Choosing Happiness (7 page)

Jake shook his head. He understood her reasoning and knew he wouldn’t change her mind. "I feel better knowing you wouldn't have left just anyone there. That's how people get robbed, kidnapped or killed."

"Thank you for caring enough to ask." Andrea stretched up to kiss him on the cheek.

"I don't want you hurt." He turned his head so her lips landed on his mouth instead of his cheek. Moving closer, he pinned her between his body and her car as he took over the unexpected kiss. The move did two things, it also served to block her from the wind.

Andrea pulled back after a moment. "Not here. We can't do this here."

Jake threw a guilty glance at the house. He’d forgotten for a moment where they were. "You're right." He stepped back reluctantly. "You want to go somewhere we can continue this?"

"I'd love to, but I'm exhausted." Her voice was filled with regret. "Once I lay down, my eyes are gonna slam shut till morning. I'd hate to lead you on, then pass out on you."

"I totally understand." Jake ran the back of one finger down the side of her face causing her to shiver. "You want to come home with me anyway? We can get some sleep, then in the morning I’ll cook you breakfast?"

"That's an offer I’m gonna have a hard time refusing." She stretched up and pecked his cheek. This time he let it land where she intended. "I'll follow you so I have my car in the morning."

"Perfect." They climbed into their cars and left, one after the other.

J
ake sat behind the wheel, watching Andrea from the corner of his eye, but kept his attention on the road as he drove.

"Where are we going?" Andrea asked. Several days had passed since the dinner at her parents’ house and they’d spent most of their free time together. Jake had learned her likes and dislikes and had planned an evening he hoped she’d love.

"I told you," Jake glanced across the cab of the pickup at her and grinned. Impatience and excitement had her bouncing in her seat. "It's a surprise."

"That's why you wouldn't tell me before you picked me up. But now we're on our way. Couldn’t you tell me now?" she begged in a singsong voice.

Jake laughed at the way she kept trying to talk him into revealing the secret. "Just hold your horses. We'll be there soon enough and then you'll know."

When he turned into the parking lot at the Aztec Bowl, Andrea squealed. "Bowling! I haven't been bowling in years."

Her excitement was contagious. "Me either. I thought it might be fun to fumble through it together."

"It will be."

She bounced with every step as they made their way to the counter and asked for shoes and a lane. After taking the shoes they found their lane and sat down to change, then went in search of suitable balls.

Back at the lane, Jake sat and put their names into the scoring computer so they could start playing. Andrea was first, she picked up her ball and counted her steps carefully, only knocking down six pins. The machine swept the downed pins away and returned her ball. She tried again, knocking down a single pin.

"Looks like it's gonna take some practice before it comes back to me." She passed Jake where he stood waiting for the pins to reset and sat in her seat to watch him.

He took longer at the back of the lane, aiming and thinking over his shot before he stepped forward and rolled the ball down the long lane. Keeping his eyes on the ball, he slowly stepped backwards as it rolled down the long wood lane. Just before reaching the pins, his ball made a sharp hook to the left, clipping three pins on its way by and ending up only knocking down four pins. He turned and went to the ball return to wait for his ball. Andrea laughed at the look of intense concentration on his face.

She hopped out of her seat and hustled up to where he stood at the ball return. Putting her hands on either side of his face, she pulled it down to meet hers.

"It's only a game." She gave him a quick kiss and returned to her seat.

Jake picked up his ball again and took his second roll, this time knocking down four more pins. He scowled briefly down the lane before turning back to let Andrea have the lane.

It was soon plain neither of them was particularly good, though Jake seemed to be improving more quickly than Andrea. Andrea had a solution for that, she did her best to distract him. She tucked her shirt in, pulling it tight from her shoulders so the neckline was a little lower, and she added a little sway to her walk whenever she was in front of him. She made sure that when she bent to pick up her ball from the return she angled her body so he had a view down her shirt. Her methods may not have made his score drop, but it managed to stop climbing.

