The Birthday List(18)

I didn’t know where we’d end up. Maybe she’d be a clean freak and drive me crazy. Maybe she’d want to cuddle at night when I just wanted some space. Maybe she’d smack her gum too loud, something I couldn’t fucking stand. I didn’t know.

But I wanted the chance to find out.

“Hey, Cole.”

I looked up from my desk—where I’d been daydreaming about Poppy and ignoring my paperwork—and nodded to Detective Matt Hernandez. “Hey, Matt. What’s happening today?”

He dropped into the seat behind his desk adjacent to mine. “Not much.” He slapped down a thick file on top of a stack five deep. “I’ve gotta get through all these today. You?”

“Same.” I patted my own stack of files. “I’ve been procrastinating.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, me too. I spent all morning running down some leads on a theft case assigned to Simmons.”

I looked over my shoulder and frowned at Derek Simmons, who was sitting five desks down. When I turned back to Matt, he was frowning at Simmons too.

“That theft case might actually get solved if you’re looking into it.”

He huffed. “At least I’m trying.”

I spun and glanced at Simmons again. He was shoving a donut—a fucking maple bar of all things—into his mouth. The arms of his desk chair were digging into his sides and his ass was ballooning through the small space between the seat and the backrest.

Simmons didn’t have stacks of paperwork on his desk, just donut crumbles, because he was the only detective that put a priority on paperwork over fieldwork. It was no wonder his closed-case rate was the lowest in the department. He never left that desk to actually ask any fucking questions.

But he wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how much the rest of us bitched. Simmons had been on the force for nearly thirty years. He’d die sitting in that chair while the rest of us busted our asses solving our own cases and picking up the slack on the ones assigned to him.

“Lazy,” I muttered, turning back around.

“Uh-huh,” Matt agreed, then jerked his chin at my files. “What do you have?”

“I’ve got one theft and six drug busts we caught last week on the task force.”

“Nice. Sounds like you guys are off to a good start.”

“Hell yeah, we are.” I grinned. “I’ve got six busts, Higgins has four, Smith has five, and Colton two. I’m telling you, having an ex-dealer on our side has been gold. Now that we know what kinds of things to look out for, it’s been a fuck of a lot easier to find out where deals are going down.”

“That was a smart move on your part—getting that ex-dealer to come on board.”

I nodded. “Without him, we’d be at square one.”

I’d gotten lucky when we’d been planning the drug task force last year. Our focus was solely on the meth trade in Bozeman, and I’d known an ex-junkie/dealer who’d been needing some encouragement to get clean. I’d gone out on a limb and personally paid for his rehab. He’d cleaned up and come back a new man.

He’d also come back as my teacher.

I’d spent months with him, learning all about the meth trade and getting names of top producers and dealers. He’d taught me the clues. What to watch for on social media. Street lingo to listen for. Common places for quick exchanges.

Because of his help, my task force was finally starting to put a dent in the meth trade that had gone crazy in Bozeman over the last decade.

My dad had been begging the powers that be for years to get funding to start this task force. It hadn’t been until a middle-school kid—a fucking eighth grader—had overdosed last year that the town had gone into hysterics and Dad had finally gotten some money to kick us off.

Our goal was to get the drugs out of the middle schools this year, then hit the high school hard next year.

“When you get an opening on your team, let me know,” Matt said. “I’d be interested in joining too.”

“You got it.”

I made a mental note to ask for another team member at next month’s task force committee overview meeting. With as much success as we’d had out of the gate, the council might actually consider adding to my crew, and Matt Hernandez would be at the top of the list.

“All right,” he grumbled. “Time to get after it.”

I smiled and swiveled my chair back to my own paperwork that I’d been working on all day—except for the time I’d spent thinking about Poppy.

An hour later, I’d only made it through one file because she’d been hounding my thoughts again. Was she at the restaurant today? Would she care if I came in for lunch? I was hungry and it was almost noon. Two weeks was enough time to give her some space, wasn’t it?

“Hi, Detective Simmons.”

Christ. Now I was even hearing her voice.

“Hello, Mrs. Maysen. How are you today?”

What the actual fuck? My head whipped up from my desk and over my shoulder toward Simmons.

And there she was.

My pretty Poppy, pulling up the gray chair across from Simmons’s desk.

I was out of my seat so fast, my own chair went rolling backward and bumped into the wall. I weaved around the desks between us until I was standing behind Poppy’s chair with my hands on my hips. “Poppy.”