Sassy Blonde - Stacey Kennedy Page 0,18
noted the front door was locked, so he moved swiftly around the back of the house. There, he spotted the back door open. He slowed his breathing, shoving hot emotions down deep into his gut as he entered the house.
Each step he took felt like a lifetime until he reached the bedroom. Time stopped, then. Everything stopped. His life ended when he spotted the blood dripping off delicate fingers and onto the hardwood floor.
Hayes’s stomach roiled, and he sucked in a harsh breath, yanking himself back from the memory he’d tried to forget. The night after he found Laurel dead in their bedroom, Hayes had hunted Falik, and after a shoot-out, Falik was dead. Hayes left law enforcement after that. He couldn’t go back to it. Face that old life. Face his pain. “I left the force for a reason,” he reminded his father. “Please don’t make me explain this again.”
His father studied Hayes and then sighed. “I know, but you can’t keep running from this and working yourself into the ground because of it. You need to forgive yourself for what happened. Laurel would want that.”
Hayes couldn’t forgive himself. Laurel was gone. Had he taken the shot he should have, Laurel would not have been targeted. She would still be alive. The thought left a sour taste in Hayes’s mouth, and his stomach knotted as he caught the sound of tires crunching against gravel. He glanced over his shoulder, finding a black MINI with a red roof coming up his driveway. An unexpected release of tension rushed over him. He shoved his hands into his pockets, hiding their shaking.
Maisie parked next to the SUV and got out of her car. “Hi, Mr. Taylor,” she said, a ray of sunshine. “How are things?”
“Doing good, Maisie.” Dad returned the smile and gave her a quick hug. Everyone loved Maisie; she was impossibly happy. Always. Her smile was infectious, and even Hayes felt an unexpected grin pull at his lips.
“Glad to hear it,” she replied to his father. Then she glanced at Hayes and she bit her lip, studying him intently. “Everything okay?”
Hayes nodded. Better now that you’re here.
Obviously, done with the fatherly lesson he’d come to give, Dad tipped the rim of his cowboy hat at Maisie. “I better be on my way.” To Hayes, he added, “You’ll think about what I said?”
Hayes inclined his head as his answer, instead of flat-out refusing. His life as a cop was in his past. No going back.
Once his father’s SUV was halfway down the driveway, Maisie whistled. “Wow. The tension between you two was near stifling. What’s up?”
Hayes gestured for Maisie to follow him over to the Adirondack chairs on the small stone patio near the flower garden. “He wants me to come work for him.”
She sat next to him, her eyebrows raising over her sparkling baby blues. “I had no idea you were considering being a cop again.”
“I’m not,” he clarified, stretching out his legs, resting a boot on the big rocks around the firepit. “My father thinks I’m wasting myself at the horse farm or determined to kill myself.”
“You won’t hear me disagreeing with him there.”
Hayes’s brows shot up. “You think he’s right?”
She gave a little shrug. “Only someone looking to punish themselves would take the risks you do.”
Most times he liked that Maisie always cut through the bullshit. Whatever came to her mind came out of her mouth. For him, being so tightlipped, he found her openness refreshing. Only he didn’t much like it directed at him. “I’m not punishing myself.”
She gave him a knowing look. “What would you call it, then?”
“Doing the job no one else wants to do,” he managed.
She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, because it’s really dangerous, and seeing that you’re doing it without wearing full body gear like Beckett told you to, I’d say you’re doing it to hurt yourself.”
“You think I’d hurt myself on purpose?”
“Yes.”
He recoiled. “Seriously?”
She gave a firm nod. “Sometimes when we hurt inside and can’t deal with that, we make our outsides hurt instead.” She glanced away and changed the subject. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to the force?”
He still reeled from her earlier statement and barely managed, “No.”
“That was a quick answer.”
He shrugged. “I don’t need to think about it. Being a cop was another life.”
“Did you tell your father that?”
Hayes nodded. “He just happens to disagree with me.”
She watched him a long moment. “Well, I knew you as a cop, and I know you now, and you know