Chapter 1: Sweet Honey
Becky O'Shea was running from her name more than anything else. If she had stayed in Rhode Island and lived her life according to her uncle’s decree, he would have pushed another well-dressed, well-paid bore on her in hopes that one day, she would marry. Because the niece of U.S. Senator George O'Shea was getting too old to still be dating casually, especially the types of men she naturally migrated toward. After all, there were Republican appearances to restore and uphold in a primarily Democratic state, and of course, upcoming elections to win.
“Honey, Rebecca needs a husband,” her Uncle George told his wife, Candie, in his important politician voice just last month while they were dancing at a fundraiser held at the Governor's mansion. “I toiled too long and too rigorously only to have her ruin me with her uncultured behavior. She needs to be tamed and to learn her place in this world.”
Candie agreed, as usual. Becky, however, had only been too happy to prove her uncle's assumptions of her character as accurate. The formal affair had been typically mind-numbing until Becky let loose her inner spontaneity, giving her uncle the perfect opportunity to spurn and reprimand her privately.
Okay, so she insulted the Governor's son to his face. But the pampered, sloshed jerk had asked for it. A tango was a type of dance...not an opportunity to copulate in a room full of monkey suits and raised noses. Even Uncle George could understand that, right?
Wrong, Becky snorted to herself, remembering that night and Uncle George’s tirade clearly enough. He made it clear that unless she married soon, she would not have a place in his house after his mother finally kicked the bucket.
Becky could barely believe he’d say something like that, to be so crass and unfeeling about his mother’s impending demise. She’d been crying for hours as Gran’s health condition worsened with every passing day. But Uncle George didn’t seem bothered at all, or patient of Becky’s distraught heart. He had a ball to attend. He had hands to shake and babies to kiss. And husbands to find for his crazy, redheaded niece, so that someone else received the pleasure of dealing with and controlling her. Gran’s declining strength would just have to wait until he found some free time on his schedule.
It was all Becky could do to keep a semblance of a smile on her face that night while her thoughts constantly drifted to her grandmother. Uncle George had practically forced her to join him and Candie at the Governor’s mansion, but around midnight, just after the tango fiasco and the Senator’s upbraiding, she managed to sneak out the back door and hail a cab back home. Uncle George had been furious. Gran, on the other hand, had been delighted in Becky’s covert tactics, but then Gran said she could never suffer through those “stuffy pot-lucks” for very long either.
Now, almost five weeks later, Becky’s ancient Chevrolet truck rumbled freely down a tree-shrouded highway, far away from her Rhode Island home, her Republican responsibilities and what was left of her family after Gran succumbed to the glory light of Heaven. But that freedom came with a price. You see, there was a reason Becky O’Shea tossed some luggage in the back of Old Blue, hitched up Gran’s silver camping trailer, and traveled fifteen hundred miles into a part of the country that seemed like a whole other planet -- other than avoiding her next beau handpicked by Uncle George himself. She was taking Gran home.
Well...sort of. Gran had made Becky promise -- “Take me home, Twinkie.” -- to bring her back to her hometown of Protection after she died, but at the time it didn’t make any sense to Becky, since Becky had never heard of this place called Protection. All she understood was that she had to try.
Unfortunately for Becky, there were these really stupid laws about transporting a casket and a body -- especially if the body was deceased and inside the casket -- across state lines...eight state lines, to be exact. And, there was that ridiculous regulation about the fact that body and casket had both already been buried a week before. Because there were laws about digging up graves, too, without permission or the correct documentation. Such finicky people, those cemetery managers, just would not see reason.
But Becky O’Shea never failed to keep a promise, specifically a deathbed promise, though this was her first one. So, she improvised. Gran got to travel in her granddaughter’s heart back to the place where Gran’s story had begun, and that would just have to do...for now.
“We’re almost there,” she said to Gran out loud, glad that this journey was almost over. It was quite a feat for Old Blue, traveling such a distance with a camping trailer in tow, not once breaking down, but Becky could hear the cough and groan of his engine, and knew the dear-heart was just about done for. And that was okay. After three days on the road, the novelty of Becky’s big adventure had just about worn off for her, too.
“Only a little further,” she coaxed her truck with a positive pat on his faded dashboard. “Come on, boy...you can do it.”
