Badge Bunny Read online

  My heart almost stops beating as I put two and two together.

  C.J. Evans is none other than Trooper Asshat.

  Oh no!

  Crap, crap, crap!

  Don’t make eye contact; don’t make eye contact. I’m wearing a disguise, for crying out loud. Surely she doesn’t know it’s me. Surely she’s not going to blow my cover.

  I ask the redhaired gentleman with Brynne, whom I assume is her brother because he looks like a taller, manlier version of her, who I should make the signature out to, and he points down to an adorable little girl in a pink stroller. “This is Harmony, and she loves your books! She is new to our family, just like Bonnie Bunny is in Bonnie Bunny Learns the Truth!”

  “Oh, that’s great! Hi, Harmony!” I fix my gaze down on the little girl with the wide, doe-brown eyes, and she gives me a shy smile. “I’m glad you enjoyed my bunny story!”

  I hastily scrawl “Somebunny loves Harmony!” with my purple sharpie. Then I sign “C.J. Evans” and hand the book back to the redhaired man.

  I steal one glance at Brynne before she moves along with her family, and she knows. She definitely knows.

  Monday I’m on nights. Monday nights are the worst night ever. Except Saturdays. Okay, Saturdays are the worst night to be a cop at Rehoboth Beach, but Monday nights are second. And it’s a full moon, which invariably means lots of domestics. And it’s warm. Full moon plus Monday night plus first warm temperatures of the spring? That is a surefire recipe for domestic disturbances.

  I’m trying to keep my mind on work, but I keep having images of the weekend flash through my mind. The movie reel starts with me not recognizing Brynne in Dewey, then almost begging her for a photo, and ends with her showing up at my book signing and totally realizing it was me. How can I NOT recognize her outside of her white coat and glasses, but if I put on glasses, colored contacts, a hat and a fake beard, she is all over that shit?

  I’m guessing I’m not going to be making detective any time soon.

  At first, when Drew told me Brynne is one of Sonnet’s bridesmaids I thought, wow, what a small world. Then I thought, whoa, that’s kind of cool. Maybe I can convince her I’m not such a bad guy after all. Maybe she’ll forget her aversion to cops, and when she sees me in a suit instead, her interest will be piqued. And hell yes, this children’s book author knows the correct spelling of “piqued.”

  But, yeah, I do want to go out with her. Whatever. I said it.

  Well, I did want to go out with her. But now she hates me, and she knows my secret, and I’m going to be around her and all of our friends for an entire weekend. What are the chances she’s not going to let the cat out of the bag?

  She’s probably already told Sonnet!

  No, no. If she had, Drew would have been burning up my phone with memes about Dr. Seuss and god-knows-what other children’s books. He would find a way to make my life a living hell. I just know he would.

  Morgan and I are, as predicted, heading to a domestic. The dispatcher said the woman got beat up a little, so I am practically itching to take her to the ER so I can talk to Brynne and beg her not to tell anyone about what she saw yesterday in Bethany. It was already so risky for me to be only a few blocks away from Drew and Sonnet’s house—I was so worried they’d take a casual walk to the boardwalk and see me there—but I also knew Drew had an event at his workplace, and I was pretty sure Sonnet was going to be recovering from her bachelorette party all day. I try to make sure my signings are at least a few hours away. I’ve been asked several times to do a signing at the Rehoboth bookstore, Browseabout, but I’ve always turned them down. It’s just too close to home, literally.

  I follow Morgan to the address the dispatcher gave us and park my Tahoe right behind hers. We rush up the steps to the front porch, and she knocks on the door. When someone answers, we’ll give our regular spiel. Above, the moon is glowing down on us and casting eerie shadows of the house and bushes all around us.

  “What’s wrong, Summer Teeth?” she asks, turning toward me while we wait for our knock to be answered. “You skeered or something?”

  “Don’t call me that,” I retort at the same time the door handle twists open. It’s been, what, four months since the Christmas Party, and they still won’t let it drop?

  “May we come in?” I ask the tall, plump blonde woman who answers, and she rolls her eyes but then pulls the door open wide enough for us to pass. Meanwhile, I almost trip over the step up into the house because I’m too busy scanning her body for signs of injuries. I really want to take this lady over to the ER to be checked out.

