Justice for Mackenzie (3 page)

“You can’t call her out of the blue and ask her out, Dax.”

“Why not?”

“She’s gonna think you’re a stalker.”

“No, she won’t.”

“Besides, it’s against the law for me to give it to you, and you know it.”

Dax tried to smile at his friend charmingly. “Come on, man. Please? I never got her name at the thing the other week, but I think it’s fate that you pulled her over tonight. I had no way of finding her before, but now I do.”

“You have it bad.”

Dax just kept smiling.

“Oh all right, but if I get in trouble, I’m siccing the review board on your ass.”

“Cool.”

“Jesus, I feel like a dating service. She really got to you, huh?”

“Yeah. There’s just something about her. I’m not sending out wedding invitations. Hell, I’m not even saying I want to date her. But I’m interested enough to call her up and see if anything comes out of it.”

TJ started the car and, after looking both ways to make sure no cars were coming, did a U-turn in the road and headed back the way they were going before pulling Mackenzie over.

“Ready for food?” TJ was obviously trying to change the subject.

“Oh, hell yeah. Think you can avoid pulling anyone else over in the next thirty minutes so we can actually get something to eat?”

“Funny guy.”

Dax smiled. He loved being part of the brotherhood of law enforcement. It didn’t matter that he was a Texas Ranger and TJ was a Highway Patrol officer. Law enforcement was law enforcement and they all worked together on cases. Neither he nor TJ had ever been married, and they liked it that way. Dax knew it was tough to be married to a cop and he hadn’t been able to find a woman who could handle it yet. At forty-six years old, he figured he never would. He mentally shrugged. He didn’t care. He had his career and his friends. Life was good.

But for the first time in a really long time, he was excited about the prospect of a date. He hadn’t lied to TJ. There was something about Ms. Mackenzie Morgan that got to him. He hoped he could find out what it was and either get it out of his system, or see where it could lead.

“Pedal to the metal then. Let’s go eat.”

Mackenzie sighed heavily as she made her way up to her apartment. Getting pulled over was the icing on the cake to a very long, craptastic day. She couldn’t believe she’d been so lost in her head she’d been going twenty miles over the speed limit. Thank God the officer decided to give her a warning instead of a ticket.

After opening the door, Mackenzie slipped her keys back into her purse and dumped it on the small table in the entryway. She shut and locked the door, then hung her coat on the hook on the wall in the small hallway.

She then kicked off her shoes and padded down the hall to her living room. Mackenzie collapsed on her sofa, put her head back, and closed her eyes. Damn, she was glad to be home.

The day had started out all right. Mackenzie had arrived at work with plenty of time to spare and settled into her chair at her desk. She’d had a lot of paperwork to reconcile after the charity event, even weeks later, and had been well into it when her horrible boss had called her into her office.

Nancy Wood was one of a kind. She was around four inches taller than Mackenzie, but was about thirty pounds lighter. She was scary skinny. Not only that, but her hair was long and black, like down-to-her-butt long. It swished around her as she walked because she refused to wear it up or braid it. With her hair, her pointed nose, and long face, Nancy was an odd looking woman. She never smiled and loved ordering everyone in the office around. Everyone made fun of her behind her back and called her the “wicked witch of the SAC.”

The woman thought she was much more important than she really was. Nancy had spent two hours going over the spreadsheets of the donations they’d received and the money that had been spent. It drove Mack crazy because ultimately the finances were her responsibility. She hated having her boss double-check her work as if she was a fifth grader.

Not long after she’d finally gotten out of the meeting with her boss, the phone rang. It was her mom wanting to invite her over for an impromptu family dinner.

Mackenzie loved her mom and her brothers, but they simply didn’t understand her. First they’d started on her choice to live in an apartment instead of buying a house. She knew at her age she should have probably bit the bullet and invested in a property by now, but she liked living in an apartment. She liked being able to call the manager when something went wrong and not have to deal with it herself. She wasn’t very handy, so it was nice that she could put the responsibility for fixing whatever was wrong on someone else. Mackenzie was also especially grateful she didn’t have to worry about any kind of yard work.

