But Sawyer hadn’t. He’d turned himself around. And he’d bought a f**king house to prove it.
The place needed work. A lot of work, actually. The house was older, built in the 1970s. The color scheme was early Partridge family. A month ago, he’d bought paint for the living room, dining room, and kitchen, and it’d been sitting in his garage ever since. His garage. Christ. At least he didn’t have a white picket fence and two-point-four kids.
When he’d first told his dad that he’d bought the house, the old man had frowned. “You gonna keep it up?”
No, he’d just spent $250,000 to let the thing rot away. Grimacing, Sawyer ignored his still pea green walls and went straight to the kitchen. The refrigerator held beer, a questionable gallon of milk, something that had maybe once upon a time been cheese, and a leftover…something.
Stomach growling, he took a beer, pulled out his cell phone, and called the diner, surprised when he heard “Eat Me” in Amy’s usual brisk cheer.
“Amy, it’s Sawyer,” he said. “You should have gone home after this evening.”
“Are you kidding? Retelling my near-miss is making me some serious bank in tips today. You need a late dinner, Sheriff?”
“Yeah. You have anyone making deliveries tonight?”
“For you, yes. Let me guess—a bacon blue burger, extra blue, side of fries, and a dinner salad with no tomatoes, because tomatoes are a vegetable and despite the fact that you’re six feet three of pure man, you eat like a little boy.”
“Hey,” he said. “Salad’s a vegetable.”
“Iceberg lettuce is a single step up from water. Doesn’t count.”
“Good, then forget the salad,” Sawyer said. “And make it two burgers and double the fries.”
While he waited for his dinner, he went into the garage and eyeballed the buckets of paint. “Fuckers,” he said to them, but picked one up and carried it into the dining room. “You ready?” he asked his walls.
They didn’t have an opinion.
He’d taken a second beer and rolled two very nice plain “ecru” stripes when the doorbell rang. He answered while reaching into his pocket for money to pay the delivery kid.
But it wasn’t a delivery kid at all.
It was Chloe, wearing a short denim skirt, emphasis on short, and a black angora sweater that was slipping off one shoulder, revealing a little black strap of something silky. And holy smoking hell, was she a sight for sore eyes.
“Hey,” she said.
Ever since their little playtime in his shower, their encounters together had vacillated between awkwardness and their usual lust-filled animosity. Right now it was a little of both. He cleared his throat. “Hey.”
“I forgot to say thanks at the hospital earlier, for getting my Vespa back to me.”
“Thanks for not dying on me in my shower.”
She snorted. “You’re just glad you didn’t have to explain that to Tara.”
He felt his brows knit together and his stomach clench.
“I’m kidding.” She flashed a smile. “Gonna have to lighten up, Sheriff, otherwise life sucks golf balls.” Looking like sin on a stick, she held up two large bags from the diner. “I went back to the diner to get dinner to go for Maddie and Tara and found Amy bagging your order. She got someone else to deliver to the inn and sent me here with enough food for two normal guys. Or for one starving sheriff.” She tried to come in, but he stopped her forward progress.
“Inhaler?” he asked.
“In my pocket, Sheriff. Sir.” She added a salute. “Can I come in now?”
This was a very bad idea, of course, but she simply pushed past him, her sweet little ass moving seductively in that skirt as she walked through his nearly empty living room and into the dining room.
She looked at the few swipes he’d taken with the roller. “Coming right along, are we?”
“Been busy.”
She’d been busy, too, he knew. Everyone and their mother in Lucky Harbor had felt free to keep him up-to-date on her every move. She’d been taking care of Lance, working at various hotel spas in the state, giving geriatric yoga classes at Matt’s studio to Lucille and her cronies, and planning a sunroom renovation at the inn for a day spa.
And if she’d trespassed, done any B&E, or anything else illegal, he hadn’t caught wind of it. Or maybe she’d laid low. No doubt she still had that rowdy untethered spirit that he was so inexplicably attracted to. But she’d changed over the last few months. Not settled down—not in any way, shape, or form, but she’d done something else, something better.
She’d found a place to belong.
He wondered if she even knew it yet. Best not to ask. Best not to keep her here one second longer than necessary, as they clearly didn’t have themselves under control around each other.
Or maybe that was just him. He didn’t have himself under control, not when his hands were shoved deep in his pockets to keep them off her. It was getting hard to remember why they were a bad idea.
Because she’s the opposite of your type. She was crazy unpredictable, spontaneous…
Okay, that was a load of bullshit. She spoke to the part of him that he kept locked down tight. And that. That was why this was a bad idea. He wasn’t ever going to be the man she wanted or needed, one who’d fly off a mountain on a hang glider simply for the thrill. One who’d open a vein and bleed out his emotions at the drop of a hat. Or crawl under a fence into private property to rescue a couple of dogs.
He wasn’t that guy. He’d committed himself to the obligations of duty and discipline. His job swallowed him whole, and that was just how it was. So he stood in the doorway of the dining room waiting for her to set down the food and leave.
Instead, she turned to him with a little smile that was disarmingly contagious. “You may not know this about me,” she said. “But I’m excellent with a paint brush.”
Oh, Christ. He was a goner.
Chapter 15
“Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.”
Chloe Traeger
Sawyer shook his head at Chloe. “I’m not going to ask you to help me paint.”
“Don’t ask. I’m offering.” She took a second, longer look around at his nearly empty living room, the completely empty dining room, the equally sparse kitchen.
He knew what she saw. She saw what he’d just been thinking himself…it was a house. Not a home. “You need to go before the paint fumes aggravate your asthma.”
She merely moved to open the windows and turn on his two ceiling fans.
“Is that enough?” he asked.
“For now. There’s good cross ventilation.” She picked the food back up and moved to the middle of the dining room floor and dropped to her knees.
