Armie stalked into the station house, his stomach grumbling, but he’d promised Noelle he would stop eating greasy burgers and that was about all he could get at this time of the day. It wasn’t like he could eat a salad in his car. Not that he wanted to eat a salad.

He bet Lila Daley ate a lot of salads. She had that I-think-about-my-cholesterol glow about her.

Damn but he hadn’t been able to get that woman out of his head all afternoon.

He needed intel. That was what had gone wrong today. He’d gone into battle without proper intel. He should have found out that the woman got irrationally angry about perfectly reasonable ticketing practices.

“I can’t believe you gave her a ticket for going thirty miles over the speed limit.” Noelle looked up from the book she’d been reading. “Do you have any idea how much that is going to cost her? You’ll be lucky she doesn’t run you over the next time she sees you. You realize that woman is now in charge of your yearly physicals?”

“I have to administer the law equally to everyone. I can’t favor the woman who’s going to take my blood pressure.”

“How about the woman who can order your colonoscopy?”

That made him stop. Another thing he hadn’t thought about. “She’s obviously a professional.” At least he hoped she was. A man’s colon was a sacred thing. A doctor knew that. “Our first meeting didn’t go as well as I thought it would, but there’s always next time. We have to work closely with the clinic. I’m sure I can find a reason to get over there soon.”

“There’s a next time?” Noelle asked.

He wasn’t going to get into this with his teenage daughter. “Don’t you have homework to do?”

“I’m three weeks ahead of pacing.” She shut the lid to her laptop and wheeled herself from behind the desk.

A junior. His baby girl was a junior in high school. Oh, sure, that high school was online, and she didn’t do what other girls her age were doing—like going on dates with boys and giggling with her friends at Friday night football games—but she was a junior.

Had he made the wrong call by not sending her to a physical school? Had he made the right call letting her hang out at a station house most of the time?

Being a parent sucked.

“She’s doing great, Armie,” a familiar voice shouted across the floor. “She took her calculus quiz and got a ninety. Smart as a whip, that one.”