Head Over Heels

Chapter 21

The next day Chloe gave a yoga class for one. Allie never stopped talking the whole time, about the amazing burgers at Eat Me, her Cute Guy sighting at the liquor store, how there was never a line at the post office here…She loved the people and wasn’t sure she missed anyone from home.

“Not anyone?” Chloe asked.

Allie lifted a shoulder.

“It’s okay to miss him,” Chloe said quietly. “It’s okay to miss John.”

And for the first time all week, Allie clammed up.

They were still stretching on the beach when Maddie and Jax pulled up to the inn. Maddie started to get out of the Jeep, but Jax drew her back, buried his hands in her hair, and kissed her.

“He’s going to inhale her right up,” Allie noted, sounding a little wistful.

“They’re getting married. I think all almost-marrieds act like that.” Chloe winced as soon as she said it, remembering why Allie was here. “I’m sorry, I-”

“No. Don’t be sorry.” Allie sat Indian style on the mat and stared out at the water. “I can’t hide out from it forever.”

“I know you’ve been in contact with your family. Have you called John at all?”

“No.” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “I made a mistake, Chloe. A big one. Things got intense before the wedding. There was so much to do, and everyone was trying to be involved…” She shook her head. “I lost sight of what I was doing, and why. John wanted to be a part of the planning, and I told him I could handle it. A bride should be able to handle it. I pushed him away. And then when he finally took a big step back, I fell apart and pushed him farther.” She bit her lip. “And then on my wedding day, I felt alone. So alone. It was all of my own making, but I couldn’t see that.” She turned to Chloe. “So I ran. When the going got tough, I ran like a little girl.”

Chloe understood both the pushing people away and the feeling alone. And hell, if she was being honest, she understood the running too. She’d spent years perfecting all three. “It’s never too late to face a regret.” She handed Allie her cell phone. “You don’t have to tell him where you are or-”

Allie snatched the phone so fast that Chloe’s head spun. She rolled up her mat and moved toward the inn to give Allie some privacy, but before she’d gotten out of earshot she heard, “Baby? It’s me.” Allie’s breath hitched audibly. “John, I’m so sorry-in some Podunk little place called Lucky Harbor. Really? You will? You’ll come? Oh, John…”

Sawyer knocked on his father’s door but wasn’t surprised when no one answered. For three days now, it’d been the same story. Worried, Sawyer let himself in and dropped the two bags of groceries he’d brought with him on the kitchen table.

From somewhere in the house, he heard a toilet flush, and then his father shuffled into the kitchen, scowling. “Nice knock,” he grumbled at Sawyer.

“I did knock. And I called, too. You’re avoiding me.”

“I was on the pot.”

“I’ve been calling all week. Wanted to help you fix the gutters.”

“My boy did it.”

Okay, last Sawyer checked, he was Nolan’s boy. “I would have-”

“I hate carrots,” his father said, nosing through the bags. “And blueberries. Christ, this is fucking sissy food.”

“It’s good for you.” Sawyer eyed his father. White wife-beater dulled by years of washings, dark blue trousers hitched up to just beneath a beer belly. “You need to eat healthier.”

“I’ve eaten how I want for sixty years.”

“Yes,” Sawyer said. “Hence your health problems.”

“Goddammit!” His father waved a hand and knocked the bag to the floor. “My business, not yours.”

Whether he’d accidentally hit the food or not, it pissed Sawyer off. He could handle drug dealers and gangbangers without losing his cool, but five minutes with his father and his temper was lit. “Listen-”

“No, you listen,” his father snarled, spitting out his words like venom. “Where in the hell do you get off telling me how to run my life?”

“Since your doctor said you were going to die if you didn’t change!”

“Well, fuck the doctor!” Nolan bellowed. “He’s a twelve-year-old, skinny-ass punk kid.”

“Dr. Scott is my age,” Sawyer said, keeping his voice quiet and controlled with great effort. “Josh and I went to school together.” In fact, the two of them had spent many, many Saturdays in detention together, driving the high school teachers insane.

“You mean you were good-for-nothing thugs together,” Nolan snapped.

“Whatever he was, Josh is a doctor now. And a good one,” Sawyer said. “Jesus, Dad! You can’t hold his past against him.” But then he let out a short, mirthless laugh. “What am I saying? Of course you can hold his past against him. You do mine.”

