Busted (Promise Harbor Wedding)(5)

“Some lunatic three counties over robbed a 7-Eleven. Hayley ran him off the road, then tackled the bastard when he tried to get away on foot.”

Giving Jackson a wide berth, Hayley nodded at the cook. “Night, Roger.”

Jackson stayed on her heels. “So you’re some kind of hero, huh?”

She shook her head. “Hardly.”

“Ran a guy down and tackled him? I’m impressed.”

Her eyes searched his like she wasn’t sure if he meant that or not. “Don’t be. I’ve seen eighty-year-old women lining up for early-bird bingo move faster than that moron.”

Jackson reached the door first, but didn’t push the glass open. “You never said when I could make things up to you.”

“Are we still talking about the truck thing? That’s not necessary. Just water under the bridge, right?” She inclined her head toward his arm. “Are you actually going to open the door or are you waiting for a ref to blow a whistle first?”

Jackson laughed, but still didn’t open the door. The pleasant buzz of alcohol hummed through his veins, the effect magnified by an incredibly attractive woman with pretty gray eyes, standing close enough to touch.

He lifted a hand to touch the dried paint smear on her cheek, but thought better of it at the last second. “You might want to wash that off.”

A flare of color washed across her cheeks, but she angled her body away from him before he could be sure if he’d just made her blush. “There’s a stiff penalty around here for blocking.”

“Gonna cuff me, Detective?” he teased.

A small smile finally caught the corner of her lips. “I’d try not to sound so excited, Mr. Knight. People might get the wrong impression about you.”

Mr. Knight? Jackson opened his mouth, but the sound of her cell phone ringing cut him off.

She pushed the door open and slipped into the night with only a warning. “Try to stay out of trouble.”





“We’ve got another one.”

Hayley’s hand tightened around her cell phone, grateful for the distraction from her second run-in with Jackson Knight. She still couldn’t decide if it was worse that he didn’t remember her or that he’d confused her with a perky, big-boobed cheerleader he’d thrown up all over.

“Hayley?” her partner prompted.

“Yeah, I’m here.” She crossed the crowded parking lot, barely resisting the urge to stick her hand in the bag to score a few fries.

“Can you follow up with a witness from last night’s robbery? His shift ends in less than an hour and my wife will have my ass if I miss drinks with the in-laws on their last night in town.”

Ignoring the tired aches in her back and shoulders, she slid behind the wheel of her truck. Dreams of a long soak in the tub after a twelve-hour shift and four hours of painting evaporated faster than the steam rising out of the bag in her hand. “That’s two Saturday mornings of hockey drills you owe me.”

“Thanks, Hayls. I’ll email you the details.”

The wait gave her just long enough to search Barney’s windows and see if she could pick Jackson out in the crowd. He had to be sitting just out of her line of sight, she decided a few seconds later. Just as well. Judging by her quickened pulse and ridiculously fluttery stomach, the years since high school hadn’t completely dimmed a foolish crush on her brother’s best friend.

Her phone beeped to signal a new message less than a minute after her partner hung up, dragging her thoughts firmly away from Jackson and his determination to make up for not remembering her.

The latest robbery brought the number of incidents to five in the last three weeks, all involving wealthy tourists with reported losses totaling nearly nine thousand dollars, and they still didn’t have a single suspect. Their captain was already feeling pressure from the mayor’s office to make an arrest before the robberies affected their small town’s thriving tourist industry.

She glanced at the details on the screen. Gerald Capshaw had been at the scene of the latest robbery right around the time camera footage from a nearby business caught a shadow fleeing into the night.

She wasn’t banking on Gerald remembering anything, seeing as he’d apparently had a few beers following a double shift, but a few direct questions might trigger something he hadn’t realized was important.

Hayley rubbed her eyes, fighting the weight of exhaustion tugging at her limbs. Maybe she should have listened to Matt and hired someone to do the renovations to her gramps’s house long ago instead of taking most of them on herself.

With just over an hour before Gerald finished his shift, she started her truck and headed back to her grandfather’s to change. Although tempted, she decided on professionalism over showing up to question Gerald looking like something from a design show nightmare.

By the time she got cleaned up and to Gerald’s workplace, she discovered he’d gotten off early and was probably at Stone’s playing darts. The parking lot was already filling up when she pulled into her family’s sports bar. Matt would be happy about that. The wraparound deck was half full with people chatting, drinking and smoking. A handful of them waved or said hello by the time she got inside.

It took a couple minutes to get Matt’s attention and pass on the beer he offered her. “Where can I find Gerald Capshaw?”

He gestured to the last dartboard at the far end of the bar. “Guy with red hair and his stomach sticking out of his shirt.”

“I thought you were with the guys tonight?”

“Got too busy here, but Allie and the girls are still going strong. Jackson and a couple of the guys are around here somewhere too.”

Everyone’s favorite hockey player must have decided on another beer after Barney’s. Lucky her.

Weaving around tables, Hayley noticed a few friends and at least one of Allie’s bridesmaids in the middle of the bar’s almost nonexistent dance floor. Next to it, Jackson sat surrounded by four women, one of whom held out a marker, her free hand already tugging at the hem of her shirt.

Hayley rolled her eyes. May lightning strike her dead if she ever wanted a celebrity to autograph her breasts. Still, she glanced over her shoulder on her way past, mildly annoyed by how quick Jackson was to accommodate the brunette.

She never pretended to have a high opinion of most jocks in high school, but she’d once believed Jackson was different. He’d always acknowledged her presence with a nod or an easy smile and never stooped to making snide comments he knew she’d overhear like others had. And for one very brief, very naive moment, she’d thought…

Focus, Hayley.

She was here to work. Not to contemplate Jackson Knight’s possible redeeming qualities. Matt had often defended Jackson, especially after the scandal surrounding his car accident and early retirement from the NHL, insisting he wasn’t like the rest of the guys. But when another woman slid into his lap, all but rubbing her boobs in his face, Hayley decided her original opinion of jocks probably applied to Jackson after all.

Getting back to business, she managed to pull aside her potential witness for a brief conversation out on the deck.

Gerald hadn’t seen any more than the retreating shadow the security camera picked up, leaving them no further ahead with their investigation. It took exactly three minutes to realize he didn’t have much to offer, but she followed him back inside anyway, listening to the man’s grievances about his neighbor’s fence being on his property, among other things.

The mention of Jackson’s name behind her split her concentration. She dutifully nodded at Gerald while eavesdropping on the other men’s conversation. With the satellite radio playing from a speaker overhead, she only caught a few words.

“…f*ck up…”

“…alcoholic…”

“…cheater…”

“…gonna tell that prick what I think about him.”

Cutting Gerald off, she told him to call the station if he remembered anything else, and moved a little closer to the three guys talking about Jackson. For every hundred people who idolized the town’s only sports hero, there was at least one who mocked him. The talk tonight was likely just that—talk—but it might not hurt to stick around.

One of the men stood up so fast his chair tipped backward. He didn’t bother to set it upright. The guy was pushing giant status with a height of at least six foot six and was built like a grizzly bear, right down to his frizzy auburn hair.

Not just talk then. Not from the way he was knocking into the few tables between his and Jackson’s.

Hayley glanced in Matt’s direction, but he was busy with customers. Stone’s didn’t need a regular bouncer since most people just dropped in for a couple beers after work or to watch a game on one of the bar’s flat-screen TVs, but every once in a while they ran into a problem. Like tonight.

She followed Grizzly Adams, knowing there was a good chance he’d back off when he saw her. She didn’t know everyone in town, but most of the regular crowd here knew she was a cop, and that was usually enough to make them realize they didn’t want her kind of trouble.