Head Over Heels

“According to Suzie, you’re being a father figure to the boy. You call him and take him to your baseball games, and last week you went to his class for career day. She says she couldn’t do the single-mom thing without your help.”

Uneasy with the praise, Sawyer shrugged. “Being a single mom’s hard.”

“And you don’t want her to give up,” Lucille said softly.

“Sammy’s a good kid,” he said and fixed his attention to the flat.

Lucille and Chloe talked amongst themselves. He wanted to talk to Chloe about the mud springs, but she was doing a damn good job of avoiding the subject. He had no intention of letting it go, but somehow she and Lucille had gotten on the subject of Sawyer at the age of eight. Lucille was telling Chloe about the time when he and Jax had urinated their names in the snow in front of the pier and gotten caught by none other than Lucille herself. And then how several years later, the two of them had moved on to delivering flaming bags of dog poop to the residents on Mulberry Street—until one of the bags had tipped over and caught Mrs. Ramos’s dead rosebush on fire. The flames had leaped up to her awning and nearly burned her house down.

Sawyer finished with the tire just as Chloe asked about his teenage years. Christ, that was the last thing he wanted her to hear about, and he tensed.

But Lucille gave him a reassuring smile, a glint of understanding in her kind eyes as she shook her head at Chloe. “He figured things out,” she said. “He had a big heart, even then.”

Bless her for lying through her teeth.

“He’s one of the good guys,” Lucille said, and patted him again.

“Lucille,” he started.

“What? It’s true. Yesterday alone you saved the peace in town at least twice.”

“What happened yesterday?” Chloe asked.

“Honey,” Lucille said with exasperation. “Facebook! I have all the good stuff up there, including today’s blog on Cute Guy. Someone got a picture of him jogging shirtless on the beach this morning. I’m telling you, if I were thirty years younger—”

“Okay, we’re all done here,” Sawyer said, gently but firmly ushering Lucille to the driver’s side of her car.

“Lucille,” Chloe said. “Could you give me a ride?”

“Of course, dear. I can’t believe Todd just left you on the side of the road like that. I—”

“I’ve got her, Lucille,” Sawyer said, giving the older woman the bum’s rush, shutting Lucille’s door on whatever it was that she was going to say. He turned to Chloe, every line of his body saying pissed-off cop.

Well, crap. “You just chased off my ride,” she said casually as Lucille drove off.

“Yeah. You’re coming with me. Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No.”

He pulled off his sunglasses and looked her over for himself, taking in the way that every inch of her skin was covered in mud except for her clothes, which were relatively clean. She knew the exact second when he came to the realization that she’d been skinny-dipping because the carefully blank look vanished. “You and Todd were in the mud springs together.”

A logical assumption, she supposed, but she’d had a rough enough day that it pissed her off. “No. I—”

“He’s dangerous, Chloe. Stupid dangerous.”

No shit. She thought about mentioning what she might or might not have seen in Todd’s truck, but Sawyer cut her off.

“I realize you like the dangerous part,” he said. “But I never pegged you for stupid.”

Oh no, he didn’t. She reached for the Zen calm she’d found at the mud springs. It was a total stretch. “I don’t know exactly how stupid I look, but even I know Todd’s nothing but a player.”

He didn’t bend an inch. “Lucille said you were in his truck.”

“He gave me a ride.”

“So you were with him.”

“Oh my God!” So much for Zen calm. He was like kryptonite to her Zen. Whirling from him, she stomped along the highway with no concern for how she must look, only knowing that she could feel the steam coming out of her ears. Maybe it’d melt the mud from her body. “Moronic man,” she muttered, prepared to walk all the way back to town to avoid talking to Sawyer. “Moronic men, all of them, the entire gender is a complete waste of good penises—”

A big, warm hand grabbed her arm, and she spun willingly around, stabbing Sawyer in the chest with a muddy finger. “And you—”

“Moronic,” he said mildly. “I know.” With a firm grip, he pulled her back to his truck and stopped at his passenger door. “Stay,” he said.

“Oh, hell no. I don’t do ‘stay.’ I—”

But she was talking to air because he’d moved to the back and pulled a blanket from his emergency kit. Which he wrapped around her shoulders. It was thick wool, and she snuggled into it even as she shook her head. “I’ll get it all dirty.”

“Done deal,” he said. “Get in the truck.”

“What about my Vespa?”

“Did you crash it?”

“No. I think the battery is dead. Which is how I ended up in Todd’s truck, you…you Neanderthal.”

He ignored that. “Your Vespa can wait. You need to get dry and warm. Get in.”

She was really quite over the ordering around. “I’m walking.” Even to her own ears, she sounded ridiculous, but the words were out. She realized that she was completely contradicting her commitment to being more mature and grown up, but she decided that a few mistakes along the way never hurt anyone.

Sawyer considered her for a brief moment. She’d seen him handle a variety of situations without ever appearing so much as rattled, without even the slight indication that his patience was stretched, yet it seemed ready to snap now. It was in the grimness of his mouth, the narrowing of his eyes. Oh, and his jaw seemed to be bunching and unbunching at random.

“You’re not walking,” he said.

She took a page from his own book and said nothing.

“Jesus.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, then drew in a deep breath. “Just get in the damn truck.”

“I’ll get it dirty, too.”

“It’s seen worse.” He pulled open the passenger door, bodily picked her up, and plopped her onto the seat. Leaning in, he yanked the seat belt across her and stabbed it into the buckle at her hip. He didn’t slam the door. Exactly.

Chloe could have gotten out, but it was warm. And it smelled good. Like Sawyer good. It’d be counterproductive to leave, she decided, and leaned her head back and closed her eyes, ignoring Sawyer when he slid behind the wheel. She went into radio silence as he started the truck, maintaining that quiet as he cranked the heat and aimed the vents at her, and then finally began to drive.