Nolan jabbed a meaty finger to the door. “Get out.”

“Gladly.” Sawyer strode to the door. “Tell your perfect little gofer boy that the porch light’s out.”

Exhausted as she was, Chloe did the happy dance around the sunroom. No, she corrected. Not the sunroom-the Lucky Harbor Day Spa.

Well, it was almost a spa anyway. It was at least finished enough to have provided a short menu of services for the family of sisters, who as of two hours ago had checked out after a long weekend stay.

The week before, Jax had thrown together a changing room, hooked up the plumbing, and painted the last of the trim an hour before the two massage chairs for pedicures had been delivered, along with the shipment of towels and robes. Chloe already had a portable massage table, so that hadn’t been an issue.

Granted, there was still more to do to make it a full-service spa, but she had made it work for now.

Grinning, she spun in a circle and collapsed onto a cushy chair. The important thing was that the weekend had been a huge success. And fun. It’d been a sister-team effort, with Tara making No-Guilt-Here foods and Maddie introducing “chick night” events complete with knitting sessions and tissues-required classic movies. Chloe had given facials, mud skin treatments, and massages, along with yoga classes.

Every single one of the guests had not only rebooked for other treatments but had bought gift certificates for friends and family.

Chloe was extremely aware of how much she’d enjoyed the weekend, and exactly what she was giving up to have, hopefully, many more. She knew offers like the one she’d had from the San Diego spa didn’t grow on trees, but she felt committed to Lucky Harbor, to being here. To her sisters as well.

Her heart wanted to add Sawyer to that list, but her brain reminded her that Sawyer was fun and heat and magic-but that he’d not exactly shown any signs of wanting more.

Neither have you…

She leaned back in the chair and sighed. It was nine o’clock at night, and for the first time in days, she was all alone. Blissful, she put up her tired feet and closed her eyes.

“Aw, look at her, all plum tuckered out. I guess taking people’s money is hard work.”

At Tara’s soft, teasing Southern drawl, Chloe opened her eyes and found her sisters standing in the doorway. “Hey. I thought you’d both left.”

“Not yet, sugar.” Tara was carrying a bottle of wine in one hand, three glasses in her other. She set them down on the low-lying counter that Chloe had just cleaned, then plopped onto the spa chair and stretched out her long legs. As always, she was in heels. She kicked them off and wriggled her toes. “Lord Almighty, I should have done that about four hours ago.” Thoughtfully, she studied the rack of nail colors.

Maddie sat, too. “Long weekend.” She smiled at Chloe. “I had a very lovely time just now adding up all the receipts. You’ve made our bank account very happy.”

Chloe wanted to ask And how about you two, are you happy? But she didn’t. She was afraid of the answer. “I took a booking for six girlfriends for next weekend. Seems we’re going to be known for the girls’ weekend out sort of thing.”

“There’s worse things to be known for,” Maddie said, covering Chloe’s hand in hers. “Heads-up-mushy alert warning.”

“What? No, I-”

But before Chloe had finished sputtering, Maddie reeled her in and hugged her.

“Tell her you love her, Mad,” Tara said, still prone on her chair. “It’ll make her as wild as a peach orchard hog.”

Chloe, laughing now, tried to escape, but Maddie squeezed her tighter. “I lurve you,” Maddie said with as much sap as she could.

Chloe stuck her finger into her mouth and then stuck the wet digit in Maddie’s ear.

Maddie collapsed in laughter while screaming “ewwww” and dropped to the floor.

“A wet willy,” Tara said calmly, nodding. “Nice tactic.”

Chloe brushed her hands together and smirked down at Maddie. “Round two?”

Maddie rolled to her belly and cushioned her head on her arms. “Hell, no. I’m too tired.” She crawled to the spa chair where Tara was still sprawled and pulled herself up, curling to share the space. She eyed the nail colors too, then picked out a baby blue. And then a siren red. She looked at Chloe speculatively, then grabbed a metallic silver, and then also a solid black. “Can you open the windows, Chloe? It’s not so cold out, and you’ll need fresh air for this.”

Chloe dutifully opened the windows.

“Now sit,” Maddie said.

Which Chloe did gladly since she was exhausted.

