Head Over Heels

Chapter 18

Sawyer’s week was an exhausted blur. His counterpart, Tony Sanchez, had been taking a lot of time off because of the new twins, leaving Sawyer overworked and facing too many double shifts. So he wasn’t in the best of moods when he should have been getting off duty but instead was heading into an all-nighter and found a car parked oddly on the side of the highway beneath a grove of trees. Sawyer exited his vehicle to check it out, but it roared to life, speeding off, tires squealing, narrowly missing two cars passing by.

Bonehead move. Sawyer jumped back into his vehicle, flipped on his lights, and pulled the car over.

There were two guys in the front seat. Sawyer didn’t see anything suspicious inside the car, so he wrote a ticket for reckless driving. The driver bitched about it, then proceeded to pull away, once again squealing his tires and laying down tread, barely missing yet another car.

Sawyer was just pissed off enough to pull him over again, calmly issuing the Idiot of the Day his second ticket.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” the driver yelled. “Another ticket?” He thrust his car into gear.

“Careful,” Sawyer warned him. “I have all night.”

The guy muttered “asshole” beneath his breath but pulled onto the highway more carefully this time.

From there, Sawyer was called to traffic duty. Construction crews were working on the main street in town and had closed the road. There’d been a flashing sign all week long warning people, and the crew had carefully barricaded the road in several places, posting up “road closed” signs as well as detour signs. And yet several people still managed to drive around the barricades and then get angry with Sawyer because they couldn’t get through.

“This is ridiculous!” one woman screamed at him. “I can’t get out of this mess to save my life. You’re all assholes!”

She’d had to drive on the wrong side of the road to get past the barricades-and he was the asshole. “See that barricade you ignored and drove around?” he asked her. “You want to drive back the way you came. Go by each of the road closed signs that you passed-I believe there were three-and follow the detour directions.”

Flipping him off, she turned around.

The next guy to come through the barricades was-oh perfect-Todd. Todd had been questioned after the diner incident as a matter of course and hadn’t reacted well. He’d been running his mouth in town, telling anyone who would listen that Sawyer was abusing his power, and that Todd was going to bring him down. The guy wanted a fight, but Sawyer wasn’t going to give him one. No way was he going to allow Todd to jeopardize his job or be a menace to innocent people. It’d been years; it was time for Todd to get over himself and get his life on track. Unfortunately, Sawyer knew better than anyone that you couldn’t make a person do what they didn’t want to do. He couldn’t save Todd any more than he could gain his own father’s approval. There was just some shit that had to be let go.

“What the hell’s going on?” Todd said now, not bothering with his usual charm, not for Sawyer. “The road’s closed. Why can’t you douche bags do this at a more convenient time?”

Sawyer didn’t respond to the fact that he wasn’t actually working on the roads. He was simply attempting to direct the idiots driving on them. Not to mention that it was midnight, how much more convenient of a time could they get?

“How the fuck do I get out of here?” Todd asked.

Sawyer flicked his flashlight into the cab of Todd’s truck, knowing he wasn’t going to get lucky enough to find a bag of dope in plain sight. “Well, here’s the thing, Todd. If you can’t follow the detour directions you’ve been passing, I don’t know how you’re going to be able to follow the directions I give you to get out of here.”

“Fuck you, Thompson. Or maybe I’ll just go fuck Chloe.”

Sawyer had to work at not reacting at that one.

“Yeah,” Todd said, knowing Sawyer enough to see right through him. “She’s a sweet piece of ass, and you know what? She’s hot for me.”

“Stay away from her.”

“Or?”

Or I’ll kill you wasn’t exactly the way to keep his job. And he’d never even had this problem before, the urge to say fuck the job and dive through Todd’s window and strangle him.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Todd said on a grin. “Behind the badge, you’re all pussy.” He shoved his truck in reverse. “Think of us tonight, cozy in my bed while you’re out here playing hall monitor on the roads.”

