Page 17 of Ridin' Solo
Fuck. Me.
Oakley teasing me back would be front and center next time I did the four-knuckle shuffle. And based on my current pants situation, that would be right after I got home tonight.
8
Oakley
I climbed into the cruiser and blew out a huge breath. Leaning back against the seat, I rolled my head over to see Wyatt. Even though he kept it short, his hair was in a mess and his chest still heaved from the exertion. I couldn’t imagine my hair looked much better. That last call had been a doozy, one that made me glad I had a partner. It had taken both of us to subdue and arrest the guy. While we wouldn’t know until tomorrow when the toxicology report came in, I’d guess the guy had been on something illegal to be that strong.
“You good?” I asked Wyatt, genuinely concerned since he’d taken most of the beating before I got handcuffs on the guy.
He hitched his lips to the side and glanced over at me. “Nothing a little ibuprofen and an ice pack can’t take care of.”
I smiled and lifted my head, ready to head back to the station and clock out for the day. “You did good out there.”
I could feel Wyatt looking at me as I drove. Sure, I didn’t hand out compliments regularly, but there was no need to stare at me like I’d grown an extra head.
“Thanks, Oakley. You’re not so bad yourself. If I may be so bold, we make a great team.”
Suppressing the smile I felt at his comment, I thought now would be a good time to ask him those questions I’d been musing over in my brain the last few days. He was both tired and happy to be going home. Maybe he’d have loose lips. Not that I was thinking about his lips.
“Was it nice to see your old pal, Ben?”
A flickered glance over to Wyatt showed him frowning. “Ben?”
“Yeah. The guy we didn’t arrest at that warehouse? The one where you got that scratch?” I nodded toward his forearm where a nice red line ended at his watch.
He inhaled through his nose and took his time answering me. “Not really. He wasn’t a close friend. Just someone I knew awhile back.”
I nodded. “He seemed pretty stunned that you’re in law enforcement. Why would that be?”
Wyatt let out a sigh that sounded more frustrated than tired. “I don’t know. Since we haven’t seen each other since we were kids?”
“Where d’you grow up?”
“What is this? Interrogation hour?” Wyatt shifted in his seat, staring straight out the windshield. “Do you mind if we just drop it? I’m kind of tired and in pain right now. Not really in the mood for chitchat.”
I felt bad for attacking him with questions, even as a sense of unease grew in my belly. Being evasive wasn’t doing much for making me feel like I could trust him. He was hiding something, and I wanted to know why. Successful partnerships required absolute trust.
“Okay,” I said quietly, letting it drop for now.
Mom’s leftover dinners had run out, and I was back to frozen meals with questionable protein sources. No matter, I still had some paperwork to do. Twenty minutes later and I couldn’t seem to focus. The words were blurring on the screen of my laptop as I stewed over Wyatt’s responses to my questions. I picked up my cell phone and typed in a search before I could talk myself out of it.
Wyatt Smith San Jose sheriff
My thumb flicked through the results, seeing absolutely nothing that would apply tomyWyatt Smith. Not that he was mine, per se, but you know what I mean. I tried more variations with different cities around California and nothing popped up. Wyatt Smith didn’t seem to exist digitally in the state of California before two years ago when he’d graduated from the academy, and I knew that was practically impossible. Everyone had an online footprint. The more I searched and came up empty, the angrier I got.
Who the hell was Wyatt and why was he lying about who he was? How could I go into work the next day and ride alongside him, knowing he wasn’t who he said he was?
I stood abruptly and threw my phone on the couch. I didn’t think about my pajamas, which consisted of a flimsy pair of cotton shorts and a camisole that had seen better days. Nor did it register that Crocs weren’t the best shoes to shove my feet into before I marched over to Wyatt’s house and demanded he tell me the truth.
I was simply on a truth-seeking mission and everything else didn’t matter.
So that’s how I showed up on his doorstep a few minutes later, banging on his door, righteous anger fueling me. The door swung open, showing a bare-chested Wyatt. His uniform pants were still on, minus the utility belt, but he’d taken his undershirt off before answering the door. His feet were also bare. My eyes instantly felt burned by the scorching glimpse of pectoral muscles dipping into boulders of shoulder muscles. And good Lord. The abs. A six-pack that melded perfectly into those little v-muscles by his hips. His skin was tan and smooth and something I desperately wanted to trail my fingertips across. He’d been hiding all that this whole time beneath ugly uniform shirts.
“My eyes are up here, Captain.”
My gaze jerked up to Wyatt’s smirking face. He held a towel around his neck, like I’d interrupted him right before he climbed into the shower. My well-trained eyes betrayed me and slipped back down his torso, my brain not quite ready to find words to answer him back. A spot of red on the left side of his ribs caught my attention.
