In real life her eyes were luminous, her lips a little too big for her face and all the sexier for it. Her hair was brown, but that was a stingy word to describe it. There was gold and hints of red threaded through all that warm silk. He wasn’t sure why—he’d dated women who were technically more beautiful—but that woman did something for him. Not that he’d managed to talk to her before today. He’d tried to ask the woman to dance at Remy and Lisa’s wedding, but she’d proven elusive. She was stuck in his head even all these months later.

“Did you know Doc Ham is replacing himself with a nurse?” He started the paperwork on the ticket. The microwave in the break room back at the station was on the fritz, hence today’s speed trap. The damn thing either didn’t work at all or heated anything put into it to volcanic-lava levels of heat. As he was forced to eat most of his meals in the break room, that microwave was critical, and it wasn’t like the damn government was going to gift them with a new one.

He needed to get to Guidry’s more often. Guidry’s Bar and Grill was the gossip hub of the parish. He might have been ready for Nurse Practitioner Lila Daley if he’d been up on the gossip. There wasn’t much to his department. It was him and his two deputies, Roxie and Major, and one junior officer, a young man named Vince. There were two other officers-in-training who would come on in a few weeks. For now, they took turns working night shifts, and he’d gotten to where he spent all his time either at the station house or holed up at home with his daughter. How long had it been since he went out and had some fun? Once a month playing poker at his friend Rene’s was about all he’d kept up with after the accident, and only because for the first few months, his friends had shown up on his doorstep and insisted on coming in.

He was ready to start living again.

Maybe he should make it special. He’d been thinking about that woman for months, and now she was here like he’d managed to call her forth through pure willpower.

He probably shouldn’t give her a ticket.

“A nurse practitioner,” Noelle replied over the line. “I’m a little worried about how that’s going to go. She’s from Dallas. She’s Lisa Guidry’s sister, but I’ve met her and she’s not like Lisa. She’s very city. You know how people feel about that around here.”