We can do it, she revised in her mind, but outside of a postage-stamp-sized town, amidst the dappled shadows of pines and oaks, Old Blue sputtered and rolled to a stop, despite her encouragement and faith.
“Oh, dear...well, you tried,” she muttered and turned the key in a pointless, halfhearted attempt to limp into town. Becky couldn’t possibly fathom what problem infected Old Blue’s ability to drive just a little further -- other than him just being older than dirt -- but it wasn’t lack of gasoline which caused him to rest his weary bones, regardless of his unmatched guzzling powers. She’d filled the tank two towns back. And since she didn’t have any kind of working knowledge about vehicles beyond the facts that the key turned on the engine there and the gas pump went into that hole in the back, Becky remained positive that he couldn’t be all that sick, because the two of them had made it this far. They were partners on the biggest adventure of her life -- and in Becky O’Shea’s case, that was a considerable declaration of opinion.
So, where exactly am I?
Staring out Blue’s dusty windshield at the deserted stretch of highway, she noticed the domed rectangular shape of a sign in the distance, as familiar to her as the knot of her left kneecap. She was almost positive she’d seen that sign in one of Gran’s old photo’s, but since she couldn’t get to that photo at the moment, she had to rely on her memory.
Could it be? Protection, at last? She pulled her wrinkled road map across the creased vinyl bench seat and studied it. But try as she might, she just couldn’t be sure if that was her destination up there or not. Which was unlike her. Becky O’Shea rarely forgot anything she’d ever seen -- a curse, really, it was, but until she got up there to the road sign, it might as well have been wishful thinking, another one of her curses.
Becky checked her dead cell phone and realized she would either have to hoof it or flag down a car and hope a decent enough person could give her a ride to the nearest mechanic’s shop. Her semi-spontaneous road trip across the country did not include being tortured, chopped up into little pieces and left in a shallow grave somewhere in the middle of the miles of forest around her.
Thank you, prime-time television for ruining my trust in strangers. Gran would be so ashamed...
Becky exited the truck with her knock-off Gucci purse and started walking. The two-lane highway dropped off into a watery, overgrown ditch -- I bet there’s snakes down there -- so she kept to the pavement, even when another vehicle flew past her and honked angrily.
“Thank you!” she yelled back and waved. “No need to stop and help a stranded woman or anything.” As she walked, she recounted her jaunt across the country with some weariness and prayed that there was a repair shop close by that could handle Blue’s needs. Not that it would have done her much good. She was down to her last hundred dollars and couldn't pay the repair bill anyway. She'd just have to settle in a place for a few days and earn some spare cash. Maybe, if she got lucky, that place would be Gran’s Protection -- Oh, the irony, Gran! -- and she could accomplish what she came here to do at the same time.
“And then what will I do?” she wondered aloud, not for the first time since Gran’s funeral a week ago. Frankly, Becky didn’t have an answer for that. She managed to finish college a few years back, and she had tried out a couple of jobs here and there, but overall, her life to this point consisted of keeping company with Gran on her grandmother's numerous escapades.
No, Becky’s lifestyle wasn’t without excitement. Gran always said that Becky needed to keep her eyes on her feet... “You’ll always be surprised when you look up and find yourself in a new place,” Gran had said. It was her way of telling Becky to not worry about where she went or how she got there, but to find enjoyment in the fact that she was there, wherever there might be. And Gran had been an expert on enjoying the There in life.
But today’s There happened to be the middle of the road, in the middle of nowhere. Not very exciting. Today, Becky was poor and homeless -- Uncle George ceremoniously kicked her out of the O’Shea mansion barely four hours after his mother, the incorrigible Josie Brooks O’Shea, was laid to rest. Changed the security codes and everything.
Along with destitute, Becky was also alone. She had only one close blood relative left in this world -- Uncle George didn’t count -- and that was Ginger, her sister, who she loved dearly. But Ginger and Becky had been opposites of the same pole for as long as they had been kin, and needless to say, Ginger and Becky could only tolerate each other on an hourly basis before tempers and childish behaviors began spurting forth. Ginger liked to rub it in Becky’s face that she had the perfect life with the perfect marriage to the perfect man and woke up to the giggles of two perfect daughters. Becky liked to think that Ginger was right, but she would never say so directly.
