Falling in Love on Willow Creek by Debbie Mason

Chapter Fifteen

Sadie glanced in her rearview mirror as she pulled into her driveway. Sure enough, Michael was right behind her. Chase, she reminded herself on a low growl. Chase Roberts, the man who’d lied to her. An FBI agent who was using her to get to her brother, and she’d named her daughter after him. He wasn’t her knight in shining armor after all.

As a heavy weight pressed upon her and the backs of her eyes began to burn, she looked at herself in the mirror. “Do not cry. He doesn’t deserve your tears.” She glanced at her daughter. “And he doesn’t deserve your love, my sweet baby girl.” Tears welled in her eyes, threatening to spill over as she remembered her daughter’s delighted giggles. Michaela had rewarded Chase with her first smile and her first laugh. He didn’t deserve to be given those gifts.

Sadie sniffed back tears, catching movement in her side mirror as she went to turn off the engine. She must have sat there longer than she’d realized. Avoiding the inevitable, she thought, as Chase walked to the front door with a suitcase in one hand and a large takeout bag from Zia Maria’s in the other. If she wasn’t worried about her daughter’s safety, she would have told him what he could do with his protection. Her stomach gurgled. The food he could leave.

“Stay where you are,” he said when she got out of the car.

“Unless the FBI teaches you to open a deadbolt…” She swallowed a mortified groan when he opened the door and stepped inside with his gun drawn. She’d left the door unlocked.

Michaela began to fuss in her car seat, and Sadie eased her way around the car to comfort her. As she did, she searched the area. Nothing looked out of place. Then again, what did she know? She hadn’t sensed the gunmen’s approach last night. She prayed Elijah wasn’t hiding inside the cottage. Surely he wouldn’t bring danger right to her door. She liked to believe he wouldn’t, but he had a long-standing tradition of thinking only of himself.

And soon he’d have a baby to think about. She’d gone back and forth on whether or not to share the news with her grandmother. Late that afternoon, the decision had been taken out of her hands. Babs Sutherland had arrived to congratulate Sadie and her grandmother about the new addition to the family. Sadie had played dumb. But she hadn’t pretended to be happy about the news. How could she be?

Her grandmother was another story. It was like Elijah wasn’t on the run and in fear for his life and Agnes wasn’t months away from losing her business and home. She was already planning the baby shower.

“You can come in now.” Chase hesitated in the doorway as if contemplating helping her with Michaela. Something in her expression must have told him she didn’t need or want his help, because he picked up the takeaway bag and rolled his suitcase into the cottage.

She opened the back passenger-side door and leaned in to grab the baby bag and slide it over her shoulder before releasing Michaela from her car seat. Her daughter didn’t reward her with a delighted gurgle or a happy smile. Instead, she tangled her grasping fingers in Sadie’s hair and tugged. Hard.

She let out a loud ow, which brought Chase to the door. “What’s wrong?”

“Besides you standing in my doorway with a gun in your hand and your suitcase in my entryway? Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.” She closed the car door and beeped the lock, wincing as she walked up the path with her hair still gripped tightly in her daughter’s hands.

He sighed and stepped aside for her to pass him. As she did, Michaela made small grunting sounds, letting go of Sadie’s hair to hold out her hands. Sadie looked from her daughter’s hands to the object of her ardent desire. He stepped out of reach, his expression blank, but there was an emotion in his eyes she couldn’t read. She thought it might be regret.

“I know how you must feel, Sadie,” he said as he closed and locked the door. At her raised eyebrow, he lifted his hands. “You’re right. I don’t have any idea how you feel, but you need to know, I didn’t want to lie to you. My partner was against telling you the truth. You heard that yourself.” He looked at Michaela, who was still holding out her arms to him. “Can I take her?”

When Sadie hesitated, he said, “Whatever you think of me, you have to know that my feelings for Michaela were real, are real. Michael is my middle name and Knight is my maternal family’s surname. If it makes you feel better, I’ll go by Michael. I don’t care.”

“I have to call you that anyway. You’re still undercover, remember?” It wasn’t just his offer to go by his middle name or that he was, in a way, Michael Knight that made her feel better and hand him her daughter. It was that he’d asked her permission to take Michaela. Drew had only ever pretended to respect her wishes and boundaries.

“Thank you,” he said, then held her gaze. “I meant what I said, Sadie. I care about Michaela, and I care about you.”

Sadie woke up to sun streaming in her bedroom window and rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t dreaming. Shooting up into a sitting position on her bed, she tried to get her bearings. A towel fell off her head and onto the blanket that covered her. She wore a towel and nothing else.

