Author: Jill Shalvis

Her heart squeezed. “You were eight when your parents divorced?”

“They were never married. Or together, for that matter. I went back and forth between them until I was around eight.” His hesitation was brief. “That’s when she left town.” He lifted a shoulder, like life happens, no big deal.

But it was a big deal. Chloe knew all too well what it was like to have only one parent, a parent who wasn’t always so keen on being one in the first place. It had left its mark on her, and the older she got, the more she was beginning to understand how deep the wounds went. Or maybe being here in Lucky Harbor with her sisters was what had stirred the pot, but all her relationships seemed to be affected by her childhood. Not only that but also her search for stability, for a home, and the ironic fear of those very same things.

Which left her to wonder what the loss of his mother had done to Sawyer. “You ever hear from her?”

“No.”

He said it easily enough, but something made her throat tighten a little. Maybe it was the thought of him at eight years old being utterly abandoned by the one woman in his life who he should have been able to count on. She knew what it felt like to be without a parent, too. It was possible, she supposed, that her own father hadn’t known about her at all, but she thought it far more likely that he’d known and simply hadn’t wanted her. “Are you close to your dad?”

He let out a low laugh.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“There’s bad history. I haven’t exactly been a model son.”

“You were a motherless little boy,” she said in his defense.

“I was a complete shit,” he corrected. “A holy fucking terror. My father did what he could.” He gave a slight shrug. “At least you and Phoebe were of like minds. She was the original wild child.” A small but fond smile crossed his lips, taking any of the possible sting out of his words.

“You liked her,” she said in surprise.

He glanced at her. “Is that so odd?”

“Well, yeah. You’re not always so fond of me, so…”

“Says who?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“Wow. I just made you speechless. That’s new. I like it.” He paused. “And yeah, I liked Phoebe, too. She did as she pleased, lived the life she wanted to live.”

“Sometimes,” she said, staring at him, “you surprise me.”

He shot her a rare smile. “So what about your dad?” he asked after a minute. “I’ve never heard anything about him.”

“No? Me either.”

“You don’t know him?”

“I don’t even know who he is.”

Again he glanced at her, and she once again turned to the window, annoyed at herself. She never told people that. First of all, it was embarrassing, and second…

Second, it brought out something she hated.

Pity.

She didn’t want pity. Most of the time, she didn’t give a damn about her father. He was a nonentity. It was only since coming here and being around Tara and Maddie that she’d realized his absence had had such an impact on her. She shifted yet again and sucked in a breath of discomfort.

Beside her, Sawyer made a sound of his own, but when she looked at him, he was watching the road, calm as can be. “Still cold?” he asked.

Fair question. Her nipples were two tight pebbles, so visible that she might as well have been naked. “Yes.” She shifted around some more.

“Jesus, Chloe. Stop doing that.” He shoved his sunglasses to the top of his head and sent her a look so heated that she nearly went up in smoke. “Get the blanket back on you,” he said, reaching behind him, where she’d tossed it to get out of the truck earlier. He threw it over her, including her face.

“Oh for God’s sake, they’re just nipples,” she said, tugging the blanket down so she could breathe. She leaned as close to the vents as her seat belt allowed. “Just let me off in town at Lance’s.”

“What’s with your place?”

“My sisters are going to give me shit about this. We had a fight this morning.” A stab of remembered hurt hit her low and deep, but she ignored it. “Among other things, I told them I was all grown up. Which obviously,” she said with a mirthless laugh and a gesture at her ensemble, “was a complete lie. Seeing me like this isn’t going to help my cause. If you drop me at Lance’s, I can check on him and also borrow his shower. And maybe get Tucker to help me fix the Vespa.”

“Lance’s mother was with him when I talked to him. In your condition, you’ll give her heart failure. Hell, I’m nearly in heart failure.” He pulled off the highway just before her exit.

“So where are we going, then?” she asked.

He drove up a steep street, then turned a couple of times, and pulled into a driveway. The house was the last on the block, a midsized ranch on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Chloe had never been up here, but she knew Sawyer had bought the place earlier in the year.

He turned off the engine and faced her, laying his arm along the back of her seat. “It wasn’t a lie, what you told your sisters,” he said. “About growing up. You’ve changed a lot since you moved here.”

