by Gemma Snow
And with that, she turned down the path toward her Jeep.
Sawyer turned to Cade Easton, the man he’d been in battle with for nearly ten years, a battle that was far from over but suddenly a million times more complicated after the night they had just shared. The look in Cade’s eyes was difficult to discern, but whether they liked each other or not, Sawyer had come to know the man well since they were kids and the riot of confused emotions pulsing in his own chest was likely no different from the one in Cade’s. They were going to have to talk, all three of them, when the little fires had been put out and the emergencies managed, but now was hardly the time to open that can of worms.
“Give me a call if you need any of my guys on the accidents,” Sawyer said. “I’m hoping we can get these downed powerlines handled quickly then start on prep work for later this week.”
Cade gave a short nod. “I’ll be on the radio. Be in touch if you need us.”
Then they too parted, far from friends, far even from neutral toward each other. Sawyer suspected he would never feel neutral about Cade Easton, not with all the history between them and the high emotions, but things were, undoubtedly, in a tentative truce. It would be good enough until they got their shit together. It would have to be.
He climbed into his truck and followed Cade’s Bronco down to the road until they came upon the main drag and their paths diverged, Cade heading toward the interstate, where accidents awaited him, Sawyer with his own emergencies to handle.
We do rely on each other for a hell of a lot.
It was hard not to think about that when their town was facing a series of emergencies they couldn’t quite anticipate the scope of. He and Cade had been at each other’s throats for years, because of Hollie, because of the night neither of them had spoken of. Because of this idea they had both concocted in their own heads about whose fault it had been that she had left.
Sawyer pulled the truck up to the scene where his team was stationed, not far off the main drag from town. One of the telephone poles had been knocked sideways by a tree in the storm and canted at an angle, a handful of wires taut as they stretched between poles, a few more hanging precariously close to the ground.
“The electricity company called. We should have power off in about two minutes.” Jensen had been on the team nearly as long as Sawyer himself and the man was a reliable, level-headed person a guy wanted on his side during an emergency.
“Just got the go-ahead,” Lane called from behind one of the cruisers. “They’re sending a team, but we can go ahead and put out the fire.” It was only then that Sawyer saw the smoke from over where she was standing. He wasn’t wearing his gear and from his near decade of working with his crew, he knew they could manage the fire on their own.
Still, it rankled him. The bad boy image, the tattoos and the beard and all of it, they were real to him. They kept him protected from his own demons, helped him forget the world that had left him behind because he didn’t need anyone else, aside from his team, and he had long ago learned how to rely on himself. It wasn’t that he never woke up in a strange bed, or even that he’d never woken in a strange bed on a night where he would have been better served to be back at the fire station. He had and he probably would again.
It was just that, while he shouldn’t have stuck around the Triple Diamond Ranch, while he shouldn’t have given over to whatever the fuck had happened the night before with a man he’d barely been able to tolerate for ten years and the woman who had haunted his dreams with alarming regularly, he knew that given the opportunity, he would do it all over again.
Hollie Callihan called to him. It wasn’t just sexual either. Not that he didn’t ache for the way she felt against him, plush and delicious and so fucking sexy. Because he did and he wanted her all over again. But he had enjoyed holding her just as much , kissing her, stroking her hair off her neck in the middle of the night. She had been the one person he had told his plans to, the one person who had seen him as more than a mistake, as more than a castoff from his deadbeat dad. When he’d been with Hollie, he’d felt like his own person, like his victories belonged to him, his emotions and his reactions were his own. He didn’t need to hedge his bets or play coy. She had gotten him on day one and every day after that.
And though nearly ten fucking years had passed, though she hadn’t so much as sent a postcard from her trips to Rio or Sidney or wherever the hell she had been, though the undercurrent of rage he had felt for so long at her leaving was still there, not yet satisfied, he couldn’t help but admit to himself that she still had the ability to make him feel like Sawyer Matthews the man was just enough. It had taken a lot of unlearning, a lot of understanding that his father hadn’t been raising him the way most fathers did, a lot of Hollie and him huddled up near the lake or wandering the Black Reef Mountains, admitting that they felt responsible for their parents’ deaths.
Only, Hollie had felt the kind of guilt of every survivor, the why not me, the what if I had and everything in between. She had been a classic case, something Sawyer had understood even when they had just been kids, their feet dangling in fresh river water—the same river water that was likely about to start barreling down on Wolf Creek. She had been innocent of everything but loving her mom and dad, and living to love them even after the robbery gone wrong. She’d been nothing but a child who cared too much.
And over months and years of friendship, she’d managed to explain the same to Sawyer. But his guilt hadn’t been natural. It had been the product of grief and love. It had been created, nailed into his head by a man who had twisted his own grief into something violent.
‘If you hadn’t been born, your mother would still be here…’ The words never truly left his mind, never quieted all that long for him to understand that they weren’t true, they were the words of a madman who had nothing left in the world to care about, including his young son.
Alone, Sawyer wouldn’t have been able to understand that.
