[When SEALs Come Home 04] - Heated Read Free

never been one to buckle under to authority figures. Somehow, though, when he looked at Deputy Sheriff Hernandez, he didn’t see an officer of the law. Or rather, he saw someone more. Hell, he didn’t even know her first name, an oversight he intended to remedy.
    Reaching inside, she killed the flashing lights. He blinked at the renewed darkness. The only light now was the cone of yellow from her headlights.
    “Are you arresting me?”
    Her eyebrows rose. “You’d know if I was.”
    True. Arrests usually involved Miranda rights and handcuffs, neither of which seemed to be happening right now. He didn’t like the off-balance feeling she woke in him. Either she was writing him a ticket—or she was doing something else. He needed to know what that something else was. Instead of explaining herself, however, she popped open the passenger-side door and gestured for him to get in.
    Right. Like he’d voluntarily park his ass inside a cop car.
    “Get in. I’ll give you a ride home.”
    When hell froze over. Did he look like he wasn’t capable of getting himself home? “I’ve got a perfectly good bike.”
    “I’ll bring you back out tomorrow if you want, but you’re done driving for tonight. Sit.” Then she touched him. Her hand on his shoulder was gentle but firm, pushing him down toward the leather seat. He let her have his way, his legs bending and his ass planting where she wanted him.
    He thought about protesting, but he was out of words. Plus he figured she didn’t want to hear any excuses. Right now, right here in her car, it was all about doing things her way. Which meant he sat on the seat, boots still on the edge of the highway because he couldn’t bring himself swing his feet inside and capitulate entirely. Their motors ticked, cooling down, because he’d pushed too hard, too fast. While he tried to empty his brain of coherent thought and the damned memories, she went around the other side and got in the driver’s seat.
    He looked over at her. “You ever lose anybody?”
    He’d have bet the answer would be no . She looked too young, too in control. Instead she knocked him onto his ass again.
    “Yes.” Her stark, one-word answer held plenty of pain. “My father worked union jobs as a longshoreman at the Port of Los Angeles. A container fell and crushed him when I was eight. My mother worked her butt off cleaning offices, but that meant we never had money for rent in a nice neighborhood. When you grow up in the barrio , you lose friends and neighbors. Two cousins joined the gangs.”
    She mimed a gun firing with her left hand.
    “Other people I lost to the streets. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation holds more than one person I know, and they’re not coming out.”
    Her faint accent grew stronger as she ticked off her list of the dead and the missing, the sweet, lilting cadence of a Los Angeleno reading a casualty list.
    He had his own list, one that he carried around his head. A list that had been topped by Ben Marshall, who’d caught a bullet from a rooftop sniper and who had been displaced by Will Donegan. Unexpectedly, tears prickled at his eyes, goddammit. He punched the dashboard. Once. Twice. He wasn’t crying over this. He was alive. Will wasn’t. He needed to suck it up and get on with fixing what he could for Abbie Donegan.
    Deputy Sheriff Hernandez watched him calmly, her hands relaxed on the wheel.
    “You should arrest me,” he said. He could hear the savagery in his voice, a mix of desperado and fuck you she shouldn’t, couldn’t ignore.
    She shook her head. “Arrests aren’t fixing this. Close the door and fasten your seat belt.”
    “The only place I take orders is in bed, sweetheart.” He knew he’d crossed a line from flirting to outright crass, but he was feeling mean and nasty.  Since Deputy Sheriff Hernandez had been nothing but sympathetic, maybe she’d rethink her new no arresting the asshole policy. Her nametag caught the light as she turned