Lie For Me: Autumn (Mandrake Falls Series Romance Book 2)

by Catherine Lloyd

  He staggered out of the jail cell and grabbed the receiver before the ringing woke Ryan who was snoring loudly in the next cell. Sawyer noted his brother was still in handcuffs and wondered foggily how he’d managed to drink.

  “Sheriff? This is Dolly Porter. I tried to call you at home but you’re not there.”

  Sawyer blinked. Where was he then? It was Sunday, he remembered. As a general rule the criminal element of Mandrake Falls gave him Sunday off so he could sleep in. He was never at the office on Sunday. Sawyer shook his head to clear the fog.

  “Morning, Dolly,” he coughed, “what can I do for you?”

  “It’s Shelby. She wasn’t in her bed when I got up this morning. I’m very worried about her, Sawyer. Could you drive out to Fillmore Ridge and see if she’s there?”

  Sawyer looked down to see what he was wearing. Jeans and a tee-shirt. Thank God he had the sense to change into his civilians before opening the scotch. “Why would she be at Fillmore Ridge?”

  “To jump off it! I would have thought that was perfectly obvious after last night. Being left at the altar is not a nice thing for a sensitive girl like Shelby.”

  Sawyer pressed his thumbs to his temples. “Shelby wasn’t left at the altar, Dolly. I was.”

  “This is hardly the time for hair-splitting, Sawyer Joseph McIntyre. Not when Shelby is out there alone and defenseless. You’re the sheriff. I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”

  The idea of Shelby Porter being defenseless was laughable but instinct told Sawyer not to argue. “All right, I’ll check it out. Don’t worry. I’m sure she’s fine.”

  Sawyer hung up and grabbed his canvas windbreaker. He debated leaving a note for Ryan but from the sound of his brother’s snores, it was unlikely he’d be up before Sawyer got back. Fillmore Ridge was off a seldom used quarry road, a cherished make-out destination for Mandrake Falls High teenagers. Not the first place he’d think of Shelby running to, unless Dolly wasn’t being overly dramatic and Shelby actually was planning to jump. The Ridge would be the place to do it. He hopped into his pick-up truck, thinking this through. No, Shelby Porter was the most unlikely suicide he’d ever met. If she wasn’t at the Ridge, where would she go in the middle of the night?

  Burning with anger. On the warpath. Armed with the only weapon she had left: Ryan and his expansion project.

  Sawyer’s head cleared instantly as he wheeled the pick-up around and headed in the direction of the Country Barn construction site. The hardwood forest was in its final glory, splashing red, yellow, and orange into a perfect blue sky. Indian summer. Shirtsleeve weather during the day turning into cool crisp nights that caused the tree sap to run. Maple syrup weather.

  He spotted the van parked in a lay-by at the side of the road near the entrance to the site. No sign of Shelby. Sawyer ducked under the wire fence enclosure and followed a roughed-in road to the pond. The barn itself was a massive structure almost completely renovated on the outside. Solar panels had been installed on the roof and a water catchment was attached to the eaves to collect rainwater. Sawyer was surprised his brother had gone this far but then he remembered Ryan had always been fascinated by science, by the way the natural world worked. Maybe there was some leverage there in terms of modifying the expansion project. That his brother was in over his head was made clear to Sawyer last night. If the entertainment complex didn’t get approved, construction on the Country Barn would cease. Ryan might be able to sell it at a loss, half-finished and declare bankruptcy. Sawyer glanced at the barn. There had to be another solution.

  He walked around the barn to the back field where the pond was situated, a trip made easier by daylight. The orange plastic fence had been removed since he was last here. There was no sign of Shelby. The farmhouse had been torn down months ago and Ryan’s crew had dug up the old septic and surrounding soil in case of contamination. The bulldozers sat idle against the jewel tones of the sky. He waded through the tall reedy field grass to the pond.

