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Chapter1
“I have a very long whip, Murray, for disciplining naughty boys. Do I need to use it on you?”
Sawyer lowered the hand he’d just raised to knock on the doorframe.
“Have you been a very bad boy, Murray?” The heavily accented French voice purred from somewhere inside the house in a deep, sexy tone. “Then I must punish you.”
There was no reply to this. No moan or man’s grunt. Who the hell was she talking to? And why was Birdie McAllister speaking like that?
Was it Birdie?
It was a reflex that had Sawyer checking he was entering her cottage. The bright pink number 2a was still inches from his face.
Her parents had lived in the place first. They were now next door, and it was there he was delivering timber on his way home. No one had answered when he’d knocked, so he’d come here to find out where they wanted him to stack it.
“No talking!” she yelled. Sawyer heard the slap of something connecting with… he couldn’t be sure but thought that sounded like a solid surface, not flesh. More a thud than a thwack.
And you’re an expert on noises?
What the fuck had he stepped into? Where was Birdie?
“Are you disobeying me, Murray? I won’t stand for insubordination. Get on your knees,” the voice purred. “I’m going to punish you now,mon petit chou. You must obey me!”
Sawyer was fairly sure she’d just called Murray a little cabbage.
She spat out a few French words, and those were definitely made up, which had him wanting to snort. He wasn’t fluent but had worked with a guy in LA who was. Jules had decided Sawyer needed to up his game with women, so he’d taught him to speak the language of love, or so his friend had called it.
“Do you know what I do to very bad boys,ma pomp de terre?”
My potato wasn’t the sexiest word Sawyer would have come up with, but it took all sorts. He’d found that out living in LA.
A loud bang and then a curse. This one, not in a bad French accent, had Sawyer wondering what the hell was going on inside this house. He wasn’t hanging around if there was some kind of role-playing kinky shit happening. People could be into whatever they wanted in their own home, but he didn’t have to see it.
More swearing and banging had him entering. Sawyer moved down the narrow hallway and stopped at the end. He’d just look to make sure no one was hurt, then leave without being seen.
“Murray? Crap.”
Looking around the wall, he found Birdie McAllister on her hands and knees, phone pressed to her ear, under a table.
He knew this woman. Had since his brother’s fifth birthday when she brought Ryder a save the bees home pollination kit. Birdie and her family were big on saving the planet.
But this Birdie McAllister wasn’t someone he’d seen before. She wore shorts, or he thought they were, but could be those boy-legged-underwear things that his sister told him once were comfortable because they didn’t ride up, and why he’d needed to know that he still wasn’t sure. Black and cupping the curve of each ass cheek. On top, she wore a tight gray tank.
“Murray?” she said into the phone again. “Well, hell,” Birdie muttered before slowly regaining her feet.
Sawyer winced as she cracked her head on the corner of the table.
“Double hell.” She rose, rubbing it and muttering.
Sawyer had to say he was impressed. His family couldn’t do anything quietly, especially if they were hurt. They’d be yelling by now.
He watched Birdie put the portable phone back onto the table.
As if sensing him, she turned.
“Sawyer!”
He was good at a lot of things. Changing the pickup’s oil, making a passable chicken casserole and biscuits. He was basically house-trained. What he wasn’t good at was talking and things that were out of his control. Uncomfortable situations. Which, when you got down to it, was odd. His family was constantly falling in and out of situations, odd and otherwise.
