Damaged Goods (Don't Call Me Hero Book 2) (2 page)

I rented two putters and golf balls from a pimple-faced teenaged boy who eyeballed Julia in her grey dress with keen interest. I couldn’t tell if he was checking her out or just curious about her fancy outfit. It was probably a little of both.

I held my hand open to let Julia pick which color ball she wanted to be—blue or red. “Lady’s choice,” I said.

When her fingers closed around her choice, a small smirk affixed itself to her painted smile. “I hope you’ll keep any comments about blue balls to yourself, Miss Miller.”

Her unexpected words caused a snort to bubble up my throat and escape out my nose. “Honestly, my brain didn’t even go there.”

Julia ran her hand over her face. “Good Lord,” she muttered. “You must be rubbing off on me.”

I flashed her a bright smile. I normally liked to make jokes of the low-hanging-fruit variety, but that was too obvious of a setup, even for me. “And, I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole.”

We walked up to the first hole, which was titled
Putt Pong
. Each of the course’s holes had been designed by an area artist.
Putt Pong
looked like a putting green with ping-pong paddles half-buried in the artificial turf.

“Do you want to go first?” I offered.

“Is this the part of the date where you teach the helpless woman how to do something sports related?” Julia quipped.

“I would never put the words ‘helpless’ and ‘Julia Desjardin’ in the same sentence.”

Her ruby-red lips twisted. “Good answer.”

She stepped onto the putting green and set her ball down. Aiming, she laced her elegant fingers around the handle of her putter as she bent over the club for her approach. I couldn’t help myself; my eyes drifted to the way the material of her dress tightened over her backside.

“Eyes on the ball, right?”

I coughed and jerked my gaze away from her luscious ass. My hand reflexively went to my hair, and I raked my fingers through my loose curls. “Right,” I choked out.

Her club swung backwards like a pendulum and connected soundly with the blue golf ball on the forward pass. I watched with wide eyes as the ball avoided the first few ping-pong paddles and each subsequent obstacle until it clattered into the far hole—a hole in one.

“What the hell?”

Julia flipped her golf club over as if to use it for a walking cane. “My father used to take Jonathan and me golfing at the Embarrass Country Club every Sunday morning when weather permitted. Mother went to church and my father had his own ideas about observing the Sabbath.”

“Is there anything you’re
not
good at?” I marveled.

Her brow furrowed and the cocky smile on her face faltered. “Dating.”

I had been nervous about today, too. We’d hung out numerous times, just the two of us, and sometimes not even in each others’ bed. But I’d worried what might change between us if we affixed a label to this thing we were doing. If we officially called it a date, would we self-destruct?

My hands went to the delicate bones of her wrists, which were clenched around the blade of her golf club. “Then I guess we’ll have to help each other out in that department.”

I watched as one corner of her mouth tilted up, and I knew I’d said the right thing.

The next hole,
Let’s Be Frank,
consisted of an obscenely large hotdog and bun, complete with a yellow squiggle of mustard down its center. Julia went first again. She leaned over her club, eyes focused on the little blue ball. I should have known she would be hyper-competitive, even over a game of putt-putt.

My eyes raked over the lean muscles of her exposed arms and to the drooping neckline of her dress, which offered scant view of the skin beneath. She was overdressed, almost comically so, surrounded by families with yelling children. In her shoes, those same shoes whose stiletto heels sank into soft green grass, I would have felt wildly out of place. But not Julia; I’d never met someone so comfortable in their own skin as she.

I realized I was coming dangerously close to being in love with this woman. And we were only on our first date.

She looked up suddenly from her putt. “What?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You had a strange look on your face.”

“Sorry. I was thinking about work.”

It was a small lie, but my status with the Minneapolis Police Department was never too far from my mind. My therapy had been going well—
productive
was the word my psychologist had used. Normally I was loath to open up to strangers, but I had a goal this time around. I needed to get back on the force as soon as they would let me. The alternative was grim, and in the long run, probably detrimental to my mental health. Throwing me back onto a beat would be haphazard, but I couldn’t sit around in my apartment killing beers and playing
Madden
forever.

We played through the remaining holes fairly quickly. Julia was under par on every hole, but for once I didn’t lament being trounced in a competition. I had a pretty wicked competitive streak, but I didn’t mind losing to Julia. I’d somehow won her affections. It didn’t matter to me if I ever had another victory.

After returning our rented golf clubs and retrieving my backpack from her car, we walked hand-in-hand, fingers loosely entwined, to an open green space close to the iconic statue of a cherry perched on the end of a spoon.

“Did you know that the artist for this piece was actually a husband and wife collaboration?” Julia asked, gesturing to the iconic sculpture. “The wife chose its design because the geometry of the Walker Gardens reminded her of Versailles and Louis XIV’s exaggerated table manners there.”

“Lemme guess,” I chuckled, “you took art history classes in college.”

She smiled innocently. “Naturally. I signed up for everything my father thought was a waste of time.”

The second reference of the evening to her father brought a frown to my face. My ego and sense of righteousness had been injured when Julia had defended her father in court rather than support me. I had tried to put myself in her shoes to understand that decision, but high heels had never been a comfortable fit for me.

As quickly as my mood shifted, I tried to mentally shake it off. I was determined to have a good time with her tonight. There would be time to heal later.

I dropped my backpack onto the grass. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“Oh yes, that vigorous round of miniature golf has left me famished,” she teased.

