“Take your time.” She let the sarcasm drip slowly as he ambled back to his cruiser, then she turned and called out her window: “Just remember we have ball practice in a couple hours!”
“Stop it,” Jayne warned. “You were the one speeding, Ellie; he’s just doing his job.”
“Give me a break—it’s not like I was all over the road or anything. They should spend less time worrying about stuff like this and more time tracking down murderers and drug dealers.”
“Murderers?” Jayne snorted. “There hasn’t been a murder here since…I don’t even know. Before I was born.”
“What about drug dealers? You can’t tell me we don’t have any of those kickin’ around this town.” Ellie shut the car off and turned the subject back to the ball team. “And what’s the deal with him joining the team? I thought we had a full roster, so what do we need him for?”
“Because he’s Nick’s best friend, he’s a hell of a ballplayer, and it’s a beer league, Ellie, which means not everyone’s going to make every game, so why not bring him in? Besides, next to you, he’s the most competitive person I know, so maybe he can help us win a game or two.”
“I’m not that competitive.”
“Oh, really?” Jayne snorted. “So it wasn’t you who tried to rip the handle off the foosball table last week?”
“Wha—?” Her sputter stopped in mid-denial, giving way to a guilty smile. “Regan cheated—she spun her player, and you’re not allowed to do that!”
“Uh-huh. Okay.” Rolling her eyes, Jayne twisted in her seat and stared straight at Ellie. “I wish you’d give Brett a break.”
“I don’t give cops anything anymore, Jayne—you know that.”
“Guh,” Jayne snorted. “The whole world knows that, Ellie, but come on, you’ve known him for what, four years now?”
“Thereabouts, but the first couple years, the only time I ever had to talk to him was when he pulled me over. Then you moved back to town and dragged Maya, Regan, and me into your little circle of crazies, so now I’m forced to see him all the time.”
“You’re welcome.” Jayne grinned. “Oh, come on—I mean, obviously he’s no Nick, but he’s a great guy, and you can’t deny he looks damn good in that uniform.”
“Wow,” Ellie grunted. “That is an endorsement.”
To Jayne’s way of thinking, her husband, Nick, had always been the bar by which every other male was measured, so for her to even suggest that another man might be marginally attractive was saying something.
“Seriously,” Jayne pushed. “Just look at him and try to tell me you don’t think he’s good-looking.”
Unlike Jayne, Ellie didn’t turn around to stare out the back window to catch a glimpse of Brett. She already knew that his eyes, normally crystal-clear blue, were now in cop mode, stormy gray, sharp, observing. He had a thin crooked scar across the bridge of his nose that seemed to get paler as the rest of his face tanned deeper in the summer. He got his dark blond hair trimmed every six weeks, he was always clean-shaven, and when Ellie wore heels, her gaze lined up directly with the seam of his unsmiling mouth.
That mouth.
One time, about a year and a half back, the whole group of them were standing in a storage locker, surrounded by boxes of books for Jayne’s store, when suddenly Brett smiled…and it was like…Yowza!
Ellie swallowed hard and forced herself to blink. She’d always thought it was a damn shame someone that good-looking had to be a cop.
“See, you can’t do it.” Jayne twisted around again and settled back against her seat. “So spill it: what do you have against him?”
Ellie blinked a few more times to shake the picture of smiling Brett from her mind and cleared her throat before answering.
“Him personally? Nothing.” She wished she could say he was a son of a bitch, but she couldn’t. The truth was, ever since Nick and Jayne had gotten together and pulled their friends into the same social circle, Ellie had gotten to know a little bit about Brett on a personal level, and Jayne was right: he was a great guy. Always happy to help whoever needed it, always polite—even to Ellie when she wasn’t—and despite the fact that he almost never smiled, he was a natural with kids and seniors.
Great guy or not, though, he was still a cop, and that negated everything else.
“Come on,” Jayne said. “What happened to you in Toronto was bizarre, but you can’t keep