Page 48 of Untamed Heart

He had no reason to pull me over. I hadn’t been speeding or breaking any other rules of the road. I knew better in this town. But the crooked assholes who were supposed to be in charge of keeping the peace and protecting their citizens didn’t give a shit about following the law.

Leaning over, I pulled my wallet from my purse for my license, then flipped open the center console for my proof of insurance.

He snatched them out of my hands as soon as I extended them his way and headed back to his cruiser.

While I waited for him to finish up and give me whatever bullshit excuse he had for pulling me over, my phone chimed in the cupholder with a text from Roe.

Roe:

You on your way, Honeybee?

Before I could type out a response, Brady returned to my window. With one arm braced on the roof of the car and the other resting on the ledge of the open window, he leaned in, his face coming way too close to mine. He passed my insurance and license back to me, a smarmy grin on his face.

“I heard you’ve started spreading your legs for that piece of white trash again. If I knew you wanted to slum it, I could have given it to you down and dirty just how you like it.”

“Is this your new tactic?” I spat at him. “You figured those stupid photos didn’t work, so you’d try to run me out of town by, what? Scaring me?”

For a moment, I thought I saw confusion move across his features, but before he could get another word out, a second cruiser pulled up beside Brady’s.

“That motherfucker,” Tolliver hissed under his breath just as North Hastings came up beside him.

“Everything okay here?”

“Nothing for you to worry about, Hastings,” Tolliver growled back. “You’d do well to stay in your lane. Wouldn’t want something bad to happen to you.”

I couldn’t tell by North’s blank expression whether or not he took Brady’s threat seriously, but I had to hand it to him, the man had serious guts, because instead of backing down from his boss, he looked at me and said, “Everything okay, here, ma’am?”

“She’s fine,” Brady spit.

North slowly turned his head. “I was asking her.”

“I’m fine,” I answered, breaking through the tension between the two men that was dangerously close to boiling over. I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of their pissing match. I just wanted to go home to Roe and Cassi. As it was, Tolliver looked like the back of his head was about to blow clean off.

“Glad to hear it.” He shot a glare back at his boss. “Pretty sure traffic stops are below you, Chief. I’m happy to take over here.”

Tolliver let a few choice curse words out low under his breath before puffing out his chest as he turned and started heading for his cruiser. “Better learn to remember your place, Hastings, or you won’t make it in this department.

North stood there quietly, and I got the impression he was putting himself in the role of my protector. As soon as the cruiser went flying by, spitting up dust and debris, North turned hisattention to me and inclined his chin to me. “You have a good evening, ma’am.”

He started to walk away when I leaned out my window and called out after him. “You didn’t have to do that, you know. The Brady’s aren’t a family you want to cross. They’ll go out of their way to make your life hell.”

Something moved across his expression then that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “They can do their worst, ma’am. But I can’t abide bullies. It’s just not in me.”

It was in that moment that I realized Iris had been right about him being a good man. It was nearly on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he knew my gorgeous, sweet, redheaded realtor friend, but something told me he wasn’t in the mood for a fix up.

Another time, then, I thought to myself as I put my car in gear and headed for my man and his precious girl. Another time for sure, because a man like that needed a good woman to have his back. And I couldn’t think of anyone better.

TWENTY-FOUR

DAKOTA

As I drovemy car through the tree-lined back road, Cassi chattered animatedly from her booster in the back seat of my car.

“And then we learned to make a fire using two sticks and these rocks called flints. I was the best at it and that mean jerk, Bobby Handell, couldn’t even make his spark. Ha!”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her it wasn’t nice to call other kids jerks, but Bobby Handellwasa jerk. Apparently he hadn’t learned his lesson the first time my girl kicked his ass, and Cassi was gearing up to make him pay for being such a buttwad.

“I’m glad you’re having so much fun, honey, but remember what we talked about?”