AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Honor was a highly intelligent K9, and she must have thought about his words. She released her end, with her tail wagging so hard it caused her entire back end to wiggle. She practically grinned while waiting for him to throw her toy. Rhys grimaced at the amount of dog saliva coating the end of the rope.
“Ready?” he asked.
She spun around, facing the yard with her muscles going taut and her body still. Rhys tossed the toy as far as he could and watched Honor take off after it. The dog sure had speed to her that came in handy when she was in pursuit of a bad guy. The toy bounced off the ground and landed. She skidded to a halt, snatching it up in her mouth while spinning around to face him. She paused as if to show Rhys that she had obtained her target.
“Good girl.” Rhys clapped and tapped his thigh, signaling for her to return to him.
Honor trotted toward him. He reached over for a bottle of water sitting on the table and took a swig. He glanced down at his watch and took note of the time.
Jordan should be here at any moment.
Honor arrived at his side and dropped the toy at his feet and sat. Her keen eyes were on him, the dog waiting for the next command. He gave her a good rubdown on her head and focused on her ears. She loved when someone scratched behind them.
“Go get some water, girl,” he said.
She got up and went over to her bowl where fresh, cool water waited for her.
His phone buzzed. Rhys pulled it out of his shorts pocket and took in the name displayed across the screen.
Zayden Gipson.
He grinned and slid his finger across the screen to answer it.
“Me and Honor are off duty today,” he said, answering the call.
Zayden, a sergeant for the K9 unit, was a close friend of Rhys’s. With Rhys being a twenty-five-year vet on the force, he had a hand in training some of the new recruits when they were starting out. From the moment he had met Zayden, he’d known he would make one hell of a cop. Zayden had moved up the ranks and then joined the K9 unit a few years before Rhys had. His friend had busted his ass to make sergeant, and Rhys couldn’t be happier for him.
Zayden was in charge of the K9 team, and they had a damn good squad. Along with Zayden and Rhys, there was Lane with his partner, Colt, Arlo and Kimbo, then Daxton and Hawk. The K9 unit was one of the more popular teams amongst the community.
Not so much for the bad guys they’d had to chase down.
“Well, aren’t you a lucky bastard.” Zayden chuckled.
Rhys took another swig of his water and finished off the bottle. He walked over to the recycle can he kept on the patio. A yip in the background came from Duchess, Zayden’s partner.
“While some of us are hard at work patrolling this town, others are relaxing. Tell me, Rhys, do you have the grill going?”
“You know I do.” Rhys grinned. His friend knew him all too well. Rhys never hesitated to light the grill and cook outdoors. He headed back over to the grill and lifted the hood. He was greeted by a billow of heat and coals that were light gray in color. “Beer in the fridge, my dog has water in her bowl, and Jor?—”
He’d almost said her name. The one thing he hadn’t been too keen on agreeing with Jordan was the secrecy of their relationship. He wasn’t one for sneaking around, but Jordan was determined to keep everything professional when they were on the job. It pained him to see her around the precinct or get called in to assist SWAT but couldn’t go over and kiss her like he wanted to do every damn time his gaze landed on her.
But no.
She wanted—no, needed—to ensure everyone respected her as an officer. But there wasn’t a person who didn’t respect her. The woman had made a name for herself the second she’d made the SWAT team. She was the first woman to do such a thing in their precinct. Rhys was damn proud of her.
“My friend.” He coughed. Not that he didn’t trust Zayden to keep a secret, but his friend was the brother of Brodie, Jordan’s SWAT brother. He couldn’t take the chance Zayden wouldn’t mistakenly say something to Brodie, and then the entire SWAT team would be sure to know then. “She’s coming over soon.”
“This friend of yours, still a secret, huh?” Zayden murmured.
“At least for now.”
“Well, hell. I can’t wait to meet her. She must be one hell of a woman.”
Jordan’s face came to mind. Rhys’s heart skipped a beat at the pure thought of her. He had never felt like this with anyone and wasn’t sure what to think of it. When thinking back to when he and Sara Beth had first started dating, they were young and foolish. There had been plenty of signs he had ignored at the time. But they had been in love, or at least he had thought they were.
This with Jordan was different.
He was much older. More experienced. What he felt for her was in an entirely different category than what he’d had with his ex-wife.
