Page 12 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Sheriff

Wait… where the fuck did that come from?

That’s the problem with this woman: she’s too damned distracting.

I’ve got a county underwater, and I’m standing in a fucking duck robe stuck in her damned house because I had to come out here to make sure she was okay. Somewhere out there my deputies are running a flood response without me because I decided, like an amateur, like a green rookie, to drive out here instead of staying in town where I could do my fucking job.

Any humor I might have found with this current situation dies before it can start. The guilt comes up in its place, familiar and cold.

“I need somewhere I can sit. A laptop, if you have one, some paper and a pen.” I look around. “And where the hell is my phone?”

Her eyes widen, and her brows go up, but she doesn’t walk away. “You can sit at my kitchen table. I’ll get you the rest of the things. And your phone is charging next to my toaster.” She turns away then. “Also, it’s very hard to take you seriously when you’re wearing my robe. Even if you are barking orders at me.”

And just like that she’s soothed my inner beast. I don’t know how she does it, why it’s her, specifically, but I know it’s real. I noticed it that first time around her.

I make my way into her kitchen, grab my phone and take a seat against the wall. At least sitting at the table will hide my lower half because her tiny robe is doing a poor job of keeping all of my junk covered.

She brings me a laptop and a spiral notebook with a bright purple pen. “There. Anything else?”

I pick up the purple pen, and I’m about to ask for a basic black one, but she raises a brow at me as if daring me to complain. I’m man enough to write with a purple pen. “This will do for now.”

“I’ll make coffee.”

I don’t even know where to fucking start. At the office, I’d have resources at my fingertips. All the low water crossings in the county. The locations that generally flood so that rescue crews could go out and assist. Surely I’d have a way to get information directly from the NOAA.

Hope appears on the opposite side of the table and sets down a plate of cookies. Her intention is clear. She’s trying to help, but she had no idea what’s at stake. And cookies are not an answer for everything. In that moment, the frustration and guilt that are stretched far too thin just snap.

“I don’t need a fucking cookie, Hope. I need to be at the station.”

She goes still. “Well, you’re not there. You’re here.”

“No shit!” It comes out hard, harder than I mean it. “I’ve got a flood event across the whole east half of the county and I’m sitting in your kitchen in a bathrobe because I couldn’t—” I stop. Start again. “I’m here because I just had to come out here to make sure you were safe.”

“No one asked you to do that. Least of all me,” she says. Her tone is even, unaffected, and for whatever reason that pisses me off even more.

“You’re a goddamn distraction. You’ve been a distraction since the first minute I laid eyes on you. Every alert that comes in from your watch had me dropping everything and heading out here. Tonight I came myself when I had four deputies who could’ve come in my place, and now I’m stuck here, useless, because I can’t seem to think straight when it comes to you and it is making me bad at my job.”

The kitchen is very quiet. The rain hammers.

Her chin comes up. Her eyes are bright—too bright—but her voice is dead level.

“Or,” she says, “maybe you’re bad at your job right now because you think you have to do every single piece of it yourself. You didn’t have to come tonight, Griff. You chose to, and then you closed both crossings yourself, walking into rushing water like a fool. When you got a whole department. So don’t stand in my kitchen and put this on me.” Her voice cracks, just once. “I am not nearly as incompetent as you seem to believe I am. I didn’t ask to be your distraction. I just asked if you wanted a cookie.”

And then she’s gone, down the little hall, and a door shuts, quiet, which is so much worse than a slam.

I sit there in this ridiculous rubber duck robe with the plate of cookies. I feel like the worst man in the entire state of Texas.

I never wanted to make her cry. I’d walk through those floodwaters again if it would keep her from crying.

chapter

seven

Griff

I find the closed door and I lean my forehead against the frame of it.

“Hope.”

Nothing.