  “What happened here?” Morgan asks, nodding over to the sofa where a man is sitting with his head between his knees. “Are you alright, sir?”

  He doesn’t answer at first, so I move a little closer. “Sir? What happened here?”

  “He’s fine,” the woman shouts from the kitchen. Morgan moves to stand between her and the man. “Don’t believe a word that dumbass says. He’s a fuckin’ liar!”

  The man jumps up from the couch, startling me enough for my hand to instinctively fly to my gun. “That bitch hit me over the head with a frying pan!”

  “I did not! Quit lying to the po-lice, you sorry piece-of-shit asshole! Lying to the po-lice is a felony, you moron!” She’s screaming so loud I feel like my eardrums are about to explode.

  Sure enough, there’s a frying pan lying in the middle of their shiny linoleum floor. The house is dated, but hey, at least it’s clean. Some of these domestics I respond to, I swear the house hasn’t been cleaned since the Reagan Administration.

  “Mrs. Talbot, how did that frying pan get on the floor?” I question. You know, the obvious question.

  “It fell off the counter,” she fires back, seething at me through clenched teeth. Like I’m really the enemy here! I thought I was responding to this call to save her ass from her drunk, violent husband.

  But as it is, she’s about six inches taller than him and probably outweighs him by fifty pounds. Maybe more. She is a very sturdy-looking lady, and the ire in her eyes is glowing like a volcano on the verge of eruption.

  “Mr. Talbot, do you have any injuries?” Morgan asks, turning her attention to the man. He has a scraggly brownish-gray beard, beady brown eyes and a wiry frame. Ironically enough, he’s wearing a wifebeater tee.

  “She hit me over the head with a fuckin’ frying pan!” he states again, for the record, I presume. “I have a pretty nasty ass bump on my head.”

  “I’ll check it out,” I announce, logical since I’m closer to him. I walk over, and he’s short enough that I can actually see the top of his head. Sure enough, there’s blood trickling out of a wound.

  Morgan can tell by the look on my face that what I’m seeing is a bonafide injury. “If you didn’t hit him with the frying pan, why does he have blood coming out of his head?” she asks Mrs. Talbot.

  Mrs. Talbot straightens the denim skirt she’s wearing. “He’s drunk. He fell and hit his head like he always does. That’s probably how he got to be such a dumb ass. I swear he wasn’t this big of a dumb ass when I married him!”

  I quickly shake my head at Morgan, alerting her that I don’t believe Mrs. Talbot’s story for a minute. “Mr. Talbot, we need to get that head wound checked out by a professional.”

  “No, no,” he says, backing away from me and rubbing his head with his palm. He pulls his hand down to his face, and there is blood on his fingertips. “I’ll be okay. But y’all need to lock her up. She assaulted me. Now that is an actual felony. Oh, and she lied about it too!”

  Fair enough. Everyone thinks they’re on freakin’ Law and Order when the cops are around.

  “You wanna take her in, and I’ll take him to the hospital?” Morgan asks.

  I vehemently shake my head. “No, I’ll take him. You deal with her.”

  She purses her lips as if she wants to argue with me, but before she can utter a word, I’m already ushering Mr. Talbot out of the house. At least I don’t trip over the step o
n my way out.

  I’m crossing my fingers that Brynne is working tonight. I don’t know how we managed to work opposite each other for so long, and then boom, now I see her every time I go in. I’m not complaining though. She’s a lot different than the women I’m usually attracted to, but there is something about a feisty redhead in a white coat that really gets me going.

  Or at least it did until she learned my secret.

  What kind of self-respecting tough guy cop writes children’s books? We all know that’s what she’s thinking.

  Literally no one knows I’m C.J. Evans. Not my best friend Drew, not my parents, who aren’t around here anyway. Not even my sweet grandmother in Florida who sends me a check for $10 every year on my birthday. None of the women I’ve dated have known.

  It’s going to be even harder to keep the secret moving forward because of that meeting I had in Baltimore last week. A certain unnamed children’s programming cable network wants to make an animated series with MY characters!

