Page 81 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

I almost smiled. Close enough.

29

CHLOE

Dollie and Emma were waiting at the door.

The moment Josh’s truck pulled into the driveway, the porch light came on and the door opened and two figures appeared, one tall with red hair and one small with a stuffed dinosaur, and the sight of them standing there, safe and waiting, split something open inside me that I had been holding shut with nothing but willpower for the past twelve hours.

Emma ran. She was off the porch before Dollie could stop her, her bare feet on the cold gravel, her purple pajamas flapping, Sir Chomps-a-Lot abandoned on the steps. She hit me at full speed and I caught her and dropped to my knees and held her so tight that she squeaked.

“Mama,” she said. Just that. My name. Over and over, pressed into my neck, her small arms locked around me like she was never going to let go.

“I am here, baby. I am right here.”

Dollie was next. She waited until I stood up, waited until I could see her face, and then she pulled me into a hug that was not gentle. It was fierce. The kind of hug that said I was so scared and I am so angry and I love you so much, all at once, without words.

“The necklace worked,” she said against my ear.

“You are insane,” I whispered.

“I am your best friend. Same thing.”

We went inside. The house was warm. Dollie had been busy while we were gone. The kitchen was clean. There was food on the counter. Emma’s drawings were spread across the table, evidence that Dollie had kept her occupied and distracted for hours, and the normalcy of it, the crayons and the cookies and the warm house, made my eyes burn all over again.

Emma would not let go of me. She sat on my lap at the kitchen table while I drank the tea Dollie pressed into my hands, and she played with my hair and whispered things to Sir Chomps-a-Lot about Mama being home and the dinosaur needing to protect her better next time.

Sawyer stood in the kitchen doorway and watched us. He had not spoken since we came inside. His face was closed. Tight. The mask back in place, the one he wore when the feelings were too big and too dangerous to let out in front of other people. But his eyes, those green eyes, were burning.

Josh and Dollie left quietly. Josh squeezed my shoulder at the door. Dollie hugged me one more time and whispered that she would be back in the morning and that if I ever did anything like that again she would be the one tying me up.

I put Emma to bed.

It took a long time. She did not want me to leave the room. She held my hand and asked me to stay and asked me to tell her a story, three stories, four stories, and when she finally fell asleep her grip on my fingers was still tight. I sat beside her in the dark, listening to her breathe, watching the moonlight fall across her face, and let the tears come because she could not see them and I had been holding them for too long.

When her hand finally relaxed, I eased my fingers free. Kissed her forehead. Tucked the blanket around her shoulders and set Sir Chomps-a-Lot in the crook of her arm.

I walked down the hall to where he was.

Sawyer was in the bedroom. Standing by the window with his good hand braced against the frame, looking out at the dark forest like it held something he needed to see. The sling was off. His shoulder was wrapped but he had discarded the immobilization, and I could see the bandage through his unbuttoned flannel, white against the tan of his skin.

I closed the door behind me.

He turned.

The look on his face stopped me where I stood. It was not anger. It was not relief. It was something beyond both of those, something raw and vast and terrifying, the look of a man who had spent the last twelve hours confronting the possibility of losing everything he had just found and was now standing in front of the woman who had almost been taken from him.

“Sawyer,” I started.

He crossed the room in three strides. His mouth was on mine before I could finish the syllable.

This kiss was not soft. It was not tender. It was not the kiss of a man who was glad to see me or a man who had missed me. It was the kiss of a man who was staking a claim. Possessive. Consuming. His good hand fisted in my hair, tilting my head back, and his mouth devoured mine with a hunger that bordered on fury, and I tasted the fear on his lips, the hours of not knowing, the terror he had buried under action and control and now had nowhere to put except against my mouth.

I kissed him back. Matching his intensity, pouring everything into it, the guilt and the relief and the desperate need to feel him alive and solid and real. My hands found his chest, slid up to his neck, pulled him closer even though there was no closer to get.

He walked me backward. My back hit the door and the impact sent a jolt through my body that he swallowed with his mouth. His hips pinned me. His hand left my hair and found my wrist, circled it, pressed it above my head against the wood. Then the other wrist, both captured in his one good hand, held above me while his mouth moved down my jaw to my throat.

“You left me,” he said against my neck. Low. Rough. The words vibrated against my pulse point. “You walked out that door.”