Not that Becky had never considered marriage and a house in the Hamptons, and all that. She’d almost been There once before, too. But too late, she found that she hadn’t been watching her own feet, but those of her ex-fiance, Dent. When that discovery was known to her, she came to her senses and dumped the conniving sack of pig slop. After that, Uncle George decided to take an active position in getting his niece married to someone respectable...since his clandestine position on getting her married to Dent didn’t work. But Becky didn’t want to become like her Aunt Candie, a politician’s wife, all perfect and polished and respectful. Hell, perfect and polished had stopped becoming a part of her vocabulary about ten years ago. People in the public eye had too many virtues and appearances to uphold, and heaven help the man Becky O’Shea eventually fell in love with, because if he had any part of a civil or social career...the guy was screwed.
Now, Becky wasn’t a bad person. True, she had a tendency to talk too much and act impulsively, and that sent a lot of gossip toward the Senator O’Shea campaign camp, but she didn’t do drugs, she didn’t sleep around – recently, sex had been just a fond memory for her – and she’d never been arrested. Okay, technically, she’d never been charged with anything. She did break into her home after all the locks had been changed to get the rest of the stuff Gran left for her. And Uncle George had her arrested, so technically, it was his fault the story made the newspaper. But then he apologized and told her she was welcome to come back home...which really, really confused her. Her uncle was anything but apologetic and welcoming...or reconsidering.
First he tried to dump her onto another man. When that didn’t work, he waited until he gained full command of the O’Shea estate after Gran's death and then told her to leave, and then, after calling the cops on her, he asked her to stick around. Naturally, Becky assumed the worse about her uncle’s motives and skipped out of town as silently and quickly as she could. She didn’t even stop to say good-bye to her sister. Poor Ginger. Forced to face Uncle George all on her own. Thank goodness Ginger lived in Boston now and had a steady husband to back her up. But then again, Ginger hadn’t been welcomed into the O’Shea mansion by Uncle George since she married “below” herself. Uncle George had the place all to himself now, just the way he had always wanted.
“Maybe the termites will eat him,” Becky said to herself with a grin, but Gran’s voice echoed in her mind, “Now, Twinkie, that’s not nice...funny, but not nice.”
Becky sighed as she walked on. “You’re right, Gran. It isn’t nice. The termites don’t eat bitter, black hearts.” Becky giggled at herself all the way to the road sign up ahead.
At the age of twenty-nine, Becky wasn’t an angry person by nature, but the recent events in her life left a stale taste in her mouth, with some confusion as to what she wished to do with the rest of that life. Coming from a long line of female beauties, eager men were never really an issue, despite her single status and Uncle George’s matchmaking attempts, but Becky had been so wrapped up in caring for her ailing grandmother these past few years that boyfriends lasted as long as a flip of the calendar. Her long, dark-red hair and twinkling green eyes drew from her grandfather’s Irish ancestry, or so she'd been told, yet her good nature and optimism stemmed from Gran’s impetuous influences and an innate gift of looking down at her feet or for those silver linings in a world of cloudy skies.
Today was another silver lining day.
Abreast of the faded, hand-painted road sign, Becky’s giggles mellowed to a relieved sigh. The words on the sign, ''Welcome to Protection. There’s a home for you here,” gave Becky a sense of rightness. A home. Gran’s home, sure, but hers?
Becky daydreamed of living in a house that was a home since she could remember. The O’Shea mansion she grew up in had been a wonderful place, but it had been a mansion. Gran allowed her and Ginger to play in any room she pleased, and Uncle George easily became annoyed by this. There were too many heirlooms that could have been broken by the curious hands of small girls, and since Gran lived mainly in the back of the house anyway, Becky preferred to spend her days there as well. And somewhere in this town of Protection, there was a house where Josie Brooks had grown up in. And Becky needed to see it, to send Gran’s memory off, before she moved on to find the rest of her life.
But the town itself...so not what she expected. This place has a Stephen King novel written all over it, she thought ten minutes later as the buildings of Main Street loom before her, dreary in that not-quite-real way. Even the name, Protection, sounded like something writers would use. Shivers of delight hit her spine as she gazed around. It was definitely in a plane of existence all on its own.
