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Chapter 1
"If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried"
Chloe Traeger
It wasn’t often that Chloe Traeger beat her sisters into the kitchen in thewith the town’s two hottest hotties, it’d been only a matter of tiotten to bed yet, but that was just a technicality With a wide yawn, she started the coffee Then, gathering what she needed, she hopped up onto the counter--hissing in pain fros The quiet in the kitchen soothed her as she ether for her natural antibacterial cream Given how loudly she lived her life, the silence was a nice start to the day
Especially today, which proh not ht Later in the afternoon, she’d be doing her esthetician thing at a high-end spa in Seattle, but first she had to put in some time here in Lucky Harbor at the B&B that she ran with her sisters
The fact that her days were centering around work instead of play had her shaking her head with a rueful so, she’d been free as a bird, roa happily from spa to spa at will, with no real ties Then she and the half-sisters she’d never really known had inherited a dilapidated, falling-down-on-its-axis beach inn With absolutely no knowledge of what to do with it
Hard to believe how far they’d co B&B, and now Chloe, Tara, and Maddie were real sisters instead of strangers Friends, even
Well, okay, so they were still working on the friends part, but they hadn’t fought all week Progress, right? And the fact that Chloe had been gone for four of the past seven days working at a five-star-hotel spa in Arizona instead of here in Washington didn’t count
Chloe looked down at the organic lavender oil she’d just "borrowed" from Tara’s stash for her cream and winced
Probably she could work harder on the friend thing…
Out the aves pounded the rocky shore in the purple light of dawn as she yawned again and stirred the softened beeswax and lanolin together with the lavender oil When she was done, she carefully poured the crea on the counter, she tugged the legs of her sweat bottoan to apply the antiseptic to the two long gashes on each of her calves She was still sucking in a pained breath when the back door opened
Sheriff Sawyer Thompson
He practically had to duck to coun at his hip, expression dialed to Dirty Harry, and just looking at hi low in Chloe’s belly
He didn’t appear to have the sa rippled Sawyer’s ih exterior And he did have a hell of an exterior At six feet three inches, he was built like a linebacker But in a stunning defiance of physics, he usually had a way ofrace that would ht as so at him Some complicated combination of annoyance and reluctant lust Last she’d checked, they had developed a sort of uneasy truce,he lived by his rules and she lived by hers Mostly this meant two different roads to the sas
Not wanting to explain last night--which would undoubtedly lead to another s down to hide her injuries, shooting him the most professional suarded expression that he wore as purposefully as he did the gun at his hip slipped for a single beat as he looked around "Just you this enuine as Chloe enjoyed achieving what few could She’d knocked that blank expression right off his face She knew that was because he hadn’t been expecting her It was usually Tara whothat Sawyer routinely stopped by on his way to work for a cup instead of facing the station’s crap
"Tara’s not out of Ford’s bed yet," she informed him
The ether rimace Or more likely, it was Chloe’s bluntness In either case, he recovered and strode to the coffeeait oddly measured, as if he was as tired-to-the-bone as she
The county police and sheriff departhters and paraht Maybe Sawyer had played too hard Maybe he’d had a hot date after Given hooet face ti to Lucky Harbor’s Facebook page, phone calls to the county dispatch es of twenty-one and forty went up substantially whenever Saas on duty
His utility belt gleaht His uniform shirt rinkled in the back and da about that when he turned to her, gesturing to the coffeepot questioningly
Heaven forbid the le word "Help yourself," she said "I just made it"
That made him pause "You poison it?"
From her perch on the counter, she smiled "Maybe"
With a sobrave, then," she noted
He lifted a broad-as-a- stea it You’re a lot of things, Chloe, but crazy isn’t one of the pain in his very fine ass, but she shrugged
Sawyer leaned his big fraainst the counter to study her Quiet Speculative
Undoubtedly, people caved when he did this, rushing to fill the silence But silence had never bothered Chloe No, what bothered her was the way she felt when he looked at her like that For one thing, his eyes wereold flecks in them sparked like fire His hair was brown, too, the sort that contained every hue under the sun and could never be replicated in a salon At theside of his last cut and in a state of dishevel over his forehead in front and nearly to his collar in back The lines in his face were drawn tight with exhaustion, and she realized that he probably hadn’t been headed in for his shift as she’d assu one Whichcried to s about him reminded her that she was a wo "Seems a little early, even for you," she noted
"Could say the sa in his voice caused the first little niggle of suspicion in her brain and put her on alert "Got a lot of things tolater," she said
His eyes never wavered from hers "Or?"
Crap Crap, she’d underestimated him He was onto her, and the nerves quivered in her belly "Or what?" she asked casually, shifting to get down off the counter, not looking forward to the pain at the contact But Sawyer ed between her legs, one hand on her thigh, the other on her opposite ankle, holding her in place