Head Over Heels

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-”

“Not everything revolves around you, Chloe.” And at that, he walked away.

“Well, I know that-” But he wasn’t listening. He was gone. Her initial thought was to walk out the door, just let everything go. The old Chloe would’ve done that in a heartbeat. But she didn’t want to be that Chloe anymore, that person who skipped town rather than face hard reality.

So she pressed a hand to her nervous stomach, dropped her purse in the entry, and forced herself down the hall after him. That’s when she saw the low wooden coffee table, and against the wall, an entertainment unit.

Sawyer had been busy making the place look more like a home.

She found Sawyer in the master bathroom, reaching through the shower to open the window there. To her surprise, one wall was half painted. It’d been a rather outdated shade of green, which he was covering up with the wildly imaginative off-white. “How did you decide on a shade?” she asked.

“It was on sale.”

She might have smiled if it hadn’t been for the knots in her gut. “It’s two a.m.”

“Yep.” He reached for the roller.

Every part of her wanted to run for the door, say what the hell, it’d been fun while it lasted, because she’d known, God, she’d known, that this couldn’t last.

But the hell with being a big, fat chicken. She was braver now. She didn’t understand. She needed to understand. “So what was that call about earlier? More crazy women skinny-dipping by moonlight somewhere?”

“No.” He rolled a careful stripe of paint, perfectly even. No crooked walls tonight.

“Your dad okay?” she asked.

“He’s fine. Blowing me off, but fine.”

“Blowing you off?”

He shrugged. “He told me to stay away, that he’d got some kid to do odd jobs around his place. A really great kid who’s always on time and doesn’t try to screw him and is a fucking pillar of virtue.”

“Well, good for him,” she said. “Those pillars of fucking virtue are really hard to find.”

He tossed the roller down. “There’s no damn kid, Chloe. He’s making him up.”

“Maybe he’s trying to save you the time or save face.”

“Save face?”

“Yes, you know, stupid male pride?”

“You don’t understand,” Sawyer said grimly. “And how could you? I’ve never told you about who I used to be.”

“So you were a punk-ass kid,” she said. “So what? A lot of us were.”

“You don’t know.”

“I know who you are now,” she said. “And that’s all that matters. You’re loyal, strong, caring-”

He snorted and went back to painting. Clearly they were done discussing this. Shock. She stared at his broad, expansive back, watching with avid interest as the muscles there flexed and bunched while he stroked the walls with the roller. “Do you have another roller?”

“No.”

She squeezed in between him and the wall. “Hi. My name’s Chloe, and you might not have noticed, but we’re friends. Naked friends, sure, but friends nevertheless. And friends share. If it wasn’t your father tonight that pissed you off, what was it?”

He met her gaze. “We’re more than just messing around naked friends,” he said.

She did her best to squelch the burst of emotion those words caused. “Then talk to me.”

He made a restless movement with his shoulders, like he was to-the-bone exhausted. “If you’re mad at me,” she murmured, “I think I deserve to know why.”

He stared at the wet paint on the wall above her head. “It’s not you I’m mad at.”

“Then who?”

“Me.” He drew a careful breath. “I’m between a rock and a hard place here with what I can say.”

“Okay.”

“It’s DEA business. We’ve been waiting on a break. I’m on call now, but thanks to me being out of range tonight, our lead went underground and took any evidence with him.”

Chloe closed her eyes, stricken with guilt. This was because he’d been at the mud springs checking on her and her sisters. “Oh, Sawyer. I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

His gaze swiveled to hers, and he studied her meditatively. “That’s your only question?”

“No, I have at least a dozen, but I’m working on not being an impulsive pain in your ass.”

With a quiet laugh to himself, he asked, “How is it you’re so good for me, and yet so bad at the same time?”

Well, if that didn’t reach out and punch her in the gut. “It’s a special talent of mine,” she managed.

His gaze roamed her face, and she hated this, hated standing here waiting for him to tell her that they were through. Because that’s where this was going, she knew it. She felt it. Everything about his voice and expression told her so, and she knew that she should have left when she had the chance, left and pretended she’d never found contentment and security in his arms.

“You asked if there was something you could do for me,” he said quietly.

She nodded numbly.

“You could come here.”