“Yeah? Then why am I still making stupid moves? Look at me, Sawyer.”

He did just that, appearing to like what he saw in spite of the mud. “Just because you’re unconventional doesn’t mean you’re not a grown woman.”

It was possibly the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. “So…is ‘unconventional’ the new ‘sweet’?”

He laughed, and she liked the sound, very much. “Why do we always fight?” she whispered.

“You know why.”

Yeah, she did. “It’s science.”

“Combustible chemistry,” he agreed. “Dangerous.” His voice was pitched so low as to be nearly inaudible and sent tingles down her spine. Clearly mistaking that for a chill instead of desire, he got out of the truck and came around for her. He held out his hand, but she just stared at it while the fresh fall air slid into her taxed lungs.

“Scared?” he asked.

“Of course not.” And she wasn’t. Scared. Nope, she was something else entirely, and it was making her breathless, and her chest was tight. She slid out of the truck, and since Sawyer didn’t move out of her way, she bumped directly into him, her body pressing close to his.

Given that she could feel him hard against her, she was guessing he wasn’t scared of a little combustible chemistry either. “What are we doing?”

“Come on. I’ll show you.” He pulled her toward the house.

“But I’ll get your house as dirty as your truck.”

“No, you won’t,” he said, and that’s when she realized that they weren’t moving toward his front door but around to the side of the house. Then they were in his backyard, which was nothing more than an open patch of wild grass. Stairs cut into the cliff that led down to the beach about a hundred feet below.

“I run along the beach sometimes,” he said. “Or climb the rocks. Clears my head.”

She walked to the edge and looked over. The cliff was rocky, jutting out in spots, creating little pockets where trees stuck out like porcupine quills. An entire elemental world of rock, trees, and water that made her itch to explore. “Does it work?” she asked. “The clearing of your head part?”

“Yeah.”

She could imagine him climbing to one of the alcoves there on the cliff, staring out at the churning ocean, inhaling the salty air, the wind in his face as the waves crashed on the rocks. “It’s a good place,” she said.

“It is. And after a run, I come up here.” He walked her to the very far corner of his house. “Maybe I’m not muddy, but definitely sandy and sweaty.” He gestured to the wall. There was an outdoor shower there, like the ones at the public beaches. But this one wasn’t grimy and gross. Instead, it was clean and tiled, and, as she discovered when he leaned in and flicked the handle, equipped with hot water.

She watched the muscles play across his back and shoulders as he straightened, and when she saw what he had in his hands, she paused. “A removable showerhead?”

“For those hard-to-reach spots.”

Chapter 11

“I’ve always wanted to be somebody.

I should have been more specific.”

Chloe Traeger

Chloe stared at the pulsing showerhead in Sawyer’s hand. Half an hour ago, they’d been furious at each other. Apparently they were going in an entirely different direction now. “Lance would’ve let me inside his house, you know. Of course, I’d probably have had to strip naked to get past the front door.”

“Feel free to strip naked now.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Yeah, okay, they were definitely over their mad. New direction coming at her. Was she ready? And good Lord, that smile should be registered as a lethal weapon, because surely it was as dangerous as anything else he was carrying. She stuck her right jean-covered leg beneath the spray, then moaned against her will as the water soaked past the mud-stiffened denim and warmed her skin. “Ahhh. So warm.”

“I might be a—what was it you said? A waste of a penis? But I’m not a complete ass.”

“Hmm,” she said noncommittally. She kicked off her tennies, then bent over to use her hands to rub her feet beneath the water. The caked-on mud washed away easily, which was nice. She could see this stuff in a really great body mask—

The water suddenly hit high on her thighs and made her jerk upright and squeak in surprise. “Hey!”

“Looked like you could use some help,” Sawyer said mildly.

“I’ve got it, thanks.” Because if he stepped in and “helped” by running his hands over her body, getting clean would be the farthest thing from her mind. Her breath hitched just thinking about it, and she thought of her inhaler, which she’d left on the seat of his truck. She considered going back for it, but she felt oddly compelled to stay right where she was even as she grabbed the showerhead from him.