Need You for Keeps (3 page)

Sheila was sentenced to doodie duty at all Companion events—for the rest of her life.

“Not the men,” Estella said impatiently, narrowing her beady eyes on the calendar. “The dogs.”

“Oh.” That was an easy answer. “I didn’t, they picked me.” Which they had. Shay truly believed that each and every stray she rescued picked her—and in return she promised to find a family to love them.

“Then that’s false advertising,” Estella said, pointing to the tagline at the bottom of the cover, which read
WINE COUNTRY
’
S FINEST TAIL
.

“It’s just a marketing tool, Mrs. Pricket,” Harper said sweetly, scooting a little closer to Shay, which, for a girl who would rather leave the state than face a confrontation, was a big deal.

“No, it’s a lie! Because Foxy Cleopatra is the best tail in town,” the older woman snapped, and the tiny Pomeranian that sat at her owner’s feet started shaking.

Harper laughed.

Shay didn’t. She wanted to pick up the poor dog and cuddle her close. It was obvious that Foxy was terrified being in a sea of legs, and Estella’s tone was only amplifying the dog’s insecurities. But their conversation had caught the attention of Nora Kincaid, who slid closer. Nora was the kind of woman who made a business out of knowing everyone’s business, then posting it on her Facebook page—which had over ten thousand likes and was growing daily. And informing Estella of her lacking parenting skills with the town’s own paparazzo nearby wouldn’t help matters.

“Foxy Cleopatra came from two champion lines . . .” Estella paused to watch Nora pull her phone out of her purse, then turned so that Nora could catch her good side, should the Voice of St. Helena decide to start snapping and uploading pics. “And is, herself, a blue ribbon holder, and you didn’t once come to ask me if she’d like to be in the calendar.”

“And she is a wonderful dog.” A painfully shy and insecure dog who needed gentle reassurance, not a stroll through a forest of drunken legs. “But this calendar is for adoptable dogs.”

“Which explains why you only went as far as to search through that ark of misfits you have in your house.” An ark of misfits that had been a point of contention since the day Shay moved in. “You should clarify that for buyers.”

Then to ensure that everyone in line could hear, Estella raised her voice, which had Foxy cowering and Nora’s trigger finger bursting into action. “Because you can’t imply that you have the finest tail in all of wine country if you didn’t inspect all the tail wine country has to offer.” Estella turned back to look—right over Shay’s shoulder. “Isn’t that true, Deputy?”

Oh boy.
Shay didn’t have to turn to see which deputy was standing behind her—her nipples already knew. Jonah oozed enough testosterone and confidence that all he had to do was stand downwind and Shay’s hormones short-circuited.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jonah said without a hint of humor in his voice, but she knew he was laughing. “And I have it on good authority that a thorough search of the best tail in wine country has not been completed by Shay here.”

At that she turned to face him, completely ignoring how well he filled out his uniform. Or that his cuffs and more-than-impressive equipment were at eye level. Even his gun had swagger. She looked up and found those laser-sharp pools of blue aimed right at her.

So she aimed back. “I’ve inspected enough tail to know right away what a cause worth pursuing is and, more importantly, what is not.”

Estella, thinking Shay’s comment was directed at her dog, snatched up poor Foxy and stormed off, mumbling, “Wouldn’t know good tail if it bit you in the ass.”

Which was probably true, but Shay kept silent.

Jonah, however, let his gaze fall to Shay’s tail, which was sporting her best pair of shorts, and smiled. An arrogant smile that promised to deliver everything Shay could ever want, and more.

Only Shay had seen that smile enough to know that it lied.

People either wanted to control Shay or change her, and she had a feeling that the sweet sheriff fell into the former category. Sure, their chemistry was off the charts, and sleeping with Jonah Baudouin would most likely be a religious experience, but beneath all the swagger and upstanding small-town charm was a man who controlled his world. And Shay was done with being controlled.

“I stand by my earlier statement,” she said.

“Following your gut is important.” Jonah took in the hordes of women flapping their money in the air, pushing their way forward—and the pitchers of alcohol. “Like when it’s nagging you that the hostess probably doesn’t have a permit to sell wares in a public park or serve open containers.”

“I’m handing out calendars. For charity,” she argued, purposefully leaving out the alcohol part.

