Page 19 of Protected By the Grumpy Single Dad
When I told him to name anything and I’d get it, I expected milkshakes or pizza the size of a manhole cover. Scones feels… British. Also, gentle. I grab my keys from the cup holder by the door.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I tell him, pointing like that ever helped.
He rolls his eyes. “Haha.”
I grin despite the knot in my chest and step into the heat. It’s been a week since the fall. The first two days of beeping monitors, paperwork, and me pretending to breathe normally while the kid who keeps me anchored slept through half of it.He’s home now; the color’s back in his face. He’s hungry. For scones.
I back out of our cul-de-sac and merge onto the narrow ribbon of road that passes for a freeway here. I can still hear Melissa Edwards saying in that steady voice of hers:We do all we can to protect our children, and sometimes the world tips anyway. That’s when they learn to protect themselves.It landed in me like a nail finding wood. Melissa’s tough enough to argue with a thunderstorm and still the chemo wears her down. If she can keep her chin up, I can survive a bakery run.
I pull into the town’s big grocery—the one with more square footage than its parking lot deserves—and step into a blast of overachiever air-conditioning. If Brick’s going to be home a lot these next couple weeks, maybe I should look into better locks, better cameras. Or maybe I should just be home more. Radical concept for a sheriff.
I grab a basket out of habit, even though I’m here for exactly one thing. Aisles glow under humming fluorescents; a handful of shoppers do the slow dance of indecision. I pretend to be a normal person reading labels instead of a man who will move heaven and earth for a scone.
I’m rounding into bakery when I see her.
Jasmine Wallace. Bent over a lower shelf, studying the fine print on a carton like it owes her money. Red hair bright under the lights. White T-shirt tucked into high-waisted jeans like she’s daring gravity to try her.
My feet pause of their own accord. Then move, fast, in the opposite direction—toward dairy, toward anything that isn’t that particular kind of trouble. I scan shelves that do not contain scones and pretend not to feel the tightening in my jaw.
“Excuse me,” I ask the cashier at the express lane, “where do you hide scones?”
“Pastry aisle, third over,” she says, pointing to the exact place I fled.
Perfect.
I return with the humility of a man about to lose an argument, find the scones in a plastic clamshell nestled between muffins and something pretending to be croissants, and drop them into my basket like they might explode.
Then I turn—and almost run into Jasmine.
“Oh, for the love of…” I exhale. We stop, both of us still, the aisle narrowing until it’s just her and me and a shelf of bread that suddenly feels like an audience.
She’s the first to recover. “Really?” she says, eyebrows up. “That’s it? No hello? Not even a hi?”
“I don’t have time for this,” I say, because if there’s a version of this conversation that ends calmly, I haven’t found it yet.
“Oh, great.” She crosses her arms. “Because Ms. Hartley is going ahead with the rig. Maybe you’ll sleep great tonight knowing you helped stamp out anyone who dared protest.”
Scones are heavier than you’d expect. “Are you saying if I hadn’t arrested you, she wouldn’t have done the thing she’s legally permitted to do?”
“Yes,” she fires back, chin lifted. In the overhead light I can see the flush rising on her cheeks, high and angry.
“You really think you could have stopped her?”
“No. But I would have tried.” Her voice edges up; mine follows.
“By ‘tried,’ you mean ‘trespassed on her porch with a bullhorn.’”
“If that’s what it takes to keep our town from being carved up, then yes.”
“Jasmine,” I say, working hard to keep it level, “she has the paperwork. If she’s in compliance, nobody—nobody—can shuther down. Not me. Not you. Not a hundred signs with glitter letters.”
Her eyes spark. “Nothing about my signs is funny.”
“Didn’t say funny,” I mutter. “Said ineffective.”
Her breath stutters. For a heartbeat, something softer flickers under the heat—hurt, maybe—but it’s gone as fast as it came. “Are you really that cold?”
“I’m really not in the mood to argue in front of the bran muffins,” I say, rubbing at the bridge of my nose. It’s not working; she keeps going.
