Page 43 of Time to Bounce

Though Pepper, my sister-in-law, was doing much better than she had been a few months ago, she still spent every day in pain.

“Okay, kid?” Dad asked, seeing the change overcome my face, I was sure.

We all adopted that look when we thought about how badly hurt Pepper had been.

I still remembered when that car had hit her. When she’d flown through the air. The sound of her body hitting the ground. The sickening thud of the car making contact with her body.

How my nephew, Forest, had cried out, and how my heart had physically ached at the sound.

I felt like I could still hear it in my nightmares.

I scratched my head. “Okay.”

“Good,” he stood up and handed me a stack of papers. “There’s a meeting in an hour in the conference room.”

Before I could ask him about the time off—something I was technically due—he was out the door and into another meeting in the conference room.

I went to follow, but then saw the mayor of Dallas sitting in the chair that Dad had just walked to.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I got up, sat in my dad’s chair, and wrote him a note.

I want a week off.

—Gable

I probably wouldn’t have put up such a fight had I known I would be working directly with a certain female I couldn’t get out of my head.

A female I hadn’t realized was home.

I narrowed my eyes at her as I walked into the room.

She glanced at me, then quickly glanced away, a pinched look crossing her face.

“Ladies,” I said to the room full of women. “How can I help?”

The meeting took three hours.

Dealing with twelve—though technically only eleven truly participated—women who all had differing opinions was tough at any time.

But when it came to their homes and their families, they all wanted to be heard.

I wondered how Athena had gotten herself roped into this.

Her neighborhood—at least the one she was living at last I knew—wasn’t in an area that was on the neighborhood watch list Dad and a few others had created in order to help higher crime areas.

The one she was representing was one that I’d never known she had any connection to.

“All right,” I said as I gathered up the papers with notes I’d taken. “Our first order of business is to plan those National Night Out parties. Any and all police representation you want at these parties is granted by DPD.”

They all stood, some filtering out of the room, while others hung back and chatted.

Meanwhile, the one who was doing her best to escape without talking to me was one of the first out of the room.

I followed behind with a silent swiftness that had her thinking she was getting away, completely ignoring the rest of the women as I went.

Only when we were about to pass my brother Quaid’s, office, did I catch her arm and pull her into it with me. Closing the door, I whirled her around and pressed her against the door.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come home for days,” I tried to say as calmly as possible. “I’ve come by your brother’s house four and five times a day, and you haven’t been there.”

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