“Which requires a permit.” He leaned in close. “You got a permit, Shay?”

Yeah, that would be a big, fat, apparently illegal no. The way his hands went to his cuffs told her he’d figured it out. The way her body responded said she was crazy, which was the only explanation she could come up with for why she stood and held out her wrists in surrender. “You going to cuff me, Sheriff?”

“Deputy,” he corrected, looking as though he was contemplating it, and a whole lot more.

“Deputy,” she said with a smile. When he didn’t move to whip out the cuffs, she decided to change the topic. “And how is our favorite Great Dane?”

He remained locked and loaded, but his swagger faltered slightly. “Working on it, Trouble.”

“That wasn’t our deal,” she reminded him, ignoring the thrill of him giving her a nickname. “You said you’d handle it and I believed you.” Something Shay didn’t do lightly.

Trust was a hard concept for her. But for some reason with Jonah she’d been willing to give him a chance. She just hoped he didn’t turn out like all the other men in her life—a gigantic disappointment.

“Give me a few more days,” he said quietly.

Shay looked at the stack of calendars, each one getting her closer and closer to her dream, then back to his gun. “Only if you give me a few more hours here.”

“You’re serving alcohol without a permit,” he explained, but she could hear the hesitation waver in his voice.

“It’s grapefruit juice,” Shay said, and Jonah raised a brow.

She sat silent, letting that lie grow and grow until she felt the urge to reach up and touch her nose. “And other stuff,” she mumbled.

“It’s the other stuff that concerns me.” The cuffs clanked against his hip and Shay considered offering him some of that “other stuff.”

Personally, she thought Jonah could use a little loosening up—good cop with a touch of wild side was way more appealing than an uptight sheriff.

“If you arrest her, then you’ve got to take all of us in,” Clovis Owens, a portly woman in a Booty Patrol T-shirt, shouted.

“Grandma,” Harper warned, and when Clovis crossed her arms in outright defiance, she added, “Last time they took you in, I had to post five hundred bucks in bail.”

“A man should know better than to touch a lady’s cane without permission,” the older woman defended, then looked back at Jonah. “And you should know better than to think we are going anywhere without our man candy.”

That elicited a few supportive amens and a damn straight, and soon fifty wrinkled hands were fist pumping bills in the air in protest, all hollering, “We want”—double fist pump—“man candy.”

Jonah merely looked at the sky and let out a sigh. Shay noticed the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth and felt herself soften. Being a superhero was hard work, and Jonah worked harder than anyone she knew for his town.

“I’ll go without a fight as long as you promise me a hot cup of coffee. A latte, something decadent and sweet, not that crap you carry around,” she added, and that got a little smile out of him.

“As much as that would make my day, I’ll have to take a rain check.” She considered asking him if he’d ever call to collect, then thought better of it. With her bold life choices, not to mention her colorful past, the last person she should be spending time with was a no-frills-drip guy who carried a badge.

As though reading her mind, Jonah chuckled, then held a couple of bills of his own over his head, waving it at the crowd and silencing them. “My aunt is recovering from surgery as you all know.”

“Lucinda had those bunions removed,” Nora added, and the crowd bobbed their heads. “Nasty things.”

Jonah grimaced as though he’d gotten an up-close-and-personal look at those bunions and agreed. “The only way to keep her off her feet was if I promised to get her a calendar.”

“Such a nice man you’ve grown into, Jonah,” June Whitney, the town’s crocheting queen, said, fanning herself at the sight of Jonah flapping bills like he was about to take it all off for charity.

Nora moved even closer.

“So if you all won’t mind my snagging one,” he said to the crowd, then pinned Shay with his sharp gaze, “I’ll be on my way.”

“As long as you leave some for us and don’t arrest the girl,” June agreed.

He flashed that practiced smile that would secure him the race for sheriff, then handed Shay a couple of tens. “Deal.”

An excited hum vibrated through the crowd and Harper wisely started handing out calendars before the sheriff changed his mind.

“Thank you,” Shay said, picking up a calendar and, forgoing the discreet bag, handing it to him. “It almost makes up for locking me in a cage for days on end.”

