Page 6 of Forever Finds Us
Great. I hated my feet. They were big. Kind of cute though, but bigger than most men’s. Just another reason to set me apart, to tell every guy in a five-mile radius that I was no petite, dainty lady, which was what it seemed every cowboy around here wanted, but whatever. It wasn’t like I could dig my big feet into the sand and hide them, like a dang flamingo.
Aubrey claimed a table for us, we dumped our purses on it, stuck our shoes beneath, and she hung Rye’s jacket over a chair to save his seat since he’d been part of the ceremony and was currently having his picture taken.
If anyone wanted to go through our bags, the only important item in my purse was Honey Bee lip balm. I’d left my gun and wallet locked in my truck. I felt naked as a jay bird without the old Smith & Wesson 469 my uncle Al had given me when I enrolled in the police academy back home. But there were kids here, and people were about to get drunk. The bar table and keg had more bodies surrounding it than the buffet table did.
I sat while Aubs went to find her man, and I watched the guests all making their way up to congratulate Bax and Bea. There were many people in attendance I didn’t know but most smiled or greeted me. I’d seen them around town on the job or at the local watering hole, Manny’s Bar, but hadn’t had occasion to get to know them. Aubrey and I had become best friends pretty much the minute I stepped foot in Wisper on my first day with the sheriff’s department. I’d made friends through Aubrey and Abey, even joined a book club which had become like a family to me.
I missed my own family, but only one of my sisters still lived in Oklahoma near my parents. The rest had scattered farther around the US with their husbands and kids. The six of us kept a text thread going, and we sent memes and checked in with each other most days, but I hadn’t seen any of my sisters in person in almost two years.
Aubrey returned with a beer from the keg for me, which I’d decided to pretend was an expensive Aperol spritz, and just as I brought the red, plastic cup to my mouth and took a deep whiff of the hoppy bitterness, my cell rang in my crossbody purse on the table. The dreaded X-Files theme-song ringtone told me it was my partner, Dan.
I ignored it. I was off duty, and he was probably calling to suggest again, like he had the one and only time I’d encountered him drunk, that since we were both single and lonely, we should hook up.
Yeah, never gonna happen.
He wasn’t creepy about it. Just resigned to the inevitability, like a pact you make with your best friend in eighth grade that if you’re not married by thirty-five, you’ll marry each other. But I set down the beer, just in case Dan was calling to inform me of a bad accident in town, a reported crime, or maybe aliens had landed and were setting up shop at the top of Mount Bannon. X-Files indeed.
Abey approached with a petite redhead following at her side. The woman was all smiles and polished teeth.
“Hey, Roxi,” Abey said. “This is Tabitha. She just moved here to work with Brand.”
“Oh.” Huh. Why did that grate my nerves? One-two-three. “Nice to meet you.”
I extended my hand and Tabitha shook it, but the fact that she worked with Brand Lee rankled. She was perky and perfect. And short, or at least normal-woman-sized, which probably suited someone like Brand better than my telephone-pole height.
“Roxi works with me at the station,” Abey said, but her attention drifted as we heard Stuey throwing a tantrum by the buffet table. The gargantuan, plastic bowl of grandma-style potato salad in the middle of the spread was calling my name, but I ignored the craving ’cause I didn’t want to pig out and embarrass myself.
Abey’s mama, affectionately known to her children as Merv, looked like she was at her wit’s end as the kid stomped the ground, tugging on Merv’s puce-colored skirt and pointing at the wedding cake. Stuey held his breath, and his little face turned the color of a beet.
“S’cuse me for a minute,” Abey said, and she dashed over to assist and left me standing there, stranded and trying to make conversation with Miss Perky Everything.
If somebody started a conga line and I had to hold onto her hips while we hopped around the reception in a procession of stupidity, I was going straight back to my truck for my gun.
Chapter Three
Roxanne
“So,” Tabitha said. “You’re a Wisper transplant too?”
“Huh?” I asked, watching as Abey got down on her hands and knees to distract Stuey away from the cake. She wasn’t the kind to care about getting her outfit dirty.
Stuart Lee had recently decided he’d rather be a dog than a human, so sometimes the only way for the adults around him to “talk” to him was to pretend to be a dog too. If Abey were a dog, I figured she’d be a white shepherd, with her pale-blond hair and her noble stature. Stuey was definitely a yapping Chihuahua. Or maybe a corgi.
“Abey tells me you moved here from Oklahoma.”
“Oh, right,” I said, focusing on Tabitha’s pretty face again, noticing her perfectly symmetrical features and the adorably nervous habit she seemed to have of sweeping her auburn hair over her shoulder with one perfectly polished finger.
Man, I really needed to stop comparing myself to her. I’d done it like six times already in my head, and I was starting to piss even myself off.
But, gah! She had gray eyes the color of sexy smoke, which I imagined had the ability to lure men from all corners of the US with only a wink. Had she used her powers on her boss? That was what I really wanted to know. Desperately. But like, how was that fair? I’d only spent ten minutes with the man.
But he was just so sexy! God, just the sound of Brand’s voice in my truck the other night…
Brand Lee had an air about him I didn’t usually run into around here, like he was someone. Like he knew what he wanted and how to get it, and if anybody had plans to get in his way, they better watch out, and the thought of this Tabitha drooling all over him in his office made the insecurity inside me rage.
You’re not good enough, rich enough, pretty enough, smart enough…
One-two-three.