Jake figured out what she was doing shortly after she started, but they were only playing for fun and he was enjoying her ploy, so he didn't say anything. The longer they played, the more elaborate Andrea's methods became. She'd kiss him, brush up against him as he got up for his turn. Small things, that if he'd tried to, he could have ignored but he thought it was funny.

They finished their first game and ordered some food and a couple soft drinks from the snack bar before starting a second. Andrea kept up her teasing and flirting as they took turns eating and bowling throughout the second game, then decided against a third.

"That was fun." Andrea shrugged into her jacket as they made their way out to the truck. "What do you have in mind next?"

"I was going take you to eat, but we’ve already eaten so I guess we'll skip that item on the program and move on the next." Jake held the truck door open and waited while she climbed up in front of him. He slid in beside her and started the truck. "If you look behind the seat you'll find a blanket you can use to keep warm until the cab warms up." He pulled out on the road and headed for the edge of town. She ignored the blanket and stayed against his side, leaving the passenger’s seat empty.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"It's a secret." He smiled and waited for her reaction.

"You're just doing this just to be mean."

He laughed. "Partly. But not entirely." He turned onto a rutted dirt road, barely more than a trail, leading up the side of the mountain.

"I've never been up here. How did you find this place?"

"Ramon brought me out here the other night. He said he likes to patrol the lesser known routes now and then, just to make sure everything is okay out here." He slowed the truck to maneuver it around the trees and rocks that were encroaching on the trail. "I don't know if you'd ever been out here, but I wanted to bring you, show you what I found."

"What did you find?"

"You'll see." He refused to tell her, waiting for some kind of big reveal.

They drove a little while longer, until the lights of town were far enough below them that they were just a pretty show. Jake slowed as if looking for something off one side of the road. When he found it, he pulled off the side of the road and onto a dirt trail. After a while, he turned the truck around so the truck was pointed back the way they came, and shut off the engine.

He got out and held out his hand. "Come on."

Andrea slid across the seat and took his hand. "You’ve got to be kidding me. It's even colder out here than it was in town."

"Come on. You won't be cold for long, I promise."

She took his hand and let him help her out of the truck, wondering what he was up to.

Jake went to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate. "Come here." He shifted something in the bed of the truck.

Curious, Andrea gingerly stepped over the uneven ground to the back of the truck. Under the bed cover was a large air mattress covered with sleeping bags put together to make a single large bed space. "What's this?"

"Climb in."

"Huh?"

"Climb up on the tailgate, kick off your shoes and get in." He folded the bed cover back so the top half of the sleeping bags were exposed.

Andrea did as he asked, sliding into the sleeping bag and wiggling all the way down. "Oh... It’s warm inside, how did you do this?"

"Thermal packs. You expose them to air and they stay hot for hours. I put a couple in just before I picked you up." He climbed up into the truck and, after taking his own shoes off, slid in beside her. Andrea moved over next to him as he pulled a pair of pillows from the darkness under the still covered half of the bed and they both got comfortable.

"So you brought me out here to camp out in the back of your truck?"

"Kind of, but not really." He looked up at the sky. "Look."

Andrea glanced at him to see what he was looking at and turned to look at the sky. "The stars?"

"Yeah, we never saw them like this when I was a kid, too much light from the city."

"But you've seen them like this before, right?"

"Yeah. We saw them like this in the army and we learned to navigate by them, but we never had time to just admire them and there was never anyone to share them with."

"Never?"

"Never anyone like you. Oh, I dated, sure. I had girls I spent time with, but there was never anyone I wanted to share my secrets with. Never anyone I wanted to spend all my time with."

"I'm glad you want to share them with me." She tipped her head to lean against his shoulder. Finding his hand with hers inside the sleeping bag, he wove her fingers with his.

"S
o, how you liking Hastings?" Ramon asked the next afternoon while they were on patrol together.

"I like it." He watched the road, today was the first time Ramon had let him drive since he’d started and he didn’t want to go back to doing nothing but sitting in the passenger’s seat.

