Star-Crossed(39)

“Nova!” The girls whined, cold and impatient as they waited by the door. “You coming or what?”

“I’m coming.” Nova waved to them and then patted Romeo’s cheek. “You worry too much, Rome. I got it handled.”

“I hope so.” Romeo wished he were in a gym beating out his frustrations on something padded rather than stuck at this party. “Five minutes.” Romeo waited until Nova was gone before he pulled out his phone, looking for an escape from his life. What he found made him smile. A picture of Jules greeted him, and 100



he touched the screen of his phone, making the photo bigger, and held it closer to better see. Dressed in a tan deputy uniform, with her hair braided back, Jules had held the phone out in front of her and snapped a picture of herself smiling in front of a small police dispatch board.

It should be illegal to make a police uniform look that sexy, and Romeo stood there staring for a long moment, unable to believe just how attractive he found her in it.

Beneath the picture the text read:

 This is what I’m doing. What’re you doing?

Romeo stepped away from the bar and walked down the street until he was in a better position to really capture Times Square behind him in a way that’d be recognizable to her.

He held out his phone and snapped a picture of himself.





101





Chapter Seven

Feet up on the desk, with her laptop in her lap, Jules was reading over the information on a new case. She was helping Katie Foster for nothing more than the cost of expenses because Katie was naive and sweet and should have never gotten married at nineteen. Now the young teacher was forced to battle through a divorce from a man who didn’t want to let her go and was resorting to the age-old technique of making Katie’s life as miserable as possible in the hopes of her just giving up and going back to him.

Not if Jules had anything to do with it. If Katie wanted to be free and clear to start over, Jules was going to make sure that’s what happened—she hated bullies.

Her cell phone buzzed on the desk, and she reached over, picked it up, and grinned. She slid her finger across the glass and then touched the picture of Romeo to make it bigger. With snow sparkling under the bright lights, he looked as handsome as ever standing in the street with all the flash of Times Square behind him. He wore a black leather jacket and a matching black ski hat pulled low over his ears, but it did nothing to hide his handsome features. She actually touched the screen nostalgically, missing him even when she knew it was dangerous to do so.

Then the dispatch buzzed, and she scrambled to put her laptop on the desk as she answered the call. “911, what’s your emergency?”

“Jules, that you? I can’t believe they gotcha working on New Year’s with as much work as you got all the time.”

Jules tossed her cell on the desk next to the computer to give the caller her full attention as she repeated, “What’s the emergency?”

“Jason and Carl were drinking too much, and they got into it.” 102



Jules brushed the fine blonde hairs that had escaped her braid off her forehead as she asked, “They’re fighting now?”

“Yeah, dumb-asses. They’re beating each other black-and-blue.” Jules frowned in concern. “Is this Fran?”

“Who else would it be?” Fran asked bitterly. “No one else gives a shit if they kill each other. I’m nine months pregnant. I need a healthy paycheck bringing food home, and here Carl thinks it’d be a good idea to invite his brother over for New Year’s. You know Jason’s been drinking a lot since Sara left and—”

“Fran, where are they right now?” Jules interrupted her. “Are you in any danger?”

“No, I’m fine. They’re out in the front yard. In the snow. Idiots.”

“Do they have any weapons?”

“Not unless ya count thick skulls as weapons.”

“No guns?” Jules clarified. “Or anything they could use to cause serious injury?

Bats? Knives?”

“Nah, all the guns are still in the house. Hold on, lemme make sure they ain’t gotten into the shed since I called ya.” Fran huffed as if she were attempting to get up.

After a few moments she said, “Just two drunk morons out there trying to drown each other in the snowdrifts.”

“Okay, I want you to go ahead and lock ’em out of the house. We wanna keep you safe, and we wanna make sure they’re not grabbing any guns,” Jules said calmly.

“We’re gonna send someone out there to break it up.”

“It’s freezing out. They’re gonna get frostbite.”

“They’ll be all right,” Jules assured her. “We got all our units out. It won’t be more than a few minutes until someone gets there.”