by Kate Angell
“Because she’s a whore,” his dad seethed, grabbing him by the collar. “They all are.” Caleb shoved at him, pushing his hands away. “You’ll see. Shouldn’t take too long for your own little whore to find someone a hell of a lot better than you.”
Caleb’s fist was up and smacking into his dad’s jawbone before he could even form the thought to do it. His father reeled and then rushed him, only to be stopped by a second punch to the mouth. He laughed maniacally.
“Yeah,” he said, spitting blood off to the side. “You’re a real catch, son.”
Caleb backed up, his heart racing so fast he was shaking. He’d never hit him before. Wanted to a thousand times, but never went there. It didn’t feel as good as he imagined it would.
He picked up the backpack he’d dropped. The one he’d kept buried and hidden behind the field house for the last two months, that held a couple changes of clothes and three hundred and forty-six dollars.
“’Bye, Dad,” he said.
Another laugh, and another spit of blood. “We’ll see how long you last in the real world.”
* * *
That was the last time he ever saw his father. He took off on his bike, around the block to give his dad time to leave, and then circled back and parked behind a grove of trees, hidden in the dark.
Hidden, because as usual his dad’s words had hit their mark. He wasn’t good enough for her. He was so angry, he couldn’t pull in a full breath, and he was leaving finger marks in the grips, but he knew that part of what that asshole had said was true. She deserved better than him.
He had just decided to hit the road, when she walked around the corner. Her hopeful expression and the excitement in her face nearly took him down. Her nervous way of tucking her hair behind her ear . . . looking around her, waiting for him to walk up and pull her into his arms. To kiss her again. To kiss her all damn night. God, he’d wanted to. And for one second, he’d almost—almost changed his mind.
He’d always believed he made the right choice, but looking at her now—even more beautiful than he remembered, and ready to crucify him—he wasn’t sure.
“I was told you’d be better off without me,” he said, realizing how lame that sounded now.
Her jaw dropped. “So you hid like a coward and made my choice for me?” she yelled. “Screw this.” She grabbed her door handle and pushed the door open.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you,” she said, stepping out and slamming the door.
“Shit,” he grunted, palming his keys and getting out. “Sidney!”
“Which way to Crane’s house?” she asked.
“Sid—”
“Which way!” she yelled.
Sawyer blew out a breath and pointed to his right.
“Thank you,” she huffed, hobbling over some rocks in the road, one hand holding her hair out of her eyes.
“Sidney.” She kept walking. Damn it, she was going to be the death of him. Again. “Sidney, please.”
Nothing.
“You were the best thing that ever happened to me,” he blurted.
She stopped.
Chapter 9
He didn’t just say that. He didn’t. Just. Say. That.
Sidney’s feet felt like they melted right into the pavement, taking her lungs right along with them. Anger mixed with hurt mixed with a million reasons to just keep walking swirled around her head, making her head feel hot and dizzy. She didn’t need hot and dizzy. She needed clear and focused. She needed the hard-core, irritating attorney with no people skills who pissed everyone off. That Sidney she could deal with.
You were the best thing that ever happened to me.
Hot and dizzy.
She turned around, shaking her head, trying like hell to pull up a mask of something. Anything that would disguise what was sure to be all over her face.
“Yeah. So damn good, you just left me there without another thought.”
He chuckled silently but his eyes looked anything but joyous as he shook his head and looked off to his left. “Without a thought,” he echoed incredulously.
“Well, what then, Sherlock?” she asked. “Oh no, I’m sorry, wrong book. Sawyer. Were you kidnapped at gunpoint? Abducted by aliens?” He continued to avert his eyes, and it only gave her more fuel to keep going. “Whisked away into the witness protection program?”
“Seriously?” he said finally.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, risking one step back the way she came. A step closer to him. “So you fill me full of pretty words and kiss me like your life depended on it, tell me to meet you, and then just disappear. Vanish from the earth. Without a note, a letter, a phone call—nothing. Just like your mom did to you.”
His whole face tightened on that one, and Sidney feared she’d gone too far, but there was no going back now.
“So, what, you were just paying that forward?”
“That’s a low blow,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Well, that’s what you shoveled out to me that night,” she said. “And now—” Sidney laughed and raked her hair back. “Now I find out that before you ditched me, you actually watched me in probably my worst, most vulnerable moment ever. You watched me cry over you before you disappeared.” She pointed at him. “You, sir, are a piece of work.”
Sidney made to turn and head back down the road to see a man about a soda shop, but his words stopped her again.
“You ever make a mistake, Sidney?” he said. “Ever screw up, even once, in your perfect life?”
Looking back at him, sleeves still rolled up, arms crossed over his chest, standing in the middle of the road looking positively friggin’ edible—God, he had no idea how riddled her life was with stupid choices and dumb mistakes.
“I was eighteen and scared shitless,” he said. “I’d just finally kissed the girl of my dreams and punched my father in the face in the same twenty minutes.”
“What?” Sidney said, hearing the “girl of my dreams” part but landing on the other. “Punched your dad—he was the one who saw us? Who told you—”
“That you were too smart for me. That you’d find someone better and I’d be holding you back or—I think there was ruining your life alluded to in there, as well.”
