he touched the screen of his phone, making the photo bigger, and held it closer to better see. Dressed in a tan deputy uniform, with her hair braided back, Jules had held the phone out in front of her and snapped a picture of herself smiling in front of a small police dispatch board.
It should be illegal to make a police uniform look that sexy, and Romeo stood there staring for a long moment, unable to believe just how attractive he found her in it.
Beneath the picture the text read:
This is what I’m doing. What’re you doing?
Romeo stepped away from the bar and walked down the street until he was in a better position to really capture Times Square behind him in a way that’d be recognizable to her.
He held out his phone and snapped a picture of himself.
101
Chapter Seven
Feet up on the desk, with her laptop in her lap, Jules was reading over the information on a new case. She was helping Katie Foster for nothing more than the cost of expenses because Katie was naive and sweet and should have never gotten married at nineteen. Now the young teacher was forced to battle through a divorce from a man who didn’t want to let her go and was resorting to the age-old technique of making Katie’s life as miserable as possible in the hopes of her just giving up and going back to him.
Not if Jules had anything to do with it. If Katie wanted to be free and clear to start over, Jules was going to make sure that’s what happened—she hated bullies.
Her cell phone buzzed on the desk, and she reached over, picked it up, and grinned. She slid her finger across the glass and then touched the picture of Romeo to make it bigger. With snow sparkling under the bright lights, he looked as handsome as ever standing in the street with all the flash of Times Square behind him. He wore a black leather jacket and a matching black ski hat pulled low over his ears, but it did nothing to hide his handsome features. She actually touched the screen nostalgically, missing him even when she knew it was dangerous to do so.
Then the dispatch buzzed, and she scrambled to put her laptop on the desk as she answered the call. “911, what’s your emergency?”
“Jules, that you? I can’t believe they gotcha working on New Year’s with as much work as you got all the time.”
Jules tossed her cell on the desk next to the computer to give the caller her full attention as she repeated, “What’s the emergency?”
“Jason and Carl were drinking too much, and they got into it.” 102
Jules brushed the fine blonde hairs that had escaped her braid off her forehead as she asked, “They’re fighting now?”
“Yeah, dumb-asses. They’re beating each other black-and-blue.” Jules frowned in concern. “Is this Fran?”
“Who else would it be?” Fran asked bitterly. “No one else gives a shit if they kill each other. I’m nine months pregnant. I need a healthy paycheck bringing food home, and here Carl thinks it’d be a good idea to invite his brother over for New Year’s. You know Jason’s been drinking a lot since Sara left and—”
“Fran, where are they right now?” Jules interrupted her. “Are you in any danger?”
“No, I’m fine. They’re out in the front yard. In the snow. Idiots.”
“Do they have any weapons?”
“Not unless ya count thick skulls as weapons.”
“No guns?” Jules clarified. “Or anything they could use to cause serious injury?
Bats? Knives?”
“Nah, all the guns are still in the house. Hold on, lemme make sure they ain’t gotten into the shed since I called ya.” Fran huffed as if she were attempting to get up.
After a few moments she said, “Just two drunk morons out there trying to drown each other in the snowdrifts.”
“Okay, I want you to go ahead and lock ’em out of the house. We wanna keep you safe, and we wanna make sure they’re not grabbing any guns,” Jules said calmly.
“We’re gonna send someone out there to break it up.”
“It’s freezing out. They’re gonna get frostbite.”
“They’ll be all right,” Jules assured her. “We got all our units out. It won’t be more than a few minutes until someone gets there.”
“Thanks, Jules, I sure do appreciate it.”
“Lock the door. And go ahead and gimme your address so I can make sure they find ya.”
103
“Shoot, the sheriff knows where we’re at. Not like he ain’t been out here before.”
“Just give it to me,” Jules said, turning in her chair and typing at the main computer. “And I need a call-back number.”
Jules quickly took Fran’s information before hanging up and then picked up the dispatch radio.
“Two-alpha-five.”
