Free Justice for Boone: Badge of Honor: Texas Heroes, Book 6 by Susan Stoker Page A

not hers. She tried to tell herself that, but deep down she knew she was lying to herself.
    The day went by surprisingly fast, especially because she hadn’t slept that well the night before.
    She hadn’t had the nightmare for years, but last night it’d come back with a vengeance.
    It was more of a memory than an actual nightmare. She was no more than four years old, sitting on a couch watching her father pace back and forth in front of her. She was wearing a ridiculously ruffled and frilly pink dress. It’d been a hand-me-down dress from a neighbor who had a little girl. They were moving and the family was trying to get rid of as much extra stuff as they could.
    The dress had been worn by the woman’s daughter when she was a flower girl in a relative’s wedding. Hayden had seen it sitting on top of the box of clothes when the neighbor had dropped it off. She’d grabbed it and immediately taken it to her room to put on. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen and Hayden had loved twirling and dancing around her room in the princess dress.
    Her dad had caught her though. He’d hauled her into the living room, made her sit, and was yelling at her as he paced. She was a disgrace to the family. If she wanted to be a prissy wuss, she had no place in his house.
    Hayden always knew what was coming in the dream, but she never managed to wake up before it happened.
    Her father hauled her up and roughly stripped the dress off of her. He made her stand there while he took out a giant pair of scissors and cut the beautiful fairy dress to shreds…all the while, telling her how pathetic and what a loser she was.
    She’d woken up from the dream sweating and could feel the tears drying on her face.
    Hayden knew her parents hadn’t wanted a girl, and that she’d been disappointing them her entire life, but it was that one incident that made her realize at a young age that her father didn’t really like her…not even a little bit.
    Hayden had tried to be what her parents wanted after that. She played sports instead of going into dance. She wore jeans and T-shirts, instead of pretty girly dresses and blouses. She got straight As in high school in the hopes that her grades would make her dad proud of her. Nothing had worked. He’d treated her with the same disdain throughout her teen years as he had that one day when she’d sat on the couch as he’d harangued her.
    It’d been an early morning for her, and she knew she’d never get back to sleep after waking up shaking and crying from the dream. So she’d gotten up, gone for a three mile run, did the pushups and sit-ups that she tried to make time for every day, had a large cup of coffee, then headed to the station to prepare for her shift.
    Hayden was busy all day at work with calls, investigations, and paperwork. She made it home with plenty of time to stand in her closet, staring aimlessly at the clothes within. She’d made an effort after moving out of her childhood home, and getting away from her father, to try to purchase clothes that were more feminine, but most days, she simply felt more comfortable in what was familiar…jeans and T-shirts.
    Finally, Hayden shook her head and grabbed a jade-green shirt that she hadn’t worn in forever. It was more feminine than she usually went for, but Hayden figured being out with Boone warranted it. She wanted to make the effort. It was cut deep in both front and back with a wide scoop neck. The sleeves were three-quarter length and while it wasn’t skin tight, it wasn’t loose either. She paired it with a pair of low-cut jeans and her favorite cowboy boots. The boots were a bit too beat up to really match, but they were comfortable, and were the only type of heel Hayden was comfortable wearing.
    She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror and tried to decide what to do with her hair. She should probably put it up. She always wore it up. Hayden didn’t think the guys at work had ever seen her with her hair down. But