Page 59 of Cisco

“Nah. I’m going to go with my gut,” Cisco decided. If he was wrong, and Hilly took his backing-off on their touchy-feely moments as a rejection of some sort, he’d find a way to let her know she was still a person of interest to him—fascinating and adorable—without encroaching on her personal space.

He jumped to his feet.

Enough dissection of what might or might not be his future love life. He needed to talk about something else.

“Alvi called after my shift today,” Cisco let Welker know with a chuckle. “He’s been at camp all of eight hours, and he’s already like a cat in a yarn store; into everything. He’s been part of a canoe race, made a gimp lanyard for his keys, and started construction on a new obstacle for Hilly’s ropes course. Can you believe that shit?”

Welker grinned and stood, doing some cool-down stretches. “Should we tell Mason he might lose his team medic if he doesn’t put crafts on SWAT’s agenda?”

Cisco snorted. “Nah. I think Alvi will eventually get tired of camp life. You know he likes trolling the bars too much to be out of circulation for too long.”

Cisco thought for a moment, then scowled to himself. Out of circulation? Should he be worried that Alvero would make a move toward Hilly?

Hell, yes, he should. The man was a player. He’d have to warn Alvi, right away, that Cisco’s woman was off limits.

His woman. Yeah. Cisco liked the way that sounded.

Hitting the showers, rebandaging his chest, then putting on civvies, he and Welker parted ways with Cisco wondering how he’d fill the rest of his evening.

Welker, the fucker, knowing Cisco had been bitten by the romance-bug, hadn’t even bothered to ask him about hitting up a club. Not that Tuesday night was big for score-time, and Welk probably had classes, but the man would prowl eventually, as if he needed to keep that testosterone-filled part of his mind busy.

The more Cisco thought about it, the more certain he became that Welker had a thing for the pretty sheriff, and was trying to keep the woman from gaining space in his head.

Good luck with that.

Cisco’s brain was currently and constantly swamped with all things Hilly. He thought about her almost every minute of the day. He’d see a red head on the street, aaand…Hilly. He’d notice the sway of a certain type of hip, and yup, it was Hilly’s strut. He’d catch a whiff of a heady vanilla scent, and, fuck him, he immediately wanted to bury his face in whoever it was coming from.

Cisco glanced at his watch. It was meal-time at camp. Was there any excuse he could think of that would sound reasonable if he showed up there to eat? Dare he…?

Nope.

And that sucked.

Sure, he was scheduled to be there tomorrow at 1:30 for his class, but he wanted to see Hilly now.

Dammit. This whole getting-to-know-someone shit without stepping in doo-doo was a drag.

Cisco made one more, slow pass through town on his motorcycle before finally pointing its nose, west. Now that the time was close, he wasn’t wasting another minute. Cisco wasn’t even going home to change out of his leathers and breeches. He’d packed his saddlebags that morning with sweats and sneakers, and the RedMan suit he felt well enough to don today was already stashed in the equipment box inside the pavilion.

Cisco grinned. So what if he was going to be half an hour early?

It had felt like the longest freaking morning of his life, with nothing more than a lost dog on a frayed leash to fill his time. And that episode had taken practically no brains at all. He’d quickly found the frantic owner via social media, then reconciled the two; happy to see a brand-new leash in the owner’s hand, and witness the exuberant, doggy-kiss reunion between the two.

Cisco commiserated. He wished he could jump all over Hilly when he saw her again, letting his tongue do the talking as he licked her from head to toe, but at best she’d probably smack him on the nose with a rolled-up magazine, and at worst…she’d have him neutered.

When he came to the outskirts of the large camp parking lot, his heart rate kicked up in anticipation, but the last thing he’d expected was to see some kind of contentious meeting just outside its perimeters. There was Hilly, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, speaking angrily to a man who looked somewhat familiar.

Was that…?

Hell, yes. It was the pushy developer who’d made enemies of all Orono’s citizens. The man had bought up—at a rock-bottom price—a five-acre spread on the river just outside of town, from an elderly widow whom he’d clearly bamboozled. He’d then plowed down the semi-historic home that had sat majestically on the knoll for over a century, somehow gaining the needed permits to put up more townhouses on the land than zoning allowed.

Ugly-ass townhouses.

To say the people in town had been angry was an understatement, but they’d all thought—Cisco included—that the man had finally disappeared with his arrogant tail between his legs once his ill-gotten gains were in his pocket and he’d been marked as a pariah.

Cisco hated being wrong, but for him to find the douchebag confronting Hilly? Well, it made him see red.

He made no bones about tearing into the lot at a higher rate of speed than he normally would have, but he wanted to make himself known right away. If the man’s pissy-assed face was anything to go by, he was winding up to take a verbal hunk out of Hilly.

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