~Excerpt~Against the Cage (Worth the Fight #1) by Sidney Halston

~Excerpt from Chapter 1~

The scene: After getting pulled over and accidentally hitting the police officer in a very sensitive place, Chrissy’s discovers the cop is Jack, her older brother’s best friend that she hasn’t seen in years. She’s thrown for a loop—but so is Jack…

He didn’t normally abuse his position of power but…

He attempted to give her his best police officer I-mean-business-face that normally intimidated the hell out of everyone, but he couldn’t seem to hide his smirk. He hoped she didn’t notice. “Have you been drinking?”

“What? No!” Yep, she was definitely seething.

“Are you sure? You were driving rather erratically,” he lied.

“No I was not. Maybe I was going slightly over the speed limit but I was not driving erratically.”

“Why don’t you step out of the car?”

“Are you serious?” She looked as if she was going to reach out and wring his neck. This is new! If there was one thing he didn’t remember, it was an angry Chris.

“As a heart attack.”

She let out an amused snort. “Did you just cliché me? Ugh! Could this day get any fucking worse?”

“You curse a lot.”

 “Get out of my way Jack Daniels so that I can show you I’m not drunk. If I can prove it, may I go without a ticket?”

“Yes. I’ll let the speeding ticket go if you pass the sobriety test and don’t call me Jack Daniels again.”

“Fine. But, that is your name.”

“Yes. But, you’re mocking me.”

“How? I’m not the one that named you Jack Daniels. Blame your parents for that. And, don’t call me Chris. I hate it. ”

“Fine. I won’t call you Chris, Christine.”

“Chrissy, please. Not Christine, not Chris. Definitely not Chris the Priss. Just Chrissy. You never were capable of calling me Chrissy, for some reason.”

“Because it was more fun to get you all riled up.”

“Some things never change. Eleven years later and you’re still mean to me,” she said, her hands still clenched around the steering wheel.

“Okay, fine. For the sake of fairness, I’ll stop. Chrissy it is. And, you know how I feel about my name. I don’t need your smart ass teasing me. Especially, when that smart ass should be a little worried about not passing a sobriety test and assaulting a police officer.”

“I didn’t assault you. It was an accident. Just get out of the way so I can open the door.”

He stood aside as she opened the door.

One long, fair, well-defined leg in the sexiest red high heels he’d ever seen stepped out of the car. Then, the other. Jesus Christ! Was this the same goofy little Chrissy Martin? Somehow, Jack had transformed into one of those cartoon characters whose eyes popped in and out of its socket.

Holy hot legs, Batman!

 He silently prayed that she had grown a tail or a third arm because all he’d seen so far was causing his brain to come to a complete meltdown. He didn’t think he could handle any more and all he’d seen so far were her legs. She finally got out of the car and went to take a step forward but then she hobbled, lost her balance, and stumbled towards the ground. Instinctively, he reached towards her, grabbed her waist and pulled her up before her face made contact with the street. The full length of her frame was flushed against his body. Every single little inch was pressed against him. He gulped. Actually gulped. A few beats of awkward silence later, he reached for her chin with his finger and brought her face up to meet his eyes. “You okay?”

“Uh…yeah. I forgot I had a broken heel.” She brought her right foot up behind her and looked over her shoulder. He leaned in, towards her body, bringing them even closer together, if that were even possible, to look at the broken heel.

“What a shame. Those were nice shoes,” he said, inches from her ear.

“Tell me about it.” She moved back a little and he reached forward with his index finger and pushed her glasses back up her nose. He’d never had a reaction like this to a woman before. She straightened her black dress and ran her fingers through her long black hair. She stood up straight, shoulders back. Ready for war, it seemed. Well one thing hadn’t changed—she was still self-righteous and proud. But, Little-Miss-Push-Over was gone. And he was liking this new and improved hellcat.

 “So, where do you want me?” Chrissy asked, as she took off her shoes.

Completely naked and spread over the hood of my police cruiser with that tiny little black dress pulled up over your hips, is what he almost blurted out. “Excuse me?” is what he managed to say instead.

“The sobriety test. I’ve never had to do one of these. What do I do?”

“You know what, never mind. You can’t do a sobriety test in broken heels and I don’t want you walking on the side of the road barefoot.”

“Does that mean you’re going to give me a ticket?”

“No. Just go,” he barked.

“What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve always been such an ass. I guess you haven’t changed.”

“I’m sorry Chris. It’s been a long day. I don’t mean to be a jerk. Where are you staying while you’re in town?”

