I bowed my head but didn’t lose her gaze. “I’m sorry for laughing. I just…” I shrugged, like what’s a guy to do?
Her face twitched. “I get it. Not every day you hear a park ranger rutting the local fauna.”
I couldn’t help the grin and it made me happy to see one side of her lips tilt up.
“But I ask that you keep things you’ve seen here tonight to yourself.” She lifted an eyebrow, as if daring me to spread rumors throughout the department.
I shook my head, meaning every word. “I’d never spread rumors.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she sucked in a deep breath and Captain Waldo was back. “Good night, Lieutenant.”
Hell, the woman found her footing real fast. She’d just dismissed me. Had to admire a woman who could recover that quickly and still boss me around knowing I had the upper hand.
I spun around and grabbed the doorknob, but not before looking over my shoulder one last time. “I wouldn’t tell a soul about tonight, neighbor, but if you think I’ll ever wipe that from my brain, you’ve clearly lost your mind.”
With that parting shot, I headed out, making sure the door closed behind me. She ought to think about locking that thing from now on. I trudged back over to my property, looking back at her house with fresh eyes now knowing it was hers. What were the odds of being partnered with her at work and being neighbors? It was like the universe was looking for ways to put us together.
I really liked something about that thought.
“Ready to hit it, Captain?” I asked Oakley as she filled her travel mug before heading out on patrol.
Her head whipped up, and she looked at me with suspicion. Which she should, as I totally meant that as a double entendre. I had a lot of those stored up and at the ready for our first work day together since The Incident. She better get ready. Over twenty-four hours had passed and, even so, I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing an imprint of a naked Oakley behind my eyelids. If I was going to be tortured, I’d make damn certain she was tortured too. Fair was fair.
She walked out of the department with her nose held high and I followed, refusing to look at her. Couldn’t look at her for fear someone would see the hungry look in my eyes and know right away that something was going on between us. Not that there was anything. Oakley would shut that down harder than a drug dealer selling to little kids. It’s just that I’d found myself a teensy bit obsessed.
I may have spent my entire day off between two states: walking around with an erection that was physically painful and beating off in the shower with her name on my lips. Neither was comfortable nor what I wanted, and neither got her out of my head. Basically, I was in trouble. So I resorted to what I always did in times of stress: teasing, joking, and not taking things seriously.
Oakley slid behind the wheel and I followed on the passenger side, needing to adjust my duty belt when I got a whiff of her shampoo in the tight quarters. Fucking shampoo made me hard.
“How about you navigate today? See if you have the layout of the county.” Oakley was all business, logging us in as active and heading out of the parking lot without a single glance in my direction.
I clenched my fists down by my sides and willed my brain to focus. “All right. How about you head east and we’ll go counterclockwise to start with, just to keep things interesting?”
She dipped her head but otherwise did not acknowledge me. Ice queen had clearly doubled down on the all-business act. I didn’t say much either, just focused on the various farms that flickered by as she drove, giving her directions to the best of my ability.
The clock ticked by without a single call from dispatch, the tension mounting the longer we were together in silence. Time to crank up the teasing. I craned my neck looking at some houses as we drove by. “Wow, they really trimmed those bushes back, don’t you think?”
Oakley’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, but she said nothing.
Not long after, we passed Poppy delivering mail in one of the neighborhoods outside of Auburn Hill. She held a cardboard box in her hands that made me smile with another idea.
“Look at the box she’s got. Wonder if there’s a surprise waiting for someone when they open it.”
Oakley breathed louder through her nose, her lips pinching ever so slightly as she drove on. I rubbed my hands together, really getting into it. Opportunity presented itself just a few miles down the road when the sprinklers were going, tamping down the dust on a horse farm. A single horse was running around in the sprinklers, having a good old time.
My thumb hitched over my shoulder as we drove by. “That poor mare is going to be dripping wet when she’s all done playing.”
Oakley’s jaw clenched tight, and she threw me a dirty look. Ah, all that bottled-up anger may look like an ice queen on the surface, but underneath, she was a cauldron of lava. I just knew it.
We only got turned around once on our first lap of the county, even with me spending more time thinking of jokes than where we were headed. We ended up on a dead-end road with a farm to our right, open land on the
