Page 39 of The Fall Back Plan
There’s a crack in my armor, and Lucas Cole is the reason why.
If the armor is thinning, I need to build thicker walls. I still have a few scores to settle, and Lucas Cole can’t be my weakness, so I’d better make my walls strong enough to keep him out.
Chapter Nineteen
Lucas
Threetimesoverthenext week, Becky comes back to my office with books that Jolie dropped by for Brooklyn. After the first time, I tell Becky to call me next time Jolie comes in.
“She definitely did not seem like she wanted me to do that,” Becky answers. “But I’ll make it happen, boss.”
The next time, Jolie tells Becky she’s in a hurry so not to call me. The third time, Jolie sends the books over with one of her servers instead of coming in herself.
Every day, more than the day before, I wake up wanting to talk to Jolie again. About anything, really. Brooklyn and books. How she’s still leaving the house without a complaint every morning. How it’s been a week and she hasn’t called home sick.
About her bar, or the weather, or how the Appies are doing this season. Just anything. I want to talk to her about anything.
But when I stop by the Mockingbird the next afternoon, Ry is outside with a tech from a security company who’s installing a camera alarm system, and he says Jolie is interviewing a chef and it’s not a good time.
The next two times I drop by, Ry tells me Jolie isn’t there, but the first time, I suspect she sees me coming on the security system and tells him to say she’s out. The second time, I’m positive that’s what happened because I spot her truck parked behind the bar.
I don’t want to drop by her house again because that’s a tricky thing to do when you’re the sheriff and you haven’t been invited, even in your unofficial capacity. It wouldn’t change the fact that I’d be pulling up to her house in a department vehicle.
At some point, I begin to wonder if I’m stalking her. Am I like the deluded guys we have to talk to sometimes, the ones who are convinced the woman they’re obsessed with wants to talk to them, that her call to us is simply a misunderstanding?
I do not want to be that guy.
I stop dropping by the bar.
But every day, I still wake up wanting to talk to Jolie.
Chapter Twenty
Jolie
“Momentum.”
Ry looks up at me from the schedule rough draft he’s working on while Precious slices limes for the bar. “Momentum? Is that a new cocktail? Let me guess: vodka plus some weird energy drink?”
I shake my head. “No. Momentum. We have it. Can you feel it? It’s gathering. Everything is coming together at the right time. Precious, did your aunt tell you that she accepted the offer to be our new chef yesterday?”
Precious claps her hands and squeaks. “Oh, my gosh, that’s awesome. You won’t be sorry. She’s just needed a chance to shine.”
“She’ll be perfect,” I tell her. Her aunt, Bonnie, is past fifty, and for the last ten years, she’s worked as a sous chef in two different local restaurants. She applied to be the chef here, and she’s excited to put together a gastropub menu for our steady evening business, eventually expanding into a full lunch menu. She’d made it clear that she could do more than either of the kitchens she’d worked in had let her do, and she’d almost cried when I called to offer her the position.
“It’s going to be so good,” Precious says. “You’re going to be so happy.”
Happy. It’s an interesting word choice, and I mull over it as I head into my office. Happiness has never been my goal, and I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about that before. Security, yes. Stability, yes. Any and all avoidance of chaos, definitely yes. The last word with the people who expected me to fail when I was here? Yes, yes, yes.
Maybe those are the things that add up to happiness, even if I haven’t put it to myself that way.
I sit at my desk, but I don’t log into the computer, instead staring at the dark screen, my mind busy but unfocused. It’s . . . noisy. Inside my head, not the bar, which hasn’t opened for the afternoon yet.
I’m not used to this kind of restlessness, and I’m not sure what to do about it, but I go back onto the floor. “I’m taking a walk,” I announce.
Precious and Ry both nod, and I pause, not sure what to do next. It’s one thing to leave for the bank or to pick something up somewhere. But just to go on a walk? When they keep at their tasks without comment, I head out of the front exit and turn right on the sidewalk. Toward the sheriff’s station. Except that’s definitely not why I’m walking that way. I’m going to the . . .
Library. That’s where I want to be. I want the soothing effect of the library, where I can walk in and let the Dewey decimal system soothe me. That’s the perfect antidote for a noisy mind. A quiet library.
