him. If Brixton was on your six, your six was fucking covered. At the same time, her serious, no-nonsense attitude left him itching to coax a smile to her face. A face designed to break hearts—with wide hazel eyes that missed nothing and went green or gray depending on her mood; high Scandinavian cheekbones that turned the apples of her cheeks positively bitable when she sent him one of her tight, superior smirks; and lips so full and shapely even her sternest expression of disapproval couldn’t hide their lushness.
Not even the DEFCON 1 look of disapproval aimed at him right now.
“Swain,” Commander Atwell said. “Come on in. Close the door, please.”
Had she filed some kind of complaint against him? Really? Out of line as it may have been, he actually couldn’t control the way his body had reacted when she’d put her hands on him a week and a half ago during the pat-down practicum. Faced with the prospect of explaining to a room full of superiors as well as the woman in question that, with all due respect, Cadet Brixton could get him rock hard just by breathing, he preferred to take the fifth, which might get him bounced just shy of graduation. It wouldn’t be the first—or probably last—time his dick had gotten him into trouble, but it would suck like hell, because six years of finessing intel from unlikely sources on behalf of Uncle Sam had given him the notion that being on the badge side of the law might fit his particular skill set like a glove.
Swallowing the sour taste of disappointment, he offered Brix a grin. “We here to thumb-wrestle for the number-one spot, choux?”
“Keep your thumbs to yourself, cooyon,” Brix muttered. “My number-one slot isn’t up for grabs.”
The tension in his chest eased a bit at the debut of her new nickname for him. Cooyon. Fool. Dumbass. As endearments went, the average guy might find this one less than encouraging, but he recognized the pains she’d taken to research the perfect insult. He wasn’t above complimenting the effort. “You look that one up just for me?”
“I learned it from your mom,” she replied, then turned her attention to the commander. A click of the ballpoint pen in her hand and the way she poised it over the clean page of the spiral notebook balanced on her lap indicated the end of their cozy exchange. “Maybe next, we can both learn something relevant, like the purpose of this meeting.”
“By all means,” he said and pretended not to see Malone’s gesture to take the empty chair in front of Atwell’s desk. Damn if he’d heel like a dog while they jerked the only career he’d had any enthusiasm for since discharge from the corps out from under him.
Commander Atwell cleared his throat. “We have the utmost confidence in all our graduates, but I want to commend Brixton and Swain. Their scores on all scales of measurement have been excellent. Their styles are different, I understand from our training officers, but the results can’t be refuted. Gentlemen, I’m proud to confirm they are two of the readiest recruits we’ve produced.”
Okay, that didn’t sound like he was about to be shit-canned. The pressure in his chest eased.
Malone shoved away from the wall and strode to the front of Atwell’s desk. “Swain, Chief Shaun Buchanan of the Bluelick PD. Chief, Marc Swain. Our top recruit.”
Buchanan looked younger than expected for someone with the rank of police chief, but the dark-haired man had steady eyes and the carefully neutral expression Swain associated with military training. “Brixton is ours, as you know.”
Malone nodded. “So, here’s the deal, boys and girls. Chief Buchanan and I consulted recently regarding a statistically significant spike in drug possession citations in our jurisdictions since assuming our duties as chief of police and county sheriff, respectively. We don’t know if this uptick is genuine new activity or merely the result of properly enforced laws and documented infractions now that we’ve cleaned house. Could be my predecessor accepted certain incentives for turning a blind eye to drug trafficking throughout Bluelick and the surrounding environs. Since he was the only law around at that time, and, according to the lawyers, neither he nor his cronies are inclined to shed any light on the question, the history remains unclear. Buchanan and I prefer to focus on the present and the future. Unknown persons are engaged in the cultivation, distribution, and sale of marijuana in our area. We want to pull