"Is it what you expected when you took the job?"

"I knew what Hastings was like before I applied. I'd been here before."

"Really?"

Jake told him about his visit with Ben on leave during a deployment several years earlier.

"So, after you got out, you came here to be near his family instead of your own?" Ramon looked confused.

"I don't have any family to go back to. Mom’s gone and Dad might as well be. I haven't seen or spoken to him since I walked out the day I turned eighteen."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

"You're not. We’re partners, we need to trust each other. That means getting to know each other. I might as well make the first step."

Ramon looked at him a moment. "Smart. Usually takes rookies longer to warm up, to realize the force is another family, too. We can't have your back and protect you if we don't know your secrets."

"Most rookies haven't already seen more than you're likely to see in your entire career as a cop in a quiet, laid back place like Hastings."

"This is true." Ramon turned and looked out the front window a moment, then looked back to Jake. "So, is it working out like you'd hoped?"

"So far? It's better than I'd dreamed."

"How so?"

"Ben told me to come. That his family would all but adopt me, treat me like one of them. I didn't really believe him but I came anyway."

"And have they?"

"His folks have, they treat me like I'm one of their kids. I never knew there were really people out there who do that, outside of the movies I mean."

"You say his folks like there’s someone who hasn’t. Is there someone not so welcoming?"

"That's not it...not exactly." Jake was quiet a moment, trying to put the words together so it didn't come out wrong. "When Ben brought me home all those years ago I met his little sister."

Ramon's thick eyebrows shot up. This caught his interest.

"I was attracted to her then but I had more respect for my buddy than to start something with his little sister. Especially when I knew I wouldn’t be here long and I might not be able to come back."

"Understandable." Ramon folded his arms across his chest, getting comfortable as he sat back in his seat while he listened.

"Anyway, since I've come back I've discovered the attraction's mutual. We've been seeing quite a bit of each other lately."

"How does Ben feel about that?"

Jake shifted in his seat. "He doesn't know."

"He doesn't know?" Ramon lifted one brow.

"I'm not hiding it from him.” He hurried to explain. “It’s just that she and I didn't run into each other until just before the wedding. I mean a couple of hours before. He's not back from his honeymoon yet, so I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it."

"Ahh... How do you think he'll take the news?"

"He'll probably do what he usually does. Try to run me off just like he's done anyone she's ever brought around."

"But?" Ramon seemed to know he was holding something back.

"But I know him, and he knows me. He knows I don't scare easy." Jake chuckled. "Andrea's never brought anyone around that Ben didn't scare off right away. I think in the end, she started bringing guys she was ready to get rid of to meet her brother. Ben would scare them off and she wouldn't have to break up with them."

"Sounds like she's figured out how to work him."

"Yeah, she's a pretty smart cookie."

"Then what's she doing with you?" Ramon snickered.

Jake just shook his head. "Go to hell." He laughed. “You have a family?”

“Of course. My mama still lives here in town, though Papa passed on a couple years ago. Then I have my Rosa and the kids.”

“I’d like to have kids someday. How old are yours?”

“Anna is thirteen and Carlos is eleven.”

They patrolled the streets of Hastings for hours, getting to know more about each other and their families. Near the end of the shift the dispatcher sent them to a domestic call. When they reached the location, there was no sign of anyone there. They knocked on a few doors and asked around but it appeared any fight that had been going on was over.

B
en had only been home for a couple days when he asked Jake out for a drink. They met at a small bar near Jake's apartment. When Jake walked in he looked around and saw, despite the dim lighting, Ben hadn't yet arrived. He stopped at the bar and ordered a Kilt Lifter. Taking the cold bottle, he drifted over to a table in the corner and took a seat. He sat with his back to the wall so he could keep an eye on the people in the bar, no one could sneak up on him, and had a good view of the door. He hadn't been there long and had only taken a few sips from his beer when Ben walked in.