Sawyer gritted his teeth and worked the rest of the night, doing his best to remind himself that Todd was just an angry asshole.

An asshole who knew which buttons to press.

Just past dawn, Sawyer drove to the B &B. It was seven in the morning, and he’d been up for just over twenty-four hours, but he told himself he needed some of Tara’s coffee.

“You look like shit, man.” This helpful statement was from Jax, who was out of his Jeep and putting on his tool belt.

“Damn,” Sawyer said. “And I was planning on going straight to a photo shoot from here, too.”

Jax grinned and whistled softly. Izzy, his three-year-old brown Lab snoozing in the passenger seat, scrambled to her feet and barked. When she saw that nothing exciting was happening, she collapsed like a wet noodle, closing her eyes again.

“Come on, lazy girl,” Jax said.

Izzy cracked open one eye and stared at him balefully.

“Tara’ll have breakfast,” Jax coaxed. The dog leaped out of the Jeep and trotted to the B &B’s front door.

Sawyer shook his head. “You working on the day spa?” He looked around for Maddie’s car. “Or you and Maddie just going to play Contractor and the Missus again?”

“Hey, you’re not supposed to know about that. Maddie hates it when people know about our sex life.”

“You’re the ones who got caught in the attic by Lucille and her damn camera phone.”

“Fucking Facebook. And I’d lost a bet with Maddie and the deal was I had to strip. It’s not like I do it all the time, but hell, when a pretty woman tells you to drop ’em, you drop ’em, you know?”

“Just be thankful Lucille stuck her head into the attic before you stripped down to just that tool belt,” Sawyer said.

Jax sighed. “She didn’t even get Maddie in the shot. Just me doing the strip dance waving my shirt around. Someone should lower her estrogen dose or something.”

“Or you could keep your strip tease to your own bedroom.”

“What fun would that be?” Jax shut his Jeep door and took a longer look at Sawyer. “Rough night?”

“Long night.”

“You stopping by to catch a glimpse of Chloe under the guise of getting coffee?”

Sawyer narrowed his eyes.

His friend gave him the same bland stare that Izzy had given Jax a moment before.

Sawyer blew out a breath but admitted nothing. He hadn’t been here in two days. He’d told himself that he was cutting back on caffeine, that he was late, that he didn’t need to waste the extra gas. He told himself whatever he’d needed to in order to make it work in his head.

But it didn’t. Work.

Jax walked into the inn’s kitchen with him. Jax got a very friendly kiss from Maddie. Sawyer got coffee. While Jax headed to the sunroom, Sawyer looked around the kitchen for signs of Chloe and found none.

“Looking for anything special?” Tara asked from her perch at the stove.

Sawyer glanced out the window. No Vespa.

“She’s not here,” Tara said dryly. “She’s been sneaking away for a few hours here and there, needing to regroup.” She paused. “It’s because she lets things build up inside of her. She tries to hide it, pretend nothing gets to her. But things get to her. People get to her.”

“Tara,” Maddie said quietly from the kitchen table.

“He gets to her,” Tara said to her sister, pointing at Sawyer with a wooden spatula.

“What’s wrong?” Sawyer asked. “What’s happened?”

Tara shook her head. “Nothing. At least nothing specific.”

“Any idea where she might be?”

Tara shook her head. “She said she goes somewhere that gives her peace and quiet, a place where she can think.”

At that, some of the tension left Sawyer’s shoulders. He had a decent idea where she might be.

“Sawyer?”

“Yeah?” Impatient to be gone, he looked back at Tara.

Her eyes were fierce and protective. “Don’t make me sorry I told you.” There was an unmistakable threat in her voice.

Normally that would irritate the hell out of him, but he kept his gaze level with hers and shook his head. “I won’t.”

As he walked out, he heard Maddie say to Tara, “Look at you, meddling like a mother hen.”

“She won’t thank me,” Tara said.

