Page 33 of Protected By the Grumpy Single Dad
I stack cinnamon rolls into neat little pyramids and try not to picture Asher’s steady hands, or his voice when he saidplease, or the way my name sounded like it landed somewhere soft when he said it earlier. My head is a very inconvenient place to live today.
“I’ll lock the back,” I tell Riley. “And I’ll sleep here if I have to.”
“You’ll sleep at my place,” she says. “I have a dog with a bark that could wake the dead and a neighbor who thinks he’s a vigilante because he owns a flashlight. We’re untouchable.”
I laugh, because Riley can make me do that even when the world wobbles. “Deal.”
She slides off the stool and snags a lemon bar. “Nora’s in until five. I’ll swing by after dismissal. We’ll get the papers, we’ll highlight in aggressive colors, we’ll drink coffee and make a list of everything Harold Swanson underestimates about women with good shoes.”
“Add men with badges who don’t run,” I say before I can stop myself.
Her smile turns feline. “Oh?”
“Go back to work,” I tell her, shooing. “You smell like kid.”
She blows me a kiss, swipes two cookies, and glides out in a blaze of green.
When the door shuts and I’m alone with the hum of the fridge and the chirp of the bell settling back on its hook, I press my palms to the counter again. The laminate warms under my skin. Through the front window, Brime Street looks ordinary—the kind of ordinary people move to Golden Heights to own.
Not on my watch.
I flip the OPEN sign to CLOSED for twenty minutes, check the back door lock, and pull flour from the bin. If a certain sheriff shows up to take a statement later, he’ll find scones. For his kid, obviously. Not because my stomach did anything stupid when he looked at me. Not because his “please” turned my bones into something unreliable.
Scones are for healing.
The fight is for me.
Chapter eleven
Asher
Jasmine Wallace.
Jasmine freaking Wallace.
Something about her gets under my skin. The sass. The certainty. The way she talks like the only two settings in life are “stop” and “go” and I’m somehow the yield sign in the middle. I tell myself it’s professional irritation. It feels a lot like personal.
“Dad!” Brick calls from the dining room. “I can’t find the other sock.”
I finish swapping my uniform for jeans and a gray henley tee, drop my utility belt in the closet safe, and lock my service weapon. When I step out, Brick’s at the table with a bowl of cereal and the sock in question draped over the chair beside him like it crawled there to die.
“You sure you don’t want to bring the crutches?” I ask.
“No,” he says. The word lands flat.
He was excited last night. Couldn’t stop talking about seeing friends and how Mrs. Milly always smells like oranges and books. Now he’s all edges and silence. That’s new. And wrong.
“You okay?” I try, casual.
He shrugs. “I’m fine.”
The world’s two least helpful words. I let it go—for now. You push Brick when he’s like this and he turtles. Then nobody wins.
“Eat a few more bites,” I say. “Fuel.”
He pokes the cereal as if the concept is offensive.
I clear dishes, check the locks, and not think about Jasmine’s macho comment looping through my head. I wasn’t trying to impress her. I was doing my job. But the way she said it… like she wanted to believe the worst of me because it helped her believe the best of herself.