Sometime after the 1960’s the business district seemed to have stalled. She noticed the crumbles in the brick exteriors of the storefronts with their large windows, metal awnings and concrete cornices. The sidewalk had been patched and cracked many times over, and the signs swinging from the fronts of the stores creaked on old chains. But Becky paused a moment and allowed her eyes to see past all that. She took in the colorful array of flowers in a window box and the cottonwood trees growing in little groves in the city park, and she heard the sounds of soulful country music coming out of the open doors of a quaint diner. To Becky, it seemed as though time had stopped caring, but the people here hadn’t.
The town of Protection was just as Gran described it to Becky. Even the people seemed to have emerged from a different land, where the concept of “Money Talks and Technology Walks” was an unusual and bizarre concept to understand. She discovered that very fact after meeting the town’s gap-toothed mechanic, Bubba.
It was two hours past abandoning Old Blue on the side of the highway when Becky’s jaw dropped as she listened to Bubba explain the reason her dear old truck might need two-thousand dollars worth of repairs. The money issue baffled her, but she couldn't help thinking that this place, this town, this person, was a long ways apart from her previous life of state dinners, evening gowns, expensive wines and tuxedo-clad fortune hunters. Not that Becky ever considered herself to be a snob. Quite the opposite, actually. She was Josie Brooks’ granddaughter. Snob wasn’t part of her acquired genes. But she knew from the moment Bubba spoke to her, she and him had not fallen from the same apple tree.
James Jefferson Kingston, 3rd, aka “Bubba” to the people of Protection, fascinated Becky from the moment he slowed his tow truck to a crawl as she crossed a street and asked her if that was her Chevrolet parked out beside Turner’s Pike. Since she didn’t know who this Turner person was, or what a Pike was to folks around here, she automatically assumed he was talking about Old Blue.
Now, Bubba was the kind of man Gran used to talk about when she described the people from her hometown. He was a big man, not fat, just big. Six feet, seven inches tall. By God, he was a giant! Broad across the shoulders, broad arms, broad chest, and legs, and back, and his feet...the poor soul, they were huge! But he was a kind man, right from the start, with an open expression and a pleasant voice. Clear green eyes looked out from under two brown bushes normal people would have as eyebrows, and his hair was the same thick, brown shrubbery, unused to a regular pruning. The very first thing Becky noticed -- and liked instantly -- was Bubba’s smile. Sure, his bottom teeth were a bit crooked, and his top had that gap in it, but they were white and pearly and healthy, his grin shining about as honestly as any smile ever could. It gave Becky a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, earnestly melting away the odd chills her spine had recently acquired.
In the time it took for him to drive her back to Old Blue, tow her dear-heart through town and to his shop, he’d already related most of his life story -- which really wasn’t anything special or overly extensive -- to the red-haired woman he thought was “purtier than a rose bloom in winter”. He’d been bred, born and raised in Protection, as had his older brother and baby sister, and he’d only left the small town once for a couple of years to “learn me some college stuff and see a bit more of the world,” but as soon as he got his mechanic’s licensing, he came right back. No one in town -- or in three towns surrounding Protection -- could fix a broken car like Bubba. His dad had been a mechanic and his granddad, so Bubba felt he didn’t need to do or be anything else. Which was perfectly fine with Becky, since Bubba was all Old Blue had in terms of a car surgeon.
“Well, for starters,” Bubba said after taking a glance under Old Blue’s hood and munching from a bag of Cheetos outside his grimy, cement-block shop behind the gas station, “Yer tires are balder than my great Aunt Tess. Yer not gonna get more’n fifty miles outta them as they is. Yer alt'nator is going bad, too, so all ya doin' with that is just drainin' the juice out of the battery, but yer real problem is the carburetor.” Bubba wiped cheese dust off his fingers and pointed at the lumpy, metal component under Blue’s hood. “I got some tires and I think I got an alt'nator, but I’ll have to order the carburetor from a junk yard and it won’t be easy to find one since cars nowadays don’t use them. They’ve got those fancy fuel injectors nowadays. I’ll have to call around to some buddies and see what we’ve got.”
Becky frowned at the news as she scanned the littered lot of Bubba’s shop. There were lots of vehicles parked around the weed-infested yard next to his garage, along with a good-sized chicken coop and a few cats prowling about. That was another thing she thought was great about this country boy mechanic. He sure loved his cats. Constantly, they sauntered past him on dainty feet and curled their tails around his pants legs as they purred and then went about their business. Any man who owned such adoration for the timid creatures had to be decent to the core.
