Joke’s on You by Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,70

of my SWAT team were helping Ken do whatever he asked them to do to make Dillan’s store open on time.

It wasn’t until I arrived at their sides that I saw that they were fetching ingredients for him so he could make another batch.

“I need a bag of flour,” Ken said. “If we need to mix and match between bags, we can.”

Then we went to work, Ken our leader, and made the hell out of some dough.

***

Four hours later, Dillan arrived to a pristine kitchen, and dough that hadn’t been ruined.

Ken nodded at Dillan, who was frowning at everyone in her kitchen, and then turned straight to me.

“Tell me exactly what the hell is going on. Right now.”

Each word I spoke had her mouth falling farther and farther open until Bourne, who was covered in flour, said, “I’m not sure that you should be leaning on that table. It’s pretty dusty with flour still.”

Bourne gestured at his messy shirt.

That was when Dillan burst out crying.

Since I’d managed to slip into something clean before she’d gotten here, I pulled her into my arms and dropped a kiss onto her forehead.

“Why are you crying?” I chuckled against her hair.

“I knew there was something going on. Everybody was too quiet.” She looked around the room in despair.

I wiped the tears that were gathering under her eyes, much faster now.

“Why’d you start crying before you even knew what happened?” Bourne teased.

Dillan’s eyes widened at my brother.

“I don’t know.” She paused. “I thought that you were here to help on my first day… it was really sweet of all of you. But now I’m crying because Ken nearly got killed.”

“I didn’t nearly get killed, girl,” Ken disagreed. “I was allowing it all to happen so that you could put her in jail and throw away the key.”

Dillan’s lips twitched. “Well… I guess I should say thank you then, shouldn’t I?”

Ken wiped the rest of the flour off of his hands, then washed them in the large industrial sink that was brimming with dirty dishes.

Seconds after that, I realized that he was done talking.

Just like that.

“Well,” Bourne said as he looked at the trays and trays of donuts. “Can I decorate one?”

And that’s how the SWAT team of Kilgore Police Department served donuts to the citizens of Kilgore, Texas. In fact, it didn’t just stop at Kilgore, either. It was tweeted about ten minutes into the opening that we were there, and people started coming from miles around just to see us in action.

Even if our donuts looked like shit, they still tasted good.

Chapter 15

You sound better with your mouth closed.

-Booth to Bourne

Booth

The next day I found myself at a bar, carrying a baby gift wrapped in a yellow duck bag.

The bartender, an elderly man who looked like he’d lived a hard life, grinned at my full arms.

“They’re in the back.”

I nodded my head in thanks and headed to the back where Dax was sitting in the middle of the room surrounded by a shit ton of presents.

All the while, he frowned ferociously at the wall.

I set the yellow gift bag down on the table in front of him, and he growled.

“What’s wrong?” I asked curiously.

“He’s mad because he has to open all this shit,” Nathan supplied helpfully.

My brows rose. “And?”

“And his wife was having contractions when he left, so all he can think about is getting back home,” Nathan continued.

I understood that completely.

“You do realize, right, that we live in Kilgore, Texas?” I said to him. “It takes five minutes to get across the whole fuckin’ town when you’re using your police lights and sirens.”

Dax rolled his eyes.

“It’s not even that. It’s the fact that I have to open all this shit, and then deal with it,” he muttered.

I reached into my bag, pulled the gift out, handed it to him, and then folded up the bag and the tissue paper.

Nathan, seeing what I’d done, did the same thing.

Seconds after that, my brother walked in with an unwrapped car seat.

He set the thing down beside the table, flicked open his knife, sliced open the box, and then pulled the entire damn car seat out of the box.

“Now you can throw your shit in there,” he said as if he’d somehow heard the entire conversation even though I knew for a fact he’d been outside.

He’d been talking to someone, who I assumed was Delanie, but couldn’t be a hundred percent sure since he was being so secretive about who he was talking to.

We’d ridden together, and