“Can we get naked now?”
Something inside her shriveled as he continued to mentally kick and fight. “I’m trying to talk about the gun range.”
“The rules stand.” The words sounded harsh but his touch stayed gentle. “I get that my chances are slim, so why discuss it?”
She ached for him. “You make your proposal sound like a lost cause.”
“I’m realistic.”
“And I’m fair.” All she wanted was for him to open up.
His mouth curled into a smile. “Show me in the bedroom.”
That’s not what she wanted or how she needed this moment to end. “Sawyer, I—”
“We’re done talking about the property. It’s time for fucking.”
She tried to think of a way to get through this without just handing over the deed. “That’s not what I want.”
The smile faded as he dropped her hands and stepped back. “Hailey, I’m trying here.”
“To do what?” She asked because she really didn’t know.
She recognized the truth now. Somewhere along the line, in little pieces, she’d fallen for him. They’d shut off this huge part of his life and tucked it away. Now she needed to bring it out and he was desperate to keep it closed down.
She didn’t know how many more ways to ask him about the business. To get him to open up and share with her.
“You know what, this isn’t happening tonight.” He slipped away from her and headed toward the table with his keys. “Let’s step back.”
That’s the exact opposite of what she wanted. “Don’t do this.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow.”
But would they? She sensed that once he walked out he would not come back. “Don’t go.”
With a hand behind her neck, he lowered her head and kissed her hair. “Tomorrow we’ll talk about the property.”
She didn’t understand why they would wait. “And us?”
“Yes.” Then he scooped up his keys and was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sawyer heard the television before he unlocked his front door. That meant company. He debated slipping back out and sleeping in the car but decided being found out there in the morning would be worse than pushing through the bullshit now.
He stepped into the foyer, expecting to see Jason. He got the double whammy of Jason and Marcus.
Wasn’t that just fucking fabulous.
They sat on the couch watching a movie with what looked like an alien and guys with guns fighting it. A typical movie night in this house. Volume too loud and lots of firepower as they counted off the kills. Only Will appeared to be missing but Sawyer let that pass.
When the keys hit the table Marcus looked over his shoulder and reached for the remote. “Why are you home?”
Jason beat him to it and hit the pause button. “Wrong question. The right one is, what did you do?”
“I fucked up.” The honest answer slipped out before Sawyer could come up with a dodge.
Now that it was out there and he definitely had their attention he moved to sit down. Let out a dramatic sigh while doing it but it did nothing to make him feel better. He dropped into the chair by the television and got a close-up of whatever sea creature as it attacked Hawaii on the screen.
Marcus eyed Sawyer up. “We weren’t expecting you, which can only mean one thing.”
“Did Hailey kick you out?” Jason asked.
“No.” Exactly the opposite. Sawyer still couldn’t believe how the night had played out. She invited him in. Wanted him to spill his guts. Almost sounded as if she had questions prepared to interrogate him about the business plan.
The openness should have been a good thing, but no. He’d turned a corner. Forget separating the business and the personal. He wanted the business out of the way completely. No more confusion or fights or wrongly timed questions. No more sliding in a comment about the gun range after he said something about taking her clothes off.
“You decided to come home? It was an actual choice you made not to have sex. And for some reason you did this without being sick. Like, on purpose.” Jason looked horrified. “Now you’re here without her.”
“Are you done?” The way Sawyer viewed it the word choice was misplaced. He did what he had to do even as he watched the words crush her. Every one of her flinches seared through him. He could feel her confidence drain and wanted to kick his own ass for being the cause.
But he had serious decisions to make and couldn’t make them while standing with her. Talking it through didn’t work because he couldn’t insist she be neutral about something that impacted her life so significantly.
Any way you looked at it they were on different sides of this thing. Had different end goals and that meant stepping away to make the decision before going back in.
Making her understand that tomorrow would be a challenge. As he weighed his earlier words during the drive home he could see why she flinched. He’d have to undo that damage and win back her trust. First he had to make his friends understand that he was backing away from a promise he’d made to them.
All the options sucked here.
“Damn.” Jason shook his head as he glanced over at Marcus. “I owe you twenty.”
Betting on his sex life. Another great piece of news that made Sawyer wonder why he’d given them both keys. “You both suck.”
“Don’t act like that’s news,” Jason said.
Marcus’s attention didn’t waver. “Talk.”
With his elbows balanced on his knees, Sawyer stared at the floor then his hands. Finally he looked at his friends again. “I left because she wanted to talk about the property.”
“I don’t get it,” Jason said.
But his brother’s reaction went a different way. Marcus smiled. “You’re done, right?”
“Yeah.” Relief flowed through Sawyer. Marcus got it. He understood this had nothing to do with leaving Hailey. Nothing at all.
“You’re actually leaving Hailey?” Jason swore as he stood up and walked around to the back side of the couch. “Jesus, Sawyer. Wake up.”
Sawyer made a promise to reassess his communication skills. After all those years of barking orders he seemed to be having trouble getting simple ideas across. First Hailey. Now Jason. “You’re not getting this.”
He grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and stood there holding it. “I get that you guys have issues and the property is in the way. But, damn it, she is the one for you. I know you need to figure that out and it’s your life, but come on.”
Sawyer almost hated to break in but he tried. “Uh, Jason—”
“Take it from the guy who married the wrong person and is now trying to clean up the mess. I’m stuck trying to...”
“Yes?” This felt like a breakthrough and Sawyer wanted to encourage it.
He worried about Jason’s stability right now. He’d never do anything truly dangerous but he seemed to be looking for thrills and Sawyer couldn’t help but wonder where his friend would turn when the women no longer filled the void.
It’s one of the reasons he pretended not to notice the attraction between Jason and Molly. One of the reasons he threatened Jason about touching her.
Jason waved off the attempt to dig deeper into his comments. “We’re not talking about my life.”
“Should we be?” Marcus asked.
Jason kept right on talking. “None of that matters. My point is don’t fuck this up.”
Silence screeched through the room. Jason got himself wound up and came out swinging. Sawyer appreciated the fight. He knew Jason’s yelling came from a good place.
Marcus clapped. “Eloquent.”
“You could help here.” Jason turned on his brother. “You think he and Hailey are good together. We’ve talked about this. Their relationship is the most important thing. There are other properties.”
Marcus nodded. “No arguments here.”
The ready agreement and smile didn’t seem to get through to
Jason. He was the only one in the room arguing. Sawyer agreed with every line but letting his friend do battle felt right. The guy needed a cause since he didn’t seem willing to stand up for himself.
“There.” Jason threw out an arm as he stared at Sawyer. “See? Marcus is with me on this.”
Sawyer tried to simply agree. “So am I.”
“Then stop being a stubborn ass.” Jason started pacing in the small space behind the couch. “Go over there, apologize even if you think you didn’t do anything wrong, and do not leave until she forgives you.”
That struck Sawyer as a bit much. “For what?”
“I have no idea. Does it even matter?”
Marcus frowned. “Kind of.”
“Not if being right means losing her.” Jason came back around to the couch and sat down. He was a bundle of energy and kept zipping around, up and down, back and forth, hands always moving, as he explained. “She is the right woman for you. Trust me. I’ve seen you date the wrong women. Women you knew would never last more than a night or two. This is the first time you picked a woman who made sense for you.”
There hadn’t been that many and Sawyer refused to believe he’d become that predictable. “You sound sure.”
“I am.” Jason yelled the answer.
Marcus glared at him while he pointed in Sawyer’s direction. “So is he.”
That finally stopped Jason’s rampage. “What?”
Even with the question on the table Marcus kept on pointing. “Look at his face. Sawyer’s come to a decision. About her. About the property.”
Jason turned to stare at Sawyer. “You have?”
Looked like he finally had their attention. Sawyer had to take a breath after that scene. Also wanted to say the words in his head before he said them out loud. Yeah, they worked. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. She’s the one.”
“Spill it.” Jason took a long pull on his beer.
With the tension back under control and the pulsing gone from the room, Sawyer tried to explain. “She wanted to talk about the property but I needed to discuss this issue with you two first.” When that didn’t get a reaction, he kept going. “I want to back out of Greenway being located on her property. Take it completely off the table and not put her in the middle or in a position of having to turn us down. It’s that—”
“Fine,” Marcus said.
Jason nodded. “Good.”
“I didn’t finish my speech.” Sawyer almost felt disappointment by the easy acceptance. Kind of blew all that time he spent preparing.
“We’ve already talked about this and Hailey and how much we like her.” Jason spun his beer bottle between his palms. “We support you, man.”
“And, for the record, you’re telling all of this to the wrong person.”
Sawyer had no idea what Marcus was trying to say. “What?”
“Her, you dumbass. You should discuss these things with your girlfriend, not with us.” Marcus swore under his breath. “You guys are pathetic. Makes me happy I don’t have women trouble.”
“Speaking of boyfriends, I know about Will, by the way.” Jason pointed at Marcus with the bottle. “Marcus fessed up before you got home.”
Marcus shoved the bottle away from him. “Let’s stay on topic.”
Sawyer had expected getting through to them to be tough. Now that he thought about it, he shouldn’t have. Jason and Marcus didn’t cause trouble. They listened, assessed and adjusted. Their friendship had survived because they trusted each other and this time he hadn’t given them enough credit. He wouldn’t do that again.
With that hurdle cleared, he could take on Hailey. He had a lot of work to do on that front. “I can head back over—”
Marcus shook his head. “God, no.”
“Wrong.” Jason whistled.
Sawyer stayed quiet because he had a feeling they were going to hammer this point. Whatever it was.
Marcus leaned forward. “You need a big gesture.”
Said the gay guy. “Isn’t that what I’m doing by backing out of the property race?”
Marcus shook his head. “It won’t be enough.”
Sawyer didn’t understand what was happening here. “I thought you didn’t know anything about women.”
