Page 46 of Protect and Serve

“The ones in the foyer? Surely you saw them there.” The bouquet was enormous.

He lifted up on an elbow and frowned down at her. “I didn’t send you roses.”

She blinked. “But… They came right after our date.”

“I didn’t send them.”

She swallowed. Hard. “And the letter?”

His eyes narrowed. “What letter?”

Oh crap. “I thought it came from you.” She untangled from him and levered out of bed to grab the paper, which she’d dropped on her dresser. “Here.” She thrust it at him.

He read it and his brow wrinkled. “Claire, I didn’t write this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty damn sure.” He pinned her with an intense frown. “Who sent this?”

“How should I know? I thought it was you.”

“Well, it wasn’t.” While she was delighted by his disgruntlement that she might have another admirer, she could tell from his expression that he might be inclined to belabor the mystery, so she decided to distract him.

Not that she wasn’t curious, now that she knew the flowers hadn’t come from him, but she wasn’t in the mood to think about it right now. Not while she had him here in her bed. At her mercy.

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” she murmured, kissing him on the cheek, then the neck, then his shoulder, his belly. When he realized where she was heading, he caught his breath and stared at her with red-rimmed eyes, as though he couldn’t bear to miss a second of this.

Which was all good and well.

And she was able to make him beg… even without tying him up.

Charlie was dead asleep when his pager went off—Claire had utterly drained him. Though he was off duty for the weekend, he still carried it at all hours in case dispatch needed to reach him. Snake Gully was a small town and usually quiet, but occasionally there was a need for additional backup. They found the pagers worked better than cell phones.

Claire grumbled at the strident intrusion, but rolled over when he turned on the light. Hopefully she could sleep through whatever this was. He didn’t like the idea of being called away from her in the middle of the night, but this was his job. If there was to be any future between them, she’d have to get used to it.

Since this was the first time he’d used the archaic device—and his brain was fuzzy—it took a minute for him to figure it out. He finally noticed the number on the display, grabbed his cell phone and called it.

He expected to hear Gladys’ raspy smoker’s voice on the other end. He was rather surprised that it was not.

“What the hell is going on there?” He’d never heard Cody bellow like that, with such a thread of fury and panic in his voice.

“Um…what?”

“You heard me. What the hell is going on? You were supposed to call me on the hour. It’s past midnight and I haven’t even had one call!”

Charlie leaned against Claire’s headboard and grinned. “Oh? I thought you were kidding about that.”

“I had to call the goddamn police station to get your pager number.”

“Did you?”

“They didn’t want to give it over.”

“Didn’t they?”

‘I had to tell them it was a family emergency.”

“Tut-tut. Lying to the authorities?”