Nevertheless, every time she got together with her family—every single time—they harped on her for being thirty-seven and unmarried. It wasn’t that Mackenzie didn’t want to be married; she just hadn’t found someone who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

She sighed. Mackenzie knew she was picky. It wasn’t a secret. Every time she thought she’d found the perfect guy, he’d do something or say something to make her reconsider. Then she’d grab hold of that one little thing and eventually it would grow bigger and bigger and she’d become more and more discontent and the relationship would end. Mackenzie’s best friend, Laine, told her all the time she was like Seinfeld, finding stupid reasons to dump men. Most of the time her relationships would end with the man throwing up his hands in disgust and walking out the door.

Mackenzie wasn’t an idiot; she knew it was her fault for nitpicking the men she dated to death and making them not want to stay, but she had no idea how to stop. And if a little voice inside her wanted the man to stay despite her being a bitch, she’d never admit it.

She had some bad habits, she knew it, but she didn’t think they were horrible enough for a guy to break up with her over them. One boyfriend told her he thought her habit of rambling on and on was cute, but toward the end of their relationship, he’d admitted it was embarrassing for him when she said whatever she was thinking around others with no filter, and that if she ever wanted to keep a man, she’d better rein that in. Jerk.

She recalled the conversation she’d had tonight with her brothers. They’d been unusually blunt with her, and their words had struck home all the more because Mackenzie knew they were right on most counts.

“Mack, what do you expect a guy to do when you’re going at him every day for stupid shit? Take it? No way.”

“But Mark, if he loved me, he’d see how upset I am and change.”

“I love you, sis, but no. First of all, I’ve heard you complain about how the men you date want you to change some of the things you do, so I don’t see how you can stand there and say that if someone loved you, they wouldn’t ask
you
to change, but you can turn around and bitch that
he’s
not doing things the way you think he should. You can’t expect a guy to alter the way he does the dishes, for Christ’s sake, just because you want him to put the plates in the dishwasher one way and he does it another. It’s ridiculous. You’re
looking
for ways to push them away and you harp on them over and over until they decide you’re just not worth it.”

Mackenzie lowered her head. She knew Mark was right. Then Matthew had started in on her.

“Seriously, I’ve seen the way you are with them. Remember that one Thanksgiving when we all had to sit around and listen to you bicker with…whatever his name was? It was crazy. You wouldn’t let anything go. Hell, the man couldn’t even sit and watch football without you telling him he was doing it wrong.”

Mackenzie’s mom joined in as well. “All we’re saying, sweetie, is lighten up. You’ll never find a guy who’s perfect. You just have to learn to give a little more when you’re in a relationship.”

Mackenzie sighed and grabbed the pillow next to her on the couch, held it to her stomach, and buried her face in it. She was such a headcase. She didn’t know why she was this way…strike that, she did, but she hated to admit it to herself, or anyone else. Her first real adult boyfriend had done the exact same thing to
her
, nitpicked everything she’d done, and apparently, she’d committed everything he’d done to memory and decided it was how relationships were supposed to work. It was a self-fulfilling prophesy apparently, because every man she’d dated since that first man, she’d done the same thing to. Nitpicked stupid little things he did, until he got fed up and left.

Mackenzie knew it was stupid, knew
she
was being stupid. Her brother was right, it didn’t really matter if a man left his shoes in the closet, or on the bathroom floor. But now that she was used to doing things the way
she
thought they should be done, it was hard to stop. Hell, her mom had told her often enough that she’d been an extremely stubborn child, now she was a stubborn adult.

But she was a romantic. Always had been. As a kid, she’d made her mom buy her every Disney movie and she’d watched them over and over.
Cinderella
,
Snow White
…it didn’t matter. As long as the fairy princess ended up with the prince, Mackenzie had loved it. It’d probably skewed her thinking.

Mackenzie turned her mind from her family—as well-meaning as they were, they still depressed her—and back to the incident on her way home.