Maddie pulled Chloe’s feet into her lap. “Nice toes. You got them from Mom. Mine are short and stumpy from my dad, of course.” She painted Chloe’s big toe the metallic silver, then painted every other toe before filling in the opposite ones with the black.

“Silver and black?” Tara asked, amused. “Different. Suits her.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too. You’re getting red, by the way,” Maddie said, and proceeded to switch to Tara’s feet. “And you have pretty feet too, you bitch. Pour the wine, Tara.”

Tara arched a brow in Chloe’s direction, like look at our little mouse now. But she obeyed and poured three glasses of wine, handing one to Chloe and another to Maddie. Finally she took her own and lifted it. “To a hell of a day and a very pretty bottom line.”

Tara and Maddie drank deeply to that. Chloe watched them, an unexpected warmth spreading inside her chest. So much had changed so quickly. Tara and Maddie, Ford and Jax, the spa, and of course, Sawyer, who’d made an indelible mark on her life, more than anyone else ever had. She still didn’t know what would become of them, and imagining that someday he’d tire of her hurt like hell, so she let her thoughts spin back to her sisters. They would always be here for her. She knew that now. It wasn’t just a concept anymore. It was a fact. They were her anchor in a lifetime spent free-floating.

Chloe set aside her untouched wine. She wanted a clear head for this. But more than that, she also wanted to be able to drive herself to Sawyer’s later tonight. Thanks to their very busy schedule, it’d been six nights since she’d last been in his bed, naked in his arms, panting his name, letting him take away everything but what they gave each other. Funny, because she’d gone a whole year without sex, and now six days was too long. Or was it simply Sawyer himself that she missed?

“I can’t believe it, really,” Maddie said.

Chloe started guiltily. “What?”

Maddie began to paint her own toes with the baby-blue polish. “How far we’ve come. I can’t believe it.”

Okay, good. They weren’t talking about Chloe’s sex life.

Tara nodded. “Do you realize that we’ve each managed to bring a vital part of ourselves to the inn?”

Chloe stared down at her sparkling toes. “Is that it?” she wondered. “Or is it that this place has given each of us something we needed?” When nobody spoke, she looked up. Both her sisters were staring at her, eyes moist.

“Oh, Christ.” Chloe sighed and grabbed some napkins, shoving one at each of them. “I swear, if either of you cries, I’m giving out more wet willies, followed by wedgies. I mean it.”

“I have a better idea.” Maddie stood up. “Our first night here together we stayed up all night decorating our poor Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Do you remember?”

“Hard to forget,” Tara said. “Chloe turned our faces and hair green with her facial and conditioner masks, remember?”

“Hey,” Chloe said in her defense. “It improved your skin, didn’t it?”

“Excuse me.” Maddie tapped a fingernail against the wineglass to get their attention, then cleared her throat dramatically. “I’m trying to recount our adventures here, so pay attention. And I do have a point.”

“You going to get to it anytime soon?” Chloe asked.

“Do you or do you not remember when we decided to make this place a B &B?” Maddie asked. “We-”

“We?” Tara interrupted, laughing. “If we’re remembering, then let’s remember how it really happened, shall we? We didn’t decide anything, Maddie. You two corralled me into the B &B thing, specifically the chef part. And you did it by dangling Ford in front of me.”

“Oh, and that turned out so awful, right?” Chloe responded dryly. “And let me guess-you hate being your own boss. You hate ordering us around in the mornings to do your bidding. Is that what you’re saying?”

Tara smiled. “No, I really like that part. A lot.”

“Hello,” Maddie said sternly. “I’m talking here!” She paused for dramatic effect, but when Chloe and Tara just rolled their eyes, she sighed. “Don’t you get it? We need to do something. We need a ceremony for this milestone!”

“It’s too early for a Christmas tree,” Chloe said.

Maddie tossed up her hands. “Something new! Something unique. To celebrate you,” she said. “To celebrate the spa thing.” She scrunched up her face to think, then grinned wide, and then slumped. “I had something. But I forgot.”

Chloe laughed. “That cheap date thing must be hereditary.”

“Yeah,” Maddie admitted with a laugh. “Half a glass and I’m gone. Wait, I think I remember. Maybe.”

“Uh-oh,” Chloe said to Tara. “I feel something inadvisable coming on.”

“Well, sugar, if anyone’s going to recognize it, it’d be you.”

