Page 5 of Thirteen Years
“Lucas, I have no idea. I just know her name. She was cute though, right?” Monica had looked up at me hopefully. This woman had been trying to hook me up with someone for years. Ever since she’d married my best friend, and partner on the force, Paul. “Sounds to me like she’s a single mom with a teenage daughter,” Monica informed me as she wiggled her eyebrows at me.
Becks was taller than most women, and yet I still towered over her with the way she looked up at me with those big brown eyes. A protective instinct had flared inside of my chest, making no sense because it was the first time I’d ever laid eyes on her. Yet, when she’d backed into me and I’d reached out to grab her arms, it was like an electric jolt had shot through me. That had never happened before. I’d found myself wanting to pull her back against me to press her softness against my chest again. She’d smelled like coffee and something fruity I couldn’t place. It was intoxicating.
I could still picture her flustered expression after she’d gotten a good look at me. The momentary panic at seeing my uniform, eyes widening and skin paling slightly. It was enough to drive a man crazy, the way she looked. The cop in me was curious, wondering what those eyes had seen that had them so haunted. Even in some ridiculous Christmas pajamas and a black hoodie, she’d taken my breath away. The way she’d unconsciously straightened her glasses and turned as red as a cherry. It was adorable.
“Lucas! How were the helions today?” yelled Paul. I plopped into my desk chair and glanced up at him, having no choice but to smile at the redhead’s infectious grin.
“Monica was just fine, my man,” I joked in return.
He laughed uproariously at my joke, “I’ll have to tell her you think of her as a juvenile later,” he returned with an ornery glint in his eyes.
“The hell you will! That woman is tiny but she’ll have my ass!” I retorted.
Paul and Monica had been married a little over fourteen years. He had taken Monica’s older daughter, Lacey, as his own. They had a friendly, co-parenting arrangement with Monica’s first husband, Trevor. Those two men would do anything for the other’s child. It was a beautiful thing to witness.
He and Monica had consistently been trying to get me to agree to double dates with them and set-ups throughout the last decade, but I wasn’t interested in anyone in this town. I wasn’t jaded or anything like that. I had a normal high school experience and had dated. I had a serious girlfriend in college that just didn’t work out. I hadn’t really done more than date around since then. No one inspired the level of commitment that I saw between Monica and Paul every time they had me over for dinner.
“So…there’s a new woman in town, huh?”
I jumped, staring up at Paul who was staring down at his cell phone.
“News travels fast,” I said dryly.
“Someone says you seemed interested in this Becks? Mon said she was really pretty,” Paul trailed off.
“Said you even went out after her to ask her name, that’s new for you,” he glanced up at me questioningly..
Avoiding eye contact, I gazed back at the computer screen. I was fighting every instinct within me to run a background check on the woman. She'd only been on my radar for a few minutes, but was still on my mind hours later for some reason.
“She seemed nice,” I finally said, hoping he'd let the topic go. I was wrong.
Paul’s eyebrows rose. “Nice?” he laughed. “That’s it?” he asked, standing to come sit at the desk across from me. He plopped down in the seat across from me, making himself comfortable in the old, worn out leather chair.
I sighed, “Fine. She was beautiful,” I admitted.
Paul grinned at me then, nodding, “Now we’re getting somewhere. Tell me more.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Monica’s rubbing off on you, man.”
“Shut up. Going after a woman to find out her name? Usually you just do the casual hook ups after bar nights. Half the time you don’t even know their name!” He unfortunately wasn't wrong and I hated that he knew me well enough to use it against me.
I glowered at him, clenching my hands together on my desk, when I finally let it out, “Dude, listen. I can’t explain it. There was something about her that tugged at me. There’s something about her that got my cop senses tingling though,” I continued, trying to brush it off.
His face changed from light-hearted humor, to concern at the last part. “Sure. Single mom, one kid, jumpy. I mean it would make a man wonder. I’m more interested in your man senses tingling though!” he said, standing and allowing his expression to relax back into teasing mode. “I’m going out on patrol, following up on a few things. I’ll be out the rest of the day before heading home. You still coming over for spaghetti tonight?”
“Yah. Your wife will never let me hear the end of it if I back out,” I grunted.
“You’re damn straight,” he chuckled, walking out the door.
Sitting back in my desk chair, resting my elbows on the arms of it, I set my chin on my hands. Rebecca Wareman had a past. I just knew it. I couldn’t have been a cop this long without sensing something off about her. The question was, how to go about finding out what it was?
And maybe getting a date out of her as well.
I wondered where she’d come from and what her story was. I wondered if her kid’s dad was involved. Was there something there that had made her so jumpy about simply bumping into a person of the opposite sex. My fingers were literally itching to type in her information and go digging. I'd done it with other females I’d dated, but this time it just seemed wrong. Dishonest.
I was a cop, but I had skeletons in my closet too. I was a hell of a punk in school. My mom had run off leaving me with my dad when I was younger, and he wasn’t well-equipped for single parenting. He’d been in the military since he’d turned eighteen and had no idea what to do with me. He dropped me on Nana’s doorstep and hadn’t looked back. When we were notified of his death, caused by a roadside bomb when I was fourteen, I hadn’t even cried. I hardly knew the man. It was just Nana and I from there on out since Pops had passed on about two years before Dad from a heart attack.
When I started getting into trouble in high school and college, she’d finally knocked some sense into my stubborn ass. She loved me with all her heart but she had told me she wasn’t going to watch me screw my own life up. When I graduated college, I decided to enroll in the police academy and that’s where I found my passion. I’d seen a lot in my line of work, but I felt like it made me a better man. A stronger man. I could see why my father had been the type of man he was, since the military is all he really knew.