Images of the night before filtered into her brain in vivid Technicolor. Chase with her smiling daughter in his arms, setting the table for dinner. She’d gone to take a shower before they sat down to eat. A long, leisurely, blissfully peaceful shower. She’d been in there so long she’d used all the hot water in the tank. Afterward, she’d gone to her bedroom to change and remembered, as clear as if it were happening right then, lying on her bed.

She’d only meant to take a moment to think through everything Chase and Nate had revealed to her yesterday morning. To go over what Chase had said about caring for her and her daughter, wondering if she should believe him. Or was he just one more man in a long line of them who would break her heart and her trust?

Her brain synapses seemed to be firing on all cylinders this morning. Which would have been a welcome change if her brain didn’t choose that moment to point out that there were only two men who’d truly broken her heart—her father and her brother. After that, she’d never let another man close enough to get past her defenses.

She thought over her past relationships. Okay, so maybe the men she’d dated hadn’t been worthy of her love. But she really hadn’t given them the chance to be, had she? She got a gold star for her ability to sabotage a relationship. Her trust issues when it came to men were deeply entrenched. For the past ten years, she’d been protecting herself and her heart. The only person she’d truly let in was her baby girl.

She blinked. Michaela! Sadie threw back the blanket and leaped from her bed. She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. She was naked, and she had a man in her house. A drop-dead gorgeous man she was attracted to. An attraction that hadn’t abated even when she found out he’d been lying to her all along.

She ran to her dresser and pulled out the drawers. They were empty save for two pairs of underwear and a bra that had seen better days. She turned to the overflowing laundry hamper. Clothes littered the honey-colored wood floor around the hamper, with more articles of clothing tossed on the blue chair in the corner. Everything she owned was dirty. She eyed the black yoga pants and white T-shirt hanging over the arm of the chair. They’d have to do.

Grabbing a pair of underwear and the bra from the dresser drawer, she hurried to the chair. She sniffed the yoga pants and T-shirt. They didn’t smell, and they weren’t stained. She remembered why. She’d tossed them there yesterday morning after deciding they weren’t work appropriate.

She listened for signs of her daughter and Chase as she threw on her clothes, her stomach doing a nervous dance. The cottage was suspiciously quiet and must have been so for twelve hours, because she’d slept the sleep of the dead. Then again, they could have had a party and she probably would have slept through it.

Overwhelmed with guilt and more than a little embarrassed, she opened her bedroom door and tiptoed across the hall to her daughter’s room. At the sight of the empty crib, she whirled around and ran, stopping short when she reached the living room. Chase was asleep on the couch with her daughter on his chest, his arms wrapped protectively around her.

Sadie stood there staring at them with a lump forming in her throat. It was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. She glanced around for her camera, wanting to capture the moment. It surprised her a little. Up until six months ago, her camera was always close at hand. Photography had been her passion long before she’d gotten into graphic design. But aside from a few photos of Michaela when she was born, Sadie hadn’t taken any pictures at all.

In her search for her camera—even her phone would do—her eyes landed on the bottles on the coffee table, the neatly piled sleepers and diapers beside them. She glanced at Chase to see him watching her through bloodshot eyes that made the blue of his irises stand out even more. She winced and opened her mouth to apologize.

He moved his hand to press a finger to his lips and whispered, “She just went back to sleep.”

Her daughter’s head came up. Chase looked like he wanted to groan but instead raised a hand to Michaela’s head and gently pressed it back onto his chest, humming and rocking her as he did so. As soon as he stopped, Michaela’s head popped up again.

After the third time it happened, Sadie was barely able to keep the laughter from her voice. “It’s okay. We both have to get ready for work anyway.”

He turned his head to look out the window that faced Willow Creek. He frowned, raising his arm to glance at his watch. This time he did groan out loud. “How can it be eight in the morning already? I swear I just closed my eyes.”

Her daughter shimmied up his chest to suck on his face. “You can’t be hungry again.” He held Michaela against him while swinging his bare feet to the floor. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” he told her daughter, rising from the couch to hand her to Sadie.

She snuggled Michaela to her chest, relieved when she didn’t cry and reach for Chase. “I’m so sorry I fell asleep and left you to deal with her all night.”

He rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t know how you’ve been doing this on your own for the past three months and you’re still standing. I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“I feel like I’ve slept for a week, and that’s thanks to you. I really do appreciate it, Chase.” Thinking of the almost-naked state she woke up in, her eyes went wide and her cheeks heated. “You covered me with the blanket last night, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but I closed my eyes.” A touch of color stained his incredible cheekbones.

