Don't Call Me Hero (14 page)

“Cum for me, Julia,” I coaxed. I corkscrewed my fingers inside her.

I held her close as her orgasm struck her like hundreds of tiny electric shocks. When her body sagged against me, I gently eased saturated fingers out of her and wrapped both arms around her waist. She was still breathing hard with our foreheads pressed together. I stroked my hands in the small of her back.

“Thank you, Detective,” she clipped in her most city prosecutor-like voice. “You were very thorough as expected.”

I frowned at the formality. What had happened to the breathy murmur of Cassidy just moments before?

Julia extricated herself from my lap and returned to the passenger seat. She flipped the sun visor down and wiped at the smudged lipstick at the corners of her mouth and raked her fingers through slightly mussed black hair.

I blinked in wonder at the woman who had just come undone only seconds before by my own hands as she calmly collected herself. Julia remained silent, and without another look in my direction, she opened the passenger side door and slid out into the night.

I watched after her as she strode up the concrete walkway, pulling the sash of her robe more tightly around her waist. Sensing movement, the front lights came on more brightly, and she disappeared inside the house without looking back.

I stayed parked outside for only a moment later, wondering at what had just happened. But when it was clear that the city prosecutor would not be making another appearance that night, I pulled the vehicle out of park and drove away.

+ + +

The next day I stayed at home instead of wandering around City Hall until just before my shift was supposed to start. Lately I had spent too much of my free time roaming City Hall on the off-chance that I might bump into the city attorney. After what had happened the previous night, however, I thought it best to avoid the municipal building until I was scheduled to work.

I heard the jangle of David’s duty belt before I actually saw him. He seemed to have more swagger to his step than usual, which I attributed to his civil court case being dismissed.

He strode up to Lori’s desk and dropped a pair of dark purple underwear in front of me. “Lose something?” he grinned.

“Jesus.” I snatched the lace garment off the desk and shoved it into my jacket pocket. “Laundry day. Yeah,” I stumbled. “It must’ve fallen out of the hamper.”

He looked at me with renewed interest as if the lace undergarment had reminded him of my gender. “You wanna get something to eat before work someday?”

“That’s nice of you to offer, but I like to keep things professional.”

“Sure. Yeah. I get it. Anyway,” he cleared his throat. “I wanted to show you something. Besides your underwear,” he said with a chuckle. He produced a piece of paper and slid it across the desk.

I glanced at the photocopied page. “What am I looking at?”

“It’s a purchase order for police radios.”

“And?” Nothing at first-glance looked amiss.

“And look at the numbers.”

I scanned over the receipt. My face scrunched, not understanding, until my eyes fell on the number purchased and their total ticket price. “Forty radios?” I read aloud. “What would Embarrass need with forty police radios?”

“My question exactly. Last time I checked, there were only three of us. Hell, I don’t even think there’s forty city employees in this entire building.”

I continued to inspect the receipt. “Maybe we ordered them for the neighboring counties? Like, there was a group discount?”

David shrugged. “Maybe,” he conceded. “But I think this deserves another look. Money like that,” he said, tapping at the six-figure price tag at the bottom of the receipt, “isn’t something to ignore.”

CHAPTER TEN

I thought about keeping the underwear as a souvenir, but a bigger part of me wanted to see the reaction on Julia’s face when confronted with evidence of our late-night rendezvous. For once, I’d have the upper hand.

I drove my Harley out to her house after work and a few hours of sleep. I knocked on the front door, but after a few moments of waiting, I went to look elsewhere. Julia’s Mercedes was parked in the long circular driveway out front, so I knew she had to be around somewhere. I left the front stoop to continue to search for the homeowner. When I made my way to the side yard, I heard the soft sounds of music filtering from the rear of the house. Turning another corner, I found Julia in the backyard, on her knees in the lawn, her head tilted down in concentration. In front of her were impressive rosebushes that she was diligently cutting back.

I had no green thumb, but if I gardened, I imagined I’d wear old jeans and a T-shirt. Not so for Julia Desjardin. Her hair was down, but pulled back from her face with a headscarf and oversized sunglasses. It made her look a little like Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Her lips were painted a familiar red shade. Her sleeveless navy shell with the gold buttons looked straight out of a Banana Republic catalog. I couldn’t quite make out the shape or style of her pants since she was on her knees, but they certainly weren’t tattered blue jeans. I wondered if Julia even
owned
a pair of jeans.

She was impossibly elegant
. How can she look so perfect, even when she’s gardening?
I wondered.
It was truly maddening.

I shoved the underwear back into my jacket pocket when I saw that she wasn’t alone. Julia smiled fondly at the woman beside her. She was older, maybe in her sixties or even seventies, and delicately built in the way older women tend to be. Her dark hair was streaked with white, pulled back into a tight bun that reminded me of the hairstyle we’d been required to wear in the Marines. A red cardigan covered her narrow shoulders and a double string of pearls adorned her neck. Despite her advanced age, she wielded the pruning tools with familiarity.

“Hi.”

Julia snapped to attention at the sound of my voice. Her caramel eyes were hidden by the oversized sunglasses, so I couldn’t be sure of her reaction to my uninvited appearance.

“Cassidy, would you be a dear and grab that bag of mulch from the back shed?”

