Page 1 of In Hot Water (The Hot Brothers #3)
CHAPTER ONE
DAWSON
The clock on my dashboard taunts me as I accelerate around a tight curve. Fuck me. Right now, I’m running a cool thirty-seven minutes late to Sunday brunch at Mom and Dad’s. I’m never going to hear the end of this.
Which is why the universe, in its infinite sense of humor, waits until I’m cresting the last hill before the turnoff to my parents’ house to throw a brown-and-white sheriff’s cruiser my way.
My heart seizes in my chest as I pass the other vehicle.
And because my luck is absolute dogshit, I catch a full-face view of the deputy as she clocks me through the windshield.
Holy shit. Even from this distance, I can tell she’s hot. Like fucking goddess gorgeous.
I hit the brakes out of pure reflex, but it’s too late.
She whips a perfect U-turn, lights on, siren barely necessary with the way she’s closing the distance.
I have just enough time to mutter “fucking hell” before I pull over and cut the engine, heart racing so hard I can feel it throbbing in my ears.
She parks right against my bumper, a power move if there ever was one, and I watch in the side mirror as she unfolds herself from the cruiser.
She’s shorter than I expected and built like a goddamn pin-up model, all curves and a heart-shaped ass.
She’s dressed in a standard tan uniform, starched to hell, gun belt with every pouch in place, and a nameplate I can’t read but desperately want to.
Her blonde hair is wrangled into the kind of sleek ponytail that makes her cheeks seem sharper.
I keep both hands on the wheel and stare straight ahead as she approaches. My window’s already down. She leans in just far enough for me to get a whiff of something sharp and clean, and her sunglasses reflect my own dumb, sheepish face back at me.
“Good morning, sir. License and registration, please,” she says. No southern drawl, but her voice is low and calm, the kind that would be a sedative if it didn’t make my cock hard as a goddamn rock.
I fumble the wallet from my pocket and hand her my driver’s license, but the registration’s still in the glove compartment, probably under the owner’s manual and that weird envelope the dealership gave me. I pop the latch, dig around, and finally hand over the whole stack of paperwork.
She takes it all without a word, eyes scanning my license. “Dawson Hot,” she reads, then looks at me, one eyebrow raising so fractionally it might as well be a tell in professional poker. “Any relation to Beckett Hot?”
“Yeah. He’s my older brother. Deputy Chief.” Fuck. I hope Beckett doesn’t have something going with her. If he does, my goddamn brother is going to be solely disappointed because this woman is mine.
Son-of-a-bitch. Where the fuck did that come from?
I’m still reeling from my inner thoughts when she nods, unamused, and goes back to the paperwork. “Are you aware of how fast you were going, Mr. Hot?”
I weigh my options here. The truth, a lie, or just plain old acting stupid.
She doesn’t blink. “Clocked you at ninety-three in a fifty-five. That’s reckless driving.”
I wince and blurt out before my mind has time to catch up with my brain, “I’m late for brunch at my parents’ house.”
She blinks several times, then takes a deep breath and holds up one palm.
“That isn’t an excuse for putting yourself and others in danger with your reckless driving.
” Then she turns on her heel and walks back to her cruiser, and I get to watch the aforementioned heart-shaped ass do a precision strut that’s both awe-inspiring and holy-fucking-sexy.
I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be thinking about a woman’s ass when she’s deciding whether or not to ruin my week, but that’s a battle I lost the second she stepped out of the car.
She’s gone for five minutes, probably running my name and record.
I scroll the family group chat in the meantime, ignoring the string of GIFs from my brother Atlas and the all-caps threats from Mom.
Beckett’s already weighing in with “You’re in deep shit,” and now I’m torn between sibling rage and the sick realization that I might, in fact, get arrested in the next five minutes.
I don’t look up until she’s back at my window, sunglasses off, and a dead serious look in her eyes.
Her eyes are light hazel with an emerald green ring around the iris, which isn’t fair because I was already drowning in the rest of her, and now I have to add “gorgeous fucking eyes” to the list of things making things harder, and I mean that literally.
She glances down at me. “I’m going to need you to step out of the car, Mr. Hot,” she says, and her voice is still a flatline of professional, but I swear I see the corner of her mouth twitch. “Because you were going more than thirty over, I have to take you in.”
