Doing It Over (Most Likely To #1)(45)

“I said stick around and help, not bust the place up.” Josie placed both hands on her waist and glared.

“I can explain,” Wyatt said.

“I’m listening.” Jo waited.

Wyatt glanced at Luke. “I tried to break up a fight.”

Jo swiveled toward Luke. “Who started it?”

Luke pointed to the stranger. “He punched me.”

“You knocked me over,” his nemesis yelled. “No one knocks D-Man over.”

Luke started yelling, followed by D-Man pushing closer.

Jo stood between the two of them.

“Enough!” Josie did the yelling that time.

“Damn it.” Jo reached for her handcuffs. “Turn around,” she ordered the stranger.

“What the f*ck!”

“Turn around!” Jo’s don’t screw with me voice had the grown man turning around.

D-Man spread his hands on a table as if he’d been in the position before. After a quick frisk and the removal of a pocket knife, Jo cuffed him and turned to another biker and did the same thing.

When she was done, there were three strangers with their hands tied behind their backs. Luke, Wyatt, and a local by the name of Matt stood in a broken bar that had been vacated by everyone other than those involved in the fight and the employees.

“I don’t even have room for all you shits in my squad car.”

One of the bikers laughed.

She turned on him, pointed. “Emery, get them back to the station.”

D-Man lifted his chin toward Wyatt. “What the f*ck about them? Playing favorites, Sheriff?”

One of the other bikers muttered, “Probably f*cking them.”

Luke started toward the cuffed man.

Wyatt stopped Luke from moving.

Jo took one look at them and narrowed her gaze. “You drive him to the station and wait for me,” she ordered Wyatt. “Matt, you’ve been drinking?”

“Uhm . . . yeah.”

She nodded toward Wyatt. “You ride with them.” She took Luke by the shoulders with a shake. “When you get there, you pour yourself a big cup of black coffee, sit the hell down, and don’t plan on getting up until I say . . . got it?”

“Jesus, Jo—”

“It’s Sheriff Ward right now, Mr. Miller.”

“C’mon, Luke. Do as Jo says,” Wyatt said, taking Luke by the elbow.

“Sheriff Ward, Mr. Gibson. And I expect the same of you. No one goes anywhere until I figure this mess out.”

“Got it.”

Before Wyatt could take a step, Jo asked, “You been drinking, Wyatt?”

“Half a beer,” he told her.

Jo glanced at Josie, who nodded.

“Get out of here,” she said before turning back toward the others.

Wyatt didn’t make her say it twice.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN




“A bar fight.” Melanie stood with her hands perched on her hips, her gaze shifting from one bruised face to another. Luke looked like he’d had a one-on-one with a prizefighter. The red, angry welts would prove to be every color of the rainbow by morning. He nursed a split lip with a bag of ice that he alternated between his face and the top of his head. The man was still drunk a good hour after Jo had forced them back to the station. Wyatt had a cut above his right eye and bruising on the left side of his jaw. At least he looked sober.

Jo called Melanie to help with the triage of the deviant testosterone-charged men.

Matt sat in the corner, his head in his hands, an angry wife at his side.

“A bar fight,” she said a second time for good measure.

Melanie had ignored the drunken comments as she walked into the back room, but took note of the unfamiliar faces as she passed them by.

She opened the first aid kit Jo had handed her before pointing her toward the men.

She removed a jar of Betadine and poured a generous portion onto a gauze pad and pushed Luke’s hand away from his face before mopping up some of the mess.

“Ouch!”

“You can’t feel too much with the amount of alcohol swimming in your veins.”

Luke pulled away and winced as his back hit the wall.

Melanie moved to his side and pushed up the edge of his shirt. Sure enough, there was a scratch taking up the left side of his back, complete with what looked like a couple of decent size splinters from a broken table.

“Good Lord. Poor Josie. I bet her place is jacked.”

“Poor Josie, what about me?” Luke asked.

Melanie rolled her eyes and helped Luke out of his shirt.

She fumbled through the first aid kit and found a pair of tweezers. With more than a little bit of pleasure, she poured hydrogen peroxide over Luke’s back and watched a grown man whimper. “And Jo . . . you know how hard it is for her to police this town. The last thing she needs to do is pull your sorry ass in here.”

“They started it,” Wyatt said from his quiet corner in the room.

Melanie stopped picking at the wood in Luke’s back and glared. “You sound like a teenager.”

“It’s true,” Luke said.

“I don’t think it matters to Jo. Everyone throwing punches gets hauled in. That’s what she said on the phone.”

“Jeez, Mel . . . be careful back there,” Luke whined.