But with Hollie…
She had opened his world to so very, very much and a part of Sawyer had always known that his fool heart wouldn’t be so quick to let her go. So, no, it hadn’t been the best for his job, for his town, for anything that had really mattered, to do what they had done last night. But there was no way he could have done anything differently.
Cade was bone weary. His body hurt and his head was starting to pound. Sleeping on the floor all night certainly hadn’t helped. Neither had running accident triage for the last eight hours, but there had only been minor injuries, the cars had been taken care of and towed away and he was finally driving back to his office to drop off some papers before heading home for the day. Finally. Finally.
And yet, even as the prospect of a comfortable and horizontal bed—hell, the couch would do it—called his name, Cade couldn’t help but admit, if only to himself, if only in the quietest part of his mind, that some of his exhaustion might not have been entirely related to the lack of sleep or the business of the day. In fact, if he looked at it just a little too close for a little too long, he could start to see threads of his emotions taking over the conversation, until he ran himself into circles. Then maybe, just maybe, right off the edge of the bridge. Or into oncoming traffic.
But fuck. What else was he supposed to have done? Through something silent and base and honest, he and Sawyer had taken a step the night before that had changed everything. Hell, Cade hadn’t thought of Sawyer Matthews as Sawyer in years, and it already felt natural, if a little stiff, like an unusual muscle creaking back to life. But it had been Hollie, of all people. It had been Hollie and all at once it had been the worst and best decision he could possibly have made.
“Hey, Hoss, I was hoping to grab you before I left.” Camilla met him in the hallway and they continued to walk down toward his office. Unable to keep standing much longer, Cade sank into his chair and leaned back. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly.
“We have the reservoir report,” Cam said. She handed him the sheaf of paper
s and settled into the chair across from his desk. Weariness etched the corners of her eyes as well and her posture wasn’t the strict, rigid pose it normally was. Hell, they’d both been running straight through since the meeting last night and it was little wonder they were exhausted, though Cade had a sneaking suspicion that Camilla hadn’t slept with Hollie Callihan the night before.
“Give me the elevator pitch,” Cade said. “I trust you.”
She smiled at that and gave a tired nod. “The water levels are higher than average for this time of year at the forebay, the mid-reservoir and the inflow. The embayment still has room, but we need to keep a close eye on it, especially if predicted rain levels prove true.” She flicked through a page and continued, “No contamination in the water as of o-six-hundred today, but the Nature and Wilderness team is on high alert. We set up a sandbag perimeter off Denton Street and along the Coffee Creek side, so that should, if all goes according to plan, keep it protected during the next storm.”
Cade nodded. “That’s great, Cam. Thank you.” He gave her a small smile. “You should go home, you look beat. I’m sure you guys didn’t get too much sleep last night.”
Surprisingly, Camilla’s cheeks turned a rarely seen shade of bright pink and she shifted her gaze away from his. Cade blinked and tilted his head. His instinct was that he was paranoid, that everyone could see what kind of hedonism he’d gotten up to the night before, but he didn’t think he was imagining the expression on Camilla’s face, or those flushing cheeks.
“I meant because of the storm,” he clarified, actually enjoying himself when she coughed and tried to speak.
“Right, of course. We were up late because of the storm.”
“I hope you guys didn’t get too wet.” Oh yeah, he was starting to lose his shit if he thought that was funny, but then Camilla shot daggers at him and he couldn’t help the dark laugh that escaped his mouth. She raised her eyebrow.
“You keep laughing, Sheriff,” she said. “But I’m not the one walking around with a hicky on my neck.”
Cade stopped laughing and pulled the camera up on his phone to check if it had been obvious to anyone who he might have come in contact with the entire day. When he didn’t see anything at close inspection, however, he turned to face Camilla again, who had an expression on her face that could stop armies in their track.
“I knew it,” she said. “You totally got laid last night.”
“Well, so did you.”
It was a rather unprofessional conversation, but he and Camilla had become more than coworkers in the last few years and he trusted her, felt to her as he would to a sister, which he had never been so lucky as to have. And, in complete honesty, it felt kind of nice that someone knew, as if it gave something real and concrete over to the whole thing, so he was no longer left wondering if it had actually happened or if he’d simply had a great fucking dream on the floor of the Triple Diamond Ranch dining room. He should have felt guilty about defiling the table, but he’d run into his fair share of Maddy Hollis and her husbands defacing furniture, and he’d definitely caught Lily, Dec and Micah with their pants down on more than one occasion, so he really couldn’t bring himself to care about it all that much.
Hmm, maybe we should have the reservoir checked for pheromones…
“Don’t let her break your heart again, Cade,” Camilla said, her voice serious now. “You haven’t let yourself care about someone in a long time and I don’t want to see you give it all up for someone who doesn’t appreciate it.”
Cade appreciated her, this sprite of a woman from a powerhouse family with madness and noise and so much love. She’d adopted him right into her fold and, brusque, humorous or however her mood struck her, she kept an eye on him, listened to him, cared about him and made sure he knew it.
