Chalk Dirty to Me, page 2
Obviously, ways that she’d adapted to protect herself just in case.
When we got there, she pressed a button, and the entire thing unlocked, and the security alarm she had on it disarmed.
When she opened her car door, she made sure to place it between the two of us before saying, “Thank you for the walk to my car.”
I winked. “If you ever need another one,” I reached into my pocket and gave her my card. The one that I’d written my personal number on. “Give me a call.”
She looked at the card for long seconds before gingerly taking it into her hand. “I’ll do that.”
She wouldn’t do that.
She was brave and courageous, and she wouldn’t allow herself to need the assistance.
Still, I wondered what had been done to her to make her so wary. Women didn’t get like this—this scared—without reason.
Anger burned hot in my belly as I watched her drop down into her vehicle, lock the doors, and leave the shelter of the parking lot.
I didn’t walk back until I saw the burning red of her taillights pull around the corner of the hospital entrance and disappear.
The walk back to the police-issued vehicle was shorter than the walk away from it, and when I arrived, it was to find Brianna standing there looking miffed.
I studied her as I walked up. She was unaware of my attention, her eyes aimed at the hospital as if she was pissed about something.
I found out what that ‘something’ was when I arrived at her side.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said as I reached for my cup that was on the passenger side of the car.
Brianna liked to drive, and I liked my eardrums too much to argue with her about who was driving.
Since arriving here and being paired with Brianna, I understood very quickly that I would need to learn to pick my battles. And who drove was one of the ones that I allowed her to win.
“That bitch was something, wasn’t she?” Brianna asked as she fell into her seat.
I went much more gingerly, sore as hell from the workout I’d done that morning to do anything but carefully.
“What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“What, you fell for her ‘poor, pitiful me’ act?” she asked, looking disgusted.
I shrugged. “She didn’t appear to be putting on an act.”
“She totally was,” she said. “She wanted me gone and wanted to talk to you alone. What did she say about me when I left?”
I felt a tendril of anger swirl through me. “She didn’t say anything about you when you left. We spoke about Hester, and she was perfectly nice about everything.”
I then went on to explain what I’d found out.
“That seems like she’s an accomplice in murder right there,” Brianna muttered under her breath.
I shot her a look of anger. “She did not help with that murder. She was explaining the intricacies of something that happened on the television. I know the show she was watching, and the episode. I went and did my own research after that episode. If Hester hadn’t asked Cannel, then she wouldn’t have had to look far to find out the answers. The information is readily available all over the internet.”
Brianna said something under her breath, and I suddenly wondered what I saw in her.
Though Brianna was beautiful, she was ugly on the inside with her attitude.
She’d already gotten three partner transfers in her career, because each of those partner’s wives hadn’t been able to stand having their husbands work with her.
The partners had threatened to quit if they weren’t transferred.
And now I was starting to think that there was a reason nobody wanted to work with Brianna.
I’d seen the anger and the resentment, as well as the overall attitude of Brianna all this time, but her pretty face had been enough to distract me from seeing the truth.
And it wasn’t until today, with Cannel, that I understood.
Brianna was a jealous woman. When someone prettier than her was around, she put up a front.
CHAPTER 2
When nothing goes right, go left.
-Text from Haggard to Cannel
CANNEL
“Hey, honey. How are you doing? How’s work at the new job?”
I smiled at hearing the warmness in one of my good friend’s voices.
“I’m doing well,” I admitted. “The new job is… boring. I’m on the ICU floor, and they don’t really have anything truly exciting going on there just yet. I’m still on probation until the fourth of next month.”
“I guess that’s to be expected at a new job,” Beckham admitted. “Did you go out with your friends from work like they wanted you to that first night you were there?”
I groaned. “No.”
Beckham sighed. “I know that you’re new, but you have to get back out there, sweetie. Holing up in your apartment isn’t going to help.”
It might not, but I couldn’t very well just ‘go out.’
The last time I’d just ‘gone out’ I’d ended up kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking.
Literally.
The one saving grace out of that whole experience was that I’d been sold to someone that hadn’t actually wanted to have sex with me.
The man who’d purchased me had been a very virile man. However, that man hadn’t actually been interested in women like me. He’d been interested in girls like his daughter.
In the end, I wasn’t actually sure why that man had purchased me. But I was glad that he did because I’d saved his daughter from being used more than once by him and had the battle scars to prove it.
“I’ll get there,” I lied. “This is my first month out of Traci’s home and on my own… I’ll get there.”
After being rescued, I hadn’t gone back to my fiancé’s place like I’d always dreamed about doing.
Why?
Because my fiancé, to get me back, had tried to do the very same thing to Beckham that had been done to me. He’d tried to sell her to the sex traffickers to find out where I was, and it’d backfired.
He hadn’t actually found out where I was, and he’d left a pregnant Beckham there to fend for herself.
