Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,136

bluebonnets. And the flat fields were backed by jagged mountains.

And hell, in Texas, the cop who pulled you over might just be Chuck Norris. So, he supposed he should be grateful that at least this one wasn’t a Texas Ranger.

He looked in his rearview mirror and watched as the cop car stopped. He had hoped, just a little, that it would go on by. But no.

Then the door opened, and the uniformed figure inside stood. He could just barely see the top of her shoulders and head above the door.

It was a woman. Brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, dark glasses over her eyes. She was small. She slammed the door shut with the force of a much larger person, her belt and gun bulky on her tiny frame.

She hitched that belt up, like a bad cop show, and walked slowly over to the driver’s side of the vehicle. He pushed the button on his truck window and rolled it down.

She appraised him for a moment, just a moment, before she spoke.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” she asked, lifting her sunglasses and sliding them back on her head.

“Can’t say that I do, Officer. But I bet you’re going to tell me.” It was clear from the way the corners of her mouth—not a bad mouth even given it was all severe—turned down that she wasn’t into his brand of humor.

“Damn straight,” she said. “Seventy-five. Max speed on an unmarked rural road is fifty-five.”

“Well, see,” he said, “I’ve been living out in Texas for the past sixteen years.” He maximized his long-ago acquired drawl for effect. “Everything is bigger there. Including the speed limits.”

“A shame you’re not in Texas anymore, Dorothy,” she returned, sharp and tight.

“You sure you want to mouth off like that? I pay—”

“You pay my salary?” She sighed heavily. “Try again. Please come up with something slightly more original if you’re going to try to insult me or take shots at me in any way. And I’m going to warn you. People are not as original as they think they are. This is a universal truth. Now, go ahead, mister. While you dig for your license and registration, feel free to create a comeback that will dazzle me.”

“You sound a bit jaded for a—” he looked her up and down “—nineteen-year-old. And also, it’s a bit rich that you’re dogging me about clichés. What’s with the aviator sunglasses?”

“I like Top Gun.”

His eyes fell to her name tag. There were no discernible female curves beneath that dark blue uniform shirt and her flak jacket beneath. “Officer P. Daniels.”

“Officer Daniels will do.”

“What does the P stand for?”

“Pissy and not paid near enough to banter with you.”

She was quick. That didn’t make her less annoying. He produced his license and his registration, and she walked back toward her cruiser, where he knew they liked to run information, or maybe in her case check her lipstick.

Maybe he would say that to her when she came back.

“You have a lot of speeding tickets,” she said. “Mr. Caldwell.”

“A fair few.”

“A fraud conviction.”

“An exoneration,” he responded.

“That doesn’t show up.”

“A quick internet search will show it. I was in the news.”

She huffed a laugh. “Well, let’s hope this doesn’t end with either of us being in the news.”

“That would be ideal,” he said.

He looked at her name tag again, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why her name was pulling him up. It sounded familiar, and he didn’t know why.

“Well, I can’t really let you off for good behavior, since according to your record, you don’t have much of it.”

“And here I heard small towns were supposed to be friendly. This is how you welcome new residents?”

“Only when they insist on leading their own Parade of One down one of my highways in a big-ass Ford truck, paying no mind to the speed limit.”

“Well, damn. That kinda runs roughshod over my grand marshal fantasies.”

“A shame. It’s an expensive ticket, too.”

Expensive ticket. Didn’t the hell matter to him. He had money to burn, and he was investing a lot of it in his brother’s school that he ran on the Dalton family ranch. But he was also working at getting his own place up and running. He had just bought his own property, and his own house that had...

“But what does the P stand for?” he asked.

“It’s not really relevant.”

“Penelope. No. That’s not right.” He squinted, trying to remember the paperwork that he’d gone over earlier in the week.