Dangerous Authority

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This is a work of fiction. Characters, establishments, names, companies, organizations and events were created by the author. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events, companies or organizations is coincidental.

Published by Headtrip Productions

Text Copyright 2015 by M Jet

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Dangerous Authority

Dangerous Authority

M Jet

Chapter 1

"U
h, hey, excuse me…"

Mary Jane Barnaby started at the sound of his voice and slowly turned to face him. 
Oh my God,
she thought. 
He's speaking to me.  Oh. My. God.  I hope I don't look absolutely horrible.

She regarded him from beneath her dramatic fringe of eyelashes and gave him a slight closed lip smile.  "Yes?" she said quietly, hoping beyond hope her voice didn't betray the internal mental breakdown she was having.

Dominique Flame didn't seem to know what to say once he had her attention.  She thought she detected a slight rise of a flush to his cheeks.  Was that possible?  After all these years could
she
be making
him
nervous?

"I…  Um…  Do you know who I am?" Dominique Flame asked shyly.

Mary Jane nearly laughed out loud.  For her to not recall Dominique would've required a lobotomy.  Or death.  Maybe death.  He was her quintessential "one who got away."  To Mary Jane, Dominique was the one she'd always loved without ever having truly known.  Never known his touch.  Never woke in his arms.  Never known his love in return.  She'd always thought of Dominique from a "what if" perspective.  Always wondered.  Always wished.  To Mary Jane, Dominique had always been her perfect lover, though he'd never been her lover at all.

She smiled again, sweetly this time.  "Sure, I remember you, Officer Flame."

He stared into her eyes with those sharp black eyes of his.  He didn't smile back.  Though there was quite a bit of grey now in his tidy black hair, and a few lines around the eyes, and maybe a few extra pounds, he was every bit as gorgeous as ever.

He raked his hand through his hair.  "Jeeze, I feel stupid now…" he muttered, glancing down at Mary Jane's three year old daughter, who sat on the floor carrying on a lively conversation with another little girl.

She tipped her head to the side.  "What is it?" she asked, the smile fading from her lips.

He stared silently at her again as if internally making a decision.  Finally he spoke.  "Well, about a week ago…  I dreamed about you."

It was Mary Jane's turn to blush.  She smiled again.

"Well?" Dominique said in his serious manner.

"Well what?" Mary Jane said.

"Well…  Don't you think that's weird?"

Mary Jane frowned.  "Gee thanks," she said sarcastically.

Dominique sighed, this time blushing furiously.  "I mean, not weird that somebody would dream about you…  Just…  It's driving me nuts.  I can't stop thinking about it."

Mary Jane shrugged.  "Maybe, I guess, who knows?  We're always here at the same time waiting to pick up kids from school.  You see me every day.  Sooo…"

"Don't you want to know what the dream was about?" Dominique asked quietly.

Mary Jane needed to get away from Dominique Flame.  He had absolutely crushed her once.  He had no idea that he was the one man who could easily wreck her world.

She didn’t need to hear his dream.

Truth be told, about a week prior; she'd dreamt of him too.

***

Mary Jane corralled her twin six year old sons and their little sister out of the school.  They emerged into a brilliant spring afternoon and made their way together, carefully through the busy parking lot.  She consciously told herself not to think about Officer Flame.  Yet, she knew his exact whereabouts, elsewhere in the parking lot as he and his two sons made their way to his black sedan.  Soon she pulled out of the parking lot and drove away. 

And only when she knew he wasn't watching her anymore did her heart rate begin to return to normal.

She tried to focus on the children as they chattered in the back seat, but her mind drifted back, against her will.  To how he'd been back then.  To the greatest heartache of her life, and to the thing that decided her fate.

She'd been fresh out of high school.  She'd left home only days after graduation and gotten her own apartment.  Not because of a bad home life.  Actually, her childhood had been quite nice.  She'd been one of the few students from her graduating class who still had married parents.  She came from old fashioned people.  A handsome, hardworking, blue collar dad, and a prim and pretty stay at home mom.

Really, it was just that her parents raised her well, and she'd grown into a strong and independent young lady.  She'd been eager to taste the world, to plunge headfirst into her waiting future.  She'd worked in fast food since her sophomore year and saved every penny.  So, when the time came, she could afford to get her own place.

However, ambitious and optimistic as she was, she didn't go too far.  She rented a walkup inside a giant, quirky house that had been converted to apartments.  It was on a quiet cul-de-sac just three streets over from her mom and dad.  She lived over an old lady who controlled the thermostat for the whole building.  Mary Jane always laughed when she recalled how sweltering the place had been for the first six months until the lady moved into an old folk's home.

It wasn't much.  But she loved her little place and considered it a fabulous start.  And though she never would've admitted it at the time, she took great comfort in having her parents close by.

At that time, Mary Jane had decided to work for a year or two before enrolling in the community college.  She wanted to further her education, but wanted to do it without taking out loans.  So, she still had saving to do.  Plus, she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do for a career yet, so she didn't see the point in wasting money on courses that could later prove useless.

That was the sort of good sense that Mary Jane had been instilled with.

To further her saving efforts, she decided to say goodbye to her fast food job, and instead wait tables for tips.  Elwood, Ohio certainly wasn't a raging metropolis by any standard, but she still thought she could make more money where tips were involved, even if she wasn't among big spenders.

