Dana Nussio - Falling For The Cop

The first step is the hardest...

Everything can change in an instant, police officer Shane Warner learns when he’s shot in the line of duty. And his tough—pretty—physical therapist, Natalie Keaton, also knows it all too well. She wants to help Shane get better, but it’s hard to see him as any different from the reckless cops who ruined her life. As they work to get him walking again, he’s determined to change her opinion of him. If he can show her who he really is, his most important step will be the one that ends with Natalie in his arms.

Natalie could only stare into Shane’s eyes. The room was so still, so suddenly intimate.

It amplified the stilted rhythm of her breaths. And his. He’d spoken about a person making an effort to understand someone else. Hadn’t he done just that for her tonight? Strange how she’d never felt more understood.

It may have been surprise, or perhaps just want of a connection she hadn’t even realized she craved, but something powerful held her in place.

Shane’s gaze was unwavering, steady. A contradiction to the riotous feelings battling inside her, some calling for a poorly plotted charge and others, a hasty retreat.

She should listen to the one that told her to run for safety...

Dear Reader,

I am so excited to return with you to the True Blue series and to the world of the honorable men and women of the Michigan State Police Brighton Post. In the past few years, law enforcement has come under more scrutiny, and rightfully so for the bad behavior of more than a few officers. But I love writing about the much larger segment of the law-enforcement community, of brave men and women who wear the badge with pride and who make sacrifices and risk their lives daily for the safety and well-being of people they’ve never met. These are the officers I have met through the Lakes Area Citizens Police Academy and through interviews and ride-alongs with officers from several Michigan law-enforcement agencies. And these are the characters who populate the stories in True Blue.

In Falling for the Cop, I explored the impossible pairing of Shane Warner, an officer who is battling his way back from a possibly career-ending shooting injury, and Natalie Keaton, a physical therapist who blames all police officers for the high-speed police chase that left her mother a paraplegic. As with all of my characters, I loved challenging their wounds (both internal and external), their fears and their prejudices that keep them from having the lives of their dreams.

I love to hear from readers. Connect with me through my website, www.dananussio.com; through social-media channels Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or Pinterest; or by regular mail at PO Box 5, Novi, MI 48376-0005.

Dana Nussio

Falling for the Cop

Dana Nussio

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DANA NUSSIO began telling “people stories” around the same time she started talking. She has been doing both things, nonstop, ever since. The award-winning newspaper reporter and features editor left her career while raising three daughters, but the stories followed her home as she discovered the joy of writing fiction. Now an award-winning fiction author as well, she loves telling emotional stories filled with honorable but flawed characters. Empty nesters, Dana and her husband of more than twenty-five years live in Michigan with two overfed cats, Leo the Wondercat and Annabelle Lee the Neurotic.

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To my father, James Corbit, who passed away in 2016. You were always my biggest fan, showing off my books and bragging about me to anyone who would listen. I hope when you look down on me now that I still make you proud.

A special thanks goes to Melissa Erickson, a compassionate physical therapist who works with special-needs students in the Novi Community School District. She not only gave up her evening hours to research medical issues and help ensure the believability of Shane Warner’s injuries, but she also became invested in the story and rode the ride-along with me as I wrote. (I hope you enjoy the finished product.) And a continued thanks to the many law-enforcement professionals from the Lakes Area Citizens Police Academy who helped me build the fictional world for the True Blue series. I appreciate your dedication and daily sacrifices for the safety of Michigan residents.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

“OFFICER DOWN.”

The words came to Shane Warner in a dream. At least it felt like a dream, its edges blurred and spreading like spilled wine. Flashing lights penetrated the fog in angry bursts, so bright that they seemed to have a sound all their own. The piercing squeals came from somewhere inside his head. The sounds built to a deafening pitch.

And something was dripping on his face.

“Hold on, buddy. They just got here.”

Shane blinked several times, trying to identify the vaguely familiar voice next to him. A voice that sounded too real to be a part of any dream. Hold on to what? Where was he, anyway? But the only words his mouth could form were “Who is—”

A rustle of cloth interrupted even that question as an umbrella unfurled over him. Of course. Rain. Not snow, though early December flurries had fluttered earlier in the day. His thoughts flicked to the windshield wipers that had been turned on in his patrol car. In a series of quick connections, he remembered. A domestic call. The angry shouts. The screams. The female victim crumpled inside the backyard gate.

Then the earsplitting blast.

As the stray dots of his memory scrambled back into a straight line, Shane jerked to lift his head.

And something set his back on fire.

Lying on his side, Shane tried to reach behind him to examine the pain’s source, but his hands refused to cooperate.

“Stay still, Trooper Warner,” a woman called out from somewhere nearby.

“Listen to her, Shane,” Sergeant Vincent Leonetti said, taking possession of that earlier voice.

He knelt in front of Shane, some towels in his hand. “You’ve been hit.”

“Shot?” Shane managed, his words coming slowly as if spoken through sludge. “But...my vest?”

As Shane shook his head to deny what was becoming obvious—that the vest had failed—the pain struck again, branding him with an unrelenting iron. Bile rose to the back of his throat. The tree-nestled bungalow swam before him in the murky sky.