Hard Feelings

 Short Story Valentine Mystery by Barbara D'Amato

Free online romance short stories - Crime Meets Love

Officer Susanna Maria Figueroa was frightened, and she hated being frightened. It made her angry. Even worse, she was sure her partner Norm Bennis felt horrible, too. Nevertheless, he had made a serious mistake, and his mistake had gotten them both into trouble.

Suze Figueroa sat on one side of the waiting room, her arms folded across her chest. Far away in the other corner-as far away from her as he could get and still be in the same room-sat Norm Bennis, feet spread, elbows on knees, hands dangling, head hanging. He looked absolutely miserable.

Hell, Suze thought, he ought to. She just hoped he felt guilty as hell, making a stupid mistake and then sticking with it. Stubborn bastard!

But they'd been together so long!

Bennis was her mentor and her friend.

The Police Academy teaches you what they think you need to know. Then the job-and your partner-teach you what you really need to know. Suze Figueroa had been assigned to Bennis just after she finished the initial on-the-job phase of working with a supervisor. She'd been afraid of what Norm would think of her at first. He looked so solid and experienced-like a walking ad for professionalism in police work for the twenty-first century. He'd been ten years a Chicago cop when she came on. He was built like a wedge, with narrow hips, a broad chest, and very wide shoulders. His square brown face, when she first saw it at that first roll call, was set in a scowl. But she soon realized that he thought it was lots of fun being mentor to a five-foot-one-inch naive female.

They hit it off immediately, and Bennis never made fun of her for not knowing whether a ten-young or a one-frank was a "disturbance, domestic, peace restored" or a "dog bite, report filed." He didn't belittle her, as her trainer sometimes had, for not knowing how to fill out a specific form. He knew the department didn't run on gas or electricity, it ran on paper, and he knew when she'd filled out a couple hundred of them, she would remember all the forms.

Bennis was sardonic, but not sour.

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Hard Feelings
by Barbara D'Amato

http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/Un.mp3