“You locked yourself in that cage,” he corrected quietly, looking down at the cover—and a half-naked Deputy Warren—and shook his head. “And I’m sure you were released within fifteen minutes of my leaving.”

Ten. But he didn’t need to know that. “You didn’t even come back to check on me, so how would you know?”

“Because when I left I called Peggy and told her you were locked in.” Which explained why her boss had shown up on her day off. “Then I paid her twenty bucks to take her time getting there.”

“Well, you blew good money, Sheriff, because she let me right out.” She’d also brought Shay dinner and helped her spruce up Tripod for today, since he was the man of the hour.

That grin went full and he snatched back his twenty. “Good, then we’re even.” Without another word, Jonah collected every last drop of alcohol and headed back toward the sheriff’s department.

“That was interesting,” Harper said, adjusting her glasses to get a twenty-twenty on the sheriff’s retreating backside.

“Interesting?” Emerson said, coming up behind them. “Hell, that was verbal foreplay.”

“That
was police harassment,” Shay corrected.

“If that was harassment, then Deputy Hot Ass can harass me anytime he wants.” Emerson laughed.

“Deputy Tight Ass.” There was a difference, one Shay needed to remember. “And he just likes to annoy me.”

Truth be told, she liked when he chose to annoy her. It felt like flirting without all the pressure.

“So are you going to ask him to take it all off for charity?” Harper asked.

She already had. He’d turned her down. In retrospect it was a good thing, she thought, shuddering at the memory of the last guy she had gotten naked with.

There had been sex, which led to more sex, which led to feelings, and finally Lance moving in. Shay had thought it was a forever kind of situation. Turned out, Lance didn’t believe in forever all that much, although he did believe that half of everything Shay owned was his when he left.

“He’s not my type.”

“If you say so,” Harper said.

“I do,” Shay clarified.

“Then why are you still staring at his ass?” Emerson asked.

“Doing my due diligence and inspecting his tail.”

“Does it pass inspection?”

Shay looked at her friends and smiled. “Oh yeah.”

It was by far the finest tail Shay had ever seen.

A
week later, Jonah responded to a call at Valley Vintage, a senior community on the west side of St. Helena, and parked his cruiser behind the fire engine. It was nearly dusk, but he could still make out the perfect cut of steak and chilled six-pack sitting in the backseat. With one last look, he stepped out into the hot July air.

He made his way around the engine blocking the entrance to the complex, and when he saw his brother talking to a group of old ladies who weren’t even bothering to hide their ogling, he pulled a box of orange Tic Tacs from his pocket and popped one in his mouth. He had a feeling it was as close to dinner as he was going to get.

“Took you long enough,” Adam said, strolling over. He was three years younger, two inches taller, and one of the best smoke jumpers on the West Coast. Today, based on his dark blue work pants and a matching SHFD T-shirt, he was being an average fireman, rescuing cats from trees or some other BS, and had decided to rope Jonah in.

“That’s what happens when you call a man in on his day off,” Jonah said, thinking again about the steak he’d just picked up for dinner.

“You’re just pissy because you got suckered into spending it digging a trench for Mr. Barnwell.”

Actually, he was building a fence so Mr. Barnwell would retire the dog crate. And he was pissy because he was doing it to keep Shay Michaels out of trouble. The less chance for trouble, the less chance their paths would cross. A good thing considering every time he was around the woman she seemed to push every single button he owned—including the good ones.

“This had better not be another false alarm, Mr. July,” he said.

Ever since Adam landed the centerfold for the Cuties with Booties calendar, the number of female callers had tripled on the days that his brother worked. The weathered faces with bifocals dotting every window, looking their fill of St. Helena’s very own Mr. Smoking Hot only deepened Jonah’s suspicions.

“Don’t hate because you didn’t make the cut.”

Oh, Jonah had made the cut, and was even offered the cover, but posing in nothing but underwear with the department’s K-9 didn’t scream
respectable sheriff
. So he’d passed—and Shay had given the spot to Warren. Not that it had mattered, since Nora posted a photo of Jonah shaking his bills like a freaking stripper on her Facebook page last week.

“And I called because Giles is MIA,” Adam explained while sending a little wave to a group of senior ladies who were standing patiently with Sharpies in hand, calendars conveniently flipped to the center.