  It’s killing me that I can’t tell anyone. I’m just waiting for The Today Show and The New York Times to come calling. What am I going to do? I think I’m going to have to decline any big public appearances at least for the time being. But what if this thing totally explodes?

  I’m getting ahead of myself, I know.

  When I first hit publish on some doodles I’d done, I wasn’t expecting any sales. I printed out some copies and took them into the local bookstores, still not expecting a damn thing. Then I had an agent from New York send a message to my website—yep, I actually have a website, can you believe it?—offering representation as well as international distribution of my cute little menagerie of animal characters, and I said yes. And now said agent is negotiating the terms of my contract with a cable company. It’s completely unbelievable.

  My head is still swimming through the endless sea of possibilities when we arrive at the ER. I’ve been glancing in the backseat every thirty seconds or so to make sure Mr. Talbot isn’t dozing off on me. That wouldn’t be advisable with a head injury—he could have a concussion. It’s a change for me to bring the husband in for DV instead of a woman, but you just never know what you’re going to come across on this job. It’s full of surprises.

  I spot her walking out of a curtained room, a clipboard tucked under her arm and her stethoscope bouncing against her ample chest with each step. It was amazing getting to see her out in the wild the other night in Dewey. She was wearing a lowcut blouse—a far cry from the conservative button-ups and white coats she’s been wearing every other time I’ve seen her. It was my first time seeing her with her hair down and glasses off too.

  I have a bit of a confession. I’ve been looking at that photo Lindy took of Brynne and me together—the one for the hazard in pub golf. Not obsessively, mind you. But you know, I’ll pull up my text messages to send something to Drew, and it’s right there in our text history, kind of hard to miss. Anyway, it’s kind of hard to deny that we look good together. Even if we are standing a whole foot apart.

  Tonight she’s wearing the glasses just like she was yesterday in Bethany, but her hair is loose and shiny against her shoulders. She actually walks up to me, pulling me out of my thoughts about what a cute couple we make in that photo. Oh, she’s already going to give me a hard time about the writing gig. I can just tell by her expression. Great.

  “So, you’re C.J. Evans,” she accuses, piercing me with her deep chocolate brown eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” I don’t know why, but I decide to play dumb. Hey, even the best cops make stupid split-second decisions sometimes. But I’m a terrible liar. Like a really, really bad liar, and I’m already smirking by the time I finish the sentence.

  “My niece loves your books,” she says, “but really? Children’s author? I’m still kind of wondering if I imagined the whole thing.”

  She steps closer to me. “And your eyes aren’t that color, that fake blue-green color—what were you wearing, contacts?”

  Busted again. “But you wear contacts too,” I retort.

  “Yeah, to correct my vision. Not to change my eye color!” she scoffs. “That was pretty much the lamest disguise I’ve ever seen. I hope DSP doesn’t ever put you undercover, because that has fail written all over it.”

  “Are you quite done?” I question, glaring at her. I know I’ve irritated her a time or two, but she is more than making up for it now.

  “Listen, is there somewhere we can talk about this for a minute?” I ask. “Can you take a break or something?”

  “Did you bring a patient in here?” She completely ignores my invitation to chat.

  I nod. “Yeah, he’s behind curtain number three. Domestic. Head versus frying pan. Possible concussion and probably needs stitches.”

  She purses her lips. “I better check it out. Sounds painful.”

  “Yeah, no doubt. There was a lot of blood, so I couldn’t tell how deep the wound was.”

  “That’s always fun. I’m sure the nurse is cleaning him up now.” She pulls the curtain aside, and sure enough, one of the male nurses is dabbing Mr. Talbot’s head with an alcohol wipe while the patient squirms and curses. Can’t blame him at all for that.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Miller,” she tells him, putting a rather decided emphasis on the word “doctor.” I have a feeling that was more for my benefit than the patient’s. “Let’s take a look at this wound, okay?”

  He nods, still wincing from the nurse finishing up his last pass. Brynne steps closer to the man, towering over him with her statuesque frame. It appears he’s trying to look down her shirt, and I clear my throat, letting him know I’m watching him. He snaps his gaze to mine as she finishes her evaluation.

