The circumstances around Mrs. Willoby’s death weren’t sitting right with him; and the fact that Lauren made enemies at a rate equal to that of making allies made him more concerned for her safety than she had the good sense to be.
“She’s cute enough to cuddle until she unsheathes her claws,” he observed. The cloak of darkness allowed him to safely appreciate her red dress was like a flame burning around her.
Against his better judgment he pulled up alongside her and rolled down the window.
“Bad things roam the night, Ms. Green,” he called out.
“And I’m fully confident they’re out here because they know you will never catch them.” She smirked.
He laughed.
God love her, the woman had a mouth built for verbal combat.
“Like I said, bad things roam here at night, but given you’re one of them, little hellion, I won’t worry about you. Now, pull that dress out your ass, get in the house, and lock the door behind you.”
He didn’t know what he said, but her face contorted as if she was transforming into the devil incarnate; she looked like she wanted to jump through the window and drag his ass to hell.
It filled him with the most peculiar pleasure.
It was beneath him how much he liked to rile this woman, yet he found himself willing to descend to the depths of the deepest ocean to get a rise out of her.
Standing straight, Ms. Green reached back and released the material that had sunken into the seam of her ass.
He realized that again, she didn’t have on a stitch of underwear.
He thought back to her sitting across from Anderson and Sullivan, recalled the way the wrap dress rose up to the juncture of her thighs. Knowing that with a wayward breeze she would’ve exposed her assets to the two men and it was his turn to control his anger.
Woman needed a goddamn keeper.
“Thank you for your chivalry, Sheriff. You have a good night because in your line of work, you just never know if it’ll be your last.”
“Keep on with the veiled threats, Ms. Green, and I’ll run your ass out of town quicker than whoever ran you out of California.”
She looked around for something to throw at him, and he peeled off down the street. Looking through the rearview mirror, he saw her in the middle of the street shouting all kinds of unseemly things.
He never should’ve driven by here. But he was glad that he did.
CHAPTER 9
She didn’t meanto slam the front door, what she wanted to do was slam Santiago Stillwater’s head against the asphalt.
Lina, Audrey, Roan, Saige, and an Asian woman and a Black woman she’d never met came running out of the formal sitting room and Lauren groaned. Closing her eyes, she let her head and shoulders drop. With all the things she’d accomplished today, she’d forgotten about the women’s group, and she was tired.
“Is everything okay?” Audrey asked, the first to reach her.
“Are you hurt, injured?” Lina said, gripping Lauren’s hand. “You were gone so long I thought something happened to you.”
“Sorry I scared you. I’m fine. I just let the sheriff provoke me again.”
Lauren hadn’t confronted Derrick or her father about how they treated her, but Santiago Stillwater would find out what a woman who was tired of being treated like shit was willing to do.
“You two seem to do that a lot,” Audrey said. “Provoke each other.”
“Back in our unit, there was only one time I saw Stillwater lose his shit the way he does around you. He was called League because his emotions always seemed to reside twenty thousandleagues under the sea,” Roan said. She must have come here directly after work because she was still in her deputy uniform.
Were Roan and the sheriff lovers?
“My brother, Santi’s grandfather, often saidbeware of still waters, for beneath their surface many bodies have been laid to rest.”
