Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) (2 page)

“Tension between you and Green Co’s finest, love?”

“I don’t want to do this, Gabe,” I murmur, and he pushes a blond curl out of my eyes, watching me with those strange honey-warm eyes of his. And then he nods.

“Ok. Not now. But we will talk. Soon. I just painted a target on my back and Archer’s never liked me to begin with. You owe me.”

I huff out a breath, and let my gaze dart up to him. Gabe gives me a patient, waiting look and I nod.

Because apparently things do change.

Gabe can grow up, even just a little.

“Ok. Tomorrow.” I say, and he nods. Brushes a kiss over my hair and hands me my bags as I slide into my truck.

And then he stands there, watching, braced between me and CinSations as I drive away. He was my best friend a lifetime ago, before I fucked up everything.

I wonder if maybe he could be again.

E
li is still charming Cindy, and I’m still listening to the gossipy bitches who like to fill me and him in on everything that might be even the slightest bit interesting in the County.

For the past six months, that’s been almost exclusively Hazel.

Which would be great, if I cared the way I’m supposed to. If I could push Hazel back into the box she’s supposed to be in, the one that she hasn’t been in since I came back from my one tour overseas and she greeted me with a fist to the face. She broke my nose and shattered the protective little box that I’d always stuck her in.

“She’s looking pretty, but she has to be lonely.” Prudence McCann is telling her sister-in-law, but her eyes are on me, like I should be doing something about Hazel being lonely.

Because that’s appropriate.

Fuck, Nora would eviscerate me and let Eli strangle me with my guts if I made a move toward Hazel. And I’d probably provide the knife.

Doesn’t mean I want someone else anywhere near her.

Pru doesn’t really relent until I offer a smile, tight and awkward and pull away.

Gabe reenters the shop and I catch his eye.

There’s a lot of anger there, and I swallow a curse. Gabriel Delvin on a warpath is the very last thing I want to deal with now. If there’s anyone besides Eli whose been protective of Hazel it’s Gabe, the short, snarky best friend who attached to her in middle school and never quite let go.

And I always liked him as much as I loathe him. Even when I was pretty sure he was fucking her, I liked him, because it was better him than me, even if I wanted to punch his too white teeth down his throat.

“Officer, may I have a word?” he asks, and even phrased as a question, that’s a summons.

And we all know it.

Gabe isn’t Green County royalty, but he’s old blood. That’s why his befriending Hazel was so strange. Military brats, especially ones like us, didn’t mix with the County’s founding lines. The Moats and the McCanns and the Jacksons. The Delvins are less of a power in the County, especially now that they’re fading and most have left.

But that doesn’t mean Gabe is someone I can ignore. So I follow him away from the ladies who are still prattling about Hazel, catch Elijah’s eye and he gives me an irritated look, like he’s annoyed he has to deal with them while I deal with fucking Gabe Delvin.

Gabe drops two boxes on the café table outside CinSations, and glares at me.

“What the fuck are you doing with Hazel?”

I stare at him, trying to process. Frankly, I’m still trying to catch up. It’s early and I haven’t had a lot of coffee yet, and Eli is the morning person in this equation, so, “What?”

Gabe snaps his fingers, his green eyes furious as he stares at me. “She was grumpy but fine, until you showed up with the puppy. She likes him. So tell me what the hell you did that sent her running, Archer?”

I cock my head at him.

Because I know. Of course I fucking know. I’m just surprised Gabe doesn’t. “She’s your best friend, Gabe. Doesn’t that mean she tells you this shit?”

A spasm of pain flares across his face. Shakes the mischievous, smiling jackass that the town knows and loves.

For a second, I see Gabriel. The last Devlin to stay in the County, the one who said fuck it when his family said he should go into politics and law. The one who stayed when his family, even his favorite brother, left.

Everyone left Gabe. Even Hazel. And he’s not as immune to that as he’d like the rest of Green Co. to think.

So I sigh, and shrug. “Hazel doesn’t talk to me. She hasn’t for a long time, man. I have no idea what’s going on in that pretty little head of hers.”

Gabe watches me, all narrowed eyed contemplation, and I struggle to keep my face blank. Until, finally, he snorts.

“Get a donut, Archer. I hear they’re to fucking die for,” he says, and then he’s snatching up his boxes and shoving back into CinSations.

Eli, coming out of the shop, gives him that tight smile he only ever fishes out for Gabe, and it reminds me I need to ask about what the hell is happening there, but I don’t.

I haven’t since I came home from Afghanistan and Eli graduated and we both joined the force. I remember it, clear as day. I was sitting at Mom’s house while Hazel prowled around, nursing a bottle of beer and giving these reserved little smiles. Eli was graduating and she was two years from it herself, and her eyes skipped over me like I wasn’t even there. Gabe alternated between clinging to her like a burr in fur, and spinning away like a falling star. But he avoided Eli, and I would say it was unconscious, except that I had watched my brother and Hazel and Gabe for too many years to see it as anything but what it was.

They were avoiding each other.

And because I was so wrapped up in my own shit, I let them. I didn’t push.

That was six years ago.

Sometimes, when shit drags too long, you don’t get to bring it back up. After Hazel left, we didn’t see much of Gabe. Mom said he came by, sometimes, but it was never when we were there.

