Jill Shalvis - Head Over Heels

“Where were you?”

“On a walk.” Making out with the sheriff. “Why?”

“Because you were supposed to be here.”

“I was gone for an hour before sunrise. We didn’t have any guests.”

“No, but when a family of four stopped by, who’d been driving all night, you weren’t here. They were just leaving when I drove up.”

“So you caught them in time.”

“They didn’t stay,” Tara said. “They said they didn’t feel comfortable staying in a deserted inn.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, I-”

Tara held up a hand. “If it’s too much, sugar, just say so. You can’t fake your way through this.”

“It’s not too much.” Goddammit. She swallowed the urge to get defensive. “I’ll do better.”

Tara nodded and went into the kitchen, leaving Chloe alone to wrestle with that promise.

A few days later, Sawyer was off duty and running errands, which rated right up there with paperwork on his hate-to-do list. It didn’t help that he’d spent the last twelve hours on a special task force working for the DEA. Under Agent Reed Morris, they’d tracked and rooted out a known drug dealer who’d holed up in Alder Flats, a particularly isolated, rugged area on the edge of the county. Ric Alfonso had been just one piece of a bigger puzzle they were working on, but despite their best efforts, it had ended badly.

Ric was now on a slab in the morgue, and Sawyer was questioning the sanity of his chosen profession. It wasn’t the first time he’d been present at a death shot, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but Christ.

Ric had been nineteen years old.

At nineteen, Sawyer hadn’t been dealing drugs, but he had been on the fast track to becoming a criminal. Which begged the question-what made the fragile difference between a life lost and a life won? Was it sheer guts and determination? Hard work? Karma? The question was too deep for him at the moment, stuck at a red light when he’d rather be flying over the water on Ford’s boat, or lying on a warm beach with a woman, skimpy bikini optional.

Neither was in the cards for him, not today. He got some food, picked up his mail, and then drove to the heart of town, to a square block of small, ranch-style homes built back in the 1970s. Most had been repaired and renovated. Sawyer pulled into the driveway of one that hadn’t. The garage door’s springs were broken. The owner said he was having a guy take care of it, and though the owner’s only living relative, a son, had offered to fix it numerous times, the offer had been firmly rebuked.

Tough. Sawyer spent the next half hour doing it himself in spite of the fact that he wouldn’t be thanked. The grass needed mowing again as well. He stretched the kink out of his neck as he went for the ancient lawn mower on the side of the house. It was a stall tactic, and he usually wasn’t much for stalling, but he mowed the entire lawn and side yard, and finally, with nothing left to do, turned to the front door.

Nolan Thompson stood in the doorway. Sawyer’s father was dressed today, which was an improvement over last week, when he’d faced Sawyer in his underwear. It was hard as hell to take the old man’s righteous anger seriously when it was delivered with plaid cotton boxers sagging over a body ravaged by alcohol and fifty-plus years of physical labor.

“I told you I’d hired a kid to do this shit,” his dad growled in the same low, gruff voice that once upon a time had struck terror to the depths of Sawyer’s troublemaking soul.

It’d been that way until the day he’d realized he was bigger and badder than his father. Instead of taking his punishment for whatever stupid thing Sawyer had done that day-and Sawyer had no doubt it had been stupid-he’d shoved back.

He’d been sixteen. After that, the two of them had resorted to stony silence for Sawyer’s last year in the house. Contact had remained rare and estranged until Sawyer’s twenty-fifth birthday, which he’d spent in the hospital at his father’s side after Nolan’s first heart attack. That had been ten years ago. Now their visits were still spent in silence, but there’d been two more heart attacks and a new frailty in his father that Sawyer hated.

Because it meant that every time Sawyer looked at him, he had no choice but to feel. Compassion, regret, guilt, whatever emotion bombarded him, he hated every minute of it. He looked around his father’s yard. “So where is this paragon of virtue you’ve hired?”

“He’ll be here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, if he said he’d come, he’ll come. He shows up on time, doesn’t give me attitude, and doesn’t rip me off.”

Sawyer had stolen a twenty off his father’s dresser exactly once. He’d been twelve and an idiot, but he’d been twelve , for God’s sake. His father had never forgotten about it. But at least that infraction had been real.

Yeah, Sawyer had been a rotten-to-the-core kid and an even worse teenager. But Jesus, he’d been working his ass off ever since trying to make up for it, which should count for something.

It didn’t.

Time had stopped for Nolan as far as Sawyer was concerned. “The garage door is fixed, so you can park in there again. And the grass needs watering.”

Another gruff sound, maybe one of grudging appreciation, but that was probably wishful thinking on Sawyer’s part. He took a peek inside the house. It was a mess again. Odds were the housekeeper that Sawyer had hired was chased off by Nolan’s bad temper. Since the woman had also brought in the groceries, this meant his father was undoubtedly eating crap, not good with his restricted diet. “Didn’t Sally come this week?”

“She’s out of town.”

Bullshit. Sawyer brushed by his father into the house and was bombarded with unhappy memories. He checked the fridge-nearly empty. Pulling some money out of his wallet, he set it on the kitchen table and turned to leave.

His father was blocking his way, eyes bright with anger and something else. Shame.

Shit. “I’ll be back tomorrow with groceries and someone else to clean up,” Sawyer said.

“Don’t bother. I have the kid.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Nolan snapped, then paused uncomfortably. “I, uh, have to get another angioplasty.”

Sawyer’s own heart skipped a beat. “When?”

“Friday.”

“I’ll be there.”

“It’s just a routine thing, no big deal.”

“I’ll be there, dammit.”

Sawyer left feeling like shit. Nothing new there. Needing a caffeine kick, he parked at the convenience store, and for just a moment, leaned back and closed his eyes. He needed something, and caffeine wasn’t it.

Balls-to-the-wall sex had a nice ring to it.

A shout interrupted the thought. Glass shattered, followed by running footsteps, which was never good. Sawyer straightened just as a guy came barreling out of the convenience store, hugging his sweatshirt close to his body as if protecting something.

A piece of paper fluttered from the sweatshirt.

Aw, Christ on a stick, Sawyer thought, catching a flash of green. Not paper.

Money .

The guy hopped into a banged-up Celica and sped away with a show of squealing tires and smoke.

Goddammit . Sawyer hit the gas to follow as he called dispatch to report that he’d caught a robbery in progress. The piece-of-shit sedan in front of him turned right at the end of town, obviously headed toward the open highway. At the freeway entrance, there were two delivery vans, moving slow as molasses. The car swerved around them, heading directly into a small, quiet neighborhood filled with midsized houses, hard-working people, and kids. Lots of kids.

Sawyer swore again and kept on the car’s bumper while simultaneously keeping dispatch abreast of their coordinates. Thankfully it was midday, both a work and school day, and the streets were relatively empty.