She had used my first name to address me—not Detective or Miss Miller. I couldn’t recall if or when that had ever happened outside of our more intimate encounters. I nodded dumbly and obeyed the request. Nothing seemed to rattle the unflappable city prosecutor—not even the unexpected arrival of a member of the local police force in her backyard.

Near the back of Julia’s lawn was a small wooden storage shed, painted red and white like a miniature barn. The doors were open and inside I found the typical things one might have in a shed: lawn mower, snow blower, weed whacker, and a wall of tools. I wondered if Julia paid someone to take care of her yard. I couldn’t imagine the city attorney snow-blowing her driveway in the dead of winter. The mental image of Julia, resplendent in high heels and a snowsuit, bordered on the ridiculous.

The bag of mulch wasn’t heavy, maybe forty pounds or so, and it smelled like chocolate. I set it down near Julia who rewarded the effort with a soft, melting smile.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“If you’d like to make yourself useful, you could put a layer of mulch over the roses’ root systems. They’ll need a good two or three inches to protect them until the weather warms up.”

Happy to have something to do, I dutifully took to the task and trowelled shovelfuls of the cocoa-smelling mulch over the flowerbeds. Between my efforts, I glanced in the direction of Julia and the older woman. Julia hadn’t bothered to introduce me to her, and the other woman hadn’t seemed to notice my presence, but I tried not to feel insulted. The two women chatted back and forth. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but none of their conversation made sense to me, which made it even harder to ignore.

“Ms. Desjardin?” A woman in salmon-colored scrubs stood in the backyard. I had been so focused on mulch and eavesdropping that I hadn’t noticed her arrival.

“Yes?” Both Julia and the older woman responded simultaneously.

The woman, whom I assumed to be a nurse by the way she was dressed, smiled kindly. “I’m ready to take her back.”

Julia stood and brushed away at the dirt that had collected at her knees. “Come now, dear,” she urged. She helped the other woman stand up, treating her as though she were made of glass.

The nurse gingerly took the woman by the elbow and led her around the side of the house. “Is Jonathan coming home?” I heard the elderly woman ask her caretaker.

The nurse looked perplexed, as if not knowing how to answer the question. “Maybe, Mrs. Desjardin. We should get back and get you cleaned up just in case.”

“Oh, that would be lovely,” the dark-haired woman smiled. “I hope he comes home soon.”

I stood up from the flowerbed and brushed away the grass, dirt, and mulch that stuck to front of my jeans. “Is that your mother?”

Julia stared after the two women and watched the nurse carefully assist her patient ease into the passenger side of a maroon Cadillac. “Yes.”

“You look like her.”

Julia turned away from the car and retrained her focus on the rosebushes. “I think that’s how these things usually work, dear.”

I fiddled with the metal snips that Julia’s mother had left behind. They looked dangerous, like they could sever a finger if I wasn’t careful. “The mulch is done. Can I … do you still need help with the flowers?”

“I’ve got a little more pruning to do. You can help, if you’d like.”

“I don’t know the first thing about flowers,” I said, feeling useless. Chalk it up to another thing grown-ups were supposed to be knowledgeable about.

“I’ll talk you through it. You might not know much about flowers and plants, but I know you’re proficient at taking my directions.”

A faint heat slid up my chest as I squirmed beneath her stare. I cleared my throat and averted my eyes.

“You’re going to start at the bottom of the plant and work your way up.” Julia could switch gears faster than I could keep up. “We’re going to cut away all the winter damage—any old wood that might be broken, damaged, or diseased. The goal is to open up the plant to air and sunlight; even though we’re cutting away at the plant, it will make it healthier and stronger.”

“Okay.”

“So find an area that you think you might want to cut away,” she instructed.

I opened the snips and closed them around a branch. I applied minimal pressure, but stopped just short of cutting off the twig. “What if I cut off something that should have stayed?”

“Don’t worry; you can’t kill the plant by pruning too much. Just, you know, don’t cut it off entirely at the bottom.”

“Give me a little credit,” I snorted even though the clippers were foreign in my palm.

“Cut it at a forty-five degree angle. And when you make the cut, be decisive about it. You want the cut to be sharp, not ragged.”

I held my breath and cut off a tiny branch. The dead wood silently fell to the mulch. It wasn’t much, but I hadn’t been brave enough to cut away more. I positioned the blades around a second branch and began again. The more I clipped away, the more confident I became. I felt Julia hovering just behind me.

“Very nice. Just like that,” she approved. “I knew you’d be a quick study.”

I turned to look at her; Julia’s caramel eyes danced, and I experienced a rush of adrenalin, privately pleased at the praise. I had an urge to kiss her, but I retrained my attention on the thorny rosebush.

“So you have to this every year or something?”

She nodded and returned to her own plant. “Around this time of year to get rid of any winter damage and again after they bloom to keep their shape.”

“That seems like a lot of work.”

“If anything is worth doing,” she said, “it’s worth doing well. I don’t mind a little sweat and blood if the results are to my liking.”

“Ouch.” I shook out my stinging hand.

My jerky motions didn’t go unnoticed. “What’s wrong?”

“Your roses bit me,” I found myself pouting.

“Let me see.”

I shoved my finger into my mouth and sucked.

Julia’s features darkened. “Stop being such a child. I need to see how serious your cut is.”

“It’s just a little scratch,” I insisted.

Julia stood up. “Come on,” she sighed. “You need to wash it out. It could get infected.”