Green County was small, but if he wanted to hide, he could and without Hazel as the glue to bring him into our inner circle, there was no real reason for us to see him.

Bury something long enough, it’s hard to bring it back up.

“What did Gabe want?”

I hesitate, and then, “He wanted to know if Hazel and I were fighting.”

Eli’s eyebrows go up and he frowns. “You have to see someone to fight with them, and you’ve seen her what, three times since she came home?”

There’s an accusation in his voice, and I ignore it. I don’t need to defend myself to Eli. He’s never pushed me for an explanation. He just accepted it. I think if it were just me, he’d push. If it were just Hazel he’d push. But with both of us playing the same game—avoidance and refusal to talk—he let it slide.

I know he wants an explanation. But for now—“Here,” he says, handing me a cup of coffee and a slice of carrot cake. Thank god for Eli. Kid knows me way too well. “Pratt wants to talk to us. Eat in the car.”

I huff at that, but follow him back to where I parked.

Being detectives means we get drive an unmarked car. Being Brandon Archer means I’m driving my unmarked car, a sleek 74 Roadrunner, fully restored, and painted a blue so deep it borders on black. Eli laughs and says it’s not practical because people know it’s mine. But we aren’t undercover so fuck that noise.

I hate driving anything but my girl.

Eli turns down the radio and I glance at him as he thumbs through emails on his phone. “Why didn’t you tell me about family dinner?” I ask casually.

Guilt in those big puppy eyes before he shrugs quickly.

“Because you wouldn’t come. Nora’s been inviting you since Hazel came home and you’ve blown her off every single time.”

“Does it occur to you I might have had plans?”

“Not if those plans include a girl you don’t call again, or the bar,” Eli deadpans, and I grin, sipping my coffee as I head toward the courthouse.

“It’s Green Co, man. I’ll see them again.”

“Archer, you’ve been avoiding Nora since Hazel blew back into town. And she gets it. I get it. Even if I’m not asking—I know there’s some shit you won’t talk about. But, fuck, man. She misses her kids. That’s all.”

And that makes me feel like shit, because Nora did her best with us. When we could have ended up in the county home, we ended up with Nora. And she fought like hell to give us the best she could.

“I’ll do better,” I say and he flicks another glance at me. It’s not much, as far as promises go, but it’ll do for now. It’s enough for Eli for now.

Maybe it’s time to put aside my shit with Hazel and make peace. I glance at the clock on the dash and sigh. I’ll go, after our shift.

The morning after talk is about four fucking years overdue, and Hazel might be pissed, but I’m done playing this by her rules.

If it’s effecting Nora and Eli it’s gone on far too fucking long.

T
he thing about small towns is that they’re small. Nothing really happens here. It’s the beauty of the place, the whole reason I fell so fucking hard for Green County when I moved here. Dad’s latest duty station. Another military brat in a town full of them.

On the surface, Green County looks perfect. Idyllic. Fucking Mayberry in the middle of corn-fed Kansas.

But the more I look around, the more I think we’ve got a problem. It’s something they don’t show the outside world. And I am the outside world, to some degree, even after Green Co rallied around us.

Do you remember that day? So many people don’t. It’s easy to forget.

October 28
^th
. 1996. Most of the country thought we were moving out of Bosnia. We were. It was a quiet time for the military.

For a military brat, there’s nothing quite like peace. Nothing that’s quite as comforting.

It wasn’t supposed to happen—that’s the tragedy of it.

But a plane crash is a plane crash.

Green County was home to Sanders Army base and it lost twenty-seven soldiers in one morning. The entire country paid attention, descended on the County like a fucking horde, demanding to know what went wrong.

Here’s the thing, though. Most of the people left behind were families. Kids and their surviving parent.

There were four, who weren’t.

Four kids who were orphans. One—Anna Winters--got out clean, got picked up by an aunt and whisked away as soon as legally possible.

The other three. Well. The military and Green Co had no idea what the hell to do with them.

Nora stepped in. She was lifelong Army, retired now, and living a quiet sort of life. She owned a diner on the edge of town that the boys from base swore by and truckers liked to stay in. She kept it clean, kept a few cabins out back to let truckers and drunk soldiers crash in, and made a decent living.

And she took those three orphans in. Raised them as her own, gave them everything she could, and if Green Co and the Marine Corp kicked some money her way for publicity and survivor benefits, she tucked that in a little fund for each of them.

Sometimes family is the blood your born to.

And sometimes. It’s the woman who steps up and takes you in when the world is falling apart. It’s the gentle giant who becomes your best friend and brother, even if he was born in Germany and you were born in California. It’s the quiet green eyed young man who’s so eaten up with grief and unspent anger that you creep around him for months before you find him, broken down in the basement, and crawl into his lap, because you get it.

Fuck, you get it.

Family isn’t just the people you’re born to.

It’s the ones who chose to love you.

Nora taught me that. So did Eli, the brother of my heart. And so did Archer. Although he stopped being my brother, a long fucking time ago.

I sit back and rub my eyes.

Stare at that last line.

Fuck.

This isn’t what I’m supposed to be writing. I’m supposed to be doing an expose on the criminal underworking’s of the County—and there
were
underworking’s, even if the entire County looked the other way—and instead I was rambling on about family.