  Shelby was sitting on the other side, hidden by a dip in the landscape. Her back was to him. She appeared to be contemplating the forested mountain, alight with crimson and orange. Sawyer wasn’t aware he was worried until he saw her and let go of the breath he was holding. He strolled around the perimeter of the pond, the grasses rustling loudly against his denim jeans. Shelby didn’t turn around. He fixed his eyes on her where she sat perfectly still, her face turned firmly away from him. Sawyer’s heart beat faster. What would she do when she saw him? Get up and leave the minute he opened his mouth? She’d have to get around the pond first. He could follow her, he could explain. Maybe she’d listen. Maybe she missed him as much as he missed her.

  Sawyer was all but standing over her before Shelby looked up. She’d been crying and dark shadows smudged her eyes. She was wearing an undersized white tee-shirt and gray sweatpants. It looked like something she would sleep in, he thought.

  “Have you been here all night?”

  “No, just a few hours. I figured it was a matter of time before either you or your deputy saw the van and escorted me off the property for trespassing.”

  “I’m here as a friend. Dolly called me. She thought you were going to jump off the ridge because I dumped you at the altar.” He tried to grin. “I told her it was the other way around.”

  “Damn it, Dolly,” Shelby muttered. “This would be a lot less humiliating if you were here in an official capacity.” Her eyes slid up his body. “I see you’re not in uniform. You wouldn’t want to cast a shadow on the Sheriff’s Office socializing with a gutter rat.” She dropped her head and her short dark hair crowded over her eyes. “Tell Dolly I’m fine. I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

  “No, I have to bring you.” Sawyer squatted beside her. “She called me by my full name. I’ll get my ears boxed if I come back without you. You should have told her where you were going.”

  “I did. I left her a note.” Shelby’s voice was edged with weary impatience. “Don’t you get it? Dolly is still pitching to get us together and you took the bait. She thinks we’re in love. She thinks we’re star-crossed lovers or some such crap. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her it was all fake, she won’t let it go.”

  “Ryan was the same way last night. He was drunk at the time.”

  Shelby stiffened her spine. “I guess you two boys had a lot to celebrate. No hard feelings. I left myself wide open. You only did what I said you’d do before you talked me around.”

  “Shelby, shut up for five minutes and listen. Ryan was the informant. He knew about the septic tank because he was the one feeding you false information. I didn’t tell him a thing about your investigation. He was trying to set you up to print a libelous story. He’s in lock-up right now. It wasn’t a celebration, it was a wake. He’s about to lose everything.”

  “Whoa, slow down. Ryan was the guy in management at McIntyre Construction? It was Ryan calling the paper with the hot leads? I don’t get it. He told me some things that were pretty damaging to his operation.”

  “Yep, I guess he did. He’s an idiot. He gave you enough to trust the source but not enough to halt construction. The real damage was supposed to be the draining of the pond. He left a paper trail of rental contracts for pumping equipment for you to find. Once you accused him in print, he’d come out with the septic tank and the public wouldn’t trust the Gazette with McIntyre Construction again. Not glamorous. Not underworld criminal activity like the kind Noel Trace the accountant was involved in, but I arrested him anyway.”

  She shook her head disbelieving. “So there’s no story. The last hope I had of restoring my reputation was my inside source at McIntyre Construction. You want to hear something funny? I thought you and Ryan were trying to keep me away from here, that there was something you guys didn’t want me to find and that’s why you ... why you did what you did.” Shelby pushed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Never mind. It’s not important now. There’s no story, nothing to investigate. Besides, the way things stan
d, even if I did find something, well, I’m not exactly reliable anymore. Good work. You were thorough.”

  Red-winged blackbirds sang shrilly across the field. Sawyer sat in the high grass beside her. Morning was pulling low over the tree line. The air was cool with October. “I didn’t tell Janice about your past. Ryan hired a private investigator to dig up something he could use against you and that’s how he learned about your mother and your father. He told Janice never thinking she would use the information the way she did. He’s a shitty brother and he makes stupid selfish mistakes, but that wasn’t one of them.”

  Her voice was small but defensive. “Why did she do that to me? Why? She had you, the farm, everything she wanted! I wasn’t a threat; I was going to come clean, tell Dolly everything. Why say it like that—your mother is dead, like it didn’t matter. It matters a lot.” Tears streamed silently down Shelby’s face. “And telling the whole town she was a hooker, that wasn’t fair. My mom had a lot of problems. I’m not excusing her but she’s not here to defend herself. The point is it was a terrible way to find out she’s dead. And ... and as much as she hurt me, I don’t want her to be dead. She was my mom.”

