“You were good with her,” Tara said. “I might have just given her the room key and stayed out of it.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Maddie said. “You were the first one on board when I was running away from my life and needed to stay here, remember?” She hugged Tara, then reached for Chloe’s hand, pulling her in close, too. “I called Jax. Told him we had reservations coming in, that we need this room done yesterday. He said he’d do it at material cost only, and that I could pay the labor later.”

“I’ll pay,” Chloe said, trying to figure out how long was long enough to stay in the group hug without being rude. “Whatever it is.”

“I’ve got it,” Maddie said. “No worries.”

“No, I—”

“Chloe,” Tara said dryly. “I’m pretty sure the debt can’t be paid in money.”

Maddie blushed to the tips of her toes.

“Oh. Gotcha.” Chloe laughed. “Well, then, thanks for paying up, sis.”

Maddie rolled her eyes and hugged her again. Jesus. Tara was still right there, too, so that now Chloe was sandwiched between them. “Okay…Well. I have things to do.”

“You always do when we’re having a mushy moment,” Tara said, not letting go.

Dammit. “Seriously?” Chloe asked. “Because we just mushed all over each other a few months back when Maddie got engaged, and I’m still recovering from that.”

“That was a year ago,” Maddie said. “And now Tara’s engaged. It’s definitely mush time.”

Tara shook her head. “No, first we mush on this.” She looked at Chloe. “We owe you an apology.”

“Whoa. Can you repeat?”

Tara sighed. “You might be the youngest, but you’re not a baby. You’ve really changed, Chloe. Grown up.”

“Okay, thanks. Can you let go of me now?”

“No,” Maddie said, tightening her grip, laughing when Chloe swore.

“We’re trying to tell you that we’re sorry it took us so long to realize,” Tara said. “And that though you march to a different drummer, you have it together just fine.”

“Sometimes even more than us,” Maddie added.

Chloe narrowed her eyes. “Okay, what do you guys want? You’re both going away with your lovers this weekend, right? Leaving me with the inn? Is that it?”

Maddie laughed. “No. We love you, Chloe. That’s it.”

“Oh, good God.” She dropped her head to bang it repeatedly on Maddie’s shoulder.

Her sisters both laughed, but Chloe didn’t feel quite in on the joke. Her mother had been a free spirit and had flung the L-word around to anyone and everyone, so much so that it had lost its meaning. And then there’d been TV and in movies, and everyone knew that love wasn’t real either, just an easy antidote to bad stuff suffered in the story. Family betrayed you? I love you. All better. Man ripped your heart to shreds? I love you. Perfect Band-Aid. World destruction imminent and you’re going to fly into the asteroid leaving your daughter an orphan? I love you. Buck up.

No, to Chloe it seemed like people used “I love you” when they meant “I’m sorry” or “Could we please forget about what a moron I’ve been?” They weren’t words to be used like a Band-Aid, or to be said to make someone feel better in the moment, like the time Phoebe had left a seven-year-old Chloe at a stranger’s house for four days or when she’d spent the entire Christmas money on gifts for her boyfriend.

Chloe might not be the smartest kid on the block, but she’d learned early on that those three words had power. No way she would ever let that power be wasted. That would be a sacrilege. Her sisters could joke all they wanted, but Chloe knew deep in her bones that when it was time to say the words, she’d know. There’d be some cosmic sign. Problem was, she was starting to wonder if her cosmic receiver was faulty.

Wonder if Jax knew a contractor for that?

In any case, she was grateful for what she did have with Tara and Maddie. More than they could possibly know. They were all she had as far as stabilizing forces. They were her only blood ties.

And if she let herself think that way for too long, it made her sad. Lonely.

Afraid.

So she didn’t think on it.

Ever.

She just enjoyed having them in her life. And as she’d come to realize in the past year, the more of herself that she gave to the inn, the longer that might be.

“She’ll say it when she’s ready,” Maddie said to Tara. “And we shouldn’t be teasing her. Chloe, honey, you’re pale. Are you okay? Are you having trouble breathing?”

“It’s blood loss from my brain exploding.” Chloe jammed her hands into her pockets, suddenly extremely and uncomfortably aware that they were both staring at her with concern. “Not everyone wants to sit around and discuss feelings. Not everyone is in a relationship.”

Silence, and she grimaced. When would she learn to stop talking?

“Sugar.” Tara’s eyes were unusually soft and, dammit, full of sympathy. “Is this about us both getting married?”

“No,” Chloe said. “Of course not. I’m thrilled for both of you.”

“Is it about you wanting a relationship?” Maddie asked gently.

“If I wanted a relationship, I’d have one.”

“Is it about Sawyer?” Tara asked. “Are you’re falling for him?”

Yes.

No.

Christ, she had no idea. She shook her head, hoping that covered all the options. “That would be stupid.”

Tara let out a breath and nodded. And this, of course, put Chloe in defense mode. “Why are you nodding?”

Tara looked at Maddie, then back to Chloe. “Because,” Tara said carefully, “you said it yourself.”

“Yes, and I know why I said it, but why did you say it?”

“Well, there’s the whole he-wears-a-badge thing and your whole hate-authority thing. And—”

Maddie put her hand on Chloe’s arm. “Honey, what she means is that you’ve never been all that interested in toeing the line, and Sawyer’s life is that line, you know?”

Yes, Chloe knew. She knew exactly. And wasn’t that just the problem.

Chapter 18

“Sex is like air; it’s not important unless

you aren’t getting any.”

Chloe Traeger

Sawyer’s week was an exhausted blur. His counterpart, Tony Sanchez, had been taking a lot of time off because of the new twins, leaving Sawyer overworked and facing too many double shifts. So he wasn’t in the best of moods when he should have been getting off duty but instead was heading into an all-nighter and found a car parked oddly on the side of the highway beneath a grove of trees. Sawyer exited his vehicle to check it out, but it roared to life, speeding off, tires squealing, narrowly missing two cars passing by.

Bonehead move. Sawyer jumped back into his vehicle, flipped on his lights, and pulled the car over.

There were two guys in the front seat. Sawyer didn’t see anything suspicious inside the car, so he wrote a ticket for reckless driving. The driver bitched about it, then proceeded to pull away, once again squealing his tires and laying down tread, barely missing yet another car.

Sawyer was just pissed off enough to pull him over again, calmly issuing the Idiot of the Day his second ticket.

“Are you f**king kidding me?” the driver yelled. “Another ticket?” He thrust his car into gear.

“Careful,” Sawyer warned him. “I have all night.”

The guy muttered “asshole” beneath his breath but pulled onto the highway more carefully this time.

From there, Sawyer was called to traffic duty. Construction crews were working on the main street in town and had closed the road. There’d been a flashing sign all week long warning people, and the crew had carefully barricaded the road in several places, posting up “road closed” signs as well as detour signs. And yet several people still managed to drive around the barricades and then get angry with Sawyer because they couldn’t get through.

“This is ridiculous!” one woman screamed at him. “I can’t get out of this mess to save my life. You’re all assholes!”

She’d had to drive on the wrong side of the road to get past the barricades—and he was the asshole. “See that barricade you ignored and drove around?” he asked her. “You want to drive back the way you came. Go by each of the road closed signs that you passed—I believe there were three—and follow the detour directions.”

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 f**k 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 f**k 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 f**k 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 as**ole 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.