Page 40 of Smitten with the Single Dad

“I’ll text Danya and let her know we might be a little late,” he said, pointing to his white Toyota Tacoma parked in front of his house. “But we shouldn’t be gone long.” He punched in a quick message to the hairdresser before pushing the start button on his truck then backing out of the driveway and rumbling down to the gate. “Can you describe the vehicle?” He punched in the code for the gate and it swung open.

She nodded. “I memorized the license plate.”

“Clever. Well done.”

Ooh, his praise should not be making her feel the way she was feeling. Especially not in such a dire and dangerous moment. But dammit, it made her hot.

“What is it?” he asked.

She swallowed, focusing on the road and not the way his big hands gripped the steering wheel, or the way the cords in his arms bunched and bulged as he turned the wheel. “Uh … it was a nondescript, gray sedan with tinted windows all around, and the license plate was ‘8T9-R5J.’”

“Fantastic. They’ll find the fucker with that information for sure.”

She exhaled. “I hope so.” Because if they didn’t, she’d be more of a prisoner here than ever. Someone out there—presumably hired by Wyndham Croft—wanted her dead now that she refused to take the settlement. She wasa sitting duck. A sitting duck in a cozy, friendly nest of other ducks she didn’t want to see get hurt in the crossfire. Maybe she needed to leave.

A quick glance at Wyatt’s profile, and his strong jaw and the way his glasses sat on his nice—slightly pointed—nose.

She should leave. But dear god, she really didn’t want to.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rage vibrated through Wyatt as he pulled into the parking lot of the San Camanez Island police station. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to come after Vica?

Someone with a fucking death wish, that’s who.

His trigger finger twitched as he shut off his truck. Not a lot of people knew this about Wyatt—well, besides his brothers of course—but he’d been a sniper in the marines. And a really fucking good one too. He had a steady hand and up until about seven years ago, perfect twenty-twenty vision. But after an explosion on his last deployment, his eyesight started to decline and seven years ago, he was forced to get glasses and contacts.

“Just wait in here,” he said to Vica, hoping out of the cab and walking briskly around the front of the truck to open her door. He didn’t like the idea of her not being protected at all times. Threats were everywhere, and if there was some sadistic fucker out there willing to run her off the road, then who knew the lengths they were willing to go to. There could be a goddamned man in a tree with a gun pointed at them right now.

You’re becoming paranoid. How would they know you were here?

He couldn’t answer that. But his intuition, his Spidey-Sense was rarely everwrong. Vica was in danger, that much he was certain.

What the person after her hadn’t anticipated though, was that they’d have to go through Wyatt to get to her first.

He shielded her as best he could as he escorted her to the front door, doing a cursory glance around the area before following her into the building.

“Hey, Maude,” he said to the receptionist behind the desk. “We need to file an incident report. Who’s around?”

“Duane and Dan are here right now. Myla just left on a call about an unsanctioned burn on the north side. Everett is off.”

Wyatt grumbled. “How long ago did Myla leave?”

“We’ve been serving and protecting far longer than Ms. Bruce,” came the voice of an entitled man with zero redeeming qualities. It was men like Duane and Dan that made Wyatt really hate his kind—white men. Duane Fischer stood in the doorway, half of a ham sandwich in his hand and a glop of mustard at the corner of his mouth. “What happened now?” The way he said “now” had Wyatt seeing red. He had to bunch his hands into fists and grind his molars nearly to nothing in order to not haul off and smack the cop.

“Someone tried to run Vica over this morning. She was out for a walk and they were clearly gunning for her.”

Officer Fischer’s brows rose ever so slightly. “Maybe they were just trying not to hit a squirrel. Or avoid a pothole.”

“Or kill me,” Vica said. “I was there. There was no squirrel or pothole. They drove onto the shoulder and sped up. I had to jump into the ditch to avoid being hit.”

The cop’s eyes traveled her body. “You don’t seem any worse for wear.”

“That’s not the fucking point,” Wyatt spat out, which earned him some real hiked brows from the cop now. He didn’t care. “The point is that she was out for a walk, and someone tried to hit her with their car. She has the license plate number, and can recall the make and model.”

Fischer calmed down just a bit. “Okay, what is it?”

“Shouldn’t you be writing this shit down?” Wyatt asked. “Like isn’t there a form?”

---