Neither her nor I, had spoken about anything that had gone on, just like Traci, my best friend in the whole wide world, hadn’t asked. But I knew that, if she even experienced it for half a second, that was way too long.
And it was something I hadn’t been able to forgive my fiancé for.
So I’d broken up with him.
It was something he still wasn’t quite able to come to grips with.
He tried, multiple times a day, in fact, to still get into contact with me.
I’d change my phone, and he’d have the phone number within the hour—something that his money and his connections gave to him.
At this point, I just blocked him every time he called from a new number and hung up on him when I heard his voice.
It’d been exactly two years since I’d made it home, and two years since I’d officially called it off with Toot, but neither of us could move on.
At least, I thought I couldn’t move on.
I thought that I would be in love with Toot—Beau—forever. I thought he was going to be my one. The father of my children. The man that I spent the rest of my life with.
I’d thought that I wouldn’t be able to get over him, that I’d be stuck, broken forever.
That was until I met Detective Schultz today.
The moment I’d seen him walking across the parking lot next to his partner, something weird and fluttery had started happening in my chest.
The normal ‘panic’ that I had when I met someone outside of four protected walls—when I was too far away from a man that I knew would protect me if needed—had subsided.
And somehow, without even getting a clear look at his face, I knew without a single doubt in my mind that Detective Schultz would protect me with his life if I ever needed him to.
“I have a reason for calling.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh, met a man today.”
Beckham gasped. “You what?”
“I met a man,” I repeated. “A detective.”
Beckham made a squeal that had her husband, Trouper, asking her what the hell was wrong.
Beckham ignored him and said, “What do you need from me?”
She knew me so well.
“I need to look into his background,” I admitted.
I need to make sure he’s not a fucking serial rapist, sex trafficker, or murderer before I sleep with him.
“You found the one, huh?” she asked.
The ‘one’ was the man that I planned to burst through my wall with.
Or, maybe, the one that would bust through my wall for me.
Someone that would hopefully help me get over Toot, as well as help me move on from this awful sense of doom that always seemed to cling to me wherever I went, and through whatever I did.
“What’s his name?” she asked when I didn’t comment on her ‘one’ comment.
“Detective Schultz of the Paris Police Department,” I answered, giving her everything that I knew.
The card he’d given me had been noted as Detective W. Schultz, Paris Police Department, and then a phone number.
But I hadn’t given her the phone number.
I wasn’t sure if it was a department issued one or not, so I’d let her do her digging.
“Oh, he’s hot as hell,” Beckham mused.
I remembered back to yesterday, when I’d seen him walking across the parking lot toward me.
Toot… no, Beau, I corrected myself. I refused to call him by that stupid name. Beau had been attractive, but quite a bit shorter than me. Shorter than me by at least six inches.
But Detective Schultz had been tall. He’d towered over his partner, who appeared to be around the same height as me.
His long, wavy black hair had been the second thing I’d seen. The waves were longer than I’d seen any man wear lately, almost as if he could give less than a shit about what he looked like. As long as it was comfortable to him, and under department protocol.
I loved hair with some body to it.
I’d always wanted it when I was younger. In fact, I’d gone to great lengths to get curly hair. I’d gotten a perm. I’d bought the most expensive curlers.
But my stick-straight black hair had too much volume, and it was so damn heavy that the moment I got a curl into it, it faded. Not even the best of the best hair spray could hold those suckers in.
But damn, did Detective Schultz have some to-die-for hair.
And his eyes.
My God, his blue eyes had been the bluest of blue. Like the sky on a cloudless day. Or the bright ‘blue’ crayon straight out of a crayon box.
“Are you even listening to me?” Beckham chirped, bringing me away from contemplating the detective’s eyes and back to the problem at hand.
“I’m sorry, I was daydreaming about eyes,” I admitted.
Beckham snorted. “He does have some pretty ones. Pairing them with that wavy black hair and dimple? I’ll bet he had you tongue-tied when he spoke to you.”
I scoffed. “I don’t get tongue-tied around men.”
That was a lie, too.
I didn’t used to get tongue-tied around men.
Now, I was lucky to be around them without having a downright panic attack.
That was one of my ‘side effects’ of my kidnapping/trafficking.
I didn’t do well in public without someone I trusted at my side, and that could come in the form of a man—my best friends’ husbands counted—or a woman. I wasn’t picky, as long as I had someone.
I also didn’t grocery shop anymore.
That had been when I was taken—while grocery shopping. I’d actually gone out for a present for Troup and Beckham and realized I needed a few things for dinner.
I’d been minding my own business, loading my groceries into the car, and I’d been snatched from behind into a white panel van.
I don’t know what the hell I’d been thinking.
I mean, everyone and their brother knew damn well and good not to load and unload next to a white panel van.