When she walked into Layman's Lunch, the small town's busiest Main Street diner, and asked for a job, the owner hired her on the spot.  Mr. Layman was a crotchety old man, and she couldn't tell it by his cranky, craggy face, but he loved her on sight.  With her long, tidy blonde ponytail, sparkling blue eyes, and bright smile, Mary Jane was irresistible to most anybody who knew her.  On his worst days, Old Man Layman shrieked at his staff like a maniac, and caused an endless cycle of new waitresses to flee the building in tears.  But the worst treatment he ever doled out to Mary Jane was a grumbled "Pipsqueak," and then he'd move on to find some other innocent victim.  She was the darling of Layman's Lunch; and soon after, well loved by most of Elwood as she got to know all the diner's regular customers.

It was her first day on the job there that Mary Jane first met Dominique Flame.  Well, met maybe isn't the right word.  But that was the day he walked into her life and changed everything.  Forever.

The diner was located close to the police and sheriff's departments as well as the courts and other city official buildings.  That meant lots of official people in and out day after day for coffee breaks.  That included a steady stream of cops.

She met a ton of cops that day.  They were mostly polite but serious, if not stiff.  They didn't chat much with the waitresses, instead keeping the talk amongst themselves, or just saying nothing at all.  They mostly came in pairs, or groups.  The older lady, Doris; who trained Mary Jane that day had a penchant for gossip, so she gave the low down on each of them.

"That one's MacGregor," she said of a balding older man.  "He's a royal prick."

"That one's a sleaze."

"That one's close to retiring.  'Bout time."

"That one's a moron."

"Oh hell, Adams!  He's as crooked as they come!"

Mary Jane soon tired of the woman's negativity and tuned her out, deciding instead to draw her own conclusions.  Though the woman couldn't find anything nice to say about any of them, when Mary Jane turned on her charming jokes and friendly smile, she found they warmed up to her just fine, and tipped her handsomely.

Which annoyed the grouchy old broads she worked with to no end.

When Dominique Flame walked in that day, she stopped what she was doing and stared.  He was the first cop she'd seen to come in alone.  A sheriff then, he wore a black uniform instead of the police blue.  The perfectly tailored outfit hugged his muscles, the short sleeve revealing a hint of an artfully tattooed bicep.  It gorgeously complemented his shock of jet black hair and sharp black eyes.  His full lips set in a firm line, making his face look hard and uninviting.  Or was it sorrow she saw there?

She'd never seen a man more alluring in her life.

"Now THAT one," said Doris, sneaking up behind her and causing her to jump.  "That one's a heart throb.  All the women want him, but he's always single."

Mary Jane's eyes snapped to meet Doris', thrilling at the word
single.
  Doris smirked.

"But, honey," she continued in a tone that was more snide than it was kind.  "That one's a little nuts.  Keep away from him.  He's too damn old for you anyhow."

Mary Jane smiled perkily at Doris and decided once again to ignore the old woman.  She grabbed the coffee pot and headed for the spot at the counter where Dominique had taken a seat.

***

Though she didn't see any indication that Doris' assessment of Sergeant Flame being nuts was correct, he was certainly an odd duck.  He always came in alone, seeming uninterested in the camaraderie the other officers shared.  He didn't drink coffee or indulge in sweet treats like the rest either.  Instead he stuck to water and dry wheat toast, which likely accounted for his flawless physique.

It took what seemed like ages to break the ice with the quiet man.  Though he tipped her better than any of the others.  And she noticed that he stood in the doorway observing, before he'd seat himself in her section each day, as though he specifically preferred for her to be his waitress.  Something told her that he liked her, though he never particularly showed it.

Three months into her employment with Lynch's Lunch, Sergeant Flame came in wearing street clothes.  He was dressed in crisp boot cut jeans, and an untucked button down black shirt with the sleeves cuffed to just beneath his elbows.  Her heart practically stopped.  None of the cops came in on their days off, undoubtedly because they weren't in the neighborhood and had better things to do.  So why was he there?

His eyes sought hers out over the crowd of diners.  She couldn't refrain from smiling broadly with a heady look in her eyes.  She nodded slightly toward one of her booths.  He nodded back and made his way across the dining room where he slid into the red vinyl booth and clasped his hands in front of him.

A hot flush rose in her cheeks and she felt faint.  Mary Jane had never had a boyfriend or interest in one.  She was smart enough to know she was young and inexperienced, but all the same, she found herself drawn to the man irrevocably.  In such a short time, it had gotten to where he consumed her every waking thought, and haunted her dreams at night.

She didn't know how it had happened. But, she'd fallen in love with him.

"Hi, Officer Flame," she greeted shyly.  The desire she currently struggled with made it hard for her to speak.

He gave her one of his dark, pointed looks and then something happened for the very first time.  He gave her a gleaming smile and exposed his perfect teeth.  Her heart hammered so hard that her chest hurt.  "How 'bout you just call me Dominique?" he said in his deep, quiet way.

***

Over the next few months, Dominique never missed a single day that she worked.  Times she wasn't working; she'd spot him here, there, and everywhere in his cruiser.  He'd give her a small smile and tip his hat in passing.

She supposed in her small town, he'd always been there, she simply hadn't known him before.  Or been obsessed with him and shamelessly looking for him everywhere she went.

Sometimes, as winter set in, he'd slide up to her curb early in the mornings.  He'd hop out and help her dust the snow off her car.  Then he'd ask if he could follow her to work and ensure she made it safely inside to open the empty restaurant.

She kept expecting him to ask her out.  She grew desperate to spend time with him outside of the diner, or the confines of his job.  But the fact that he took his time was also outrageously compelling.  She'd learned he was ten years older than she and wondered if he was nervous or old fashioned.  Whatever the reason, the building anticipation was both killing her, and the most exciting thing she'd ever known.