Page 1 of Protected By the Grumpy Single Dad
Chapter one
Jasmine
The deputy’s grip cinches around my wrists, cold steel biting just enough to remind me I’ve lost this round.
“Easy there, Sheriff,” I say, aiming for breezy even though my heart’s still hammering from the protest. “I’m cuffed, not sprinting for the border.”
He doesn’t so much as glance at me. Tall, broad-shouldered, all pressed tan uniform and zero patience. The new guy, I’d heard. Golden Heights’ shiny sheriff, come to clean up our dusty little town.
Figures I’d be his first arrest.
“I told you to leave the property,” he says, voice deep and clipped. “You didn’t.”
“It’s calledpeaceful protest,” I shoot back as he steers me toward the cruiser parked at the edge of Mr. Jameson’s oversized driveway. “Key wordpeaceful.”
“Key wordtrespassing.” He opens the back door with the kind of calm that makes my teeth clench.
I glance back at the handful of neighbors who bolted the second those red-and-blue lights hit the driveway. Cowards. “You know, Sheriff…?” My eyes flick to the embroidered patch on his chest: A. Vaughn. “What’s the A stand for?”
He meets my gaze for half a beat. Blue eyes. Beautiful, but cold.
“Arrested,” he says flatly, guiding me into the back seat.
I huff a laugh in spite of myself. Okay, that was… unexpectedly funny.
The cruiser smells like sun-baked vinyl and stale coffee.
A scuffed youth hockey stick leans against the passenger seat, its tape frayed and dusty — a quiet clue that the new sheriff’s a dad. Huh.
“You’ve got a kid?” I ask, nodding toward the stick.
Nothing. Not even a twitch of acknowledgment as he slides behind the wheel.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” I keep my tone casual, but I’m studying him in the rearview: strong jaw shadowed with stubble, dark hair gone shaggy at the edges, a faint scar — or birthmark? — above his right eye. “No one around here drives a cruiser like they own it unless they’re trying to make an impression.”
Silence. The man’s a brick wall.
“So… where from? Texas? Alabama? Florida?” I prod.
Still nothing.
“Man of mystery, huh?”
Finally, without looking back, he says, “You know, staying quiet might actually help you right now.”
“Bold strategy, Sheriff Vaughn.” I grin at the mirror. “Arrest the local baker and tell her to shut up.”
That earns me a flicker of a look — quick, assessing, gone again.
I settle against the seat as the desert highway unspools outside. Mesquite trees flash by. My wrists ache against thecuffs, but I’m too stubborn to shift. “For the record,” I say, “your shiny new oil-money buddy back there is trying to buy up half of Golden Heights. Some of us think maybe our town shouldn’t be sold off to the highest bidder. He’s already got a local in his corner. Loretta Hartley has the money and clout to slip her real estate business into a land grab operation under his umbrella.”
“Imagine that,” he mutters.
Not exactly support, but not total dismissal either. Progress?
“You really don’t care why I was there?”
“My job’s to keep the peace,” he says, still calm. “Not pick sides.”