“Recognize this,” Chloe said and flipped Tara off.

“We need to mark this milestone,” Maddie insisted.

“We can go to the mud baths,” Chloe said, knowing damn well that they’d both shoot her down, tell her she was crazy, and then she could finally go jump Sawyer’s bones.

And he had such fine bones, too…

“That’s brilliant!” Maddie stood up and grabbed them each by the hand. “We’re going to the mud springs!”

“Wait-what?” Chloe asked.

“It’s a great idea,” Maddie said, tugging them both along.

Chloe dug in her heels. “Hold up.”

“Why?” Maddie asked.

“Because first, you’re drunk. Second, I was totally kidding.”

“Tell me that it wouldn’t be the perfect thing to do.” Maddie let go of them to clasp her hands together and jump up and down. “Oh, come on! Do this for me and…and I won’t make you get me a present for my wedding shower!”

“But it’s pitch-black outside,” Tara said.

“Actually,” Chloe said, “it’s a full moon.” Too late, she clamped her mouth shut. Dammit, she had plans for Sawyer and his naked bod beneath that full moon.

“Yeah,” Maddie said to Tara. “It’s a full moon, pansy ass.”

“You know what?” Chloe shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“You suggested it, genius,” Tara reminded her.

“Yeah, but I was joking.” But it was the disappointment shining in Maddie’s eyes that killed her. “Okay, don’t do that. Not the Bambi eyes.”

“I thought you’d appreciate the fact that I’m willing to do something that’s so you,” Maddie said. “After all, the spa was your baby.”

“Yes, and I do appreciate it.” And only a few weeks ago, Chloe would’ve been the first one out the door, not sitting here considering the fact that it was late and not altogether safe to be slipping and sliding around the springs. She glanced at Tara, then back to Maddie, and sighed. “Fine. Jesus. Why the hell not?”

“Yay!” Maddie polished off her wine, grabbed another bottle, then pulled them through the inn to her car, tossing Chloe, the only sober one, the keys.

Chloe thought for a second, then ran back inside for everything she’d wished she’d had the first time: towels, three spa robes, flashlights, and even though it took another trip, she hauled out three big gallons of fresh water to clean off with. When she returned, still laughing at herself a little for being the only grown-up of the bunch-how scary was that?-she found Tara still standing outside the car.

“Did she really call me a pansy ass?” Tara asked in a hushed whisper that the people of China could have heard.

“We have to get her a present for her wedding shower?” Chloe whispered back as she tossed the stuff into the trunk. “Because I thought the wedding shower was the present.”

They got to the trailhead just after eleven, and Chloe felt like a pagan white witch leading her sisters up the trail by flashlight.

Once at the mud springs, they had no trouble seeing. The moon had cast the meadow in a pale blue glow. Steam rose off the mud into the night, and Chloe shivered. “I don’t know-”

“And you call yourself the wild child,” Maddie chided and stripped down to her tiger-striped panties and bra. “I think we should switch monikers. You be the mouse. I’ll take wild child, thank you very much!” So saying, she dipped a toe into the mud, then holding the bottle of wine like she was of the highest royalty, waded in up to her waist and sighed in bliss. “Warm.”

“Since when do you have tiger-striped underwear?” Chloe asked.

Maddie blushed, her face lighting up like a glow stick in the night. “They were a present from Jax. Isn’t it gorgeous out here, all silvery and mysterious? You can almost see the forest fairies.”

“Okay, no more wine for you,” Tara said. She eyed the mud and sighed. “I must be insane.” But she followed suit after Maddie and stripped. Though, of course, she took the time to carefully hang her dress over a branch. Her underwear was not tiger-striped but a pale, silky cream and lace that screamed sophistication and elegance. Or at least as much as one can scream sophistication and elegance while standing in your underwear in the woods at eleven.

Chloe was hands on hips staring at them. “For the record, I have never called myself the wild child.”

“Come on in, Mouse,” Maddie called.

“Nor did I ever call you the mouse.” At least not to her face. Chloe kicked off her shoes. “Though I think we should call you Queen Bee-yotch. Damn, it’s cold out here!”

“Only until you get in,” Maddie promised, tossing back some more of the wine right out of the bottle before handing it over to Tara.

Chloe wriggled out of her jeans, then hesitated there in her panties and sweater. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

Tara made the sound of a chicken.