She didn’t understand how he looked as gorgeous as ever with so little sleep. Still…“You were walking around in my bedroom with your eyes closed and my daughter in your arms? You’re lucky you didn’t trip over anything.”

“All right, I had my eyes open for the very reason you just stated. I intended to shut them, but your bedroom is…well, it’s a bit of a disaster.” He winced. “Sorry. I understand why it is now.”

She didn’t take offense, because it was the absolute truth. Although she didn’t tell him her daughter wasn’t the only reason her bedroom looked like it did. She’d never been a neat freak, and her messy habits had only intensified after she’d had Michaela. “No need to apologize. I’m just embarrassed you saw me almost naked.”

“You have no reason to be embarrassed. You look amazing. Uh, I didn’t mean to say that. Not that you don’t look amazing, you do, but it implies that I was staring at you while you were sleeping, which sounds a little creepy. I wasn’t. I—” He scratched the back of his head. “I should probably stop talking and grab some sleep. I mean a shower. I’m going to grab a shower.” He went to walk away, and Michaela held up her arms.

He sighed and leaned in to take Michaela’s hand and suddenly reared back. With a finger under his nose, he said, “Sadie, I don’t know what’s in her formula but you need to look for a new brand. Someone that little should not smell that bad.” He frowned at her. “Can you not smell that?”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m used to it.”

“You should get your sense of smell tested. I’m serious,” he said when she laughed, sighing when he noticed Michaela had yet to lower her arms. He pinched his nose and leaned in to kiss her fingers. “I can’t take you, stinky. I have to have a shower or I’m going to smell as bad as you do,” he told her daughter, gagging as he walked away.

Sadie lifted Michaela to smell her diaper. At first, she’d been afraid Chase had been talking about her. “He’s right. You are a little ripe. But don’t worry. Mommy still loves you.” She hugged her daughter tight and headed to the nursery to change her, amazed at how good a little extra sleep made her feel.

Twenty minutes later, Sadie looked up from the drawer she was searching when Chase walked into the kitchen. “Have you seen my cell phone?”

“No. When did you last have it?”

“At the store, but I’m sure I didn’t leave it there.” She wouldn’t, on the off chance Elijah tried to contact her.

“Did you check the diaper bag?” Without waiting for her to respond, he unzipped the quilted pink bag sitting on the island behind Michaela’s carrier and dug around inside. He held up her phone.

“Thank goodness,” she said, and reached for it.

He didn’t immediately let go of the phone. “You haven’t heard from your brother, have you?”

“No, and I have a feeling he won’t risk getting in touch with me now. Not after the other night. But if you’d give me my phone, I’ll check.” He handed it back to her. She entered her passcode and opened her phone. She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“If you do hear from him, you need to tell me, Sadie.”

“I know. I will,” she said when he held her gaze as if he didn’t quite believe her. She nodded at Michaela, who was sucking on a pacifier, looking from her to Chase as if she sensed the tension between them. “Maybe we should change the subject.”

“Sorry, you’re right.” He smiled at Michaela and leaned down to nuzzle her cheek. “Someone smells good. But what’s with the plug in her mouth?” He gestured at the pacifier as he straightened.

“One of Granny’s friends dropped it off yesterday. I’m pretty sure my grandmother asked her to. Even though she knows I’m dead set against them. I don’t need the added expense of braces down the road, but it seemed to work. Nate suggested we give her a sucker.”

“Of course he did.” Chase laughed.

Michaela popped the soother out of her mouth to give him a drooly smile. There was no denying he was drool-worthy. The sexy stubble he’d been sporting this morning was gone, and his golden-tanned skin glowed. He smelled incredible too, and the pristine park ranger uniform he wore only heightened his appeal.

Sadie bent to pick up the pacifier off the floor. She sucked on it and then stuck it in Michaela’s mouth.

Chase looked from her to the floor. “Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how many germs there are on a kitchen floor?” He took the pacifier out of her daughter’s mouth and went to turn on the tap.

Sadie glanced at the floor. It looked pretty clean to her. Much cleaner than it had yesterday morning when she’d left. “Did you wash my floor?”

“Yes.” He tested the water coming out of the faucet with his finger. “It really should be boiled, but this will have to do.”

She narrowed her eyes, taking in the starched lines of his uniform pants. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. But if you’re asking whether or not I’m looking for your—”

She picked up the slice of cold pizza she’d been eating while searching for her phone and waved it at him, a piece of pepperoni falling on the floor. “No, a neat freak.”

He inhaled noisily and bent to pick up the piece of pepperoni. “I’m not a neat freak,” he said while opening the cupboard under the sink and tossing the pepperoni in the garbage can.