He’d had a family, once upon a time. Not the parents who’d birthed him. They’d been, more often than not, in a trailer home somewhere bartering for their next fix. But Cade had had a home in the wonderful Ruth Callihan and Wes and Hollie. He’d had a homecooked meals with a grandmother who wasn’t his own and in care packages carefully filled with non-perishable items, as if Ruth had known that he couldn’t go down to the kitchen every night, couldn’t even leave his own room on the bad ones, as if she had known he was planning to make a break for it one day, that he wouldn’t stick around to be hurt any longer.
Hollie had been the best part of his life. She’d come to mean a warm, soft glow, a shared bowl of popcorn, a sense of comfort and a place to hang his hat. That had made it hurt all the more when she had left, after all she knew about him, after all that she had been through at his side.
And it had made it that much harder to say no to her the night before. It hadn’t even been a question. Things had just happened, just progressed until Hollie was in his arms, her face awash with pleasure.
And something deeper, something that had called to a base part of himself. Something no one, not even Camilla Flores, the woman he thought of as a sister, knew about him. But there was no doubt in Cade’s mind that when Hollie had called him Sir, when she had done as he had asked and when she had bucked against his demands, it had been with intent and promise in her words and movements. He had seen it in her eyes that she was a woman who understood his predilections, who found her pleasure in giving up control just as he had found his in taking it. It made sense, in a way. Hollie had always been a jump-first, adventure-on-the-horizon kind of person. She had taken off for greener pastures and bigger thrills at every chance she got. His secret lifestyle might just be one she indulged in on occasion too.
That she might be a submissive both thrilled and terrified Cade. Because now that he had his head on straight, now that Camilla was voicing her concern and giving him that look that spoke volumes about all she knew about him, Cade could see how terrible an idea it had been for them to sleep together the night before. Ignoring the whole issue of another man—and that he could even manage to ignore the whole issue of another man was testament to how insane the whole thing had been—Cade knew that his relationship with Hollie had too many loose ends, too many unfinished pieces and parts and way, way too many opportunities for heartache. The last thing he needed was to want her more, or, even worse, feel this driving need for control and dominance that had him aching to make her his.
“I don’t exactly want to see you get hurt either, Cam,” Cade put in. Camilla had her own brothers, had people beyond him who cared for her, but he sincerely doubted she was about to tell any of them about what had undoubtedly gone down with her and Federal Emergency Agent Walsh. Savannah seemed smart and capable enough, but so had Cam’s ex-girlfriend, and that hadn’t ended well for anyone.
“I know, Cade,” she said quietly. “And I appreciate it, but things are a whole lot less complicated between us than they are between you. I just want to make sure you’re keeping yourself safe.”
It was funny, that. He’d sworn an oath to protect the town, first as an incoming deputy, then as the Wolf Creek sheriff when Bob Henders had retired. Protecting people, the good folks of Wolf Creek, his friends and team, was second nature. It came to him as easily as breathing and Cade had wondered on occasion if that had played a role in why he’d taken such extreme pleasure in caring for others and bringing them to new heights, protecting them all along the way.
But he wasn’t a psychologist. He was a small-town sheriff and it was a hell of a lot more important for him to focus on his job right now, and not the way that Hollie Callihan whispering the word Sir had made him harder than he’d ever been in his entire life.
A knock on the door dragged his surprisingly limited attention away from that particular memory, and when he called that it was open, Hollie and Savannah Walsh walked in. Because, of course.
It didn’t escape Cade’s notice that Savannah was watching Camilla intently and that Camilla, his strong, capable, take-no-prisoners friend, was blushing furiously and looking in just about every other direction. Of course, Cade only noticed that because he wa
s doing his damnedest not to look at Hollie.
And that was the second time in a week he was glad as hell he was sitting behind his desk.
“We have some updated reports about the flood regions starting Thursday night and going into Saturday morning,” Hollie said by way of greeting. “I wanted to run through them with you and Sawyer, but he’s still tied up with accident cleanup, so I thought I’d leave the files with you to look at so we can meet up later. I’d also like to fax the reservoir report to my superiors, if you don’t mind.”
Cade nodded to the ancient fax machine in the corner of the room and Hollie pulled a file identical to the one on Cade’s desk from her bag and began punching numbers into the old machine. It whirred to life and she painstakingly fed it one page at a time from the two-dozen-page report.
“What’s the short take on the new reports?” Cade asked. Savannah pulled a face.
“Not better,” she said. “It looks like we might get up to thirty-three percent more flooding than we were initially anticipating. We’re discussing a potential evacuation, but it hasn’t come to that yet. It depends more on the runoff locations for the time being.” Before she could continue, her phone went off at her hip and she answered with a curt “Agent Walsh.”
She took her phone call and Hollie futzed with the fax machine—which Cade was starting to believe she didn’t actually have to do, that she’d just wanted an excuse to avoid making eye contact with him—and he turned to Camilla.
“You look beat. Why don’t you go home and take a break until our meeting later?”
She gave him a sharp look, but it wasn’t quite as sharp as usual and Cade pressed his luck. “I’m going to need you on your best game this week,” he said. “That means no falling asleep on the job. Take the break now. We might not get another one any time soon.”
Camilla raised her eyebrow and made to get up, collecting her things and heading for the door just as Savannah clicked off her call.