Chloe rolled her eyes and tore off her sweater. When she was up to her chin in the mud, Tara grinned at her. “You took out your nipple ring.”

“Last year,” Chloe said, watching as Maddie snatched the bottle of wine back from Tara.

“Really?” Tara asked Chloe. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It kept catching on my bra.” Which was true, but it’d been more than that. Somehow, at some point, she’d realized she’d outgrown the need to be so wildly different. It’d been right about the time that the three of them had agreed to stick together and renovate the inn. They’d been halfway through the renovation when there’d been a bad fire, forcing them to start over. The fire had been devastating in many ways, but by some miracle, they’d survived. And it’d been that night, lying in the ER, suffering from a smoke-induced asthma attack, with a sister on either side of her, that Chloe had known.

She’d been singed nearly to a crisp, lost everything including the clothing on her back, but it hadn’t mattered because she had her sisters and she loved them. “I do,” she said softly to herself, nodding. “I really do.”

“You believe in fairies?” Maddie asked, confused.

Tara took the wine from her. “Shh, sugar. I think Miss Wild Thang’s having an epiphany. Let’s leave her to it.”

Chloe stared at them. Tara was in the middle of carefully streaking the mud on her jaw in order to get the maximum benefit from it. Maddie had done her face already and looked like a zebra. And Chloe felt a smile bloom both in her heart and on her face. “To us,” she said softly.

“To us,” Maddie said, and drank to that.

Sawyer got the call from the forest service about midnight. It was Matt, reporting flickering lights had been seen on the trails out at Yellow Ridge. Matt was on Mt. Jude, the far side of the county, a good hour away, and couldn’t respond to the call. “I’m contacting you,” he said, “because the caller gave a description of a hopped-up shiny black truck going off-road, and it sounded like Todd’s. I know you’re watching him. I can call another ranger, but it might be morning before I can get anyone out there, and as you know, those trails are supposedly closed at nightfall, thanks to the fire season.”

“I’ll go,” Sawyer said, already in his truck, knowing this was it. If he caught up with Todd, he’d catch whoever Todd was working for. It was the break they were looking for. He was already on call twenty-four seven for the DEA until they closed in on their drug case, which most likely involved Todd one way or the other. Twenty minutes later, he was shining his flashlight on the car in front of the mud springs trailhead, shaking his head in disbelief.

Maddie’s car. What the hell was she doing up here? He flickered his flashlight in the window and saw a purse on the passenger floor. He thought maybe it was Tara’s. There was a phone on the backseat. He was pretty sure it was Chloe’s iPhone, which explained why she hadn’t picked up any of his calls. “What are you three up to?” he murmured.

No doubt the three sisters would have an explanation that would make him dizzy. Chloe might just be the most impulsive person he’d ever met, but she was also one of the sharpest. She had a reason for most everything she did, although sometimes the reason was to turn the world on its ear. But Tara and Maddie? He’d have figured them more sensible than to follow her up here.

Hell, it was fall. Bears were on the hunt to store up their winter fat. Coyotes were doing the same. Not to mention that in spite of the combined efforts of the forestry service and his own county department, there’d been plenty of illegal camping and hunting going on during this long, late Indian summer.

He needed to let it go. They were three grown women and could handle themselves. His job was Todd. If he was out here, he was up to no good, but the demands and conflicts of his job had never been stronger as he caught sight of the iPhone in the backseat of Maddie’s car.

Fuck.

He eyed the trailhead, and the sign there, posted by the forest service.

TRAIL CLOSES AT NIGHTFALL.

Swearing beneath his breath, he headed up the path. There were several forks, and he methodically worked his way along each until twenty-five minutes later he came to a clearing and stood staring in utter disbelief. Three heads appeared to be floating disembodied in a mud spring by the light of the moon.

“Hey,” he said to the three sisters, hands on hips, “if it isn’t Curly, Larry, and Moe.”

The three faces grinned. Sawyer had long ago schooled himself to be braced for surprise, trouble, danger…anything. And he had a really good blank, cop face. He knew this because it was that face that allowed him to whip Jax’s and Ford’s asses in poker every single time. But it was a struggle to stay blank at the sight before him.

Far above them, the moon’s glow gave off an unearthly feel, and with nothing surrounding them but isolated wilderness, the three women might have been ancient Indians in their war paint.