Jonah thought about the steak waiting in his car, begging to be grilled and paired with a baked potato and cold beer, and he sighed. Giles Rousseau was Valley Vintage’s most notorious escapee—he was also Jonah and Adam’s great-uncle on their mother’s side. On Tuesday nights he snuck out to watch the WWE Diva SmackDown on the jumbo screen at the local pub, on Friday it was to play a high-stakes game of Put Up or Shut Up in the basement of the hardware store,
and any other time it was to cause trouble with his buddies. “Call Warren, he’s the deputy on duty.”

“Already did.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Because when the nurse reported Giles missing, Deputy Dickwad told her he’d look into it. That was right after lunchtime.”

“And?” Giles always made it home by dinner.

“
And
we already checked the Spigot, the bocce ball court at the park, and the hard
ware store, thinking he might be playing a few hands of cards.” Adam shrugged. “No luck.”

“This nurse,” Jonah asked, taking in the leggy blonde sitting on the end of the fire engine looking their way with Adam’s jacket wrapped around her shoulders. “What does she have to do with it?”

“Nurse Nikki?” Adam asked, flashing her that smile that got him laid on a regular basis. “She placed the call. First day on the job and the poor thing lost a patient.”

“Yeah, poor thing,” Jonah deadpanned, knowing exactly where this was going.

“Seems she needs some consoling,” Adam said, and the damn guy had the nerve to grin. “Said if I found Giles before her shift ends at seven then she’d be forever indebted to me.” Adam looked back over at Nurse Nikki and her double Ds, and let loose a low whistle. “Do you have any idea how much consoling Nurse Nikki and I could do with forever?”

“You’d be bored by Friday.”

Adam shrugged. “Friday, forever. Same thing.”

“Not when you’re the one getting laid.”

“That’s why you’re pissy,” Adam laughed. “You’re not getting any.”

No, he was not. In fact, Jonah hadn’t gotten laid in way too long. And maybe that was the problem. Ever since he’d pulled Shay over a few months back for driving with loose animals in the vehicle—a flock of goddamned geese—he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. He’d given her a ticket, she’d shown him the bird, and they’d been circling each other ever since.

Which was ridiculous.

Jonah preferred his women sweet, easy-natured, and straightforward. Nothing about Shay was easy. Oh, she was all woman, with the sweetest ass he’d ever seen, but she was also the most complicated and irritating do-gooder on the planet. Her go-green world was like a nonstop Category 5—spinning out of control and leaving behind a trail of destruction that he usually had to clean up.

Good intentions or not, the woman was a magnet for trouble—something he’d long ago given up chasing.

“Even after you let the cute neighbor off with a warning, she still wouldn’t go out with you.”

Jonah didn’t think Shay would go out with anyone, let alone him. She was beautiful, sexy, and had a distinct fuck-off attitude that sent most men scurrying. Too bad he wasn’t most men—it would have made things so much easier.

“You want to talk about it? Maybe I can give you some pointers.”

“Call Warren.” Jonah smacked his brother on the shoulder and headed back to his steak.

“Hold up,” Adam said, catching up to him, his normal humor fading. His brother might play it fast and loose in his personal life, but he was dead serious when it came to his job. “Nikki found Giles’s meds on his nightstand.”

“Ah, hell,” Jonah said, staring at the fading sun. Four hours was a long time for a man with a walker to be out alone. Especially one with a breathing condition.

For once Jonah wished that Warren would man up and do his job. Following up on a known wanderer who didn’t want to be found could be boring as shit, but it fell to the sheriff’s department to protect and serve all of the residents of Napa County, not just the ones Warren thought could help his career.

Which was why Jonah had decided to run for sheriff. It wasn’t that he wanted, or needed, any more responsibility—keeping his adrenaline-junkie siblings out of trouble and making sure his stepmom didn’t donate herself right into bankruptcy was a full-time job—but when Warren stepped up unopposed, Jonah knew he had to do something.

He loved this town, loved the people. They’d rallied around his family when his dad died, so to repay the favor he was going to have their backs—and that meant making sure Warren stayed a deputy.

Kissing a night of manning the grill and sipping cold beer good-bye, he popped another Tic Tac in his mouth and said, “Let me radio dispatch and call out Search and Rescue.”

