Head Over Heels

“Or you could leave.”

“Yeah, but it’s much more fun to stay and make you squirm.”

“You don’t make me squirm.”

Her fathomless green eyes met his. “I make you something.”

Yeah. She sure as hell did. “Annoyed?” he offered. “Irritated? Frustrated? Infuriated?”

“Horny.”

He shook his head, but hell if she wasn’t right. “Option two.”

“Irritated?” she asked.

“No. You talk.”

She laughed, then talked about her last trip to Belize, where she’d gotten the small tattoo on the inside of her wrist, which apparently meant “Be Yourself.” “Hurt like a bitch,” she said. “And Tara’s certain that I’ll never land a corporate job because of the location—it’s hard to cover it up. She’d probably freak if she saw my other tat, but she won’t because it’s…discreetly placed,” she said, flashing a grin.

Sawyer thought about that for a very pleasant beat, enjoying the distraction of picturing where and what that might be. “Do you anticipate wanting a job in the corporate world?” he asked, unable to envision her in an office setting, all tamed and subdued.

She laughed. “Sitting behind a desk making nice? No, I’m not sure I have that in me.”

“What do you have in you?”

Chloe looked surprised at the question. “Well, I’d like to get this natural skincare line I’m creating off the ground.”

“That sounds…surprisingly corporate.”

“Bite your tongue,” she said.

He found himself smiling.

“Wow,” she said. “You should do that a lot more.”

He ignored that. “You like what you do.”

“Well, yeah. Isn’t that the point?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, conceding with a nod. “Did you always know what you wanted to do?”

“Yeah. When I was little, I camped with my mom all the time. Did you know that?”

He shook his head. He didn’t know much about her past at all. He’d known Phoebe though, and she hadn’t exactly been the mothering type.

“Maddie and Tara grew up with their dads, but I was with Phoebe. Camping,” Chloe said. “Mostly we traveled from one Grateful Dead concert to the next; sometimes we’d go off for another adventure. But I always had everything I owned in a little Saved by the Bell backpack.”

He felt something tighten in his chest, and it took him a moment to speak. “That must have been hard for a little girl.” His childhood had been a world away. He’d had a house, a miserable house, but a roof over his head regardless.

“Oh, I liked it,” Chloe said. “I mean, we were poor as dirt, of course, but I didn’t know that. We made the things we needed when we could. Soap, shampoo, stuff like that. I loved figuring out which scents went best with which ingredients.”

Of course, she would have made the best of the cards she’d been dealt. But the nomad life had to have been rough. He had no idea how things would have been different for him without Ford and Jax, who’d given him a taste of stability. And then, after getting arrested, he’d found a different, even more stabilizing force in his arresting officer, of all people. Sheriff Allen Coburn had been the first adult to take the time to show interest. To care. He’d straightened Sawyer’s ass out by checking on him weekly, and had until his death a few years back.

It didn’t sound like Chloe had had any such stabilizing forces, at least not until this past year. “Moving around like that,” he said. “How did you go to school and make friends?”

“Phoebe homeschooled me for the most part, until high school. We settled in San Francisco for a while because she had a boyfriend who was a theater stagehand. I went to school there.”

“You and your mom lived with the boyfriend?”

“No, he lived in his car in the theater lot. We camped then, too, a lot.” She shrugged, like no big deal; it was what it was. “I made friends wherever we were; that wasn’t really a problem. It’s easier now, of course, having a home.”

So the B&B with her sisters was the first real home she’d ever had, which tightened the knot in his chest.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“You grew up here.”

“Yes.”

She gave him a long look, waiting impatiently for him to open up. “Come on,” she said. “Give me something. Do you have any tattoos?” she asked. “Childhood stories? Something you want to share with the class? Anything?”

“I thought the deal was that you talk and I sit.”

She shook her head. “I looked you up, you know.” She nudged her shoulder to his. “And for a town that loves gossip more than Walmart, there’s not a lot about you out there. Actually it’s kind of nice that the people here are so protective of their big, bad sheriff.”