“Depends on what happens next,” Maddie said, which was the last thing Sawyer heard as he left the inn.

Sawyer drove through town, hoping he was right about Chloe’s location. Somewhere that gives her peace and quiet. Hell, if he thought about it too much, that could be anywhere. The mud springs. Lance’s house. Hang gliding…

He shuddered. Christ, he hoped she wasn’t doing anything like that, but when it came to Chloe, one never knew. Her idea of peace and quiet was decidedly left of center.

But her partner in crime, Lance, had been seen all over town with his new girlfriend, which hopefully meant they’d all been too busy to get into trouble.

So Sawyer headed home. In the middle of the night, with no traffic and no red lights, it took fifteen minutes to get through town and up the hill to his house. This morning, as the sun rose above the tall mountains cradling Lucky Harbor, bathing the town in a golden glow, he made it in seven.

He idled in his driveway, staring at the Vespa parked there. Not wanting to examine the odd feeling in his chest, the one that felt suspiciously like relief and also something more, he got out. He didn’t go inside, but walked around the side of the house. He flicked a glance at the outdoor shower, and as it had every other time since he’d been in there with Chloe, his dick twitched at the memory of her pale skin gleaming, water running in rivers down her curves…

He moved to the cliff and took the stairs to the beach. The sun had risen a little more, casting the overhang in black shadow, the rocks indistinguishable from one another.

At the bottom of the stairs, he kicked off his boots and socks and turned to face the cliffs. The sun was in his eyes, blinding him to anything but the outline of the granite. The beach was utterly empty and completely isolated, especially at this time of year. There was a salty breeze but the waves were subdued, soft and quiet. A lullaby, gently rolling against the rocky sand. A bird squawked. Its mate squawked back.

But there was no sight of a petite, redheaded, wild beauty named Chloe.

When he saw the single-track of small, feminine footprints, he sucked in a breath of pure relief. “Gotcha,” he murmured, and followed the prints up the beach and around a large outcropping of rock, heading for the cliff.

Where they vanished at the face of the rock.

If it hadn’t been for the footsteps, he’d have missed her entirely. Because even tilting his head back as far as he could, she was invisible to him. But he knew she was up there.

He could feel her.

Shaking his head at himself-he could feel her?-he began to climb, telling himself that this would be a hands-off talk.

Halfway up, he levered himself over a large, flat rock that jutted out and found her.

Silent, gaze hooded, arms clasped around her knees, her lovely face was in profile but still projecting a loneliness and darkness that called to him.

Because it matched his own.

He crouched in front of her. “Hey.”

Chloe turned her head and studied him, from his bare, sandy feet, to his wrinkled uniform, and finally his face. Whatever she saw there had a small smile curving her mouth. “Long night, Sheriff?”

“Jax asked me the same thing.”

“It’s because you look like shit.”

“Yeah, he said that, too.”

She nodded and scooted over, a wordless invitation to join her. He crawled in next to her and mirrored her pose.

They watched the waves for a few minutes in easy, companionable silence. He’d gotten the feeling from Tara that Chloe had been upset, but he wasn’t getting that vibe from her at all.

No, just that same sense of needing that vague something that he felt deep in his own gut. “Are you all right?”

“Always.” She smiled, but it didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Same question back atcha, Sawyer.”

She didn’t often use his given name. He liked the sound of it coming from her lips way more than he should. “Your sisters are worried.”

She blew out a sigh and sank farther back against the rock. “They shouldn’t be.”

“Want me to take you home?”

“Are you asking, or planning on cuffing me and dragging me back?”

“If I cuff you,” he said, “the inn is the last place you’ll be headed.”

She laughed softly. “You’re such a tease. You climb up here in uniform often?”

“Almost never.”

She looked at him, that damn concern in her eyes again. “You really do look beat.”

“I am.” He unbuckled his utility belt and set it on a rock.

“Don’t stop there,” she said.

“Right, and end up on Facebook.”