“Not a thing, but I know you and you need to get closure so we can figure out the business part and you can get started practicing the personal part.”
“He means sex,” Jason said.
Marcus nodded. “I do. Yes.”
That was the one part Sawyer had covered, but the other sounded interesting. Maybe a bit scary. “A gesture.”
“He’s warming to the idea.” Jason drank more of the beer.
Sawyer needed him sober. Needed them both at top efficiency and thinking power. “I need you two with me.”
“As if we’d miss you getting down on your knees and groveling over a woman.” Jason laughed. “Not happening.”
Again with the overstatement. Sawyer shut it down. “I’m not groveling.”
Marcus turned to Jason. “Double or nothing.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hailey wanted to slam things. She walked out of the kitchen and into the middle of The Bakery the following afternoon and looked for something to throw. She’d clanked dirty dishes together but that wasn’t enough. She needed a sound to match the screaming in her head.
The noise centered on one man. Sawyer Cain. All hot and tough and full of confidence. He walked out of her house and she hadn’t heard from him since.
“If you slam one more thing I’ll have to hand out complimentary headphones.” Kat looked around. “Lucky for you we only have a few people here.”
Jessie stood behind the counter cleaning out the coffeepot. “It is so tempting to call him in here and let you go at him.”
“I would prefer we not have blood on my floor,” Kat said as she took a counter barstool across from Hailey.
“I can control myself.” She’d had an entire night of practice. She’d picked up the phone to call him and stopped. Walked to the family room and grabbed her keys then put them back again.
Jessie shook her head. “There’s no evidence of that.”
Hailey had to agree that applied to her lately. Sawyer, with those shoulders and that face, had her spinning in circles and desperate to see him. Hailey’s live action fantasy waffled between sitting him down and making him talk, and tying him to a chair so she could yell at him without any touching. In both scenarios she needed to see him, craved contact and an opportunity to settle the one thing that kept driving them apart—the damn property.
For the first time since the estate lawyer handed her the keys, she regretted Rob leaving it all to her. If the land cost her Sawyer, she didn’t want it. That’s what hours without sleep taught her. She’d been debating proposals and afraid to let Rob go when the property wasn’t about either of those things. Rob had handed her a home, now it was up to her to nurture and build it, and that didn’t mean seeing how many condos she could squeeze in a small space.
“Huh.” Jessie stopped with the coffeepot and dropped the napkin holder in midrefill. “Please tell me whatever he did to tick you off is unrelated to your trip to the lawyer’s office this morning.”
That would teach her to mention her errands. Hailey had waited all day for the attorney’s call, so when it came she didn’t hide her relief, which meant her friends knew about the errand.
Thinking about Sawyer filled her with another feeling. “He left last night.”
Kat shot Hailey a small smile. “You told us.”
“Four times.” Jessie held up four fingers. Wiggled them.
“We were in the middle...well, the beginning. I just wanted the proposal so we could concentrate on other things.” The room had gone silent. Even the tables with diners stared at her. Hailey took that as a sign she’d veered into TMI territory. “Forget it.”
“So, we hate him now?” Jessie asked.
Not even close. Hailey knew her life would be
so much easier if she could hate the guy. “No.”
Kat twisted the kitchen towel in her hands until she had it wound in a tight knot. “Is it over?”
Hailey refused to let that be the case. The thought of it made her stomach heave. “No.”
“That’s why she’s upset,” Jessie said. “She is in love and he’s ticking her off.”
“Stop saying that.” Hailey glanced around Jessie and through the small window in the door to the kitchen. Molly sat back there somewhere. She’d officially signed on to work with Kat and planned to stop in after hours while she worked out her notice term with her current employer.
That meant Hailey had to be careful. She didn’t know how much Sawyer had talked about their blowout. She tended to over share with friends. Since she couldn’t get Sawyer to tell her anything, she doubted he suffered from the same affliction. But that didn’t mean she wanted to invite more questions.
“Am I wrong about the love thing?” Jessie asked.
Hailey couldn’t let that phrase pass. “Love thing?”
“Speak of the devil.”
At the sound of Kat’s voice, Hailey turned and looked at the door. In sauntered Sawyer. He didn’t simply walk. No, his stride could only be described as cocky and sure. Having Marcus and Jason stream in behind him probably helped with the overall effect. The three of them together provided a formidable front. An oversized wall of testosterone.
She glanced at Jessie. “Did you actually call him?”
“How could I? I made that threat five seconds ago.”
Not sure what else to say or why he picked here and now for some sort of showdown she jumped on her advantage and launched an offensive strike. “I see you brought reinforcements.”
Sawyer stopped right in front of her, less than five feet away, with his legs apart and his hands on his hips. “I’m not stupid.”
“That’s good to know.” She got off the stool. For some reason standing made her feel more confident. “It’s hard to tell from the way you act sometimes.”
“Wow, this should be good.” Jason shook his head. “So happy I came today.”
“Shut up.” Sawyer delivered the order without moving or even looking in Jason’s direction.
Chain of Command Page 24