Protective? He shook his head, but he should have known she wasn’t going to let it drop. “Is that no, you’re just boring as sin?” she asked. “Or no, you’re being obtuse simply because you can and it’s what you do best?”

He laughed just as the surgeon came out. Suddenly somber again, Sawyer got to his feet and braced himself for the worst, but the doctor assured him that his father’s procedure had gone well. In sheer relief, he sank back to the chair. Why he gave a damn was a complete mystery. Nolan Thompson thought his son wasn’t worth his time. That wasn’t going to change because of an angioplasty. A heart replacement, maybe…

Chloe sat, too, and slipped her arm around him, resting her head on his shoulder. She didn’t speak, just gave him a moment. Which was another surprise. She was always in such perpetual motion, always working so hard at driving him up a wall. Or hell, maybe it wasn’t hard work at all, maybe it came easy to her.

But now, right this very minute, she was here. For him. Soft and warm and caring. What the hell was she doing here anyway? And why did it feel so damn right? Unable to resist, he gathered her in close. Just for a minute he told himself, pressing his face into her sweet-smelling hair, absorbing the quiet comfort she was offering.

Finally they rose from their chairs, and in another surprise, she stared up into his face. With a satisfied nod that he was apparently looking okay in her book, she went up on tiptoe and kissed his jaw. And then she walked out of the room just as mysteriously as she’d arrived, leaving in her wake an odd void that he couldn’t name.

Three nights later, after a helluva day, Sawyer dragged his sorry, aching ass into the Love Shack, the bar co-owned by Jax and Ford. That morning, it had snowed for about five seconds, just enough to screw up the roads. Which meant that every call Sawyer had gone on after that had been a life-or-death situation just getting out of his damn SUV. Twice he’d been out on the highway handling traffic control, and twice he’d been nearly hit by some idiot going too fast for the conditions.

But it had been his last call that had gotten to him—a fatal accident just outside Lucky Harbor. A twenty-year-old kid drinking and driving had wrapped himself around a tree.

Once upon a time, Sawyer had nearly been that kid. On that long-ago night, Sawyer hadn’t been driving but he’d been just as drunk as the driver when they’d hit a pole.

Sawyer had managed to live through that accident, and while he’d like to think that it had straightened his ass out, it had actually been several more years before that happened.

Now, icy cold to the bone, he headed toward the bar’s front door just as another man came out.

Todd, whose eyes narrowed at the sight of Sawyer. Sawyer returned the look evenly. Saying something unintelligible beneath his breath, Todd shoulder-checked Sawyer hard and headed out into the night.

Sawyer was in the mood for a fight and nearly followed Todd to get one. But common sense prevailed, and he let Todd go. He headed into the bar, hoping to warm up.

The Love Shack was done up like an old Western saloon. The walls were a sinful bordello red and lined with old mining tools. Exposed wooden beams high above supported lanterns, which hung over the scarred bench-style tables, now filled with the rowdy weekend crowd.

Sawyer walked straight through the bar to Ford’s office in the back. He’d changed out of his dirty uniform at the station and was in plainclothes now, but still armed. He locked his utility belt and the majority of his weapons into an empty locker that the guys kept for him and moved back out to the bar.

“Well, if it isn’t the local hero,” Ford noted when Sawyer sat at the bar. “Change any smoke alarm batteries lately?”

“Shut up.” Sawyer watched him pour his usual soda. “Make that a beer.”

Ford raised a brow as he hit the tap. “Fucked-up day?”

“Fucked-up day.” Sawyer took a long pull from the beer, still seeing the kid’s sightless eyes as he lay forever still on the asphalt forty-five feet from where he’d been flung from his car.

Not five minutes later, Maddie waltzed out from the storage room looking a little tousled, which meant Jax was undoubtedly close by. She smiled at Sawyer and helped herself to an ice water while Ford called out to one of his servers, “An order of fish and chips for the sheriff,” he said. “Double the chips.” He looked at Sawyer. “Anything else?”