It took less than twenty seconds before Wyatt’s voice crackled over the system,
“Two-alpha-five.”
“I got a signal 38 at 14 Pine Ridge Way.”
“Sorry,” Wyatt responded back. “I’m 1015 with a signal 10 and 1025 to the station.”
Hearing that Wyatt was on his way back to the station with a drunk driver in tow, Jules went ahead and dispatched another officer. Then she called Fran back just to make sure she was safe until Adam, one of Wyatt’s best deputies, showed up on the scene.
She was just hanging up when a burst of cold air announced Wyatt’s presence in the station.
She looked to the front door expectantly and then gasped when she saw who he was dragging with him, handcuffed, with his head held low. “Oh no, Terry!”
“Don’t.” Wyatt pointed at her, giving her a stern look. “Just shut your trap.”
“What happened?” Jules gasped, ignoring her brother’s warning as she jumped out of her seat to follow Wyatt as he pulled Terry with him to his office. “You can’t book him. That’ll go on his permanent record.”
Wyatt sat Terry in the chair on the other side of his desk and then turned to give Jules an incredulous look. “What part of ‘shut your trap’ aren’t you getting? This is a sheriff’s office. We arrest people who crash into elm trees, drunk as a damn skunk on New Year’s Eve. We don’t play favorites. That ain’t fair and you know it.” 104
Jules crossed her arms over her chest and bit her tongue against arguing in front of Terry. She managed to stay silent for about two seconds before she said, “He crashed his car? Is he okay? How’d ya know he ain’t got whiplash or something? Maybe you should’ve called Tommy to take him up to Mercy General and—”
“He’s fine,” Wyatt assured her as he unzipped his thick, wool-lined sheriff’s jacket and shrugged out of it. “Can I do my job, please?” Jules stood her ground, wanting to strip off her uniform and play lawyer instead because there was no way she was going to let this ruin Terry. Wyatt would start screaming about conflict of interest, and she really didn’t give a shit. She was tired of being his backup every time things got too wild and hairy at the sheriff’s office. She had enough work to keep her busy for a lifetime. Taking her badge would be the best thing Wyatt ever did for her.
Wyatt lifted his gaze to hers, tilting his head to the front of the station. “I believe that’s a dispatch call I hear.”
Jules growled, feeling very tempted to stomp her foot in frustration. Instead she turned around and dashed out of Wyatt’s office before she missed the call. She dived for it, answering breathlessly, “911, what’s your emergency?”
“Hey, Jules, whatcha doing working New Year’s Eve?” She sat in the chair and repeated, “What’s your emergency?”
“I locked myself out of the damn house.”
Jules took a deep breath, remembering now why she positively hated working dispatch on New Year’s. This particular holiday didn’t bring out Garnet’s best and brightest. “Who is this?”
“Dontcha recognize my voice? It’s Kenny.”
“Being locked out of your house is not an emergency, Kenny,” Jules said in annoyance. “You got family to call for that.”
“Without my shirt on,” Kenny went on. “And the car’s locked, so—”
105
“Have you been drinking?” Jules asked him accusingly. “Were you gonna drive somewhere?”
“But I didn’t.” Kenny’s voice rose to a whine, his teeth chattering in the cold.
“Wait, maybe I locked the keys in the car. Yeah, that’s why I can’t get into the house.
’Cause the keys are locked in the car. I went back to get a shirt, but the damn door’s locked—”
“Right,” Jules said drily. “I’m gonna send someone out there to help you. Go ahead and give me your address.”
“Sheriff knows where I live.”
Jules rolled her eyes. “Just give me the address and your cell phone number.” Jules wrapped up the call with Kenny. She sent someone out to help him, which seemed like a waste of desperately needed manpower, but they couldn’t let Kenny freeze to death from his drunken stupidity.
She wanted to go back and argue with Wyatt, but she knew that was pointless when he was in full-on sheriff mode. New Year’s Eve was one of the worst nights of the year for him, and he was all business because of it. Instead she picked up her cell phone as a distraction, going back to Romeo’s picture and reading the text beneath it.