She’d been horrified when she’d been pulled over. Mackenzie was a good girl, never had even a parking ticket before, so being pulled over was not a fun experience. She’d been speeding because she wanted nothing more than to get home and into some comfy clothes and relax.

The police officer had actually been very nice, all things considered. He’d taken her license and registration and she’d felt humiliated waiting for him to come back and give her a ticket. Of course she’d babbled on and on to him. She even saw him laughing with the man who’d been in the car with him.

Mackenzie had glanced into her rear-view mirror and watched as the officer and whoever the man was sitting next to him laughed with each other. She’d felt the blush rise on her face, hoping they weren’t laughing at her. But the other man was definitely good-looking. Mackenzie had always had a thing about men in uniform. There was just something about seeing a crisp shirt, a pressed pair of pants, a badge, and all the accoutrements that came with whatever the man’s profession was, that pushed her buttons.

She had no idea how tall the man in the passenger seat was, but he had dark hair and a nice smile. Mackenzie shook her head. Sad that that was all it took to get her interested.

Suddenly Mack sat up straight on the sofa and said out loud to her empty apartment, “Holy shit!”

The man in the car had been the Ranger she’d lusted after at the charity event!

At least she thought it was the same man. She couldn’t be sure, but she remembered how she’d talked about the event the other night with the officer outside her car and he’d mentioned he’d been there. If he was there, the man sitting next to him in his car most likely was too. It probably really
was
the man she’d briefly spoken to at the charity event.

She buried her face in her hands. How freaking humiliating. Great. Just great. This was all she needed on top of everything else that had happened today. Mackenzie had spilled her entire lunch in her lap when she’d misjudged the table and put her plate down too close to the edge. She’d always been a klutz and was constantly spilling and breaking things, as well as tripping over her own feet.

All in all, it’d been a shitty day and she hadn’t been able to stop the tears from falling while she’d waited for the officer to come back with the ticket she knew she deserved. He’d been very nice to her. Mackenzie didn’t have any excuses for speeding; she’d just wanted to get home and wasn’t watching how fast she was driving.

Getting a warning instead of a ticket had been one of the only good things about the day. Mackenzie took a deep breath. Thank goodness today was finally over. She got up off her couch and headed into her bedroom, not bothering to check the mail she’d picked up.

She stripped off her shirt, threw it into the laundry hamper and took off her bra, just dropping it on the floor where she stood. Her pants came next, along with her panties. Mackenzie walked naked into her bathroom, where she got ready for bed. It was early, but she didn’t care.

Mackenzie had always preferred to sleep naked. She had expensive fifteen hundred thread count sheets that felt smooth and silky next to her body. Mackenzie once had a boyfriend who chided her for her penchant to sleep without anything on, telling her she didn’t have the type of body that looked good naked and she’d be sexier if she covered it up with a nightie. She’d dumped his ass the next day. Fuck him.

Mackenzie knew she wasn’t beautiful, and that was okay. She wasn’t a troll, she had great legs, but she was too short to ever be considered classically pretty. She liked to eat, she liked her sweets and loved pasta and hated to work out as well. She’d never be stick thin, and that was perfectly all right with her. Rather than wishing to be thin, Mackenzie always wished to be taller instead. It was tiring always looking at people’s chests or necks instead of being able to look them in the eye. Not to mention the way men would try to look down any shirt she wore. Jerks. Mackenzie had also hated wearing heels, she was way too clumsy to pull off a sophisticated look in them, so she was stuck at her five feet four.

She climbed into her queen-size bed and under her comforter and fleece blanket and snuggled in for the night. Mackenzie didn’t bother picking up her e-reader to finish the romance she’d been reading. She wasn’t in the mood to read about how some lucky woman got her happy ever after with a hunk of a man…even if it was only fiction.

She closed her eyes, trying not to relive the day, and surprisingly fell asleep quickly. She dreamed of a dark-haired policeman backing her against a police car and leaning down to kiss her.