An hour later, Jonah stood on the steps to the senior center, patiently waiting for Adam to finish his quick medical eval of their missing Houdini so he could ask his uncle what the hell he’d been thinking. Although, looking at the window full of ladies in flower-covered swim caps, Jonah already had a pretty good idea.

He had been about to lead his team of volunteers on a canvass of the Vine Street neighborhood when a call came in from dispatch. A suspicious-looking gray-haired man was cornered by the entire water aerobics class for snooping around the pool with a camera in hand. Jonah had arrived right as the first water noodle went airborne. It had taken three firefighters, a handful of Search and Rescue volunteers, and Adam’s promise to stay after for autographs, to get Giles away from the angry mob of biddies.

“You’re all good,” Adam said, closing up his first aid kit. “But next time you might want to rethink peeping on a bunch of ladies with weapons. Or at least bring your walker so you have a fighting chance.”

“That Clovis has some bony feet, got me in the shin real good,” Giles said, rubbing the red area on his leg and frowning as though he were the victim. “And I wasn’t peeping. I get enough of the saggy breasts back at the home.”

“Then what is this?” Jonah held up Giles’s camera and scrolled to a photo of enough wrinkled cleavage to make Adam look away in horror.

“That,” Giles said, flipping to the next picture of a very beautiful, very stacked blonde in a bikini leading the class, “is a gift from God.”

“Those aren’t from God,” Adam, the resident boob expert, said after a long and thorough investigation of St. Helena’s newest swimming teacher. “Those, my friend, can be purchased for about ten grand.”

“Too old to know the difference or to care,” Giles said, taking his camera back and zooming in on the screen. “Wanted to snap a picture to show the guys back at the home, give them some motivation. Celeste does private in-house lessons. Says so on her website. So we’re pooling our social security checks to bring her out, and I needed my investors to see what they’d be getting.”

“I saw you swim the length of Lake Donner,” Jonah said, remembering the summer after his mother’s death, when Jonah had turned seven and his dad had been too overcome with grief to function, let alone celebrate life, and Uncle Giles had taken Jonah and his brothers camping. It had been one of the few bright spots in that period of his life, between losing one mother and gaining another in his stepmom, Phoebe, and his half sister Frankie being born.

“I could forget how to swim for a day or two if it meant seeing Celeste up close in the thing you kids are calling swimming suits.”

Jonah couldn’t blame the guy. Just last week he’d chosen, for the first time since leaving San Francisco PD, to forget about the law for just a moment and look the other way.

He knew better. Knew all too well just how dangerous relaxing on the job could be. But he’d done it anyway and that didn’t sit well. Hell, nothing about Shay sat well. She made him want to strangle her and rescue her at the same time—a bad combo for a guy who liked things cut-and-dried.

Blue lights flashed as Deputy Warren’s cruiser pulled into the lot. He approached the group, his eyes narrowing when he spotted Jonah. “What are you doing here?”

“Following up on that missing persons report,” Jonah said, returning the look evenly. “The missing senior Valley Vintage called in earlier today that you promised you’d look into.”

“I did look into it,” Warren defended in a tone that implied none of this mess was his doing. “I opened his file, saw that he goes missing at least once a month, and figured it was a waste of city funds to send out a search party when the guy obviously needs some space.”

“Protocol says we respond to every reasonable call, not just the ones we feel like responding to,” Jonah countered.

Warren put his hands up. “The missing person was found. All is good.”

“You had a senior with a breathing condition who was reported as missing without his proper meds,” Adam cut in. “Which means this all could have ended a whole hell of a lot differently.”

“But it didn’t,” Warren said.

Adam sent Jonah a
can you believe this a-hole?
look. And sadly Jonah could believe it. This was typical Warren—lazy, entitled, and always thinking his shit didn’t stink.

It was no secret that Warren, wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps, had his sights set on mayor. The title of sheriff was the next logical step in his quest to climb the public service ladder. Problem was, St. Helena deserved a sheriff who was in it for the right reasons.

“You’re right.” Jonah stepped between the two because Adam looked ready to punch Warren in the throat. “We got lucky. This time.”

“You’re right. My bad,” Warren said, not looking sorry at all. It was as though the entire situation were completely out of his grasp. “Won’t happen again.”