“What about that truck?” Becky asked, pointing to a similar style vehicle on which a black and white tomcat sunned himself. “Can’t you get one of those carbur-thingy’s from that one?”
“Naw,” Bubba said and stuck another Cheetos in his mouth. “That’s a Dodge. Ya got yerself a 1965 Chevy C10 here. Parts won’t fit.”
Becky gave him her most winning smile, and the poor man looked as though he’d choke on his snack. “Bubba,” she said sweetly, imitating the same southern drawl in his voice, “you aren’t trying to bamboozle me, are you?”
“Naw, miss, I swear I ain’t,” he stammered. “I ain’t seen me a truck like yers in a long time. It’s gonna take some diggin’ to find a carburetor to fit...unless ya want me to convert the whole fuel system, but that’ll cost more’n this ol’ thing is worth.”
Becky sighed. She was stuck. “Alright then...see what you can do, and I’ll have to tell you now that I don’t have the money to pay you, but I can get it if I need to.”
Bubba waved off the last thing she said. “Don’t ya worry ‘bout the money too much. We’ll work somethin’ out. If ya can stick around fer a few days, I’ll make some calls and get ya set up as best as I can.”
“Looks like I don’t have much of a choice,” Becky replied with a smile despite her turn of bad luck here. “Is there a place I can stay that won’t cost too much?”
Bubba crumbled up his empty Cheetos bag and tossed it in a nearby trash can. “I’ll tell ya what...my brother Lenny’s got a camp site over by the river. How ‘bout I give him a ring and then take ya and yer camper over? He’s got water and ‘lectric hook-ups on his camper pads, and I’ll make sure he don’t charge ya fer the stay. What’da say?”
“You would do that for me?”
“Sure, why not? Ya ain’t a serial killer or nuthin’ like that, are ya?”
Becky giggled. “No...Any serial killers around here I should worry about?”
Bubba chuckled, a simple, rich sound that matched the rest of him. “Nah, Miz Becky, we’re nice enough folk ‘round here, unless ya’ve got a secret up yer sleeve, then those damn gossips will come at ya with claws bared ‘til ya ain’t got a mystery left in ya.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Becky said. “I can’t keep a secret either.”
Bubba unhooked her camper from Old Blue, literally dragged the thing over to his tow truck and attached it to the back end. Becky blinked in amazement at his strength, and all she could say was, “Thank you, Bubba. This is really nice of you.” He shuffled his feet and blushed a rosy pink.
“Ain’t nothin’ to it, miz. Lenny owes me some favors, ‘specially after that damn blasted mutt of his got into my chicken coop this spring and killed five of my prized hens.” Bubba continued to grumble about his lost chickens as he led her into his tiny office and made the arrangements with his brother. There was some arguing, but Bubba didn’t give an inch, and within the hour, her trailer was delivered and set up in a completely-deserted, yet nicely-shaded and well-kept, campground next to a thin river with red clay covering the banks.
“Thanks again, Bubba,” Becky told him as he eased his tall girth into his tow truck to go back to his garage. Lenny, the older brother, stood stiffly nearby, looking very much like Bubba, but without the bushy hair and the grease-stained skin, though Lenny made it clear from the beginning that he thought himself to be considerably better than Bubba and nothing at all similar to him. Lenny’s speech was vacant and unaccented, a little condescending, and he told Becky immediately that he didn’t just own a campsite, he was the high school principal and wouldn’t take kindly to late-night parties and disturbances on his land.
Becky turned on her brightest smile, and Lenny mellowed quick enough to make Bubba laugh outright.
“Yer very welcome, Miz Becky,” Bubba said, still smiling his gap-toothed smile as she followed him to his tow truck. “And might I say, ya smell like my MawMaw’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. What’s that perfume yer wearing?”
Becky laughed and said, “It’s a lotion, actually, and a secret of my own grandma’s. Gran says when a woman smells like home-baked cookies, the men will come running.”
“Well, ain't a lot of single men in these parts,” he grunted, “but those that are, ya know, ain’t married for a good reason. Ya be careful, yer hear? Chief Harris has this pet peeve ‘bout people stirrin’ up trouble in his town, and yer just about as purty as a sunset in October, if ya don’t mind me sayin’.”