  Shelby was crying throughout the speech, emotion that was harder and harder to keep in check until finally her shoulders rounded and heaved with it. Sawyer shifted closer and put an arm around her. Shelby clutched at him burrowing against his chest, wailing like a little kid. He held her firmly against him, acting on instinct, to calm her down.

  She closed her eyes, tears glistened her mouth. “Did you tell Janice about me, Sawyer?”

  “No.”

  “She said you did.”

  “She lied to hurt you.”

  “How did she know that would hurt me?” Shelby opened her eyes. Sawyer looked into their depths, the color of luminous oak or polished wood. Incredibly beautiful eyes.

  “The night of our date, I told her we were seeing each other.”

  “Because of the lie. You needed her to back us up.”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “Shelby, when Dolly asked you who you were seeing why did you say my name?”

  Would she answer truthfully? Sawyer didn’t know, but they had to stop dancing around this. He realized after seeing Janice again that it had been there all along just waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. He was in love with Shelby Porter, maybe from the beginning because he couldn’t recall a day when she wasn’t in his thoughts. The question was—was it the same for her? She had to say it, she had to confess it or this thing between them ended right here.

  She sighed wearily and gazed at the blowing grasses that shielded them. “I said your name, Sawyer, because it has to be you. It was not possible it could be someone else because it’s always been you. God, I can’t believe I’m laying it all out like this. See, the problem is there is no one else. Not for me anyway. I understand you have a life waiting for you with Janice. But I think everyone should be told when someone falls in love with them, even if they don’t feel the same way. It’s a good thing for a person to know.”

  Sawyer held her away from him to look her in the eye, to make it clear. “There is no Janice and me. Not since I caught you on the construction site. Maybe even before that. Seventy-six hours ago something happened between us. I don’t know why it was then and not any of the other times we’ve crossed paths. We must’ve run into each other half a dozen times a week and I never felt anything like that before.”

  “We were alone and we were cold and it was late.”

  “Yes. And I saw you for the first time. It’d been there all along, from the beginning. I wanted you. And that scared the shit out of me.”

  She peered up at him under a fringe of unruly bangs. “Dolly said you would be too confining for a girl like me.”

  “Did she?” Sawyer pressed her back against the grass. It tufted tall and wheat blonde around them. He wiped her face of tears with the flat of his hand, first one side and then the other. Shelby fixed her eyes on his face but her thoughts were hidden. “Confining how?”

  “She said you wouldn’t be exciting enough.”

  He stretched over the length of her body. Shelby Porter was a small woman, he covered her easily. His arms formed a cage on either side of her shoulders. “Did you agree with her?”

  “No.”

  Sawyer bent over her face and kissed her mouth. Her lips tasted of salt where the tears she’d cried over her mother had dried. He pushed her lips apart and deepened the kiss until he found her tongue. Shelby rose up against him and he could feel her breasts against his chest through her tee-shirt, which was too small and too revealing to be considered clothing. He pressed her back with his mouth, crushing her against the sweet-smelling grass and brushed his hand over her nipples that were erect with cold, or arousal. He hoped the latter.

  “Will you stop if I ask you to?” She was breathing hard.

  He touched the base of her throat with his fingertips. He could feel her pulse beating there. “Ask me and see.” Sawyer kissed her neck, something he’d wanted to do for what felt like all of his life, although he knew this couldn’t be true. She was so soft. He bent lower until he found her breasts and latched on, suckling them through the thin fabric. Shelby moaned and bucked underneath him. Sawyer pinned her shoulders down so she couldn’t escape. “I want to ... you know what I want,” he breathed. “Take your clothes off or I will.”

  This time it was her mouth seeking his, her hands sliding under his windbreaker to fondle his nipples erect and aroused. Her legs parted and he pressed between them, grinding his pelvis into hers. Sawyer sat up abruptly, straddling her middle and zipped down his jacket. He took the windbreaker off and spread it on the depression of grass beside them.

  “What’s that for?”

  “It’s for you. The grass will be rough on your skin.”

