Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

“Lots of military boys?”


“Yeah.” Shauna’s gaze swept down the torso of a man a good ten years younger than she was. “Fresh.”

Jo laughed. “You haven’t told me much about your divorce. How is it going?”

“Not fast enough.” She leaned in. “We can talk about that when we’re alone.”

Jo took the hint and dropped the subject.

Lenny waved them across the room and their group followed.

Music flowed from a stereo in the walls, but a small stage was available for live entertainment in the back of the room. The waitress took their drink order and left after dropping off menus.

“How often do you get out here, Agent Burton?” Lenny had a knack for keeping the conversation going and including everyone within earshot.

“I’m in DC a few times a year, try to get here at least once.”

“Don’t you have to retest annually?” the woman next to Lenny asked. Jo tried to place her name. Nina . . . or was it Mina? Jo had forgotten but knew she was from Kansas City. Why that fact stuck out, Jo couldn’t say.

“Quarterly quals are four times a year . . . fitness, annually. Clausen and I hold a firearms cert, so that’s something we need to prove every year.”

“Sounds like a lot of testing,” Bess added.

Jo leaned in. “Yeah, well . . . when you call in the Feds, it’s nice to know they aren’t sending some overweight, underskilled fat cat counting his time toward retirement.”

Shauna nodded. “What she said.”

“We have a few of them in my department.”

“There’s a few of those in every department,” Lenny said.

“I haven’t seen one overweight, underskilled anyone here,” Jo said.

“They are . . . they’re just hidden.”

“Who’s hidden?” Jo swiveled around to see Gill standing over her chair, asking. He’d changed into a T-shirt that stretched over his chest like a glove. It wasn’t all that different from the shirt he’d worn the night they’d met.

Jo’s mouth watered.

“Not you, that’s for sure,” Bess said from the other side of the table. She pulled out a chair to her right and patted it. “Saved you a seat, Agent.”

Gill glanced at Jo, smirked, and moved to the other side of the table.

Good, he wasn’t close enough to smell. And he was far enough away to look at without being obvious.

“I was explaining how often we have to prove ourselves to our boss.”

Gill shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. It helped that he looked like he lived in the gym.

“Jo?” Lenny moved the conversation around the table. “How many deputies do you have working with you?”

“It’s a small town.” Here with so many law enforcement officers, surrounded by the FBI and marines on leave from the base, Jo couldn’t help but feel like a little fish in a great big pond.

“How small?” Bess asked.

“I have one full-time deputy, and two part-timers I pull in from Waterville that help with relief when my second or I are occupied.”

“So there are only two of you?” Mina/Nina asked.

“It’s a really small town,” Shauna explained.

“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad,” Lenny said.

“I’d go apeshit crazy.”

“Oh, I don’t know . . .” Gill said. “There’s been enough trouble in River Bend to keep you busy.”

Jo switched her gaze from Shauna to Gill. The two had obviously talked.

“Trouble in River Bend usually means trouble with people I know, which makes crime personal.”

Lenny tossed a hand in the air. “I’m out. I don’t want to be slapping cuffs on my friends.”

“Forget that, what about family?” Mina/Nina asked.

“Maybe your family,” Bess teased.

The discussion moved to dysfunctional brothers and deadbeat cousins. Jo was happy to switch the spotlight away from herself. Who knew policing such a small town held embarrassment? She hadn’t felt that coming. Since she had taken the position of sheriff, she’d worn her badge with pride and taken everything she did seriously.

Jo always considered herself a strong person, one that didn’t bend to peer pressure or cower in any way. Yet for the next hour, while their group enjoyed a couple of drinks and ate some of the best burgers she’d ever tasted, Jo said as little as she could to keep the conversation off her.



Gill watched her disconnect. Almost like a computer being powered off, the fire in Jo’s eyes twinkled down to a dim spark until she appeared to be nothing other than a shell. He waited until they’d gotten through their meal and she was ordering another drink before he engaged her.

“Hey, Jo.”

She met his eyes from across the table.

“Yeah?”

“You’re a competitive sport.” He nodded at the vacant dartboard on the other side of the room. “Wanna lay a bet on who can toss a better dart?”

Jo swiveled in her seat before narrowing her eyes. “What kind of bet?”

He liked her tiny smile. “Round of drinks, twenty bucks? Whatever you want.”

Shauna nudged Jo’s arm while keeping on with the conversation with Lenny.

“Round of drinks and twenty bucks.” She stood. “You’re on.”

“Give her your money now, Clausen. I saw her on the range,” Lenny said.

The chair scraped against the floor as he left the table and followed Jo to the dartboard. He couldn’t stop his eyes from lingering on her ass any more than he could stop breathing. It helped that he knew what it looked like without the tight jeans she now wore.

Jo Ward was many things, but a sluggish, small town cop working toward retirement, she was not.

She finished her drink and set it on the tabletop closest to where they were going to play.

“I’ll have a Stella,” she told him before moving to the board to retrieve the darts.

“Afraid you’ll lose and downgrading your drink now?” he taunted.

“Slowing down the liquor so I can beat you.” She nodded to the tiny cocktail waitress with blue hair as she walked by. “You order whatever you want. You’ll be buying.”

Some of her earlier spark came back.

“Two Stellas,” he told the girl.

She wrote it down and walked to another table.

Jo erased the scores from the previous players from the chalkboard before adding their names. Only instead of Jo and Gill, she wrote an A and an R.

He chuckled under his breath.

“Are we playing 501?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Double score to win, or just get to zero?”

“Double score.”

There was a little swing in her hips as she walked back. “You’re entirely too confident,” he told her.

She gathered up one set of darts and pivoted toward the board. “You live in Eugene, right?”

“Yep.”

She didn’t look at him. “Big city.”

“It’s not New York.”

She poised a dart on the tips of her fingers and motioned toward the board a couple of times. “River Bend has one bar and zero nightlife outside of that bar.” She let the dart fly, hitting the twenty-five-point green bull’s-eye. When she turned back toward him, a satisfied grin lifted both sides of her cheeks.