blonde hair, heavily muscled shoulders. Maybe another cop, given the venue, but I didn’t recognize him.
He held out his hand. Belatedly, I offered my own.
“Brian,” he said. “Brian Darby.” He jerked his head toward the house. “I live down the street. You?”
“Umm. Tessa. Tessa Leoni. I know Shane from the barracks.”
I waited for the inevitable comments men made when meeting a female officer.
And those were the nice guys.
Brian, however, just nodded. He was holding a Bud Light in one hand. He tucked his other hand in the pocket of his tan shorts. He wore a blue collared shirt with a gold emblem on the pocket, but I couldn’t make it out from this angle.
“Got a confession,” he said.
I braced myself.
“Shane told me who you were. Though, to give me some credit, I asked first. Pretty woman, standing alone. Seemed smart to do a little recon.”
“What did Shane say?”
“He assured me that you’re totally out of my league. Naturally, I took the bait.”
“Shane’s full of shit,” I offered.
“Most of the time. You’re not drinking your beer.”
I looked down, as if noticing the bottle for the first time.
“Part of my recon,” Brian continued easily. “You’re holding a beer, but not drinking it. Would you prefer a margarita? I could get you one. Though,” he eyed the gaggle of wives, who were well into the third pitcher and laughing accordingly, “I’m a little afraid.”
“It’s okay.” I loosened my stance, shook out my arms. “I don’t really drink.”
“On call?”
“Not today.”
“I’m not a cop, so I won’t pretend to know the life, but I’ve been hanging out with Shane a good five years now, so I like to think I understand the basics. Being a trooper is way more than patrolling highways and writing tickets. Ain’t that right, Shane?” Brian boomed his voice, letting the common lament of any state trooper carry over the patio. At the grill, Shane responded by raising his right hand and flipping off his neighbor.
“Shane’s a whiner,” I said, letting my voice carry, as well.
Shane flipped me off, too. Several of the guys laughed.
“How long have you been working with him?” Brian asked me.
“A year. I’m a rookie.”
“Really? What made you want to be a cop?”
I shrugged, uncomfortable again. One of those questions everyone asked and I never knew how to answer. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I’m a merchant marine,” Brian offered up. “I work on oil tankers. We ship out a couple of months, then are home a couple of months, then out a couple of months. Screws with the personal life, but I like the work. Never boring.”
“A merchant marine? What do you do… protect against pirates, things like that?”
“Nah. We run from Puget Sound up to Alaska and back. Not too many Somali pirates patrolling that corridor. Plus, I’m an engineer. My job’s to keep the ship running. I like wires and gears and rotors. Guns, on the other hand, scare the crap out of me.”
“I don’t care for them much myself.”
“Funny comment, coming from a police officer.”
“Not really.”
My gaze had returned automatically to Sophie, checking in. Brian followed my line of sight. “Shane said you had a three-year-old. Holey moley, she looks just like you. No taking the wrong kid home from this party.”
“Shane said I had a kid, and you still took the bait?”
He shrugged. “Kids are cool. I don’t have any, but that doesn’t mean I’m morally opposed. Father in the picture?” he added casually.
“No.”
He didn’t look smug at that news, more like contemplative. “That’s gotta be tough. Being a full-time cop and raising a child.”
“We get by.”
“Not doubting you. My father died when I was young. Left my mother to raise five kids on her own. We got by, too, and I respect the hell out of her for it.”
“What happened to your father?”
“Heart attack. What happened to her father?” He nodded toward Sophie, who now appeared to be playing tag.
“Better offer.”
“Men are stupid,” he muttered, sounding so sincere that I finally laughed. He flushed. “Did I mention I have four sisters? These are the things that happen when you have four sisters. Plus, I have to respect my mom twice as much because not only did she survive being a single mother, but she survived being a single mother with four girls. And I never saw her drink anything stronger than herbal tea. How about them apples?”
“She sounds like a rock,” I agreed.
“Since you don’t drink, maybe you’re also an herbal tea kind of gal?”
“Coffee.”
“Ah, my personal drug of choice.” He looked me in the eye. “So, Tessa, maybe some afternoon, I could buy you a cup. Your neighborhood or my neighborhood, just let me know.”
I studied Brian Darby again. Warm brown eyes, easygoing smile, solidly built shoulders.
“Okay,” I heard myself say. “I would like that.”
Do you believe in love at first sight? I don’t. I’m too studied, too cautious for such nonsense. Or maybe, I simply know better.
I met Brian for coffee. I learned that when he was home, his time was his own. It made it easy to hike together in the afternoons, after I’d recovered from the graveyard shift and before I picked up Sophie from daycare at five. Then we caught a Red Sox game on my night off, and before I knew it, he was joining Sophie and me for a picnic.
Sophie did fall in love at first sight. In a matter of seconds, she’d climbed onto Brian’s back and demanded giddyup. Brian obediently galloped his way across the park with a squealing three-year-old clutching his hair and yelling “Faster!” at the top of her lungs. When they were done, Brian collapsed on the picnic blanket while Sophie toddled off to pick dandelions. I assumed the flowers were for me, but she turned to Brian instead.
Brian accepted the dandelions tentatively at first, then positively beaming when he realized the entire wilted bouquet was just for him.
It became easy, after that, to spend the weekends at his house with a real yard, versus my cramped one- bedroom apartment. We would cook dinner together, while Sophie ran around with his dog, an aging German shepherd named Duke. Brian bought a plastic kiddy pool for the deck, hung a toddler’s swing from the old oak tree.
One weekend when I got jammed up, he came over and stocked my fridge to get Sophie and me through the week. And one afternoon, after I’d worked a motor vehicle accident that left three kids dead, he read to Sophie while I stared at the bedroom wall and fought to get my head on straight.
Later I sat curled up against him on the couch and he told me stories of his four sisters, including the time they’d found him napping on the sofa and covered him in makeup. He’d spent two hours biking around the neighborhood in glittering blue eye shadow and hot pink lipstick before he happened to catch his reflection in a window. I laughed. Then I cried. Then he held me tighter and we both said nothing at all.
Summer slid away. Fall arrived, and just like that, it was time for him to ship out. He’d be gone eight weeks, back in time for Thanksgiving, he assured me. He had a good friend who always looked after Duke. But, if we wanted…
