It also helped that the man was nice to look at. His hands alone and the way they wrapped around a beer bottle would be something she’d be adding to her spank bank—when she could spank again. Not that women spanked. Or did they?
Her buzz bank? Her vibe vault?
Whatever. That wasn’t the point.
Idris Elba—the name she’d given her vibrator (its real name was Tracy’s Dog, which is just a horrendous name for anything but a canine owned by a woman named Tracy) sat lonely in her nightstand. She hadn’t been able to effectively use him for the last few months of her pregnancy, her belly had gotten so big. And now that she was bleeding, he sat in the purple satin bag pining for her and she for him. Like two star-crossed lovers.
But soon (hopefully), she and Idris could be reunited, and she’d think of Isaac and his hands and that V that disappeared into his jeans as she spoke with God and smelled colors and found her G-spot once again.
She silently rocked in the chair, her eyes closed and Ike guzzling away. Her mouth dipped into a frown the longer she thought of Isaac. From a painful smile to a frown of disappointment in under a minute.
Postpartum emotions were a wretched beast.
Because as much as she liked Isaac and found him hot, found him sweet and exactly what she needed when she needed it, she knew that they had no future.
At the most, maybe they could have a little no-strings fun, but as far as dating and love went, that was off the table.
She didn’t date cops.
Never had.
Never would.
Not when there was a curse haunting the women in her family and taking away the heroes they loved.
Her father had been a cop, and he’d died on duty. His death was senseless, preventable, and tragic. Even though she’d only been five when he died, her mother had drilled it into her from the day of his funeral forward to never date a cop. To never marry a cop. Their family was cursed.
Every day of their life together, Lauren’s mother had waited with fear in her gut and a dull ache in her heart when Lauren’s father would leave for work, and she wouldn’t relax until he returned home. Only to put herself through that torture the next day and the next.
It explained a lot about why Lauren’s mother was such an anxious person by nature. Lauren didn’t get that from her, but her half sister, Fiona, certainly did.
She’d only been five, but she’d had a nightmare and was in her parents’ bed with her mom when there was a knock at the door and two officers appeared on their doorstep. It was eleven fifteen on Saturday night. October twelfth.
And it was that day she knew she could never fall in love with a cop.
4
It was four forty-five on Christmas Day, and of course, Isaac got dispatched to a “kerfuffle” downtown. Two homeless men were fighting each other—and by the time he arrived it looked like a death match—in an alley because one guy stole the other guy’s tarp. Then one of them set fire to the other guy’s stuff, and it escalated from there until one was swinging a rusty old ax and the other brandishing some prison-grade toothbrush shank.
Both he and Sid had been sent out on the call, and Sid had carted both men away in the back of her squad car. They were in for a warm bed and a hot meal in a cold cell. Not the best way to spend Christmas, but given how they looked and how they lived, Isaac would take a day—hell, a week—in the slammer over living on the streets of Seattle in the dead of winter.
He managed to put out the fire without calling the fire department—those guys were busy enough this time of year—and was collecting what remained of the one guy’s stuff, the stuff that didn’t get torched, when he heard a faint but very distinctive meow.
But it wasn’t your typical cat meow. This was the high-pitched, sharp mewl of a kitten.
He didn’t have to pack up the guy’s stuff. That wasn’t his job, and he wished he had more than gloves in his car, like a full hazmat suit, but it was Christmas, and most likely, the contents of that grocery cart were the man’s entire life.
He finished packing up the stuff into the back of his car when he heard the meow again.
Cardboard boxes and trash bins lined the alley, along with the torched remnants of the man’s belongings. He couldn’t see a cat. Or a kitten.
And if there was a kitten out here, it wouldn’t survive for long given the way the temperature had been continuously dropping over the last week. They were expected to get snow in the next few days—and lots of it.
As he tossed the latex gloves into a trash can, he heard the mewling louder and closer than ever. There was definitely a kitten around there somewhere.
Pulling his leather gloves out of his back pocket, because it was really fucking cold out, he pulled them on and began searching among the garbage for the little beast.
It didn’t take him long to find a tabby kitten, fluffy but filthy and terrified, hiding in a microwave box on its side. A few rags had been made into some makeshift nest, and there was a lot of fur. The kitten also didn’t look old enough to be without its mother.
Was the mother around somewhere? Off gathering food?
He made a psst psst noise and crouched down, rubbing his thumb and fingers together to attract the kitten or hopefully draw out its mother. Should he take the kitten to the shelter? Or was its mom coming back for it?
It was dark now, and the streets were practically empty. He scanned up and down the alley and the sidewalks for a cat, but she was either hiding on purpose or not around.
He was about to turn back to go and check on the kitten again when he spotted a mound in the middle of the road less than a hundred yards away.
It wasn’t moving.
Jogging to stay warm, he went and confirmed his suspicions.
The mother. She’d been hit by a car and most likely recently.
Fuck.
That kitten was now alone in the world, without a mother, without a food source and would not make it to morning.
Using one of the homeless man’s blankets and a shovel from the back of his car, he scooped up the mother and wrapped her, then he went and gathered up her child, tucked the kitten into his coat, climbed into his cruiser and called Sid.
Lauren knew he finished work at five, and she knew from being a cop’s kid that off at five didn’t necessarily mean your shift ended. Sometimes a case, a call, or paperwork forced you into overtime. So she planned dinner for six thirty. Not that re-heating the meal would be a problem. But there was nothing so delicious as fresh cooked turkey and all the trimmings.
Like the good man that he was, Isaac had texted her when he got off work. They’d exchanged phone numbers last night while eating nachos. He just figured it made sense, and she liked being able to enter him into her phone as Sergeant Big Hands.
But his text had been cryptic as hell though. What’s your opinion on cats? I’m running late. Should be there for seven.
She understood the latter portion of his message. But the former baffled her. What was her opinion on cats?
For starters, she loved them. She’d always been a cat person.
She’d had her beloved Genevieve since she was thirteen, and the darling had only just passed away that previous March. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to get a new cat. Her Genevieve had been irreplaceable. But she still had all of Genevieve’s stuff.