Rachel Gibson - Crazy on You

She shoved the Jeep into park and hit the window button in the armrest. The window slid down and she looked in the side mirror as the sheriff’s door swung open. She knew most of the Potter County deputies, had gone to school with half of them or their kin. If it was Neal Flegel or Marty Dingus pulling her over, she was going to be very annoyed. Neal was a friend who wouldn’t think twice about pulling her over just to shoot the shit, and Marty was recently divorced. She’d cut his hair for him last week, and he’d actually groaned when she’d had him in the shampoo bowl. She didn’t have time for a traffic stop so Marty could ask her out again.

A wrinkle furrowed her brow as she watched the deputy, lit from behind, move toward her. He was shorter than Marty; thinner than Neal. She could see he was wearing a brown nylon jacket and a star on his chest. He had some gadgets hooked to the collar of his coat, and his belt seemed weighted down with various cop stuff. The stream of his breath hung in the headlights behind him as he approached, the steady thump-thump-thump of his cop boots closing the distance.

“I don’t believe I was speeding, Officer,” she said as he stopped by her door.

“Actually, you were.” The red and blue lights bounced off the side of his face. She couldn’t see his features clearly, but could tell he was young. “Do you have a weapon in the vehicle, Ms. Darlington?”

Ahhh. He’d already run her license plate and knew she had a permit to carry concealed. “It’s beneath my seat.”

He pulled out his Maglite and shone it in her lap and between her feet.

“You won’t see it.”

“Make sure I don’t.” He angled the light on her shoulder. “I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.”

She grabbed her purse and pulled out her wallet. “You talk too fast to be from around here.” She slipped out her driver license and her insurance card. “You must be new in town.”

“I’ve been in Potter County a few weeks.”

“That explains it.” She reached for her registration in the glove compartment, then handed everything over. “No one gets pulled over for going five miles over the limit.”

“That isn’t why I pulled you over.” He shined his light on her information. “You crossed the center lane several times.”

Seriously? So, she wasn’t the best driver when she tried to do two things at once. That’s why she got the UConnect hands-free system. “There’s no one else on the road for ten miles,” she pointed out. “I wasn’t in any danger of a head-on.”

“That doesn’t make it okay to take your half out of the middle.”

She looked up and into the dark shadows of his face—and to where the light touched his clean-shaven chin, square jaw, and a mouth made impressive by the shadow across the bow of his upper lip. The rest of him was hidden within the inky night, but she got the distinct impression that he was not only young, but very hot. The kind of hot that in her younger days might have made her fluff her hair. These days she felt nothing but a longing for home and her old flannel pj’s. She should probably feel sad about that but didn’t.

“Have you had anything to drink tonight?”

She smiled. “Just water.” She remembered the last time Neal had given her a ride home from the Road Kill Bar.

“Is something funny?”

And the many times she’d run home from parties, diving into bed as her mom got up for work in the morning. “Yeah,” she said and started to chuckle.

Only he didn’t laugh. “I’ll be right back,” he said and headed to his cruiser with her info.

She leaned her head back and rolled the window up. The deputy was wasting her time, and she thought of her son and dinner. All he ever seemed to want these days was pizza, but that was Pip. He got something into his head, and had hard time getting it back out.

So far Pippen was a good kid. True, he was only ten, but with her and Ronnie Darlington for parents, hell-raising had to be in his DNA. The only time she saw any sort of aggression was when Pip played sports. He loved sports, all kinds—even bowling. And he was very competitive, which normally wouldn’t be a bad thing, but Pip was hypercompetitive. He thought that if he was really good at sports, his daddy would come to his games. There were two problems with his scheme. Pip hadn’t grown into himself, could hardly walk without tripping. He was awkward and, so far, a serial bench warmer. But even if he had been the best at everything, Ronny was too selfish to think about his son’s football or basketball games.

A knock on the window drew her attention to the left and she hit the power button. “Find any outstanding warrants?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“Not today.” He handed her information back through the window. “I pulled you over for inattentive driving, but I’m not going to ticket you.”

She supposed she should say something. “Thanks”—she guessed—“Officer . . . ?”

“Matthews. Stay on your side of the road, Lily. You want to be around to raise that son.” He turned on his heels and walked back to his cruiser, the crunch of gravel beneath his heels.

