Lori Armstrong - Mercy Kill

No. “Yep. Unless it’s something kinky, like you’re into submission games.”

“That’d be an easier confession if it were true.”

Maybe this game of secret swap hadn’t been such a hot idea.

He inhaled. Exhaled. “I have an eleven-year-old son.”

I remained curled into him, listening to the increased tempo of his breathing. Waiting.

“Ain’t much to tell, to be honest. His mother was a cocktail waitress at the bar where I moonlighted as a bouncer in Minnesota. She moved away, and I became a cop. End of story, right? Five years later she informed me via legal summons that I’m a father and demanded child support. I called bullshit, but the paternity test confirmed that I am, indeed, this boy’s father.”

A secret love child was a whopper of a secret. “Do you share custody or anything?”

“No. I see him maybe twice a year, for a day at the most. Mona doesn’t encourage it, and he’s shown little interest in me, no matter how much interest I show in him.”

That made my insides ache. “Where does he live?”

“Denver.”

“Is that why you moved out here?”

“Yeah. I thought if I was closer, maybe we’d connect or something… but it hasn’t changed a goddamn thing.”

I thought of Jake. Even though Levi hadn’t known Jake was his father, Jake had gotten to watch Levi grow up. That’s more than Dawson was getting. “What’s his name?”

“Lex. Lex Pullman, not Lex Dawson. Seems pointless to talk about him, when there ain’t anything to talk about, know what I mean?”

I adjusted my position so I faced him.

His eyes searched mine. “You’re taking this well. It doesn’t freak you out that I hadn’t told you before now?”

“No. If you don’t hold it against me that I can’t reproduce, then I figure I can’t hold it against you that you have.” I maneuvered him closer until we were mouth-to-mouth, wanting to end this conversation.

Wasn’t the whole point of this “sharing” exercise so you could come clean about the campaign committee before he heard it from someone else?

Damn conscience. I eased back only far enough to speak. “Dawson, I should tell you-”

“It’ll keep.” He fed me those drugging soft-lipped kisses I craved. “Now can we go inside before I freeze my ass off?”

I tried one last time. “Don’t you want to talk-”

“No talking, because if we talk, we’ll fight. And I don’t want to fight with you tonight.”

“We do get into less trouble when talking isn’t on our minds at all,” I murmured against his throat.

“See? We can agree on something.” Dawson carried me inside and locked the door.

I rolled outof bed three hours after Dawson left. I’d needed the intimacy of connecting with him, a man whose baser instincts matched mine, yet it’d muddied the waters, regarding my choice to let the campaign committee run me as a replacement candidate.

Phrased that way it seemed less my decision.

But my cynical side suspected Dawson had shown up, acting sweet, loving, spouting the “I don’t want to fight” line, knowing full well I’d been asked to run against him.

Would that bother me if it were true?

Not as much as it’d bother me if Dawson had shown up, acting sweet and loving, spouting the “I don’t want to fight” line because he hadn’t known I’d been asked to run against him.

What if Dawson hadn’t been making a political maneuver by using our sexual relationship to confuse me? What if he’d shown up because he’d… missed me? Was it time that I owned up to the fact that we were involved on a deeper level than just casual sex? Probably. I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it.

I ended up at the sheriff’s office, telling myself it was only to pick up my gun. Not to look for a sign. Not to go googly-eyed over the man who’d rocked my world and had finally opened up to me.

Jolene manned the front desk, not Robo-Barbie. Dawson had stepped out, but she told me to hang out in his office-a natural reaction after all the years she’d sent me back to wait for my dad.

With time to kill, I examined Dawson’s meager personal effects. A framed commendation and a silver star from the president of the United States for bravery, valor, and service in Desert Storm. A diploma from a vo-tech school in Minnesota for his law enforcement degree.

I stopped in front of the last item on the wall; a sizable shadowbox. Inside was a gigantic fancy silver-and-gold championship belt buckle with a hand-tooled brown-and-black leather belt, from the PRCA Midwest Circuit, for first place in bull riding, inscribed to Mason “Mad Dog” Dawson. Alongside the buckle was a picture of a much skinnier, much younger cowboy, wearing chaps, a neon-green western shirt with red flames on the sleeves, holding the buckle, almost with a look of surprise on his lean, handsome face.

With my propensity toward picking cowboys, if Mad Dog and I had crossed paths in our younger years, would we’ve given each other a second look? Was part of the reason we ended up together now because neither of us had a better option?

Such a cynic.

I wandered to the chairs across from his desk. The same desk my dad had used, but neater. The out-box was emptied. Campaign promotional materials were strewn across the surface. Notes scrawled in a spiral-bound notebook sat directly below the phone. I told myself it’d be wrong to snoop so I plopped into the chair on the right side of the desk.

And that’s when the in-box caught my eye, seemingly empty, save for one envelope. A familiar envelope. The envelope I’d dropped off at Dawson’s request.

A solid minute passed. I don’t think I blinked as I stared at that envelope.

Maybe he kept it there for quick reference.

My hand was in the basket before I’d thought it through.

Heart pounding, I flipped over the plain cream-colored envelope with the Gunderson Ranch logo in the upper-left-hand corner. The envelope I’d personally sealed.

Almost a week ago.

The fucking thing hadn’t been opened at all.

Oddly, red rage didn’t consume me. I was plenty mad, but the feeling that followed on the heels of disbelief was worse than blind fury.

Disappointment.

In him. In myself.

Had I really believed Dawson would do his job? It was obvious he hadn’t. Every doubt I’d ever had about him resurfaced.

His heavy tread stopped behind me when he saw the envelope in my hand.

“Mercy?”

I very carefully replaced the letter where I’d found it. My resolve helped me get to my feet and face him.

Something-regret or guilt-flashed in his eyes, and then it vanished. He sidestepped me and skirted his desk. I heard his chair squeak as he sat. I heard him sigh. What I didn’t hear? An explanation. An apology.

An excuse?

There was no excuse. I let him stare at the rigid line of my back for another minute before I whirled around.

“Why are you here?”

“To pick up my gun and to tell you that Bill O’Neil’s campaign committee asked me to run as his replacement candidate.”

No change in his expression. “And what did you say?”

“Yes.” My gaze swept his office before my eyes caught his. “Don’t get too comfy here, Sheriff.”

I spun on my heel and walked out.

Geneva dragged me to the courthouse to officially verify my candidacy. One of my stipulations for running was working with her for this campaign, not Kit.

An hour later we sat in the Blackbird Diner, poring over preliminary campaign strategy. She counted off the talking points on Bill’s election platform.

“How do you feel about the county commissioners slashing the emergency services budget by ten percent?”