  “Yep, we need a few stitches here. And probably a CT scan for good measure. Are you having any vision problems? Headaches?”

  “Uh, I got hit with a frying pan. Of course I have a headache,” he mumbles as Brynne directs him to follow a light from one side to the other.

  She looks a bit concerned at the way his eyes are moving, and a frown curls her lips downward. “Let’s get those stitches taken care of first.” She nods to the nurse, who immediately goes to get a suture kit from the cabinet. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere!”

  She’s still smiling at her joke when she pokes her head out of the curtain and notices me just standing there, waiting.

  “So, can you grab a cup of coffee while Mr. Talbot gets his stitches and CT scan?” I look up at her with hope in my eyes. I’m a little embarrassed she noticed the contacts…

  “Can you wait? I have to do the stitches.”

  The idea of her poking a needle through the skin on this guy’s skull makes me woozy. And I’ve got a pretty strong stomach. I gulp down the sour taste in my mouth and nod.

  A few minutes later, she emerges again from the exam room. She sighs with a long, dramatic eye roll. “Okay, Corporal Everson, let’s make it snappy. I have lives to save, you know!”

  I laugh at her. “You can call me Chris, you know. I heard we’re going to be paired together at Sonnet and Drew’s wedding.”

  “Yes, about that,” she begins to lead me down the hallway toward the lounge, “I’m hoping I can do a special favor for Sonnet so she’s indebted to me, and then I can ask her to rearrange the bridal party.”

  “Wow, you’d do that just to avoid me?” I didn’t realize how deep her dislike for me ran. I thought it was all just friendly bantering—like we’re frenemies, not real, honest-to-god arch rivals.

  “No, Chris, I’m just teasing,” she says. “Geez, you can take a joke, can’t you? I mean, you write children’s books. Surely you’re not that serious of a person?”

  “Right. So about that.” I swallow down my nerves, trying to figure out the best way to ask her to keep the cat firmly inside the bag. Just thinking of that expression causes a sudden pang to my heart as I remember that Tubbs never came back. I’m going to have to get Crockett a new partner in crime.

  The lo
unge is vacant at this time of night, for which I am grateful. I step over to the coffee pot and grab two mugs from the drying rack beside the sink. Maybe if I pour her coffee she’ll be less hostile toward me?

  “How do you take it?” I flash her the most charming smile I can muster.

  “Black,” she retorts, “as black as my soul.”

  I think she’s joking, but when my eyes meet hers, they are as stoic as can be. “Alrighty then.” I dump some creamer and sugar into my coffee and head over to join her where she’s already settled down in one of the plastic chairs.

  “Look,” I begin, stirring the coffee again and again, even though it’s fully mixed at this point in time, “no one knows I write children’s books, okay?”

  “Welp, they do now!” There’s a glare on her glasses from the harsh overhead lighting, but I am pretty sure I see a mirthful glint in her dark eyes.

  “What do I have to do to convince you not to say anything to Sonnet and Drew—or the rest of the bridal party, for that matter?”

  She takes a long, teasing sip of her coffee as she stares at me, her eyes locked on to mine. I try to read them, to figure out what she’s thinking. I am used to looking into people’s eyes and trying to predict what they’re going to say, do. I’ve had entire training sessions JUST on reading people’s eyes, how to tell when they’re lying or crazy or innocent. But none of that training is giving me a damn bit of aid in deciphering what is going on in those glittering orbs of hers.

  “Why? Why keep it a secret?” she finally asks in lieu of an answer.

  I take a deep breath, my chest tightening against my bulletproof vest. It feels heavy all the sudden. My entire uniform, gun belt and badge feel like they’re weighing me down, anchoring me to the floor. “I am pretty sure everyone will give me a really hard time.”

  “So?” She looks at me quizzically. She legitimately doesn’t understand.

  “You really don’t get it, do you? Don’t you have anything in your life that’s in direct opposition to your…you know…your persona? I mean, you’re a doctor. What if you smoked? Or did drugs? What if you ate bacon-wrapped bacon for every meal?”