Taming a Texas Devil - Katie Lane Page 0,15
since he was a teenager, so he wasn’t surprised it was a dead ringer. But Deputy Meriwether seemed surprised. She stared at his hat swaying on the hook and her perfect eyebrows popped up. She glanced at him and nonchalantly tossed her hat at the row of hooks. It missed and landed on the floor. With a shrug of indifference, she left it there and took the chair behind the desk.
Lincoln remained standing in front of the girl. “Your name is Cheyenne Daily?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Where do you live?”
“Lucky Lane trailer park.”
He knew the trailer park. He’d helped bust a meth lab out there a few years back. It wasn’t exactly a country club neighborhood. “You live with your mama and daddy?”
“Just my daddy. My mama’s . . . gone.”
Things were starting to make much more sense. Lincoln knew what Cheyenne was going through. It was no fun to hit puberty when your only parent was the opposite sex. And it had been even worse for Lincoln because he lived with his grandmother. So he’d kept his fears and embarrassing questions to himself. Unfortunately, girls didn’t have it so easy. They needed to buy feminine products. If they didn’t have a mother or a big sister—or a father who was willing—they had no choice but to purchase tampons themselves. And in a town as small as Simple where gossip ran rampant that had to be as embarrassing as hell. He didn’t blame Cheyenne one bit for what she’d done.
Relaxing his badass stance, he leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. “I know what you stole, Cheyenne. And I think I get why you stole them. You were feeling embarrassed and didn’t want to ask your daddy to buy them for you. But stealing is wrong. No matter what your excuse is.”
The kid burst out in tears and dropped the crushed box she held to her chest. The box hit the floor and tampons spilled around Lincoln’s boots. Dammit to hell. This was exactly what he had hoped to avoid. He wasn’t good with female tears. Thankfully, before he had to figure out what to do, Deputy Meriwether finally became useful.
“Oh, honey!” She jumped up and came around the desk and pulled Cheyenne into her arms. But instead of trying to get her to stop crying, she gave her the okay to continue. “You just go right on ahead and let it out, sweetheart. My mama always says that women need to have a good cry every now again to declutter the gutters. And starting your period is something to cry about. I mean why would God punish all women for Eve’s weakness? She’s the one who ate the apple so she should’ve been the only one who had to deal with the cramps, mood swings, and the mess. The only one who should’ve had to go to the drugstore and stand in line with a big box of tampons.”
Lincoln rolled his eyes at the rambling, but Cheyenne released a sobby giggle.
Deputy Meriwether drew back and gave the girl a smile. It wasn’t the bright, full-toothed smile. This smile was much softer. If Lincoln thought she was breathtaking before, he had been wrong. This unpretentious beauty was like a swift kick in the gut.
“Wouldn’t that be a sight for sore eyes?” she said. “Eve standing there in her palm-tree-leaf bikini while Adam tried to pretend he wasn’t with her. Yep, tampons can embarrass men too. Just look at that tough Texas Ranger standing there with his face lit up like Rudolph’s red nose.”
Cheyenne glanced at Lincoln. His face must’ve been red because she laughed even harder. He figured if it stopped the crying, he didn’t mind being the butt of Deputy Meriwether’s jokes. Of course, he felt differently when the deputy joined in.
He gave them a good full minute of laughter before he cut in. “Are y’all about finished? Because I have things to do.”
Deputy Meriwether sobered. “Well, I hope one of the things you have to do isn’t arresting this sweet girl for just being a little shy about buying tampons.”
He had no intentions of arresting Cheyenne, but she did need to learn a lesson. So he played bad cop for just a little while longer. “She broke the law.”
“Yes, but I’m sure she won’t do it again because she won’t have to. I’ll be happy to buy her tampons.”
He sighed. The woman really didn’t have any common sense. “That doesn’t solve the problem. What if you get transferred