“Chrissy,” she said, through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“You called me Chris. I was correcting you.”

“Oh, shit. Sorry. Habit, I guess.” She wasn’t a Chris any longer. No sign of the nerdy little girl anywhere. She was all woman; from the tips of the sexy-as-hell high heels to the top of her long jet-black hair.

“At Slade’s house,” she answered. He looked at her, confused, and she snapped her fingers at him, bringing him back to the present. “You asked me where I was staying. I’m answering. I’m staying at Slade’s. I kind of have to break-in.” She leaned into him a little and whispered, “Don’t tell the cops.” She giggled. He had forgotten all about her giggles. She was a giggler. It was infectious. He used to think it was annoying—what an idiot he’d been.

“Why?”

“I don’t have a key. You know I let him have the house after Dad passed away and it’s been years since I’ve been back. Technically, it’s half mine, so it’s not really breaking and entering.”

“Come on. Follow me home. I have a spare key,” said Jack.

“You do?”

“Yeah. He’s like a brother to me, you know that. He has a spare key to my house too.”

“Oh, okay. Where do you live?”

“Same place.”

“You mean you still live with your folks?” she said, incredulously. Her face was full of judgment and pity. That was always her thing. She was judgmental as hell. He didn’t remember caring so much about her judgments eleven years ago, but he sure as hell cared now. In fact, he was suddenly angry and he wasn’t even sure why he felt a need to correct her.

“No, Chris. I don’t live with my folks. I bought the house from them before they retired and moved to a retirement community a few miles away.”

She took a step forward, closing the gap between them, and poked his chest with her index finger. “Do. Not. Call. Me. Chris! And, it’s great that you bought the house. It was just a question, relax. I didn’t mean anything by it. You don’t have to be so moody.”

He grabbed her finger with his big hand. “I’m not moody. You’re just so judgmental.”

“I wasn’t being judgmental,” she answered. He looked at her in disbelief and her shoulders slumped down. “Okay, maybe I was being a little judgmental. Seeing you reminded me of that girl that you and Slade used to push around, and I guess it made me defensive. I’m sorry. Look, it’s been a terrible day. I just need a long hot bath and a good night’s sleep so I can go to Slade’s arraignment tomorrow morning and bail him out.”

“Okay, let’s go. Come on. Follow me home.” He waited for her to get into her car and then walked back to his police cruiser.

A few hours earlier, he’d been called into a bar fight, where he’d had to wrestle four guys into handcuffs. He was at the tail-end of a very long shift, and all he had wanted to do was go straight home, drink a nice a cold beer and sleep for the next twenty-four hours. Dealing with a speeding driver was the last thing he’d had in mind. But, his sense of duty had gotten the best of him, and he had stopped her—not knowing that a pair of smoldering blue eyes waited for him in the driver’s seat. He found himself adjusting his pants a few times on his way home, and it wasn’t from the punch to his balls.

She was gorgeous. The once insecure and slightly overweight frumpy girl was now a confident, voluptuous well-put-together stunner. He was glad she still wore the glasses. On anyone else, the thick black-frames would’ve probably looked goofy, but on Chrissy, it gave her that naughty nurse look men fantasized about. As he drove, his mind drifted to Christine, the naughty nurse, who wore a short white dress—tight on the top, accentuating the swells of her overly-large-for-her-small-frame breasts—giving him just the teensiest preview of the garter from her stockings, and a little white hat that contrasted so severely with her pin-straight inky black hair. Jack could picture her bending over to check his reflexes and reaching up to his mouth to put a thermometer in and of course, she would be a good and thorough nurse and ask him in the softest shyest voice to please pull down his pants so that she could examine. . .

Get a fucking grip Daniels! Did you just make little Chrissy a porn-nurse? What is wrong with you dude? Snap out of it!

She wasn’t even a nurse, she was a doctor. The last he’d heard, she’d been overseas volunteering her medical services in third world countries. She was so out of his league, he couldn’t even see the field. But hell if he wasn’t completely turned-on by her unexpected attitude. She hadn’t been like that before. She had always been smart and goofy. But, feisty and sultry? Nope, never feisty and never ever sultry. She would do something Slade and Jack didn’t like and they’d scold her and she just took it, never rebelling. And yet, she’d still follow him and Slade around like a little puppy. He hated when she would hang around him and Slade’s friends. They were all hooligans and he damn well knew it. She had no business being a side-kick in their trouble-making schemes. But then the last few months before she left, she had avoided him like the plague. He had always wanted to ask her why, but she was gone before he ever had the chance.