There was no one better. In all the years since then, there still had been no one to live up to or surpass him. How sad was that?
“You punched him for that?” she asked, her voice going a little breathless.
“I punched him for calling you a whore.”
Sidney felt her eyebrows reach for the sky. “Come again?”
“And then he left,” he continued. “And you came. And—” He stopped and closed his eyes as if he was remembering, then opened them right on her, taking two steps closer. “It was enough. What he said. You know, you hear that you’re worthless enough times, you begin to buy into it.”
Sidney’s hands were twitching with the want to comfort him, touch him, pull him in for a hug, and her brain was screaming no.
“I might have made the wrong choice, but look at you now. Fancy lawyer in a Boston office. You wouldn’t have gotten that staying in Derby.” His eyes locked in on hers. “Or with me. I was a mess.”
I’m still a mess! She couldn’t play that hand, though. She couldn’t play any hand, due to how he was looking at her. She needed some distance from him, and the two feet that were too easily spanned weren’t enough.
Sidney walked around him, back to the truck, unfortunately losing her balance as her heel got caught on a rock.
“Oh, shi—” she exclaimed, the word clipped as her body slammed into Sawyer’s and his arm caught her. Tightly.
The side effect was being close enough to kiss him. If she wanted to. Which she didn’t. At all. Even with his mouth right there.
“Sorry,” he said, as she laid her hands against his chest to push back, and yet she didn’t push. And he didn’t let go.
God bless America, she couldn’t breathe. Everything in her want
ed to run her hands right on up to his neck, his face, his hair, and wrap herself around this man with the hand burning a hole in her lower back.
“Let’s, um—” she began, her gaze focused on his mouth solely because his eyes would have done her in.
“Get to Crane’s,” he said, nodding slightly.
“Yeah,” she said, sliding her hands down his chest a little as he let her go. As unfair as that might have been, his hands did a drive-by down the side of her ass. So both of them stood there a little unsteadily.
“So,” he said.
“I’m gonna get—back in the truck,” she said, spurring her feet into motion. “Shit!” she whispered as she got in and shut the door. “Breathe. Grow up.”
His door opening made her suck in a breath and cross her legs. Which showed more thigh. So she put her log back down and tugged her skirt down. In doing that, she noticed a button undone on her blouse, giving a nice little view. Jesus, she looked like she’d been making out in a backseat. And looking to her left, she caught Sawyer watching the whole show, a heat in his eyes that made the soles of her feet tingle.
“You done?” he asked.
Boy, was she. Done for. Things had changed in the last ten minutes. Her long-repressed anger had come out to dance and then was dampened with the news about his father. She couldn’t really be mad anymore. And that was a problem. Mad had at least provided walls.
* * *
Sawyer couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent most of a day so aroused. He couldn’t remember another woman worthy of it, for that matter. But Sidney had his blood racing. She had him tweaked earlier, but now after holding her against him like that—feeling her softness against him. Her hands on him and her mouth just inches away, the sound of her breathing quickening and the look in her eyes that said she wanted him, too—all of it had his dick on standby.
They made it to Crane’s just to find out he wasn’t there. Went to the soccer fields but no one was playing.
And then it dawned on him.
“Aw, damn it,” he said.
“What?” Sidney asked, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“It’s the day after Halloween,” he said, shaking his head as he made a quick right. “I forgot.”
“Forgot what?” she asked.
“That no one in Moonbright passes up a chance to be cheesy.”
Five minutes later, he pulled up to a large field, opposite of the WORLD’S LARGEST PUMPKIN PATCH sign.
“Is it really the largest?” Sidney asked.
“I just kind of take their word for it,” he said.
“And Crane would be here, why?” Sidney asked as she got out. Just as a large orange sphere hurtled about twenty feet overhead. “Shit, what’s that?”
Sawyer laughed. “That would be last night’s decorations. Damn, I had a ton of this carnage I could have brought.”
If he’d been thinking. Instead of chasing after Sidney Jensen.
Sidney looked back at him, the breeze lifting her hair, and damn if she couldn’t still take his breath clean away.
“And Crane will be here?” she asked.
“Bet my paycheck on it,” Sawyer said. “He owns the two biggest catapults.”
“Fore!” bellowed a big booming voice off to the right.
“And there we go,” Sawyer said. “Watch it!”
Sidney ducked instinctively and swayed backward as her heels sank into the soft sod, her ass landing right up against his crotch. His arms went around her and got a side grope of boob.
He wasn’t going to make it through this day alive.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he said against her ear. She laughed, but not before he noticed the goose bumps on her arm and the quick intake of breath.
“I’ll just carry them,” she said, righting herself and pulling off her shoes.
“Good idea.”
* * *
“Mr. Crane—” Sidney began, but her words were cut short by Sawyer’s hand on her shoulder.
“Hold up there, Speedy,” he said under his breath, stepping past her.