“Are you trying to say I’m trouble?” she asked, leaning into the open window of his tow truck.
Bubba grinned back and said, “Ain’t all women?”
In the few hours that Becky had known Bubba, he’d teased her relentlessly like a little sister, but affectionately steering her clear of the jumbled mess around his shop and standing guard as Lenny’s black and white puppy/mutt barked loudly and nipped at her ankles until he hollered for his brother to lock up the menace. It was enough to make her feel good about her decision to drive all this way from Rhode Island on a whim.
“You’ve got a point,” Becky agreed with another laugh. “But don’t worry about me. Careful may not be my middle name, but I’ve never been called stupid, either.”
He shook his head, muttering, “It ain’t ya I’m worried ‘bout,” and started up his truck. Becky just gave him a pat on his broad hand and said, “Hey, Bubba, do you know where the old Brooks’ place is located?”
He frowned and asked, “Brooks, you say? Nah, I've lived here my whole life. No one ‘round here with that name. Ya be careful, ya hear?” And he drove off. Lenny finally let his sneer paste across his face as he watched his brother’s tow truck round the bend back to the highway. He spat on the ground and headed back to his double-wide at the entrance of the campground, leaving Becky to her own devices.
So far, she had only met two of the Protection’s citizens, and something was going on between the two brothers, but Becky figured it wasn’t any of her business. Already, her curiosity was getting the better of her and that was what usually got her into trouble. Gran’s voice in her head said, “Knowing too much was why the Beatles broke up,” though Becky shook her head at Gran’s words of wisdom, as misconstrued as they sometimes were. But her grandmother’s voice never ceased to flow through her mind like warm honey when Becky needed some guidance. Grinning at Lenny’s retreating back and the dust cloud made by Bubba’s tow truck, she wondered what else Protection had to offer, and she went into her trailer to set up a semi-permanent home front.
*****
Chief Nick Harris dropped heavily into his desk chair and ran a grumpy hand through his black hair. It was getting close to time for a haircut, but that would have to wait. The morning’s affairs left him exasperated and longing for a few hours of the normal quiet that his hometown provided. But today, Mr. and Mrs. Burgis had been at each others throats again, and Willy was dead set on leaving her husband of thirty-six years…yet again. Nick growled to himself. He remembered growing up, hearing about the Burgis’ public arguments from his dad or one of the other citizens of Protection. If he’d known then that this was the kind of headache Willy and Carl sent his way on a weekly basis, he would have chosen to be a mortician as “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up”, instead of a policeman. At least that way, he’d only have to deal with the Burgises once…after they finally offed each other.
Unfortunately, Carl Burgis, stubborn as a mule but sweeter than a pound of sugar, actually dared Willy to go ahead and leave him, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, because Willy came back with accusations of extra-marital hanky-panky on Carl’s end, saying that was why he wanted her gone, so he could have his floozies over every night, and Carl got rather wounded and angry that his wife would actually think that of him, and the impeding argument ended up in their front yard where the whole damn town could hear.
Playing peace-maker and cupid for the tiresome old couple caused Nick to miss his lunch, and his stomach told him so. But thankfully, this week’s argument had been settled, and when he left their farmhouse, Carl was chasing Willy up the stairs with a wicked grin on his wrinkled, weathered face.
“So glad I’m not married,” Nick muttered with a shudder.
As he opened a file on some recent break-ins and property damage around the town, his nose caught a faint whiff of...Is that honey? And vanilla and sugary butter with some light hints of coconut. His stomach growled savagely and his mouth echoed it, watering to form a pool of drool just under his tongue. Try as he might, he couldn’t ignore the temptation. Someone around here brought in some treats, and he was starving, dammit.
Rising from his desk, Nick went in search of the sweet snack with the alluring scent and some hot coffee to go with it, but the break room was devoid of any cookies or brownies or pies or cakes, or sweets of any kind. And that was just plain rude. Thinking that his dispatcher, Lucy, at the front desk hogged all the sweets again, Nick sauntered into the main room of the small police station.
