Read Officer on Duty (Lock and Key Book 4) for Free Online Page B

about everything that goes on at the center. I do a lot of organization and supervision. Also…” She snapped the lid on the coffeemaker down and pressed the start button. “I teach our junior swim fitness class twice a week. It’s for kids of any gender ages twelve through sixteen, but it’s all girls right now.”
    His gut clenched at the thought of Lucia in a swimsuit. No doubt whatever suit she wore for work was modest and professional, but with curves like hers, it wouldn’t matter.
    “You like your job?” he asked, exercising his admittedly lame small talk skills.
    She nodded as she pulled two mugs from a cupboard. “I started out as a lifeguard when I was a teenager. I love the water. I prefer the beach to any pool, of course, but I’ll take what I can get. Do you like what you do?”
    She turned to face him, and her eyes locked with his, searching. Expectant.
    If anyone else had asked, he would’ve brushed their question off with some canned answer. But the way she watched and waited, as if she was interested in his reply and didn’t know what it would be, altered his reaction.
    “I wanted to be a cop ever since I can remember. Used to run around with a plastic badge and handcuffs when I was a kid. I went through the academy as soon as I was twenty-one and I’ve been doing it ever since. It’s not quite what I expected when I was arresting my cousins with my dollar store cuffs, but I do like it.”
    It was all he knew. A role he’d stepped into as soon as he’d become a man – a role that had shaped every aspect of his life. His badge defined him in more ways than it probably should’ve. Paige and that shiny bit of metal were the sum total of his purpose on earth.
    “I always wondered what it would be like,” she said.
    “What, to be a cop?”
    She pursed her lips. “Specifically, to have the power to write traffic tickets to jerks who cut you off.”
    A grin burst out of him like a weed sprouting up through concrete. “Dealing with traffic gets old faster than you can blink.”
    “Oh really? In my road rage fantasies, I never tire of enforcing justice on North Carolina’s worst drivers.”
    “You hear so many excuses and arguments, you start to wonder whether you have the word ‘idiot’ stamped across your forehead. People hate you for catching them doing things they know they shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.”
    “I can imagine… But man, it must feel good to slap some of those idiot drivers with fines.”
    “Occasionally,” he admitted, remembering a time when he’d watched a driver speed through a stop sign and nearly hit a kid on a bike.
    She smiled, as if he’d shared some sort of secret with her. “Well, then, I’ll just have to live vicariously through you. What was the most satisfying ticket you ever wrote?”
    He skipped the bike story, not wanting to bring up something that would dull her smile.
    “I once pulled over a guy who was going fifty-five in a thirty-five zone. He said he knew he was speeding and was just trying to get to his favorite drive-through before they stopped serving breakfast.”
    She laughed. “Seriously? Wow. Guess he really wanted those hash browns.”
    “Hope they were good, because I doubt he’ll ever taste more expensive hash browns in his life.”
    “I don’t get to write tickets where I work, even if I am a coordinator. Exercising my authority mostly involves stuff like reprimanding kids for running on the pool deck, or breaking up teenagers who think they’re being stealthy by making out in the hot tub.”
    “Well, it’s nice to meet someone else who understands what it’s like to live a life of glamour.”
    She grinned. “Hey, at least you get a uniform. Try seeming authoritative when you’re wearing two square feet of spandex and a whistle.”
    He tried not to picture her wearing exactly that, but the vision was sweet and sticky, like molasses. It sucked him right in and drowned him in all that sweetness.
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