Flipping him off, she turned around.

The next guy to come through the barricades was-oh perfect-Todd. Todd had been questioned after the diner incident as a matter of course and hadn’t reacted well. He’d been running his mouth in town, telling anyone who would listen that Sawyer was abusing his power, and that Todd was going to bring him down. The guy wanted a fight, but Sawyer wasn’t going to give him one. No way was he going to allow Todd to jeopardize his job or be a menace to innocent people. It’d been years; it was time for Todd to get over himself and get his life on track. Unfortunately, Sawyer knew better than anyone that you couldn’t make a person do what they didn’t want to do. He couldn’t save Todd any more than he could gain his own father’s approval. There was just some shit that had to be let go.

“What the hell’s going on?” Todd said now, not bothering with his usual charm, not for Sawyer. “The road’s closed. Why can’t you douche bags do this at a more convenient time?”

Sawyer didn’t respond to the fact that he wasn’t actually working on the roads. He was simply attempting to direct the idiots driving on them. Not to mention that it was midnight, how much more convenient of a time could they get?

“How the fuck do I get out of here?” Todd asked.

Sawyer flicked his flashlight into the cab of Todd’s truck, knowing he wasn’t going to get lucky enough to find a bag of dope in plain sight. “Well, here’s the thing, Todd. If you can’t follow the detour directions you’ve been passing, I don’t know how you’re going to be able to follow the directions I give you to get out of here.”

“Fuck you, Thompson. Or maybe I’ll just go fuck Chloe.”

Sawyer had to work at not reacting at that one.

“Yeah,” Todd said, knowing Sawyer enough to see right through him. “She’s a sweet piece of ass, and you know what? She’s hot for me.”

“Stay away from her.”

“Or?”

Or I’ll kill you wasn’t exactly the way to keep his job. And he’d never even had this problem before, the urge to say fuck the job and dive through Todd’s window and strangle him.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Todd said on a grin. “Behind the badge, you’re all pussy.” He shoved his truck in reverse. “Think of us tonight, cozy in my bed while you’re out here playing hall monitor on the roads.”

Sawyer gritted his teeth and worked the rest of the night, doing his best to remind himself that Todd was just an angry asshole.

An asshole who knew which buttons to press.

Just past dawn, Sawyer drove to the B &B. It was seven in the morning, and he’d been up for just over twenty-four hours, but he told himself he needed some of Tara’s coffee.

“You look like shit, man.” This helpful statement was from Jax, who was out of his Jeep and putting on his tool belt.

“Damn,” Sawyer said. “And I was planning on going straight to a photo shoot from here, too.”

Jax grinned and whistled softly. Izzy, his three-year-old brown Lab snoozing in the passenger seat, scrambled to her feet and barked. When she saw that nothing exciting was happening, she collapsed like a wet noodle, closing her eyes again.

“Come on, lazy girl,” Jax said.

Izzy cracked open one eye and stared at him balefully.

“Tara’ll have breakfast,” Jax coaxed. The dog leaped out of the Jeep and trotted to the B &B’s front door.

Sawyer shook his head. “You working on the day spa?” He looked around for Maddie’s car. “Or you and Maddie just going to play Contractor and the Missus again?”

“Hey, you’re not supposed to know about that. Maddie hates it when people know about our sex life.”

“You’re the ones who got caught in the attic by Lucille and her damn camera phone.”

“Fucking Facebook. And I’d lost a bet with Maddie and the deal was I had to strip. It’s not like I do it all the time, but hell, when a pretty woman tells you to drop ’em, you drop ’em, you know?”

“Just be thankful Lucille stuck her head into the attic before you stripped down to just that tool belt,” Sawyer said.

Jax sighed. “She didn’t even get Maddie in the shot. Just me doing the strip dance waving my shirt around. Someone should lower her estrogen dose or something.”

“Or you could keep your strip tease to your own bedroom.”

“What fun would that be?” Jax shut his Jeep door and took a longer look at Sawyer. “Rough night?”

“Long night.”

“You stopping by to catch a glimpse of Chloe under the guise of getting coffee?”

Sawyer narrowed his eyes.

His friend gave him the same bland stare that Izzy had given Jax a moment before.

Sawyer blew out a breath but admitted nothing. He hadn’t been here in two days. He’d told himself that he was cutting back on caffeine, that he was late, that he didn’t need to waste the extra gas. He told himself whatever he’d needed to in order to make it work in his head.