Marshal Craven, one of Nick’s patrolmen and his only real detective, leaned back at his desk with his booted feet propped up on the seat of another chair and twirled a keyring on his finger while his other hand cradled a cup of joe. Marshal nodded a greeting at Nick and looked back toward the front of the room where Lucy stood, bracing her elbows on the high counter that separated the waiting area from the rest of the station. No cookies were to be seen anywhere, but Marshal’s normally dark eyes were alight with mischief, and that was never a good sign.
“I smell cookies,” Nick said to his detective, as he leaned over to check Lucy’s trash can. Maybe she already ate them.
“Yup,” Marshal said, “but it ain’t cookies. At least, not the kind you’re meaning.”
“Then what the hell is it?”
Marshal winked with a grin and nudged his bald head toward Lucy. “Give it a minute. You’ll see. She dropped her purse or something.”
His detective liked to talk in riddles, as though the world needed a lesson in figuring out things for itself, but Nick wasn’t in the mood for his antics today. He was hungry and stressed, and needed a reprieve from both. “What the hell are you talking about? I just want to know where the damn snacks--”
Just then, a halo of dark-red hair surfaced from behind the counter, apologizing to Lucy for her clumsiness, and Nick’s heart skipped a beat. His jaw stopped flapping, and his teeth clicked audibly as he shut his mouth. The woman chatting to Lucy with an impish smile on her outrageously beautiful, heart-shaped face seemed to appear out of a dream. Small in frame, but rounded out nicely with squeeze-me curves, her sudden manifestation made Nick’s palms itch and the drool drip in his mouth all over again. And he could only see her from the chest up. Imagine what the rest of her looked like. But as quickly as Nick warmed up to her presence in his station, he cooled off just as abruptly. Women like that don’t come to Protection. Women like that are only seen on the movie screen or in magazines. And women like that spelled trouble with a capital T.
“That’s one purty cookie,” Marshal commented jovially as he sipped his coffee. “I ain’t seen a woman like that since I left Las Vegas...showgirls, you know, have to be nice to look at.”
Nick stopped listening to Marshal after the first sentence. “That’s the cookie?” Nick stared at her. His hunger took on a whole new definition.
“Sure is. That’s her perfume or something you’re smelling. I heard Lucy ask about it and she said something about her grandma.”
“Who is she?”
“Don’t know. Came in asking for directions or something,” Marshal explained. “Lordy, if I weren’t set on paying for my sins as it were, I’d swear the devil sent that little lady to tempt me straight to hell.”
Nick snorted. Marshal had this convoluted idea that God intended him to be celibate for the rest of his life in payment for the lives he took while working as a cop in Las Vegas. It always struck Nick as foolish, but he wisely kept his mouth shut on that subject. Marshal wasn’t one of the townsfolk who grew up here, left, and came back, like Nick. He just showed up one day a year ago, asking about a position Nick posted in a few papers, and didn’t seem to mind that he was taking a considerable pay cut from working the beat in Vegas or the fact that he’d work under Nick, who was fifteen years younger. Marshal just said he wanted some peace and quiet for the rest of his days, and he’d been warming that desk chair ever since. The man might seem casual and lazy on the outside, but Nick witnessed Marshal’s intelligence and shrewd mind several times in the last year. Nick, himself, had never been bested in a game of checkers until Marshal Craven showed up.
Therefore, when Marshal made a comment on a woman who could just possibly cause a lot of trouble for a man, Nick’s attention perked. He inspected the cookie still yakking to Lucy like he would any stranger coming into Protection. If she had something to hide, surely she wouldn’t walk right into the police station, right? And if she was one of those petty females -- like Jackie Parsons -- who knew they were nice to look at and enjoyed making sport out of men, then she deserved every evil thing the gossip-mongers in this town said about her.
Most likely, she was lost and looking for the interstate. Such a shame. Protection hadn’t had a foxy stranger like her come through in a while. Nick was tempted to personally escort her on her merry way, just so he could look at her for a few more minutes. God gave men beautiful women like that red-haired goddess for a reason, pure eye-candy because ladies like her didn’t go for country boys like Nick.
However, Nick' Pop raised no fool. Quitters were those who never tried. And he hadn't gone out “trying” in quite a while.
Nick grinned as he shifted his gun belt more comfortably around his hip and set off toward the front counter. “Where are you going?” Marshal asked.
Nick turned and winked. “Straight to hell.”