Chloe laughed. “Lucille wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Only because she knows I’d arrest her.”

“Sure you would.” Her smile faded, replaced by a thoughtful frown. “Why is that, I wonder?”

“Why what?”

“Lucille loves to shout to the world what you do as Sheriff Thompson, but the private life of Sawyer seems to be off-limits. She never outs you about anything.”

“Nothing to tell. I’m always on the job.”

“No, seriously. Remember that day you changed her tire? She was telling me all about your younger years, then totally clammed up when she got to your teens.”

No, he wasn’t tabloid material anymore, thank God. And he owed a big thanks to Lucille for that. “I’m too tired to have that conversation with you right now.” Or ever.

“So…you’re off duty.”

“Finally, yes.”

“Good.” She rose to her knees at his side and tugged at his shirt, indicating she wanted him to lose it.

He shouldn’t, but he must have been even farther gone than he’d thought, because he peeled out of his Kevlar vest, his uniform shirt, then the T-shirt he wore beneath, setting everything on top of his growing pile.

She ran her gaze over his chest with frank appreciation. Then he shivered, realizing he hadn’t really considered the weather. It was forty-five degrees max, but Chloe was giving him a go-on gesture with her hand.

“All I have left is my pants,” he said.

“Yes, please.”

“It’s cold, Chloe.”

She tilted her head. “Are you worried about shrinkage?”

Well, he was now.

“I’ve already seen the goods, remember? Trust me, Sheriff, you have nothing to worry about.”

Sawyer laughed in spite of himself, then went still when she straddled him. Before he could so much as blink, she’d bent and kissed his collarbone. Then a pec. She touched her tongue to his skin, and he shivered again. Not from the cold. “Chloe.” That was all he managed to get out. His hands were on her hips, gripping her tight as she shifted over an inch and licked his nipple. He sucked in a breath.

“It looked cold,” she whispered and blew a warm breath over his damp skin.

He shuddered, the cold air the last thing on his mind now, as she rocked slowly over the obvious bulge behind his zipper.

“I thought I wanted to be alone,” she said, grinding on him until his eyes rolled to the back of his head.

“I know,” he managed, tipping her face up to meet his gaze. “But I didn’t want you to be.”

She smiled. “I like that about you. You listen to everyone, but then come to your own conclusions and do whatever the hell you want.”

“If you knew what I wanted to do right now, you’d probably be shoving me off this bluff.”

“Don’t count on it.” She rose a little and covered his mouth with hers.

The kiss rocked his socks off. Or it would have, if he’d been wearing any. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. She was definitely no longer feeling lonely or sad, or anything negative at all. Her eyes were soft and…dreamy.

Dreamy was troubling, because it was more than just lust. Dreamy meant things he couldn’t deliver, such as his own emotions. It wasn’t that he couldn’t feel things for her. He could, and did.

God, he did.

He just had no idea what to do with them. “Chloe-”

“I was thinking about your shower,” she said, nuzzling her face against his jaw. “I was sort of hoping to find you there.”

“We never did finish what we started that day.”

Chloe smiled against him. “Maybe ‘we’ didn’t finish, but I sure did.”

He laughed. So did she. And then somehow they were kissing again. “Hold on,” he said, regretfully pulling back. “We can’t.”

“Sorry. That word doesn’t compute.”

He let out another low laugh and tightened his grip on her when she nipped at his throat. “I’m not risking you having another post-orgasm asthma attack while we’re way up here on the rocks,” he murmured, groaning when she rocked the hottest part of her over the hardest part of him.

“I have a better idea,” she whispered.

Oh, good. One of them could still think. “What?”

She pulled her inhaler from her back pocket and waved it at him. Leaning over him, she lightly kissed first one corner of his mouth, then the other. “And I want you,” she whispered, her mouth brushing his with each word. “So much. Please? Please, Sawyer…”

This was her idea? To beg? Because first, that really worked for him. And second…hell. He couldn’t remember.