Yet, that day, my mind had been on other things—i.e., marriage to a man that I loved, at the time, with all of my heart. It turned out that he wasn’t the man I thought he was.
I’d been on cloud nine.
I’d never seen it coming.
“You get flustered around men,” she corrected. “You get… weird.”
“Well, I didn’t get weird around this one,” I admitted. “He made me feel… safe.”
She scoffed.
“He looks a lot like Henry Cavill with that almost curly black hair and the chin dimple,” Beckham mused.
That’s when I snapped my fingers.
I’d been trying to put my finger on it for damn well ten hours. But I couldn’t figure out why he looked so familiar to me.
And then that hair and chin dimple finally clicked into place with her words. He did look like Henry Cavill. Only a hell of a lot more attractive one, which I hadn’t realized was possible.
“He was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans and a button-down Wrangler khaki shirt,” I admitted. “I’ve never, ever in my life found a man wearing cowboy clothes attractive, but the detective was…”
“Hot,” she mused. “He lives on a ranch. That explains the cowboy clothes.”
Over the next ten minutes, she gave me everything that she could find on him in a short amount of time.
“He has a high credit score.” She paused. “He has two nieces that live with him part time. He splits them with his parents. The mother and father, his sister, died in a car wreck years ago. He has another sister, Nivea, who used to help raise them, but she moved to a different part of the country with her new man. Parents and him live on a ranch a couple of towns over. Dad inherited about a thousand acres from his father who passed away recently. Wilhelm—you’ll have to call him Will because Wilhelm is weird—lives in a two-bedroom cabin on the property.”
I smiled at all the information she could find.
“Now, I’ll continue to dig. But you’re gonna have to tell me why you need this information,” she murmured.
I swallowed and looked down at my hands.
“He’s the one,” I told her. “Like you already said.”
There was no reason to lie.
I needed to break out of my funk.
I wanted to live again.
I wanted to be who I was always meant to be, not a shell of Cannel who was scared of her own shadow.
I’d seen the shrinks.
I’d moved out of the town that used to be where my best friends were located—my crutches in all things.
I’d graduated school, found a job, and moved into an apartment on my own.
I was ready to live as well as I possibly could live.
And that meant having sex again.
That meant seeing men on a daily basis, and not overanalyzing their every move.
It meant… Wilhelm Schultz, the detective for Paris Police Department, was going to be the one to break me out of that funk.
I knew, just as well as he did, that he was attracted to me.
I’d seen it in his eyes, and the way that he allowed his gaze to trail down my body.
I only hoped that I could scrounge up the nerve to go for it.
“Just wanted to make sure you were sure. I want you to be happy.”
CHAPTER 3
Life is short. Smile while you have teeth.
-Text from Shine to Cannel
CANNEL
One week later
I didn’t expect him to be drunk, too.
In fact, I expected him to be sober, that way he could take care of my drunk ass.
Two drunk people didn’t normally equal a good time.
At least, that was how it’d always gone with me and my ex. One of us had to always be sober for us to enjoy the night.
Whether that was because Too—Beauregard, formally known as ‘Toot,’ was just a lousy drunk, or I was, I didn’t know.
Over the last week, I’d watched Will, learned his habits, and knew that he’d be here tonight.
Over the last week and a half since I’d met Detective Wilhelm Schultz—I’d already shortened his name in my head to Will, I’d thought about him so much—I’d worked up the courage to enact my plan.
My plan being to get laid.
Get laid by a man that I knew was a good man… even though he didn’t look like a very good man right now.
In fact, he looked like a bad man, and that had my heart thundering.
And I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure as to why.
I mean, on the outside, he looked bad.
On paper, he looked really, really good.
I mean, he was a detective for the police department—he solved murders, for Christ’s sake.
He took his two young nieces in after his sister died. He fought for them in court with his own sister because he knew that he and his parents would be better for them than his partying sister, who only wanted the cash flow that came with the kids.
He donated to a damn animal shelter on a daily basis and had a dog named Sally who was a rescue.
Sally the Doberman, who liked to scale fences that were six feet high and got posted in the Paris Happenings once a week because of her escape escapades.
But today, he was wearing a black t-shirt that fit him like a glove—and man, did he have a great body. I’m talking, ripped. His muscles had muscles. I only saw muscles like the ones he was sporting on the mannequins in the store that were advertising Under Armour.
And, as a nurse, my eyes were glued to his forearms where every single fucking vein that I could see was popping out like he had a tourniquet around his bicep.
The only thing around his bulging bicep was the sleeve of his t-shirt, and though it was tight—oh, man, was it so tight—it wouldn’t have produced the vein effect.
“Can I get you another?”
I blinked, surprised that I’d been watching Will at the end of the bar with his beer for so long that I hadn’t noticed another man coming up to me.
