Janie Crouch - Fully Committed

Feeling bad, he shifted his tactics with Caroline.

“I do want to ask her professional opinion, but, really,” he chuckled in self-mock, “I’m a little embarrassed to admit this because it’s so middle-school-ish, but I was hoping to ask her out. Nothing serious or that would make her uncomfortable, just a meal or something.”

That was the truth. Last night, before he’d known how self-centered Sherry obviously was, he had been quite interested in asking her out.

Now he was just interested in Sherry getting past her selfishness and doing her job as a forensic artist.

“Oh.” Caroline hesitated, but then finally continued. “Well, that might be good for her. Just, like you said, keep it light.” She gave him the address of Sherry’s house on the beach. “If she doesn’t like you, don’t tell her I gave you her address.”

“Thanks, Caroline. Maybe we could all go out together. Sherry and I, you and Zane.”

Caroline guffawed. That was the only word for the sound that came over the phone. “Yeah, you work on that, Agent Hatton. Let me know how it goes.”

The call ended. Jon had no idea what had or hadn’t happened between Caroline and Zane Wales, but it was obviously complicated.

Jon had much more important things to worry about than romance between the detective and paramedic.

Right now he had a date of his own to get. And he didn’t plan to take no as an answer.

* * *

SHERRY SAT IN almost the exact same place she had sat the day before, umbrella up, blocking her from most of the late-afternoon sun’s rays.

She had her red bikini on again, but once again had clothes over it. This time at least it was lightweight linen capri pants rather than jeans. Much more appropriate for the beach. Her long-sleeved, button-down shirt was still a little conspicuous, but since it was unbuttoned, not too bad.

Sherry was determined not to let what she had seen—or rather heard—at the hospital yesterday cause her to have a complete setback. To do that, she just had to completely shut the entire incident out of her mind.

It was hard. She had picked up the phone a half-dozen times last night to call Caroline and get the number of the handsome Detective Hatton and tell him that she would at least try to help. But every time she did she’d been racked with a cold so vicious she’d felt paralyzed. There was no way she was going to be of any use to anyone.

Even the cold wasn’t as bad as reliving the scene of that poor woman crying as the jerk who called himself a police officer had tried to question her. That was heartbreaking. And knowing Sherry could’ve stepped in and taken over at any time, if she’d just been able to find the strength to do it, was agonizing.

So here she was, on the beach, putting it all out of her mind. It was her only option.

She had her pencil and sketch pad on her lap in the beach chair she sat in. She’d made random lines, nonsensical shapes to the rhythm of the gulf waves crashing a dozen yards away, but hadn’t been able to force herself to do anything beyond that.

At least she wasn’t shivering.

She was tempted to try to draw the face of Detective Hatton from last night, since it kept floating through her mind. She definitely remembered his exact features. Dark brown hair, cut short. Hazel eyes. Chiseled, clean-shaved jaw. Confidence permeated how he held himself; intelligence how he studied everyone around him to understand their motives and actions before he responded. The guardedness of his features probably wasn’t let down very often.

Even without her talents as an artist she’d be able to remember him clearly. It wasn’t a face one was likely to forget. And, Sherry could admit, it was the first time she had felt any heat by looking at a stranger in a long time. Months. Maybe longer.

Then that guy in the hospital room had started belittling the woman and the cold had swamped Sherry again. She’d been almost paralyzed with iciness. It was coming back again now, so she pushed all thoughts of yesterday, even of handsome Detective Hatton, out of her head. She kept her hand on the pencil, but nothing was coming from it.

A few moments later a larger shadow showed up next to her umbrella. Sherry looked over from the drawing she wasn’t really drawing and saw casual brown oxfords coupled with dark khakis. Definitely not a bad style, but also not beach wear.

She shaded her face to allow her eyes to travel farther up and found a blue polo shirt neatly tucked into the pants and then the face of Detective Jon Hatton.

Speak of the devil.

“Aren’t you a little overdressed for the beach?” he asked by way of greeting.

“No more so than you, Detective Hatton,” Sherry responded. She felt at a distinct disadvantage being so far down near the ground with him towering over her. She couldn’t see his face well because of the sun, but her brain was more than happy to fill in from memory whatever she couldn’t physically see.

“Yeah, well, I’m not on vacation, as you so definitely are,” he said.

The use of the word vacation seemed almost venomous. His entire frame radiated tension.

“Is that a problem?” she asked.

“Evidently not to you.”

It didn’t take a genius to see that the detective was mad. And his anger seemed to be directed at her.

“Is there something I can do for you, Detective Hatton? Some sort of problem?”

She could feel her fingers moving with the pencil over the paper, real shapes taking form this time, but she didn’t pay it any mind. It wasn’t the first time she’d drawn something without giving the paper her direct attention.

Her focus was on Hatton, who was still standing so she had to crane her neck to look up at him. No doubt it was on purpose. The man was too intelligent, too insightful, for it to be anything but a deliberate measure on his part.

It was kind of making her mad. And...hot.

Not a sexual hot, but a regular, healthy, overheated hot because she was sitting on a Texas beach in the late-afternoon June sun in long pants and sleeves.

“Really?” he said. “You can’t figure it out?”

God, it felt good not to be icy. Even if it took being around a jerk to do it. Evidently her attraction, or whatever she’d had for him in the first few moments she’d seen him yesterday, was way off base.

Sherry sat straighter in her chair. She wasn’t just going to sit here and let him talk down to her, literally and figuratively. She got up from under her umbrella, tucking her pencil behind her ear, sketch pad down at her side.

At nearly five foot eight, Sherry was used to being pretty close to eye to eye with a lot of men, but not to Hatton. She hadn’t realized how tall he really was. He had to be at least six foot three, because she still had to crane her neck to look up at him. Not something she was used to.

“What is it that you want, Detective Hatton?”

She studiously ignored how the blue in his shirt brought out the blue specks in his eyes, especially in the late-afternoon golden sun.

“What I want is to know why you didn’t let me know about that.” He pointed toward her waist.

She looked down at herself. Was he still talking about her clothes? “I get cold, okay? It’s no crime to have on long sleeves at the beach.”

“No.” He closed the few feet between them and took the sketch pad that she held in her hand. “This.”

He was studying the sketch pad. Sherry felt a flush creep across her cheeks. She didn’t want to explain the random lines and doodles that covered her sketch pad. Didn’t want to go into the whole story about her drawings or lack thereof. Whether he knew she was an artist or not, she didn’t want to have to explain the lack of talent evident on that pad.

“Give it back to me.” She reached for the pad, but he took a step backward so she couldn’t reach it, still studying it.