Hey everyone! Sorry that Chapter Two has been a long time coming, but I intend on posting this story fairly regularly now. If you enjoy reading slow-burn romances with some steamy sex sprinkled in, this is your story! If you haven't read it already, I high encourage you to read Chapter One. It gives a LOT of necessary context (and has some pretty awesome sexy-times too!). Thank you for your time and feel free to leave a comment. I LIVE for the comments.
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"So, while I'm telling Charlene about the parade, I mention that some woman flashed me, right? I barely even think about it because what I really want to tell her is that I swear to God I saw Tom Cruise there, and she seriously loves Tom Cruise. Well, Charlene goes full stop right in the middle of the mall and looks at me like I just shot someone." Jim said as he opened his police locker and began digging out his uniform.
"Like you'd ever shoot someone, Jim." Diana blinked the sleep away from her eyes as she shrugged off her jacket and began changing into her uniform. The changing room at the central police station wasn't packed, but people were filtering in and out for the shift change.
"Not the point, Chief." Jim started shrugging off his off-duty clothes.
"Uh huh." She yawned and began changing into her uniform as well.
"So, I stop, and I ask her what's wrong, right? And she just looks me dead in the eye, white knuckles the stroller, and boom." Jim slammed his locker for dramatic effect.
"She asks me. You want to know what she asks me?" Jim looked down at Diana, his meaty fingers working the buttons on his uniform jacket.
"What's that?" Diana cocked a skeptical eyebrow at her partner.
"She asks me if I
looked
at them. She asks me if I looked at this random woman's boobs on Bourbon Street. Like, what? How can she even ask that?" He scoffed.
"You totally looked." Diana laughed for the first time in the past few days.
"Of course I did, they were right in front of me!" The hulk of a man pointed to his face with a look of bewilderment. "But that's not the point. I might have saw some random college girl's boobs, but I wasn't looking at them. There's a difference."
"Right." Diana nodded. "Completely different."
"There's a difference and you know it."
"You know you could have just jumped straight into the Tom Cruise part of the story and skipped the boobs part, right?" Diana nodded at a few tired looking officers who had just come off their shift. Most of them nodded back or said hi, and she returned the greetings before looking back at Jim. "Kind of shot yourself in the foot on this one."
"Now, you see..." The man who had played college football and almost went pro began to lecture, "A part of me says, well, Jim, maybe if you had just kept your big mouth shut, then you wouldn't be in this place you know? But Charlene's the mother of my kids, and the God's honest truth is I think she's way sexier than any girl I've ever met. Hell, if I'm being honest, now that we've got the twins and Rebecca I think she's even sexier than before."
"That actually turn you on?" Diana teased.
"So," Jim made a point to ignore her question, "the idea of looking at another woman in that way just doesn't even make sense to me. Wasn't even on my radar. But I don't know, maybe Charlene doesn't know that I feel that way about it? Maybe I need to try and do better and spend more time with her. I don't know. What do you think?"
"Jim, ask me how to rebuild a motorcycle engine or free-hand climb a mountain and I'm your girl, but I'm the last person you need to ask about your relationship." Diana shrugged on bullet proof vest.
"Point taken." Jim paused, his speech abruptly halted when he noticed the dark bags under Diana's eyes. "Sorry, I'm talking too much. You doing alright, Chief? You're not looking so hot."
"Ugh." Diana grumbled as she slammed her locker shut and lazily rubbed her face. "You're good, Jim. And yeah, I'm fine. Late night."
"Ah." Jim nodded in understanding before scratching the stubble on his chin. "Another one of your date nights?"
"Yeah. Something like that."
The truth was that Dianna had spent an abnormal amount of time the past week investigating the old mansion on Lee Boulevard. For the first few days after the Halloween "incident" she tried her best to ignore what had happened, and convince herself that it was some sort of daydream or hallucination. None of it made any sense to her, not a lick, and she couldn't imagine how any of what she had experienced could have been real. Even if it had felt more real than anything she had ever known. It was the dreams that had gotten her. Dreams of the redhead she had had found in the mansion, dreams of Ruby. She tried to ignore them for a while, but before long the dreams had become so intense that she couldn't sleep. She had dug up every scrap of dirt that she could about the mansion. She checked the old land records, pulled up past reports, asked everyone who knew the area, everything. But nothing unusual ever came back, only that the property was owned by some land development company out of New York named the Hellas Foundation. Last night she had gone back to the mansion and searched every square inch of the place and found nothing but dust and rats.
It was exhausting for Diana, and breaking into a creepy old mansion was the last thing she was going to confess to Jim.
"There's no way you pull that much tail, Smith. It's bullshit." A tall man with a slender frame clicked open the locker next to Diana and began taking off his bullet proof vest.
