of her dainty calf. The images gave me the pluck to go on.

  “You like the people,” I repeated. “What do you like about the people?”

  “Well,” she said, “they’re friendly, and helpful, and generally pretty invested in their community, which is great.”

  “We sure are,” I nodded, appreciative of her kind insight.

  “And, um,” she went on. “Some of them are pretty fucking hot.”

  Shit. She was going pedal to the floor with these pickup lines. I wanted to reciprocate vigorously, but something kept me from participating as much as I would have wanted. Damn it, I was a broken man.

  “Do you have anything to say to that?” she inquired with a smirk.

  I was going to have a hard time keeping my gaze on the road if she kept talking dirty or about as dirty as I’d ever heard a woman talk in Wisconsin. And it felt good to flex these sexual and verbal muscles after so long, to remember the excitement of first flirtations.

  I played along as gamely as possible. “Are any in particular catching your eye?”

  “Maybe…” she returned, letting the word hang heavy in the air.

  “Oh yeah? Does he know that you’re interested?”

  Her smirk grew larger. “I think he’s taking the hint.”

  “Should he be asking you out?” I asked, my pulse racing. Please say yes, please say yes.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied, her eyes off somewhere in the forest, running over the lines of the mountains.

  Disappointment seeped through me. “Why not?”

  “Because he’s married,” she responded, all playfulness leaving her tone. The sexual tension had been sucked out of the car, as if by a vacuum. Did she mean me? She definitely meant me. Damn it, I thought she had read between the lines by now. Wasn’t that what the flirting had indicated?

  I ached to tell her the truth, but it just seemed too soon. And once she knew everything, she wouldn’t see me as a hunky cop with biceps to spare, but as a stray dog with a limp, something to be cared for. I couldn’t bear to watch that change take over her.

  “Why do you think he’s married?” I asked her with the little breath I could muster.

  “Because he’s wearing a fucking wedding ring.”

  No, no, I had to keep quiet, the truth would technically explain everything, but it would als
o ruin what we had going on, the sparks of sexual attraction and romantic interest. The fire would dim and sputter out before it had a chance to kindle. The tradeoff wasn’t worth it.

  “Maybe,” I offered, by way of compromise with my internal demons, “the ring doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

  “And maybe,” Zoe shot back, “I’m less of a dumb bunny than he thinks I am.”

  “Come on now, he doesn’t think you’re dumb.”

  “Oh yeah?” she retorted. “How else do you explain the ring, Dylan?”

  We had dropped all pretenses of this being a hypothetical man. Her eyes were on me now, waiting for an answer. An answer I couldn’t possibly give.

  “Zoe, it’s more complicated than—”

  Just at the moment, mercifully or not, my walkie light blinked red — an incoming message. Reluctantly, I switched directions in my sentence.

  “I have to answer this.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and muttered something under her breath.

  The machine buzzed, and a voice came through, saying, “Officer Robertson, do you copy? Over.”

  I clicked the talk button on the side of the walkie, and replied, “I copy, over.”

  “There’s been a B&E on Main Street.”

  “What’s a B&E?” Zoe asked.

  “Breaking and entering,” I replied to her. Into the walkie, I said, “Okay, on it. Where on Main?”

  The radio crackled with static. “A shop called Zoe’s Cakes and Bakes.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Zoe

  My vision tunneled, and the world swam around me. My heart shot straight from my stomach to my throat. I swallowed around the newfound lump in my esophagus, and I attempted to say something.

  “Zoe’s?” I managed to croak out, though I wasn’t sure if my voice was audible above a whisper.

  “Yeah,” Dylan replied. “Why—”

  He stopped mid-sentence. I could read him as plainly as a book, and worry contorted his beautiful face. Distantly, as if in a different timeline, I cursed myself for forcing those wonderful features into such an unhappy arrangement.