Wish I was with you. Stuck here instead.
Break it off. Jules told herself that after every phone call. Every text message. She chanted it in her head at night before she fell asleep, and she woke up with the same reminder. Never in a million years would it work with Romeo. There was so much she didn’t know about him, and a lot more she did know and wished she didn’t.
She set her phone down and turned to the computer. She logged in to the national database and looked him up. Not for the first time. She’d done it many times since she’d gotten home, and every single time it was almost impossible to equate the information on the police report with the man she’d spent the night with in Las Vegas.
She stared at the screen, seeing his crimes in black-and-white, and still she couldn’t accept it.
106
Assault.
Resisting arrest with violence.
Battery on an officer.
Those were extremely serious offenses, and apparently the state of New York agreed. Romeo Wellings had spent two years in prison because of them, and that was as mind-boggling as the rest of it.
The phone rang, jerking her out of her thoughts, and she reached to answer it automatically. “911, what’s your emergency?”
“Dang, Jules, I can’t believe the sheriff’s got you working on a holiday.” Eyes still on the screen, she repeated, “What’s your emergency?”
“Oh, you know, the boys have been drinking, and they ended up in a nasty fistfight. Broke my dang coffee table in the process.” The caller sighed. “I guess ya ought to send the sheriff out here to straighten ’em out.”
“Sheriff’s kinda busy right now,” Jules said with a glance at Wyatt’s office, seeing that he was leading Terry to the lockup in back. “Are they still fighting?”
“Nah, I just thought he could come and talk to ’em. Scare ’em a little. They shouldn’t be drinking anyways. They’re not even old enough, but they found their daddy’s stash and wouldn’t ya figure they’d be mean drunks.”
“That seems to be par for the course in this town,” Jules observed because they’d been getting the same damn call all night. “Drinking underage is a crime and Sheriff’s in a mood on account of New Year’s. You sure you want him to come out there?”
“I suppose not. I’ll just have their daddy give ’em a talking to when he gets off shift.”
“Good plan,” Jules agreed. “But call back if you need help.”
“Will do. Thanks, Jules.”
“No problem,” Jules said and then hung up.
107
She went back to staring at the screen but jumped when Wyatt said behind her,
“Are you advising people against seeking my assistance on account of the fact they’re breaking the law? What the hell kinda dispatch are ya running, Jules?”
“Back off,” she snapped as she stood. She reached for her cell phone and shoved it in her pocket before she announced, “I’m going on break.”
“We’re swamped. You can’t go on break.”
“Watch me.” Jules walked past her brother and headed toward the lockup. “Fire me if you don’t like it. Not like I get a damn paycheck anyway.”
“Do you wanna paycheck?” Wyatt asked, following after her. “Do you need the two hundred bucks? Only lawyer for two towns. You ain’t exactly hurting for cash.”
“What I need is a break.” Jules stopped in front of the hallway that led to the lockup and tilted her head. “I believe that’s a dispatch call I hear.” Wyatt stood his ground, glaring at her until the third ring. Then he swore and turned on his heel, dashing back to the front desk. Jules left him to it and headed to the lockup. She stopped in front of the first cell, leaned against the bars, and pressed her face between them.
“Hey, Terry,” she whispered.
Terry sat on the bench, looking broken, but he ran a hand through his dark hair and turned his head to glance at her. “Hey, Jules.”
“Wanna tell me what happened?”
“Are ya asking as my lawyer?”
“I’m asking as your friend.” Jules gave him a gentle smile. “Tomorrow I’ll be your lawyer. We’ll get it handled, darlin’.”
“I thought you weren’t allowed to practice criminal law.”
“Yeah, but I can give excellent advice, and I got a buddy over in Eastwind who’s really great. He owes me a favor.” Jules studied him curiously. “You don’t seem that drunk to me.”
108
Terry shrugged. “That thing the sheriff had me blow in said I was drunk enough. I knew I shouldn’t have driven. I just needed to get out, and walking home wasn’t a great plan.”