It was a well-known fact that Sawyer ate like a truck driver. He shrugged. “I’m not real hungry.”

Ford’s brow rose again. “Should I hold the fries?”

“Just the double part.”

Maddie and Ford exchanged a worried look, and then Maddie slipped onto the stool next to Sawyer. “You okay?”

It used to be that no one ever asked him that. People just assumed that he was, or at least that he would be. Then the three sisters had come to town. Two of them had snagged his best friends, and now one or another sister was forever asking him if he was okay. “Just not that hungry is all.”

Jax came out of the storage room. He pulled Maddie off her stool, sat in her place, then tugged her into his lap, nuzzling at her hair, one hand sliding to her ass. “Hey, babe. Feeling a little better now?”

Jesus, Sawyer thought. They even had Jax asking about feelings.

But Maddie melted against her man. “Much. Sawyer’s had a bad day, though. He says he’s not hungry.”

Jax looked at Sawyer, brows up.

Sawyer ignored him, and when his food came, hunkered in to eat to prove he was fine. Jax leaned close to help himself to a fry. “Since you’re not hungry— Hey,” he grumbled when Sawyer stabbed him with his fork. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with your reflexes anyway.” Giving Maddie a smacking kiss, Jax went back to work.

Maddie watched him go with a dreamy sigh. “I’m going to marry him.”

“God knows why.” Sawyer reached for the ketchup, and Maddie laughed.

“He makes me happy,” she said. “He makes me…everything. You know?”

Sawyer looked into her warm eyes and nodded, not wanting to disappoint her. She smiled and hugged him, then kissed his cheek. “You’re sweet to humor me.”

He nearly choked on a fry. There was the sweet again. He should have killed someone this week; that would have taken care of that.

A few minutes later, Chloe came in. Sawyer took a deep breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Forget killing someone. He wanted…her.

He’d been thinking about that ever since she’d surprised him at the hospital. Dreaming about it, too. Dreams hot enough to singe his sheets.

She pulled off a black leather jacket, revealing an eye-popping red sweater, a tiny denim skirt, tights, and knee-high boots. And Christ, the boots gave him ideas. Not that he needed more. Her glossy, dark red hair was wind tousled and cascading over her shoulders, making him think of those dreams he’d had. In detail.

Or maybe that was just her. She made him think of sex. Hot, wild, no-holds-barred sex…

Chloe came up to the bar and met his gaze for a long, timeless beat. She didn’t ask him if he was okay. She didn’t weigh him down with her worry. She didn’t even give him her usual I-don’t-give-a-shit sardonic smile. No, she just looked at him with those deep green eyes, and he found himself wanting to fall in and drown.

He also wanted another drink, and possibly a vacation. Definitely he should get laid. Maybe a tall, stacked blonde who didn’t give a damn about his feelings, who’s only words would be “Harder, Sawyer, f**k me harder.”

Except he didn’t want a tall, stacked blonde.

He wanted a petite, curvy, wild, redhead. He wanted this petite, curvy, wild redhead.

“After a tough day,” Chloe said softly, “I always need something a little…crazy. Something a little off center to nudge me back into place.”

He was much farther gone than he’d thought if that made perfect sense to him.

“But maybe that’s just me,” she said to his silence. “Probably an Eagle Scout doesn’t feel the need for crazy.”

“Eagle Scout?”

She smiled. “Did I say Eagle Scout? I meant an officer of the law, sorry.”

Bullshit she was sorry. She thought he was a straight arrow. He knew that. He’d let her think it because it suited his purposes. They needed distance between them.

Lots of distance.

But tonight he wasn’t feeling so straight arrow, and he sure as hell wasn’t feeling distant. “Sometimes crazy works.”

“Don’t tease me,” Chloe said. “We have very different ideas of crazy. I mean like zip-lining over snapping alligators.” She nudged the drink in front of him. “You mean having a single beer.”