"What, and you do any better, Mike?" Jim smiled and started suiting up as most of the other officers in the room were taking off their gear. It was the first big shift change of the day, and while not all officers came into the station to get into and out of their gear, most of the ones who lived nearby found it more convenient to store all their stuff at the station than at home. "Strike out on your date last night or something?"
"Eh, don't worry about it Jimmy." Diana clapped Jim's shoulder. "I'm not worried about what ol' one pump has to say."
"Hey!" Mike through up his hands in surrender, "That shit escalated quickly! No need for you to bring up that up. It was a freak situation!"
"You were batting way out of your league that night. I'm just surprised you got as far as you did." Diana smiled.
"Duh." Mike made a stupid face as he tossed his vest and threw on an old Saints t-shirt, "So you can hardly blame me, alright? Besides, all I'm saying is that sweet D over here needs to leave some for the rest of us. Fair is fair."
"Maybe the issue isn't me catching all the fish." Diana squared up on her friend with a shit eating grin, "But that you just don't have the right
bait
."
Jim blew out a long breath.
"Damn." Mike finished pulling the shirt over his head. "Now you're just being cold, Chief. I was just playing around and you're cutting me down at the knees."
A few of the other cops in the room laughed at the exchange, although it was clear that the banter between Diana, Jim, and Mike was fairly routine. They had all graduated from the academy together, and had been thick as thieves ever since.
"You'll be fine, Mike, don't worry about it. Just stop wearing that cheap cologne and you'll probably start doing a lot better." Diana threw on her uniform jacket and gave the fellow cop a nudge with her elbow. "And don't worry, there's plenty of fish in the sea."
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The abandoned warehouses and dilapidated old shotgun houses along the street stood silent and dark as the police cruiser slowly made its rounds, the headlights shining like spotlights on the old bones of the city.
"So, want to tell me what's really up?" Jim garbled around the donut hole in his mouth.
"Like I said, long night." Diana hit the turn signal on the cruiser and waited for the red light to change. The rain was starting to pick up, and Jim's loud chewing seemed perfectly timed with the slick sound of the windshield wipers moving back and forth across the glass.
"Come on, Chief. Tell ol' Jimmy what's bothering you. Break ups never bothered you much before."
"Breakup?" Diana laughed, "What the hell makes you think I broke up with someone?"
"Well, for one," Jim cleared his throat and put on the best 'therapist' voice he could muster, which was the same as Jim's normal baritone voice but with a horrible British accent attached. "One, you're behaving in precisely the same manner as when you dumped Micky Brocato."
"That was different." Diana drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.
"Two." Jim forced his voice up a few octaves, "You missed Walter's birthday party this weekend."
"Oh
fuck.
" Diana sighed and hit the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. "Shit, I'm sorry, Jim. I was caught up in some stuff and totally forgot. God damn it."
"Mmhmm." Jim hummed before speaking in his normal deep voice again. "Don't worry though, barely a half hour into the party and the neighbor's kid started projectile vomiting in the Avengers bouncy house. At one point Iron Man was covered head-to-toe in partially digested Cheetos, hot dogs, and a hell of a lot of tootsie rolls."
"Are you serious?" Diana's shoulders hung with guilt. "I wanted to be there."
"Like I said, after the puke fest Walter just wanted to take his presents and go up to his room. You know how he is, and honestly, I don't blame him. Cake wasn't all that great either. But, back to the reason why in the world a twenty-something year old woman like yourself would dare to skip out on your partner's eight year old's birthday party." Jim finished off the last of the donut holes with a loud smack as he licked the icing off his fingers. "Chief, isn't it about time you started getting serious with someone? Like, for real."
"Damn, Jim. What is this, Dr. Phil or something? And can we discuss the donut holes? Really? The jokes write themselves."
"Look here now," Jim waved his sixty-nine cent coffee cup like a king's scepter, "Two things. One, this is a really long red light. Two, I'll have you know that once you have kids you're allowed to eat garbage like this all the time."
"Pretty sure you're supposed to stop, not start, eating shit when you have kids." Diana grumbled and gunned the cruiser when the light finally turned green.
"Yeah, you try making lasagna when you've got three kids and a baby. Tell you what, that's a seriously unreal expectation right there, cooking homemade meals every night, and anybody who thinks it isn't has either never had kids, stays at home all day, or is rich. Probably all three. The Pioneer Woman can kiss my ass."
Jim shook his head and took a long drink of his coffee. "Besides, what's the point of getting married if you can't let go a little bit, ya know? Am I supposed to keep this sexy set of Captain America abs forever? Besides, Charlene keeps telling me that dad-bod is hot. Can't leave my beautiful wife hanging, can I?"
"You sure she said that?" Diana arched a skeptical eyebrow at the larger officer.