I unzipped my backpack and pulled out an old bed sheet. I wasn’t fancy enough to own a proper red-and-white checked picnic blanket, so I had to make do with what I had around in my apartment. Julia watched with curiosity as I unfolded the sheet on the grass and proceeded to produce dinner. I had managed to fit a veritable smorgasbord of cured meat, cheese, bread, and fruit into my backpack.

“That backpack is like the clown car of backpacks,” she observed as I laid out the food on the blanket.

“I got really good at packing in the military,” I explained.

“This looks really lovely, Cassidy. Thank you.”

I cleared my throat, still unaccustomed to niceties and compliments. “It’s just some stuff I picked up at the grocery store,” I dismissed.

While Julia settled down on the blanket, elegantly tucking her long legs beneath her, I pulled a small box of white wine from my backpack.

Julia’s eyes darted around when she saw the container. “Alcohol out in the open?”

“I think we can break the rules just this once,” I said, pouring a generous amount of wine into two red plastic cups. “Besides, the worst any cop is going to do is ask us to dump it out. Only a real prick would write a ticket.”

Julia accepted the proffered beverage. “I had no idea you interpreted the law so liberally, Officer Miller.”

“Just don’t tell my boss,” I winked.

“Speaking of which, any news on getting reinstated?”

I took a small sip of the white wine. I preferred beer, but I hadn’t had room in my bag for a six-pack. I wasn’t
that
efficient of a packer. “I met with the Inspector yesterday.”

The city police department had never had to deal with a situation like mine before. Technically, I’d taken myself off of active duty—it hadn’t been the result of an internal affairs investigation or some disciplinary action. But at the same time, they couldn’t very well return a gun and badge to an unstable police officer. It put my commanding officer at the Fourth Precinct, Inspector Garnett, in a tough position.

“And?” Julia pressed.

“The plan is to have me redo my probation period. Seventy days of supervised duty, continued therapy, and then I’ll be officially reinstated.”

Most police departments across the country used something called the San Jose field training model to observe and assess new officers after they’d graduated from the academy. The San Jose police department had come up with the system back in the 1970s, hence its name. I had been through the process before when I’d been hired directly out of the police academy, so I knew what to expect.

I would be assigned a senior officer as my Field Training Officer, or FTO. Over a seventy-day period, my FTO would fill out a daily observation report, or D.O.R, which assessed twenty-nine gradable tasks, including things like my attitude, appearance of my uniform, relationships with other officers, knowledge of protocol, and my overall performance. My FTO would rank those tasks on a sliding scale of 1—unacceptable—to 7—exceptional. If I received a rating of 1 for two consecutive training days, my underperformance would be forwarded immediately to the Inspector. I didn’t anticipate any hiccups, however. I had passed easily and without issue through my rookie probationary period, and I expected nothing less from round two.

The only major difference between my true rookie year and now was that I wouldn’t have to redo my fitness test. I actually wouldn’t have minded that though. Since returning from Afghanistan, I’d probably gotten a little soft around the middle. My eating habits hadn’t helped the cause and all exercise was easy compared to what I’d experienced in boot camp, especially the Crucible—a forty-mile march that required carrying over sixty pounds of combat gear.

Julia swirled her wine around in the plastic cup before taking an experimental sip. I was sure her palate had become accustomed to far more expensive wines than what I could offer. “That sounds reasonable. Or am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong. It just means I’m a rookie all over again.”

Julia made a humming noise. “I can relate to that. It’s been taking some time to feel comfortable in my new job as well, building a rapport with co-workers and the judges and prosecutors with whom I’ll be in contact.”

In a short amount of time, Julia had gone from Embarrass City Prosecutor to her father’s criminal defense lawyer to being a public defender for a Minneapolis non-profit group.

“Do you like it so far?” I asked.

“They’re not exactly crime of the century cases,” she dismissed.

“I know that, but do you like it?”

“I took the job because I needed to get out of Embarrass,” she said in earnest. “I don’t see it as a forever job, but it’ll do for now. And, to be quite honest, since my clients’ cases are fairly routine, it’s afforded me the opportunity to look into a custody trial about my mother.”

Julia’s mother, Olivia Desjardin, had been diagnosed with dementia. The way Julia told it, she hadn’t been the same since Julia’s brother Jonathan, another returning veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, had taken his own life. I’d only seen Julia in the context of her mother twice—once tending to rose bushes at her home, and the other when her mother had wandered off in the middle of the night—but even from those brief interactions, I knew Julia loved her mother deeply. Leaving Embarrass and her mother had probably been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

“So how does that work?” I asked. “Getting custody of someone?”

“The judge first has to declare my mother as unable to care for herself anymore, and then he’ll appoint a guardian. The incompetency is the easy part,” she said. “Determining if my father or myself will be appointed her guardian is the real issue. Unfortunately, the process strips her of many legal rights, but it’s the only way I can get her away from that man.”

“Do you need me to testify?” I offered. “Kind of like an expert witness?”

“No, dear, nothing like that. Her doctor in Embarrass sent ahead his recommendation, and I also have the paperwork from when she wandered away from the house and you and David helped us find her. Those are all official documents, which in many cases are more credible than personal testimony.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not unless you’re an expert in family law, I’m afraid. I’m actually having to relearn a lot about custody and family law myself. I haven’t had to really think about it much since law school.”

“You don’t have to do that as a public defender?”

She shook her head. “Family law is largely civil cases. As a public defender I’m still working in criminal law, but they’re mostly for minor infractions—DUIs, petty theft, drug possession,” she listed off.