Crazy on You

He bounced the ball and moved a few inches closer. Close enough that she had to tip her head back to look up. Close enough that she could smell sweat and clean Texas air. “No. You told me I talk fast.”

“I did?” She swallowed and felt a sudden urge to take a step back. Back to a safer distance. “When?”

“The other night when I pulled you over.”

She didn’t remember saying that, but it was true. “Where are you from, Deputy?”

“Originally Detroit.”

“Long way from home.”

“For the past eleven years, I’ve lived at Fort Bliss, then El Paso and Houston.”

“Army?”

“Staff Sergeant, Second Battalion, Third Field Artillery.”

He was in the Army and now the police force? “How long were you in the military?”

“Ten years.” He slowly bounced the ball. “If you want to play man-on-man, we can.”

Ten years? He had to be older than he looked.

“Or man-on-woman.” One dark brow rose up his forehead and his voice got kind of low and husky. “You wanna play a little man-on-woman, Lily?”

She blinked. She wasn’t sure what he meant. Was he joking or was that a real position or play or whatever in basketball? “Do I have to sweat?” She didn’t like to sweat in her good clothes.

“It’s not good if at least one person doesn’t work up a sweat.”

Okay, she was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about basketball. She glanced over at Pippen standing at the edge of the driveway listening to his daddy. She looked back at Tucker, at her reflection in his glasses. If she leaned forward just a bit, she could put her face in the crook of his neck just above the torn collar of his sweatshirt. Where his skin would be cool and smell like a warm man.

“You’re blushing.”

In his glasses, she could see the pink creeping to her cheeks. Could feel it heating her chest. He was young and attractive, and she wasn’t used to men flirting with her. At least men she hadn’t known most of her life. “Are you hitting on me?”

“If you have to ask, then I’m not as smooth as I think I am.”

He was hitting on her! “But I’m a lot older than you,” she blurted.

“Eight years isn’t a lot.”

Eight years. He knew her age. No doubt from her driver’s license. She was so flustered, she could hardly do simple math. He was thirty. That was still young, but not as young as she’d thought. Not so young that thinking about him as a faux cop in Playgirl was perverted. Well, not all that perverted. It wasn’t illegal anyway.

“Your cheeks are getting really red.”

“It’s chilly out here.” She turned toward the house but his hand on her arm stopped her. She looked down at his long fingers on the forearm of her white sweater. She ran her gaze up the frayed wrist of his sleeve, up his arm and shoulder to the scruffy growth on his square jaw. He had the kind of mouth that would feel good sliding across her skin.

“What are you thinking, Lily?”

She looked up into this mirrored glasses. “Pure thoughts.”

A deep chuckle spilled from his lips. “That makes one of us.”

For the second time in less than an hour, Deputy Tucker Matthews stunned her into silence.

“Momma!” Pippen called out as he headed toward her. “Daddy and me are going to Odessa next weekend to see Memaw and Papaw.”

She tore her gaze from Tucker’s face. “I know, sugar.” She took her cell phone from her son. “We’ll pack lots of road snacks.”

Pippen turned to the deputy. “Is it my shot?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. I gotta go take a shower before work.” A slight smile curved his lips. “I worked up a sweat.”

“Not me,” Pippen told him. “I don’t sweat. I’m too little. Momma doesn’t sweat either.”

He raised his brows above the gold frame of his sunglasses. “That’s a shame. She should do something about that.”

Lily’s own brows knitted and her mouth parted. Was he hitting on her in front of her son? And was she so out of practice she didn’t know?

Tucker laughed and looked down at the young boy in front of him. “But I have tomorrow and Tuesday off. We can finish then.”

“Okay.”

He shifted the ball from one arm to the other. “See ya later, Lily.”

No way could she call him Tucker. He might not be as young as she’d first thought, but he still was young and hot and an outrageous flirt. He was dangerous for a single mother in a small town. A big old hunk of hot flaming danger for a woman who’d finally lived down her wild reputation. “Deputy Matthews.”

Tucker stretched his arms upward and moved his head from side to side. It was 0800 in Amarillo and he was just finishing up the paperwork from the night before. He’d made two DUI arrests, issued three moving violations, and had responded to a 10-91b in Lovett. The noisy animal in question had been a fat Chihuahua named Hector. The dog’s elderly owner, Velma Patterson, had cried and promised to keep the ankle-biter quiet and Tucker had let her off with a verbal warning.

“It was that horrible Nelma Buttersford who called. Wasn’t it?” Ms. Patterson wept into a rumpled tissue. “She hates Hector.”

“I’m not sure who called,” he’d answered.

Tucker rose from the desk. That’s what he liked about working in Potter County. There wasn’t a lot happening on a Sunday night. Not like Harris County. He liked the slower pace that gave him time to plow through his paperwork.

No, not much happened, and he was fine with that. He’d seen a lot of action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and later after joining the department in Houston. Here, there was just enough going on to keep him interested, but not so much that it kept him up at night.

At least not yet. But it would. Bad things happened sometimes and he’d signed up for the job to deal with them. For as long as he could remember, he’d been dealing with bad things. He knew how to survive when shit went south.

He moved to the locker room and opened the locker with his name printed on cloth tape. He unbuttoned his beige and brown long-sleeved work shirt and pulled at the Velcro tabs at his shoulders and the sides of his waist. The vest weighed a little under ten pounds. Nothing compared to the body armor he’d worn in the military. He set it inside the locker and buttoned his shirt over his black tactical undershirt.

“Hey, Matthews,” Deputy Neal Flegel called out as he entered the locker room. “Did you hear about the 10-32 up at Lake Meredith?”

He’d heard the call over the radio. “Yeah. What kind of idiots are out on the lake that time of night?”

Flegel opened his locker and unbuttoned his shirt. “Two idiots fishing in a leaky ten-foot aluminum boat, no life jackets, and a cooler full of Lone Star.”

He knew from listening to the radio that they’d recovered one body close to shore. Another deputy, Marty Dingus, entered the locker room and he and Neal shot the shit like two old compadres. Brothers. Tucker had had a lot of compadres. Brothers in arms. Some of them he’d straight-up hated but would have died for. A sheriff’s department wasn’t unlike the military in that regard. They both played by big-boy rules. He was the new guy in Potter County. He’d been in this spot before, and he knew how to roll and adapt and get along for the sake of the job. He looked forward to getting to know the deputies here in his new home.

“How do you like Potter County so far?” Marty asked. “Not quite as hot as Harris County.”

Tucker reached for his jacket inside his locker. Marty wasn’t talking about the temperature. “That’s what I like