  He reached down and pulled the tiny tee-shirt off over her head. Shelby lay beneath him, between his legs, her breasts exposed. Sawyer was wrong about the shirt. That thin scrap of cotton had hid plenty. Shelby had the body of a porn star. She moved to cover herself but he caught her wrists in one hand and pinned her arms over her head.

  Shelby blushed and turned her face away. “In your bedroom, you accused me of setting you up for a charge of sexual misconduct just for taking off a jacket. Taking my clothes off out here in the middle of nowhere, my word against yours ... it’s a bit hypocritical don’t you think?

  “Yes, I do.” He stroked her breasts lightly with his free hand. They were as beautiful as he fantasized they’d be. Fuller than her wardrobe had ever let on and tipped with dark areolas that puckered and budded at the slightest touch. Her skin looked like thick cream. He wanted to tongue every inch of her. Sawyer bent over her right breast, opening his mouth over the crest and breathed. Shelby closed her eyes and the tension in her body changed from resistance to engagement. Her pelvis moved against his. He knew she wasn’t aware of what she was doing.

  “Please don’t do that,” she whispered.

  He moved to her left breast and gently bit the nipple, tugging on the firm flesh. Sawyer was completely erect, engorged and pressing hard against his jeans but if he released his cock now, he wouldn’t stop. He was sure Shelby wasn’t ready for sex yet. Her body was but her mind wasn’t.

  “Are you asking me to stop?”

  “Yes.” The word was barely audible. “No.”

  He freed her wrists to slip his hands under her sweatpants. No underwear. She had slept in the sweats and tee-shirt just as he thought. Sawyer pulled slowly, down over her hips, past her thighs, her calves, and finally freeing them from her ankles. He added them to the pile he was making of her clothing near his windbreaker.

  Kneeling at her feet, he twisted to look at Shelby. Sunrise had topped the hills, casting the field and pond in copper and translucent reds. Her eyes were closed as though sleeping. She was completely naked, a maid in a farmer’s field. He let his eyes roam her body. Perfectly shaped, narrow waist an
d tapered thighs. Her breasts were extraordinary. Her buttocks were rounded and firm as melons. It hurt Sawyer to look at her. He was actually experiencing pain, a response he knew he could never explain, at seeing how vulnerable she was, how beautiful. Sawyers rested his hand on his knees, drawing in deep, shaking breaths.

  The clutch of black silky hair between her thighs held his gaze.

  With her eyes closed, Shelby shifted her weight, moving toward the pile of clothing and he thought for a moment that she was going to dress and leave him kneeling in the field. But she rested her buttocks on his windbreaker and laid back, her eyes still shut as though looking at him would change something for her. The question was what would it change?

  “Porter. Look at me.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “Everyone should be told when a person falls in love with them. Porter, I’m in love with you.”

  Pain, confusion and finally surrender washed over her face. Shelby nodded and half-lifted her arms to him. Sawyer shucked his jeans and tee-shirt and dropped them to the grass. He stood over her briefly, straightening just as the sun flared gold and lavender into the sky. Sawyer raised his hand to his eyes and turned to the east, to the horizon. A perfect fall day was dawning. A perfect beginning.

  “Oh my God.” Shelby sobbed. “Sawyer.”

  Instantly, his attention was on her to where she lay prone on his jacket. “What is it?”

  “It’s you. You are beautiful.” Tears were coursing down the corners of her eyes to her ears.

  Their eyes locked for several seconds. Sawyer knelt down. “Don’t cry, Shelby. Don’t cry. No more crying for us.” He spread her legs and thrust his cock inside her without another word.

  And then he felt at peace. Perfect, exquisite peace.

  SHELBY HEARD a sound and knew it was coming from her. He had wrapped his arms around her, holding her down to thrust deeper and harder. And she, who normally didn’t like to be restrained during sex, lifted her hips to admit all of him. She threw her head back, her fingers gripping his broad shoulders, holding on as Sawyer pounded between her legs over and over; a battering ram at a solid oak door. He would break in, she thought, when she could still think. Because then she couldn’t think at all, the violence of their coupling was dissolving the barrier she’d always had inside her, the shield behind which she controlled her sexual response.