She tried not to be put off by being pushed aside, but to be honest, she was having a harder time dealing with all the touching. She had never been clumsy a day in her life, and yet now she’d stumbled into his arms twice within fifteen minutes. And the whisper against her ear, the heat from his hand that was damn close to her neck—it was like having foreplay all over town.
No. Not that. Stop thinking like that.
“Sawyer,” the man said, peering down at the ground, then stepping down three steps of a ladder to reach it. An oddly insecure move for such a large, solid man.
And that he was. Sawyer was no small guy, and yet this man dwarfed him. In both stature and presence. He’d only uttered one word so far, and Sidney could tell he was commanding.
“Crane,” Sawyer said, an easy smile on his face that was only given away at the eyes. Damn it, she shouldn’t know that.
They shook hands and did that clap-of-the-shoulder thing that men do.
“Partying hard, I see,” Sawyer said, looking out at the field.
“You know me,” Crane said. “I’m a sucker for this shit—stuff,” he amended, glancing at Sidney. “So how’ve you been?”
“Always good,” Sawyer said. “You?”
“Well, you tell me,” Crane said, leaning a meaty elbow back against the ladder. “I haven’t seen you even accidentally for months, and now you show up and make a beeline for me. Somebody dying?”
Sawyer laughed. “Not to my knowledge.”
“Not to yours. Your boss send you?”
Sawyer’s eyes narrowed playfully. “Should she?” At Crane’s uncomfortable expression, which Sidney didn’t understand, Sawyer chuckled again. “No, I want you to meet someone,” Sawyer said, reaching a hand back for Sidney. She felt that hand settle at the small of her back, and she tried not to focus on the placement of each and every finger.
“Hi, Mr. Crane,” Sidney said, extending a hand. “I’m Sidney Jensen of—”
“She’s staying at the cottage,” Sawyer said, cutting her off, and squeezing two fingers gently against her spine. “And her car broke down in town. Needs her radiator fixed to even be drivable and she has to get back to Boston on—”
He stopped and dropped his gaze on her questioningly.
Oh, she could talk now?
“Sunday,” she filled in. “Tomorrow.”
“Ah,” Crane said, nodding, a knowing smirk on his face. “You need me to call Oscar in.”
“Afraid so?” she said, tilting her head, hoping to look cute and not like she’d just broken her neck.
“And yet Sawyer here could have called me with that request—”
“I did,” Sawyer interjected. “You didn’t answer.”
“Yeah, the service tends to suck out here,” Crane said, not even glancing down at his phone. “But you didn’t have to bring her with you.” He stopped and stared right into Sidney’s eyes, and she was pretty sure her soul was draining as she stood there. “You need something besides your car fixed. What can I do for you?”
Oh, he was good.
Sidney held out a hand that he automatically took. “Sidney Jensen. I need to talk to you about Arthur Teasdale.”
Crane dropped her hand like it was coated in dog shit.
Chapter 10
“You could have saved yourself the time,” he said, climbing back up the ladder. “I have nothing to say.”
“Sir, you can’t force someone to stay in a rental agreement,” Sidney said. “You can enforce penalties, early cancellation fees, deposit forfeiture—”
“You heard me,” he bellowed, peering ahead like a general surveying the troops.
“But he can leave at any time,” she finished. “Why are you fighting this? You could get another tenant with an actual running business.”
“Nobody wants that place,” Crane said. “I don’t even want it. And when he leaves, I’ll be stuck with it.”
; “That’s not his problem!” Sawyer said through his teeth, stepping back forward. “The man lost his wife, for God’s sake. Have a heart.”
“I’m aware of that,” Crane said, his tone going harsh.
“Sell it,” Sidney said.
“It has a giant soda fountain in it,” Crane said. “Layla had to have that installed, and it makes it a bit limited. I can’t even turn it into a bar because that street’s not zoned for it.”
“Coffee shop, bakery, other things can work there,” Sidney said. “Better than a closed business.”
“I didn’t tell him to close,” Crane said.
“Quit being an asshole,” Sawyer said, his voice raising. “He can’t keep paying your inflated rent with no income.” He paused. “And you owe me one.”
Crane stepped back down and leaned back a little, looking down his nose at Sawyer as if he were looking through imaginary reading glasses. “Are you seriously comparing getting Marie a job to this?”
“A favor’s a favor,” Sawyer said.
“I thought that was what the car was about,” Crane said. “Now you want a two-for-one?”
“Fixing her car is just being a good person, Crane,” Sawyer said. “It’s being a good businessman. This thing with Teasdale is—”
“None of your business,” Crane finished.
“To hell with this,” Sawyer muttered, turning around, walking off.
Sidney, however, didn’t move. She stood her ground, looking up at the giant man with a pumpkin on a platform, crossing her arms over her chest and looking up at him patiently.
He kept his gaze on her, too, cockiness morphing into realization. Shit.
“Teasdale doesn’t have money for an attorney,” he said. “Especially one from Boston. Who are you, really?”
Sidney lifted her chin. “An attorney from Boston.”
“You don’t sound like it.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Like an attorney?”
He scoffed. “No, you have that droning drivel down. You don’t sound Boston.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t start out there.”