She grabbed his hand when he went to close the cupboard door and looked inside. “Really? You cleaned my cupboard and lined up the cleaning products in order of their height.”

“I’m neat, not a freak.”

“Okay, I’m sorry I said that. You’re not a freak. But you may have a slight problem.” He gave her a look, and she pointed her slice of pizza at his pants, being careful not to get any on the floor. “Your uniform looks brand new.”

“It is. I had a run-in with Nessa McNab’s golden retriever.”

She struggled not to laugh. She’d heard all about it yesterday afternoon.

His eyes narrowed. “You already knew.”

“About your swim in Willow Creek to rescue Finn?” She nodded. “Yeah, I did.”

Michaela spat out her pacifier again. Chase picked it up and turned on the tap. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Everyone at Zia Maria’s had too,” he said as he turned off the hot water, waving the pacifier to cool it off.

“I bet that earned you some brownie points with Zia Maria. She and Nessa are besties.”

He put the pacifier in Michaela’s mouth. “It did, but I think I earned more because of you.” Her daughter spat the pacifier out. It landed on the counter, which he inspected before sticking it back in her mouth.

Sadie frowned. “What do you mean?”

He kept his gaze on the pacifier, catching it when Michaela spat it out again.

Sadie smiled, nodding at the way her daughter pumped her arms and legs and the smile she directed at Chase. “She thinks it’s a game.”

He put the pacifier on the counter and took Michaela’s hand in his. “You’re a smart baby, aren’t you?” he said, raising her daughter’s thumb to her mouth. She latched on to it immediately, smiling around it at Chase. He shrugged at the face Sadie made. “It’s better than the pacifier. Thumb-suckers sleep through the night at a faster rate.”

“Did you read that in your baby book?” she teased.

“I Googled it in the middle of the night.”

“I’m guessing by your bloodshot eyes it didn’t do you much good.”

“It will, eventually.” He glanced at his watch. “You should probably get dressed for work.”

“I am dressed.” At his raised eyebrow, she said, “I’ll find something to wear at my grandmother’s store.” She went to grab the carrier’s handle. “You didn’t tell me what you meant by earning brownie points because of me.”

Shocking—yesterday she probably would have forgotten his comment by now.

He didn’t meet her eyes. “They’re worried about you, you and your grandmother. Elijah too. Did you know his girlfriend is expecting?”

“He told me the other night. My grandmother knows too. She wants me to reach out to Payton.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“A good idea because she’s pregnant with my brother’s child, or a good idea because you want me to pump her for information about Elijah?”

“I think you know the answer, Sadie.”

“Yeah, I do.” She returned the carrier to the island and opened the cupboard, tossing the rest of the pizza slice in the garbage. “And I don’t appreciate you asking me to do your job for you. He’s my brother, Chase. Is he a screwup? Yes. Was trafficking drugs for the Whiteside Mountain Gang wrong? Absolutely, and there’s a part of me that won’t be able to forgive him for that. But you didn’t see him when those guys were shooting at him. He—”

“They were shooting at both of you, Sadie.” Chase shoved his fingers through his hair. “Look, I understand we’re putting you in an untenable position. But what if your brother was responsible for Brodie’s murder? Would you be as quick to defend him then?”

“He’s not. Why are you looking at me like that? I think I know my own brother better than you do.”

“According to the ballistics experts, several of the bullets we recovered from the scene are a match to the one that killed Brodie. Your grandmother’s gun came back clean. The bullets didn’t come from Nate’s gun or the other shooters. They were all using high-powered rifles. The bullet came from your brother’s gun, Sadie.”

Her gun. The bullet had come from her gun. Her legs went weak, and she leaned against the island for support, schooling her features to keep her expression blank. No, it would be better if her face revealed all the shock and panic icing her insides. Chase would expect her to feel both emotions after learning in all probability that her brother’s gun was the weapon used in Brodie’s murder.

How was this even possible? She hadn’t shot anyone, and no one had access to her gun…Wait. She’d left the door unlocked yesterday. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility she’d done the same when she’d first moved back to Highland Falls. But that wasn’t when the deputy had been shot. He’d been shot the weekend of her baby shower.

Relief coursed through her, and she opened her mouth to tell Chase the truth, quickly closing it when she remembered a very important fact. She’d brought her gun with her when she’d come home for the baby shower. She’d been worried about Drew. He’d been in a bad place and drinking heavier than usual. Afraid he’d do something stupid, she’d brought her gun to her grandmother’s.

Chase reached out to rest a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Instead of giving him a negative head shake like her body seemed primed to do, she nodded. “I’m fine, thanks.”

She couldn’t tell him the truth, not yet. Not until she figured this out.