He knew she had a son? She put the Jeep into drive and eased back onto the highway. How? Was that sort of info available when he pulled up her driver’s license number? Had he checked her weight? She glanced in her rearview mirror. He was still parked on the side of the road but had turned off his flashing lights. Like most women, she listed her weight five pounds less. She didn’t actually weigh 125, but wanted to. It seemed to her that once she hit thirty-five, she gained an extra five pounds that she just couldn’t lose. Of course, having a ten-year-old boy who needed snacks in the house didn’t help.

Within a few moments Lily had forgotten about Officer Matthews. She had other things to worry about, and ten minutes later, she hit the opener clipped to her visor, drove past the basketball hoop planted next to the driveway, and continued into her garage. She was sure Pippen was next door, peering out the front window, and would be home before she set down her tote and purse.

As predicted—“Mom,” he called out as he burst through the back door. “Grandma said she’s coming over with her extra spaghetti.” He tossed his backpack onto the kitchen table. “Hide.”

Crap. She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. “Hi, Ma,” she said as soon as her mother picked up. “Pippen said you were bringing over spaghetti. I wish I’d known because I got some takeout from Chicken Lickin’.”

“Oh, darn it. I know how much you love my spaghetti.” Lily didn’t know where she got that idea. “Did I tell you about your new neighbor?”

Lily rolled her eyes and unbuttoned her coat. The house on her left had been for sale for over a year. It had just sold a few weeks ago, and she wondered what had taken Louella so long to introduce herself and get the lowdown.

“It’s a single fella with a cat named Pinky.”

A man with a cat? Named Pinky? “Is he gay?”

“Didn’t appear to be, but you remember Milton Farley.”

“No.” She didn’t care either, but there was no stopping Louella when she had a story to tell.

“He lived over on Ponderosa and was married to Brenda Jean. They had those skinny little kids with runny noses. A few—”

Lily put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered to her son, who’d wrapped his arms around her waist, “I’m going to hell for lying to your grandma for you.”

Pippen lifted his face from the front of her shirt. He grinned and showed a mouthful of braces with blue bands. Sometimes he looked so much like his daddy it broke her heart. Golden hair, brown eyes, and long sweeping lashes. “I love you, Mama,” he said, warming her heart. She would gladly go to hell for Pip. Walk through fire, kill, steal, and lie to her mother for her son. He was going to grow up strong and healthy and go to Texas A&M.

Phillip “Pippen” Darlington was going to be somebody. Somebody better than his parents.

While her mother prattled on about Milton Farley and his hidden boyfriends in Odessa, Lily bent and kissed the top of her son’s head. She scratched his back through his Texas A&M sweatshirt and felt him shiver. Ronnie Darlington was a rat bastard for sure, but he’d given her a wonderful little boy. She hadn’t always been the best mother, but she thanked God she’d never messed up so bad that she’d messed up her son’s life.

“ . . . and you just know he was tricking everyone with his . . .”

Lily closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of Pippen’s hair. She’d made sure that her son didn’t go to school and have to hear stories about his weird mama. She knew what that was like. And she’d worked hard to make damn sure she never embarrassed him, and that he never had to hear other kids calling his mama Crazy Lily Darlington.

Fingers of gray crept across Lovett, Texas, as Officer Tucker Matthews pulled his Toyota Tundra into the garage and cut the engine. Full dawn was still half an hour to the east and the temperature hovered just above freezing.

He grabbed his small duffle and the service Glock from the seat next to him. He’d just started his third week with the Potter County Sheriff’s Office and was pulling his second twelve-hour night shift. He moved into the kitchen and set the duffle and pistol on the counter. Pinky meowed from the vicinity of the cat condo in the living room, then ran into the kitchen to greet him.

“Hang on, Pinkster,” he said and shrugged out of his brown service coat. He hung it on a hook beside the back door, then moved to the refrigerator. The veterinarian had told him milk wasn’t good for Pinky, but she loved it. He poured some two-percent into a little dish on the floor as the pure black cat with the pink nose rubbed against his leg. She purred and he scratched the top of her head. A little over a year ago, he hadn’t even liked cats. He’d been living on base at Fort Bliss, ready to be discharged from the Army after ten years of service and preparing to move in with his girlfriend, Tiffany, and her cat, Pinky. Two weeks after he moved in with her, she moved out—taking his Gibson custom Les Paul guitar and leaving behind her cat.