“What are you doing?” he asked, voice a telltale hoarse, causing her to glance at him, but he couldn’t help it, he’d just flashed to her making that same move in his shower.
“Making you a picnic.” She leaned over to pull food from the bags. “Come on.”
He didn’t budge, riveted by the way her skirt was riding up the backs of her thighs.“If you don’t sit,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m going to eat all of this by myself. And trust me, I totally could. I’m starving.”
Sawyer sat. She handed him a plate loaded with two burgers and double fries, and then pulled a large bottle of wine from the depths of her huge purse.
“The big guns,” he said.
“No, that would have been vodka. But I wanted to relax you, not put you out of commission. Though you’re so freaking stoic all the time, it’s hard to tell if you need relaxing. Nothing seems to faze you.”
He let out a mirthless laugh. “You think nothing fazes me?”
She smiled a secret little smile. “Well, except when I’m na**d. You were pretty fazed then.”
He shook his head.
“No?” she asked.
“Yes.” Fuck, yes. “But that’s not all that gets to me.”
“What else, then?”
“Seeing you suffocating,” he said. “That fazed the hell out of me.”
Her smile faded. “I know. I’ve been told that’s damn hard to watch. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He shook his head. “God. Don’t apologize for that.” He paused. “You and your sisters make up?”
“Oh. Yes.” Chloe shrugged. “Pretty much anyway. It was my fault. I spent all those years being wild, and then I hate when no one wants to depend on me.” She shook her head. “I’m working on that, but the problem is, people tend to assign you the role of the person you are at your worst, you know?”
Yeah. He knew. Exactly.
“Not much I can do about that,” she said with a philosophical shrug. “Except hopefully continue to prove them wrong.” She set the bottle between her thighs to steady it and went to work the corkscrew, also from the mysterious depths of her purse. When she bent over the bottle, her skirt rose up even more, giving him another quick flash of—yep—something that was definitely black silk beneath. The corkscrew slipped, and with a low breath of annoyance, Chloe ran her fingers up the neck of the bottle to reset its position.
“Keep doing that,” he said, mesmerized. “And the top will pop off on its own.”
She laughed and handed everything over to Sawyer. He removed the cork, and she took the bottle back, pouring him a glass.
He wasn’t much of a drinker, not anymore, and he’d already had the two beers, but she was looking at him with a soft smile. And then there was that sweater, still slipping off her creamy shoulder. Plus she smelled amazing, was wearing black silk under her clothes, and he was suddenly more than a little short on brain power.
They ate and drank in a comfortable silence. After a while, Chloe looked down at his empty plate with a smile. “Better?” she asked.
He’d inhaled everything. Finally full and definitely better, he nodded. “Thanks.”
“Oh, it’s not me.” She poured the last of the wine into his glass. “It’s the food. And the alcohol.”
He was pretty sure it was her, but he kept silent, shaking his head when she pulled a second bottle from her purse. “What else does that suitcase hold?” he asked in marvel.
“Everything.”
“Anything worthwhile? Like, say, a house painter?”
“I’m your new house painter.” She reached for the corkscrew to open up bottle number two.
He stopped her. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
She tilted her head and studied him. “Is it possible?” she asked, sounding intrigued.
“No.” But when she leaned forward, her sweater gaped and he discovered that the black slinky strap belonged to a black, slinky bra. Mouth suddenly dry, he downed the last of his wine, not surprised that he was feeling a nice little buzz.
“I really can paint, you know,” Chloe said. “If we keep the windows open, and I wear a mask.”
“No way.”
“No way?” she repeated in disbelief. “You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do, Sawyer.”
He sighed and swiped a hand over his face. This was his own fault for demanding instead of asking. He located one of the paper masks that the paint store had given him with his purchase.
It covered her mouth and nose, and when she got it into position, she looked at him. “I know you’re just concerned and not trying to be a domineering asshole,” she said benignly through the paper.
“Do you?” he asked, amused in spite of himself. She looked adorable.
And sexy.
“Yes. But I’m a big girl.”
And wasn’t that just the problem.
Her eyes crinkled so he knew she was smiling as they began painting.
“How’s your dad?” she asked.
He watched as she stretched up high as she could with her roller. “Ornery as hell,” he said, eyes locked on her bare legs.
“I hear they get that way with age.”
He had to laugh. “Then he’s always been old.”
“You have your moments, too, you know.”
That gave him pause. “Are you saying I’m like him?”
“I’m saying that sometimes genetics are annoying.”
She was still painting, paying him no special attention, allowing him to look his fill. He wondered if she was referring to Phoebe and the wanderlust lifestyle that had been forced on her, or if she blamed the father she’d never known for not sticking around.
She dipped her roller into the paint tray very carefully. “Sometimes I wonder what I got from my dad. If he was…difficult. You know, like me.”
Sawyer had liked Phoebe, he really had, but sometimes he wanted her to come back to life just so he could strangle her. How could she never have told Chloe a thing about her father, given her nothing of half of her own heritage—no knowledge, no memories, nothing?
Sawyer had never asked his father much about his own mother. It had hurt that she’d left him, and for a hell of a long time, he’d been positive that he’d been the reason she’d gone. But that was different. Chloe’s dad hadn’t been there from the get-go. “You’re not difficult,” he said, meaning it, but when she snorted with laughter, he had to smile. “Okay, maybe you’re a little difficult, but I like it.”
“You do not. No one likes difficult. Which is why I’m so hard to put up with.”
It took him a moment to answer because suddenly his throat burned like fire. “If I don’t get to tell you what to do, you don’t get to tell me how I feel,” he said, and watched her eyes crinkle at the corners as she smiled at her own words being tossed back in her face.