the sidewalk.
Despite the pace, despite the shock of hard pavement beneath his boots, Drew didn’t panic. He shouted commands. “Lola, throw a towel on her and get out of the way.”
Iggy gunned his truck forward and parked in Lola’s driveway, blocking the sidewalk with one oversized rear wheel in case Rosie got past Lola’s trash can.
This is not going to end well.
Lola shook out a towel and held it in front of her body like a reckless bullfighter. Before Drew could say anything, Iggy pushed Lola out of the way and grabbed the towel. Lola stumbled in her heels and landed on her butt on her lawn.
Rosie crashed into Lola’s trash can. Iggy tossed the towel over her head. Together, the men tackled the pig on Lola’s grass. Not surprisingly, Rosie’s hooves kept galloping.
“Just…like…old…times,” Iggy rasped from beneath the hog pile. They’d played defense together on the high school football team.
“That a girl.” Drew rubbed the massive pig’s belly. “She can’t see and gets stressed out by loud noises.”
“My…bad,” Iggy rasped.
Lola came to stand in Drew’s line of vision. All he could see were her legs. She wore tight jeans that had red bows fastened at each ankle and black half boots with a tall heel. “You have a pet pig?”
Drew explained Rosie’s situation to his landlady and then sang an urgent rendition of “Rock-A-Bye Baby.”
Lola added her voice and knelt in front of Rosie. She had her brown hair in a French braid and wore a blue checked button-down that accentuated her curves without showing an inch of cleavage.
Why couldn’t Pris dress more like Lola?
“Not…singing.” Iggy’s face was turning red.
“Easy now.” Drew got to his feet when Rosie had calmed, and helped the pig to hers.
Still draped in a black towel, Rosie pressed her snout against Lola’s thigh and snuffled.
“Yes. That must have been very scary,” Lola said sympathetically, scratching Rosie behind her ears.
“Pigs.” Iggy stood, stretched from side to side, cracking his back, and then returned to his truck. “I’ll stick with bulls.”
“Are you okay?” Drew asked Lola softly.
“Maybe you should be asking Rosie that.” She smiled but not big enough to show her dimple.
Drew wanted to kiss her good morning. Why couldn’t he want to kiss Wendy?
A surge of annoyance made him say, “Next time a pig charges you, hold the towel to the side. If Iggy wasn’t around, you would’ve been trampled.”
Smirking, Iggy was backing out of the driveway. “Way to thank a woman, Taylor.”
Using the leash, Drew led Rosie back to his side. “Lola knows I’m grateful and thinking about her safety.”
“I suppose,” Lola said grudgingly. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re being the sheriff and not Drew. What’s next? A lecture about my window?”
“No.” The drapes were closed, which was a relief until Drew noticed a plastic arm holding a lacy bra extending between the curtains. “And I don’t always lecture people.” But Lola was the third woman to chastise him about lecturing this morning. And it wasn’t even nine.
He led Rosie toward the sidewalk. “It’s a sheriff’s job to be honest.” Criminy. If he were being honest, he’d admit he wanted to see her dimpled smile again.
“There’s a difference between supportive honesty and being a pessimistic pain in the neck.”
Drew rubbed the back of his neck before he realized what he was doing, and dropped his hand. He should find out whom Pris was getting busy with and tell them to back off, because they were rebound bait. He should give up on Rosie, load her into the back of the cruiser, and take her to the Bodine ranch. He should call his mother and ask her to meet him at Eileen’s to help clean out the place.
Instead of attending to the hard duties of older brother and sheriff, he turned at the sidewalk and leaned down to pet Rosie so he could spend a few more minutes with Lola. “Does it hurt your feelings? When I tell you the hard truth?” He kept his gaze on the pig. It was safer than looking at the attractive woman on the lawn.
“Sometimes the truth hurts no matter who points it out to you.” Lola meandered to the end of the driveway.
His eyes started at the pointed toe of her boots, up those legs, across those gentle curves, and landed on her face. “You’re beautiful.”
“And you…” Lola stepped closer, bringing a light flowery scent that was worlds different than Rosie smell. She smoothed his uniform over his shoulders, letting her palms rest there, letting