Author: Jill Shalvis

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.

Chapter 22

“Women might not like to admit their age,

but men don’t like to act theirs.”

Chloe Traeger

Chloe stared after Sawyer’s truck, Maddie’s headlights cutting through the cloud of dust in his wake.

“What the hell was that?” Maddie asked. She sat in the backseat, a towel wrapped around her hair. She didn’t sound drunk now. “He seemed mad.”

“He wasn’t angry before,” Tara said from her shotgun position in the front seat.

Now that the dust had settled, Chloe pulled back onto the road, replaying the evening in her head. “It wasn’t about us,” she said. “I think it was about his messages. Something must have happened.”

“I hope everything’s okay,” Maddie said. “I’d hate it if he missed helping someone because of us.”

Chloe, too. She’d never seen Sawyer react like that before. It wasn’t his style. Usually when things went to hell, he got calm and quiet. Steady as a rock. It had to be something bad. Her thoughts went first to his father, but that didn’t hold up. If he’d had a heart attack, Sawyer would have been concerned, not angry.

“He sure was surprised to find us in the mud,” Maddie said. “I can’t imagine what he was expecting, but I can guarantee it wasn’t the three of us in war paint.”

Chloe thought of Sawyer’s expression when he’d come into view at the edge of the trail and found them. He’d been irritated, then relieved to find them. Then he’d looked right at her and hadn’t even tried to hide his affection.

The memory brought an unexpected lump to her throat. Jax and Ford had known Sawyer forever, and yet he hid his emotions from them all the time. His emotions and his weaknesses…

But not from her.

He let her see him, all of him. It was a gift, she realized. The gift of himself.

She’d never had such a thing offered to her before, and she was still thinking about it, marveling at it, when she dropped Tara and a very groggy Maddie at the inn. No one even bothered to suggest cleaning out the car tonight. Jax and Ford were waiting to pick up their women.

Chloe parked and walked around back to the cottage. It was with mixed feelings that she went inside, alone.

She stripped there in the doorway and stepped gingerly to the bathroom, where it took her nearly an entire bottle of her own shea butter body wash to get clean. Afterward, she slid naked between the soft sheets of her bed and listened to the quiet creaks and groans of the place around her. Several months ago, she and Lance had joked about the sounds coming from a ghost, a lonely one.

Chloe knew the feeling…

No. Life was good, she reminded herself firmly. She and her sisters seemed to be in sync. The inn was doing well. Her past was her past, and her present was actually moving along.

It was only her future in question. A future she couldn’t quite see or imagine. She flopped over and told herself she’d never given her future much of a thought, so why the sudden worry now?

The answer was terrifyingly simple.

For the first time, she was feeling content. And she wanted the feeling to last, even though she knew from experience that nothing lasted.

Sleep didn’t come. Just more concern. She debated calling Sawyer, but…but she had a bad feeling about whatever it was that had happened tonight. She didn’t want to interrupt him from something important.

But on the other hand, he could already be home, and not calling her because he thought she was asleep.

Which settled it. She’d go to his place, see if his truck was there. If he was mad, he could tell her in person.

When she pulled into his driveway twenty minutes later, she let out a breath at the sight of his truck. Parking the Vespa next to it, she headed up the walk and knocked softly.

Sawyer opened the door in low-slung jeans and nothing else but a decent amount of testosterone-driven attitude. For the first time since they’d been doing this, he didn’t seem happy to see her, and dread enveloped her heart. “Is it too late?” she asked much more mildly than she felt.

“Since when has that stopped you?”

She stared at him for a beat, then turned to go. “I shouldn’t have come—”

“Chloe.” He sighed and pulled her back around. “Come in. You’re cold.”

No, she was scared. Not of him, never of him, but of what was going to happen between them.

Or not happen.

With butterflies flying around in her gut, she shut the front door and leaned back against it. She tried to get a read on him, but as usual, his face was giving away nothing. “I didn’t think you were upset about the mud springs,” she said. “Which, by the way, wasn’t my idea.” She winced. “Okay, so it was, but I’d been just kidding, and then Maddie was all over it, and—”

“It’s not about the mud springs.”

“Are you sure, because—”