‘Hey, stop that.’His tender touch on her shoulder was unexpected but also soothing.‘You are a valuable member of the Stock Squad.They’d be lost without you.’
‘With paperwork, sure.’
‘And managing them as a team.Without you, they’d be a bunch of misfits scrambling to get anything done.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Organisation and procedures are there for a reason—they stop the chaos, especially in our line of work.’
‘I can’t believe you just said that.Who are you?’She waved at his crumpled uniform, in dire need of an iron.
He gave that cheeky smile over his shoulder as he headed inside the shed.She had to follow as he strolled around the inner perimeter.‘I got a hard lesson when I almost lost my job once.’
‘How?’
‘By not doing my job.’
‘I can’t even tell if you ever do your job.’When she’d assumed he was just a slacker.
He frowned at her.
‘Hey, you said housemates with no BS.You’re a patrol officer—’
‘With an exceptionally large area to cover, Montrose.’
‘That night you told me you had a stable, you could’ve booked those drunk stockmen mucking up in the pub’s car park for drunk and disorderly.But you let it slide as if to skip the paperwork.’
‘They weren’t hurting anyone, just themselves.’
‘They were a public nuisance.You should’ve been doing your job.’
‘My job is to make sure those people are okay.’
‘They were a danger to themselves falling off that ute, and to everyone around them.’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’
‘Well, why don’t you write me a list?’
Instead, he turned and towered over her.‘The reason those yahoos were drinking hard at the pub that night was they hadn’t had a drink in months, working their arses off, and had only come into town to celebrate.’
‘And to play car park games.’
‘TheHold-My-Beergame.’He grinned for just a second before the seriousness took over, and it was a good look on the casual cop.‘That crew were celebrating the fact that Blu’s baby sister had just beat cancer.She was coming back home, and Wingnut and Showbag had been helping Blu pay towards the extra medical costs like mates do.Heck, we all put cash into the hat to help pay for Blu’s folks to stay down south and be there for his sister while she was getting treatment in the hospital.That’s why I let them slide, Montrose.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘How could you not?When you were living in the pub, that’s the hub of everything in this town.And those three stockmen were telling everyone, who’d then shout cheers with every round.’
She shrugged, almost ashamed of her need to distance herself.‘Cops can’t be friends with the people they may have to arrest.’
‘That’s a load of bulldust, and you know it.’He turned away from her and began walking around the shed.
She went the other way, with that need for distance.Yet it niggled at her.
Only to turn around and follow him.Again.
‘What did you do with your job, the hard lesson you had?’When he was handing out the harsh lessons her way today.