The tallest one narrowed her eyes and spoke with a Southern accent. “We were thinking more along the lines of Sex and the City than The Three Stooges,” she drawled.

The next one squealed with delight at that. “Oh! I want to be Carrie! I’ve always wanted to be Carrie!”

The petite one just studied Sawyer meditatively. “I think we should make him join us,” she said, her expression angelic, her voice pure devil. “He doesn’t always wear underwear, you know.”

Six eyes swiveled to his crotch.

Christ. He resisted cupping himself.

“Come on in, Sheriff,” the little minx called softly. “We don’t bite.”

“You’re drunk.” Perfect. He should arrest them for all for public intoxication and public nudity, not to mention being out here on closed trails, but hell if he could make himself do it. Where was Lucille when Facebook needed her? He pulled out his cell phone.

Tara gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Getting a shot for Lucille. You’re going to be even more popular than the elusive Cute Guy.”

Maddie and Tara squealed and immediately gave him their backs.

Chloe held her ground, watching him. “You wouldn’t.”

“I should.”

“Come in.”

“Not gonna happen.” If she’d been alone, he’d have been tempted. Which was a sorry thing. Before she’d come along, the thought not only wouldn’t have entered his mind but would’ve appalled him.

He pressed the button on his phone to check for calls from Agent Morris before he remembered-no service up here. “Okay, everyone out.” He held out his hand to Maddie first because she was finger-painting Chloe’s face and looked to be the most gone. She didn’t come out. No one did. Tara was gathering the hair off her neck, her skin gleaming pale and smooth beneath the moonlight, looking like some sort of Greek goddess. Maddie finished with Chloe’s face and began humming a song to herself while doing some sort of dance. Chloe grabbed her before she could dance her way farther into the shadows. “Whoa there, Pocahontas,” she said, snagging her sister by the arm, surging up out of the mud to her waist to do so.

She wasn’t wearing a bra, and Sawyer swallowed hard. “Chloe-”

She sent him an innocent smile and pulled both sisters out of the mud, wrapping them each up in towels before reaching for her own towel.

Sawyer turned his back and stared hard up at the stars. He tried a few multiplication tables, but it couldn’t hold up against the images of three gorgeous women covered in mud, washing each other off.

By the time Chloe came up to his side, cleaned and grinning, he was sweating. “You can look now,” she murmured.

They were all dressed, thank God. He could stop picturing Ford’s and Jax’s women, nude by the pale moon’s glow.

But he didn’t have to stop picturing Chloe.

They walked together down the path, making it in twenty minutes back to Maddie’s car. He then followed them down the road to the highway in his truck, getting out when Chloe pulled Maddie’s car over to the side.

“Just wanted to say thanks for checking on us,” she said when he’d walked up to the driver’s door and she’d rolled her window down.

His phone beeped as his cell service kicked in, and he realized he had messages. From where he stood, he could also hear dispatch trying to get him on his radio. Shit. He listened to the first message on his cell and his blood ran cold.

“Sawyer?” Chloe’s smile faded. “You okay?”

He held up a hand, listening. Dispatch had been trying to reach him. Agent Morris had been trying to reach him. Everyone and their mother had been trying to reach him. In the forty minutes he’d been out of range, all hell had broken loose. There’d been a reported drug deal before the DEA could mobilize. They had a witness, a hiker, who claimed that he’d seen the whole thing but by the time the authorities had arrived, everyone had scattered.

It’d been only a few miles from here.

The DEA had gone to Todd’s place to discover that not only had they missed whatever had gone down tonight, Todd had cleared out entirely, probably holed up waiting until the heat was off.

No doubt thanks to Sawyer going to Todd, trying to interrogate him about his drug source and offering him a deal. Instead Todd had packed up his shit and vanished.

“Sawyer?”

“I’ve got to go.” He strode back to his truck, vibrating with anger. Jamming his key in the ignition, he tossed his cell on the seat, then peeled out of the parking area, furious at himself. He’d known he was the only one on the DEA task force actually stationed in Lucky Harbor, and he’d also known better than to be out of cell service that long, but as always, being anywhere near Chloe stole his good sense.

Not her fault. Nope, this one was all on him, and it’d been at the expense of the job that meant everything to him.