But it didn’t. Work.

Jax walked into the inn’s kitchen with him. Jax got a very friendly kiss from Maddie. Sawyer got coffee. While Jax headed to the sunroom, Sawyer looked around the kitchen for signs of Chloe and found none.

“Looking for anything special?” Tara asked from her perch at the stove.

Sawyer glanced out the window. No Vespa.

“She’s not here,” Tara said dryly. “She’s been sneaking away for a few hours here and there, needing to regroup.” She paused. “It’s because she lets things build up inside of her. She tries to hide it, pretend nothing gets to her. But things get to her. People get to her.”

“Tara,” Maddie said quietly from the kitchen table.

“He gets to her,” Tara said to her sister, pointing at Sawyer with a wooden spatula.

“What’s wrong?” Sawyer asked. “What’s happened?”

Tara shook her head. “Nothing. At least nothing specific.”

“Any idea where she might be?”

Tara shook her head. “She said she goes somewhere that gives her peace and quiet, a place where she can think.”

At that, some of the tension left Sawyer’s shoulders. He had a decent idea where she might be.

“Sawyer?”

“Yeah?” Impatient to be gone, he looked back at Tara.

Her eyes were fierce and protective. “Don’t make me sorry I told you.” There was an unmistakable threat in her voice.

Normally that would irritate the hell out of him, but he kept his gaze level with hers and shook his head. “I won’t.”

As he walked out, he heard Maddie say to Tara, “Look at you, meddling like a mother hen.”

“She won’t thank me,” Tara said.

“Depends on what happens next,” Maddie said, which was the last thing Sawyer heard as he left the inn.


* * *

Sawyer drove through town, hoping he was right about Chloe’s location. Somewhere that gives her peace and quiet. Hell, if he thought about it too much, that could be anywhere. The mud springs. Lance’s house. Hang gliding…

He shuddered. Christ, he hoped she wasn’t doing anything like that, but when it came to Chloe, one never knew. Her idea of peace and quiet was decidedly left of center.

But her partner in crime, Lance, had been seen all over town with his new girlfriend, which hopefully meant they’d all been too busy to get into trouble.

So Sawyer headed home. In the middle of the night, with no traffic and no red lights, it took fifteen minutes to get through town and up the hill to his house. This morning, as the sun rose above the tall mountains cradling Lucky Harbor, bathing the town in a golden glow, he made it in seven.

He idled in his driveway, staring at the Vespa parked there. Not wanting to examine the odd feeling in his chest, the one that felt suspiciously like relief and also something more, he got out. He didn’t go inside, but walked around the side of the house. He flicked a glance at the outdoor shower, and as it had every other time since he’d been in there with Chloe, his dick twitched at the memory of her pale skin gleaming, water running in rivers down her curves…

He moved to the cliff and took the stairs to the beach. The sun had risen a little more, casting the overhang in black shadow, the rocks indistinguishable from one another.

At the bottom of the stairs, he kicked off his boots and socks and turned to face the cliffs. The sun was in his eyes, blinding him to anything but the outline of the granite. The beach was utterly empty and completely isolated, especially at this time of year. There was a salty breeze but the waves were subdued, soft and quiet. A lullaby, gently rolling against the rocky sand. A bird squawked. Its mate squawked back.

But there was no sight of a petite, redheaded, wild beauty named Chloe.

When he saw the single-track of small, feminine footprints, he sucked in a breath of pure relief. “Gotcha,” he murmured, and followed the prints up the beach and around a large outcropping of rock, heading for the cliff.

Where they vanished at the face of the rock.

If it hadn’t been for the footsteps, he’d have missed her entirely. Because even tilting his head back as far as he could, she was invisible to him. But he knew she was up there.

He could feel her.

Shaking his head at himself-he could feel her?-he began to climb, telling himself that this would be a hands-off talk.

Halfway up, he levered himself over a large, flat rock that jutted out and found her.

Silent, gaze hooded, arms clasped around her knees, her lovely face was in profile but still projecting a loneliness and darkness that called to him.

Because it matched his own.

He crouched in front of her. “Hey.”

Chloe turned her head and studied him, from his bare, sandy feet, to his wrinkled uniform, and finally his face. Whatever she saw there had a small smile curving her mouth. “Long night, Sheriff?”