He gave her a full five minutes before he spoke. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Thought you had it all figured out,” she said.

“Christ. You drive me insane, you know that?”

Yeah. She knew that. She drove everyone insane. It was a special talent of hers.

Chapter 10

“Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom,

someone’ll throw you a shovel.”

Chloe Traeger

Extremely aware of the pissy woman in his passenger seat, Sawyer drove back to Lucky Harbor, occasionally glancing at her. She was no longer shaking, he noted with what he told himself was clinical and professional interest only.

But it wasn’t clinical or professional interest that also took in the fact that she looked better covered in mud from head to toe than any woman had the right to look. Her shirt had once been white but was now streaked with mud and sheer as a second skin. Through it, he could see every dip and soft curve, every nuance of her, including two perfect, mouthwateringly tight ni**les threatening to burst through the cotton. “Chloe.”

Nothing.

“Fine. Let me know when you’re done pouting.”

Turning her head, she leveled him with yet another icy stare. “Pouting? You think I’m pouting? I’m…furious.”

“At the Vespa?”

She stared at him like he’d grown a third eye. “At you!”

“Me? What the hell for?”

“You…” She choked, as if she could hardly speak. “You actually think that I’d f**k Todd? In the mud springs? Or anywhere outside of hell freezing over, for that matter?”

Sawyer clenched his jaw. “I found you caked in mud but your clothes are mostly clean. Which means you stripped down to skin. Plus, you’re not wearing any underwear. What the hell else am I supposed to think?”

“How can you tell that I’m not wearing any underwear?” she demanded.

“God-given talent.”

She closed her eyes and counted to ten. “I was alone in the damn mud springs. I slipped in, then had to ditch my bra and panties. They were…uncomfortable. I didn’t see Todd until I got back to the highway to hitch a ride when the Vespa wouldn’t start. Halfway back we saw Lucille and I made him pull over to help. He didn’t stick around. Not that I should have to explain myself to you.”

He was quiet a moment. “I had to ask.”

“Why?”

“Why? Christ, Chloe.”

“No, I mean it, Sawyer. In the past week, you’ve made it abundantly clear that we’re…well, I don’t really know exactly what we are—were—but whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t worth your time. So I have to know. What if I had been with Todd? What would it matter to you?”

Sawyer reminded himself that she didn’t, couldn’t, know his history with Todd, or the level of resentment and escalating violence that Todd directed toward him.

Or how the thought of Todd’s hands on her twisted him in knots. “It’d matter,” he said grimly.

“Why?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

No way was he going to tell her that once upon a time he and Todd had been fellow thugs. That he and a group of other equally stupid thugs had terrorized the entire county together and had, in fact, outdone themselves on several occasions. The most memorable time being when the four of them had gotten drunk—God so f**king drunk—then stolen a car for a joyride. That had been the night that they’d reduced their gang by two when they’d hit a telephone pole.

Sawyer had earned a trip to juvie.

Todd, the driver, hadn’t been as lucky. He’d turned eighteen the week before, had been tried as an adult, and had been convicted for involuntary manslaughter. “There’s an old grudge between us,” Sawyer finally said.

To say the least.

“What kind of grudge?”

Todd had done some hard time, and when he’d gotten out, he wasn’t the same easygoing troublemaker he’d once been.

And even though they’d each made their own decisions, Sawyer had never been able to shake the guilt. This was because he knew without a doubt that if he’d been smarter that night, the accident wouldn’t have happened.

Two guys wouldn’t be dead.

Todd wouldn’t be on a one-way street to Loserville.

And Sawyer wouldn’t still be trying to straighten Todd’s ass out. “Let’s just say that Todd blames me for the way his life has turned out,” he said quietly.

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Chloe said. “And not your fault. We all make our own path.”

“Yes, and his is to f**k with me. I want you to stay away from him, Chloe.”

She looked pissed off again. “Look, I understand you’re trying to offer me advice, but—”

“Not advice,” he said. “I’m flat out telling you. Stay away from him. He’s trouble.”

She kept her voice low and even, but her eyes were flashing pure fire. “He’s a friend of my closest friend’s brother. So staying away from him won’t always be possible. I get that you have some sort of pissing match going with him, but he’s not that bad a guy.”

“Are you sure about that?”

She had no answer for him, but huddled farther into the seat with a shiver.

Sawyer blew out a breath and checked the heater output, but it was already on full blast.

Chloe sighed. “I need to tell you that Todd maybe had drugs in the back of his car.”

He slowed down and looked at her. “Maybe?”

“I can’t be sure. He had a duffle bag, and it was filled with small ziplock bags. I couldn’t quite see what was in them.” She shook her head. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, I’m glad you did.” He fought with what to tell her. “He’s under investigation and being watched. If he’s got drugs, we’ll catch him.”

She nodded.

“And no one in Lucky Harbor knows that information.”

“Understood.”

He glanced at her again, and told her the other thing bugging the hell out of him. “And for what it’s worth, I stayed away from you all week because some distance seemed in order. Chloe…” He let out a breath. “We both know damn well we could give each other something we need, but it’s a real bad idea.”

Her gaze darted away from his, but not before he caught the flicker of unmistakable hurt. “Yes, all the kissing proved that,” she said to the window. “It was awful.”

He opened his mouth, shut it again, and waited for the traffic to get moving.

Chloe tried unsuccessfully to ignore the mud that had tightened uncomfortably on her skin. As she squirmed, Sawyer slid her an unreadable gaze. She ignored him, too, and he put the truck into gear, pulling back onto the highway.