Unreasonably handsome Hixon Drake with his cool, pool-blue eyes, powerfully-built body and natural swagger that wasn’t eye-roll-worthy, but drool-worthy. The tall, beautiful Princess of Glossop Hope. And their three equally beautiful children.
Lou had a girl on the same soccer team as Sheriff Drake’s girl, and I was close with all of Lou’s family (except her husband Bill, who was likeable, but did things that were really not-so-likeable), so it wasn’t rare I took in a home game.
And I had a client who had a daughter who thought I walked on water so she asked me to her dance recitals, and I went.
Sheriff Drake had a daughter who danced.
So I’d seen them. All five of them, together, in various groups, separately.
The perfect family.
Tall. Strong. Proud. Gorgeous. Happy.
Glossop’s royal couple, hell, royal family—the sheriff and his brood.
When they fell apart, the town was agog. They couldn’t credit it. They couldn’t believe it.
It was unbelievable.
No.
Unthinkable.
Everyone thought it’d last a few days. Then they decided it might take a few weeks. After that, a few months.
When the divorce went through—and I knew exactly when it went through, it was the talk of the salon all day (this making me an even bigger idiot, can anyone say rebound?)—everyone was freaked.
If it could happen to the perfect family, it could happen to anybody.
The townsfolk had been split down the middle.
At first.
Men and catty women said it was all about Hope being Hope, thinking her shit didn’t stink and her female parts were coated in gold, wanting to bust the balls of a man who would allow that to keep peace in his family.
Until the time came when he was done allowing that.
Women and men who wanted to get into Hope Drake’s pants said it was Hixon who was an asshole, probably had someone on the side, or several someones, and she was best shot of him. Because look at her, she’s Hope Drake. She could get anyone.
Time wore on and Hope sat in Lou’s chair and let her mouth run, and probably did it other places besides, thinking women would feel her pain (when, with what she had and the games she was playing endangering that, we did not) and the mixed looks Hixon Drake was getting started to be not so mixed anymore.
The tall, beautiful Princess of Glossop thought she was just that.
So when my mom said Soccer Mom Barbie would get her GI Sheriff Joe back when he came to heel, she wasn’t talking out her ass.
Everyone knew Hope was pitching one helluva fit to get her man to do what she wanted.
The thing was, it wasn’t only his Bronco that declared the kind of man he was.
How the woman who’d shared nearly twenty years with him didn’t clue in made everyone think even less of her (and her waning popularity, especially in the last three weeks, was running out, so not many thought much of her already—not anymore).
Someone’s tiara was tarnished, and unless she got her head out of her ass and came to heel, broken perfection would not get fixed.
And it was my experience that a good way to make a woman come to heel was show her she could be replaced.
Even with a Trailer Trash Farrah Fawcett who had a few too many years on her, it would work.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think Hixon took me to bed to get his wife back.
At least not consciously.
I just knew if nothing else would wake her shit up, that would.
So if my mother had heard, Hope Drake definitely had.
And the thing of it was, even though I wasn’t Hope Drake’s biggest fan even before it became clear what kind of woman she was and how that had affected her family (and it went without saying also before I slept with her ex-husband), there was a part of me that thought it best that happened.
They fixed what was broken.
Maybe not for him.
Definitely not for her.
But absolutely for those three kids.
I knew better than most that the perfect family never existed, but the slightly-imperfect perfect family that still worked was on the endangered species list.
So if there was a shot, everyone should do what they could to protect it.
That was what I’d been thinking the past two days.
That I hadn’t done that.
I’d been charmed by a handsome man who made me forget I was supposed to have hardened my heart against men who might look at their wives like she was the first female created and God had outdone himself (and that was how Hixon had looked at Hope), but me, he’d treat like dirt.
And then he made me remember.
Now . . .
Well, now, if my mom had heard about what had happened, I was likely going to be thrown right in the thick of it.
And I had a feeling that wasn’t going to go well for me.
I had that feeling because nothing ever did.
And dammit, I’d taken more than my fair share of lickings.
I’d had enough.
But it was more.
After the one Keith had delivered, then me finding the first moments of respite in my life and thinking it might finally go okay, that being before Mom followed Andy and me out here and blew that all to smithereens, I didn’t know for sure, if I got another one, that I’d be able to keep on ticking.
The In-Between
Hixon
HIX FELT IT the minute he walked into the department the next morning.
He saw the cause when he looked beyond Donna, Bets and one of his other deputies, Larry, all of them at their desks in the bullpen, and he aimed his attention to his office where Hope was pacing.
Goddammit.
He swung through the swinging half door, and it was Larry who moved from his desk, close to the aisle to say, “Mornin’, Hix. And sorry, man. We asked her to wait out here. She refused. And she pitched a fit when Donna said she was gonna give you a call, so Donna thought it best to put her back there and maybe she’d cool off before you got here.”
He knew from having seen that pacing before, that hadn’t happened.
“Not your problem,” he growled, tipping his chin down to Larry, lifting it to Donna and noting that Bets was avoiding him but doing it looking under her lashes toward his office.
Once he’d greeted his deputies, Hix just kept staring into his office as he prowled there, seeing Hope had noticed he’d arrived and was standing smack in the window with her hands on her hips like it was her damned office and she was waiting for a naughty boy to show up and receive his chastisement.
He didn’t need three guesses to know that word had reached her about Greta.
What he didn’t quite get was why that drove her here.
Surely the woman could share what was on her mind on a freaking phone, not dragging his staff in as witnesses to whatever she’d worked herself up to dole out.
He moved down the side hall that led to the door to his office as well as the one at the back that led to the alley.
He turned right through the one to his office.
He hadn’t even closed the door when she launched in.
“You’re fucking unbelievable! How could you humiliate me this way!” she shouted.
He closed the door and ground out, “Calm down.”
“Calm down?” she screamed, advanced quickly and lifted a hand to shove his shoulder.
It rocked back and he felt his face turn to stone.