Once a Lawman. Lisa Childs

for only one man,” Erin shared.

      Tessa glanced toward the officers’ table, at the handsome blond sergeant and then she turned back to Erin with a raised brow.

      “Not him,” she repeated, a scowl marring her smooth forehead. The furrows cleared when she smiled and explained, “My little man is only three and a half feet tall.”

      “You have a son?” Tessa would have guessed Erin was not much older than Amy, but then age had nothing to do with parenting. Her mother had gotten pregnant with Tessa before finishing high school.

      “Nephew,” Erin said, “but he’s my responsibility right now.”

      Tessa understood those kinds of responsibilities, the ones that really belonged to someone else but had become yours. “I have—”

      “Please turn your attention to the overhead where we’ll be playing tapes of some traffic stops,” Lieutenant O’Donnell directed, interrupting Tessa before she could share the number and ages of her siblings.

      The watch commander nodded and someone flipped off the lights. “This will give you an idea of the day in a life of a patrol officer and what some of you will have to look forward to on your ride-alongs. This shows you how we don’t know what to expect with even the most routine of traffic stops, so each of you will need to stay in the cruiser until your officer indicates you can leave the vehicle. Your safety, the public’s safety and our officers’ safety are of utmost importance to the Lakewood PD.”

      Next to her, Erin snorted in derision.

      Tessa closed her eyes. Because she was not a police groupie, nor participating out of any interest in law enforcement, she intended to recharge from her long day of running from sales call to sales call to high school to middle school to elementary school, dropping off and picking up kids and taking forgotten lunches or lunch money or books or homework…

      But then a familiar deep voice requesting, “License and registration, please,” drew her attention to the screen. Lieutenant Michalski stood next to an equally familiar black SUV.

      She cringed and slumped in her chair as a woman coyly remarked, “Good afternoon, Officer. I must have a taillight out, right? How sweet of you to stop and inform me.”

      Yet the SUV’s lights burned red even in the fuzzy video footage.

      “Both lights are working, ma’am.”

      “Then I can’t imagine why you stopped me.”

      “You were speeding,” he said, lifting his hand toward her open window. “License and registration.”

      As she passed them over, her hand lingered on his, her index finger stroking his skin. “I can give you my card, too, if you’d like my phone number.”

      Chuckles emanated from the darkness, and Amy nudged her with an elbow. “That’s you!” Then in a louder voice, she exclaimed, “That’s Tessa!”

      Tessa’s face burned with humiliation, but her screen image knew no such shame. “Officer…Lieutenant Michalski,” she murmured as she leaned through the open window, reading the thin brass pin with his name above his badge. Then she blinked up at him. “I can’t imagine why you think I was speeding…”

      “Because you were,” he stated unequivocally, with no discernible reaction to her flirting, the dark glasses hiding his eyes. “I’ll be right back with your ticket.”

      “Wait!” But he walked away from her in the video. If only that had been the last she’d seen of him…

      Chad clicked off the computer, freezing the frame on his handsome face as he walked back toward his car. Even with the low quality of the footage, the muscle twitching in his cheek was visible as he clenched his jaw.

      “That was the classic,” he said, having taken over for the watch commander, “flirt-your-way-out-of-a-ticket reaction—”

      “Starring CPA member Tessa Howard,” one of the other participants said, laughing. The kid, who had shared in the introductions last week that he was in the criminal justice program at Lakewood University, acted as if Tessa had starred in another kind of video.

      “So did you give her the ticket?” one of Chad’s fellow officers asked as he chuckled, too.

      “Why do you think I’m here?” Tessa replied for him, lifting her palms and sighing with resignation.

      “So the flirting didn’t work?” Amy asked, her eyes wide with disappointment.

      Tessa shook her head. “Not with the lieutenant.”

      “But you gave a valiant effort,” someone praised her—the older woman who had talked her husband into joining the program for “thrills.” Bernice, or Bernie as she preferred, began to clap, and the other CPA members joined in the applause.

      Tessa stood up and bowed, as if she had just performed a play. In a way she had, a very public play for the lieutenant’s interest.

      As if he hadn’t noticed her sassy response, Chad continued speaking, “It’s an officer’s duty to uphold the law and treat all violators fairly.”

      “No matter how pretty they are,” Terlecki interjected, but his focus was on Erin, not Tessa.

      “So my ugly mug won’t cause me to get more tickets?” Bernie’s husband, Jimmy, asked from where he sat next to his wife in the middle of the room.

      “You’re just as handsome as the day I married you,” Bernie dutifully assured him.

      “Then what the hell were you thinking thirty-nine years ago?” he joked.

      Relieved the attention had shifted from her, Tessa released a breath. Then she risked a glance toward Chad and found his gaze on her. Did he care that he had embarrassed her? Or had that been his intention when he’d included the footage of her traffic stop? As in the video, his face was unreadable.

      “Let’s turn back to the screen, folks,” he directed everyone. “We have a few more examples we’d like you to see.” As the next video flickered across the screen, he warned, “If anyone finds foul language offensive, you may want to plug your ears…”

      The few laughs that emanated from the CPA participants died out as the young female officer on the screen walked up to the open window of the car she had pulled over. The driver hurled insults and curses at the officer, who didn’t even flinch. But Tessa tensed, fisting her hands at her sides as she took exception to the chauvinistic remarks.

      When the young officer asked the man to step out of his vehicle, the driver gunned the engine and took off. A gasp spilled from Tessa’s lips, which others echoed.

      “He was later apprehended,” Chad assured them, “with a blood alcohol level well over the legal limit. But he filed a complaint against the department and that officer for harassment.”

      A few curses of outrage emanated from the CPA participants.

      “So Tessa was the honey and that guy was the vinegar,” Jimmy said.

      Lieutenant Michalski ignored his remark, of course, and played the next video. An officer stood beside another vehicle. The audio had been turned down so Tessa couldn’t hear what either the officer or the driver said. But then metal crashed against metal, the sickening crunch reverberating in the quiet conference room.

      Tessa jumped, startled by the noise and horrified by what she saw on the large screen. A truck hit first the police car, so that the camera shook but kept recording the image of the officer’s own vehicle hitting him.

      Even though he didn’t make a sound, Chad drew her attention. In the flickering glow from the screen, his face was eerily pale, his green eyes dark and haunted. Sweat beaded on his upper lip and his brow. She rose a few inches from her chair, compelled to go to him, to see if he was all right, but then he spoke.

      “Officer Jackson’s injuries were surprisingly minor,” he said.