My stomach flops. Motherfucker. “To jail?”
“To the station,” she corrects, like that’s any better. “It’s mandatory for speeds in excess of thirty over the posted limit, per county code. Step out of the vehicle, please.”
I hesitate, not because I’m resisting, but because every molecule of blood in my body is now ping-ponging between humiliation and a hard-on. “Can I at least text my mom?” I ask, and immediately regret it. Fuck. Now, I sound like an idiot.
She almost cracks a smile at that, but recovers instantly. “You’ll get a phone call at the station. Please step out of the vehicle, Mr. Hot.”
I do, and she gestures for me to turn around, and for a split second, I wonder if this is a bad dream I’ll wake up from.
Cold steel on my wrists. Fast, efficient, practiced.
She reads me my rights in a tone that makes it sound like she’s reading me bedtime stories.
And just like that, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen has handcuffed me, and it isn’t in the bedroom.
I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or propose on the spot.
She puts a firm hand on my shoulder and guides me to the back seat of the cruiser. The whole time, I’m thinking about two things: one, how the hell am I going to live this down, and two, how soon can I tie this goddess to me for life?
I finally catch her name tag as she opens the door and see her last name is MERRILL.
She closes the door behind me, and I’m left staring at her through the safety glass as she does some paperwork up front.
The air inside the cruiser is cooler than outside and smells faintly of lemon wipes.
It takes about thirty seconds for the humiliation to hit me, and then another ten for the realization that, in all likelihood, every single one of my brothers is about to find out I got taken in for reckless driving by the woman who just stole my goddamn heart.
She fastens her seatbelt, adjusts the mirror so she can keep an eye on me, and pulls back onto the road with the kind of controlled, emotionless precision that makes my pulse spike in a whole new way.
The cuffs are tight but not painful, and I do a little test wriggle to see if I can get comfortable. Spoiler alert—I can’t.
The drive is only a few miles, but it’s the longest car ride of my life. I clear my throat. “What’s going to happen to my car?”
She doesn’t look at me. “It’s going to be towed to the impound lot. After you bond out, you can pick it up there.”
“Great.” Fucking perfect. I should care more about what could be happening to my brand-new car, but all I’m worried about right now is the stunning woman sitting in the front seat.
She grunts in reply. I can’t handle the silence anymore so I decide to try again, because clearly, I’m a glutton for punishment.
“I was actually headed to my parents’ for brunch,” I offer, as if this will somehow endear me to her. “I have three brothers and we’re all firemen.” Like that will help my case.
“I know,” she says. “Your brother, Beckett, gave a safety talk at my orientation.”
“Oh.” Well, fuck me. I’m so goddamn tongue-tied, I don’t even know what else to say.
We ride in silence for a minute, just the sound of the road and the faint click of her turn signal as she takes the shortcut through town to the station.
I figure I have one last shot at not making a complete ass of myself. “So, you know all about me, but I don’t know anything about you.”
She finally looks at me, and her eyes are dead serious. “What would you like to know?”
“Your first name, for starters.” At least she’s speaking to me.
She inhales, the faintest of sighs. “Isla.” I file away that information as we pull into the station. She parks in the shade and comes around to open my door. There’s something gentle in the way she helps me out, one hand on my elbow to keep me from face-planting onto the curb.
Inside, it’s all linoleum and bad lighting, the front desk manned by a civilian clerk who barely glances up as Isla leads me down the hall to processing. The only other person in sight is a janitor waxing the floor, who gives me a bored look before going back to his mop.
She uncuffs me long enough to take my fingerprints and a mugshot, which is every bit as humiliating as I’d expected.
Afterward, she leads me to a holding room without windows.
There’s just a plain desk with four very uncomfortable-looking chairs and a vending machine that’s older than me.
“You can use the phone on the desk to make your one call,” she says and turns to walk away.
I stare after her, mouth half-open, and for the first time in my life, I understand exactly what my brothers meant when they explained you don’t see it coming until it’s already got you by the throat.
As the door shuts, I think about how quickly I went from “never been arrested” to “desperately wanting to get arrested again if it means getting cuffed by Isla Merrill.” The love at first sight bug has bitten me.
I lean back, look up at the water-stained ceiling, and wonder what it’s going to take to break through that fortress of hers. Whatever it is, I’m all in.