Chapter 5 #2
That could have possibly been it, but Paxton wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t deny that he stuck out like a bruised and battered thumb. Many of the people here worked for Sawyer’s family at the lumber mill. Now that his father was no longer around, that meant they worked for Sawyer.
Interestingly enough, Paxton didn’t detect even a hint of the veiled animosity that often hovered between bosses and employees.
Several people approached the bar to thank Sawyer for some incentive program instituted at the mill.
Others just wanted to shake his hand. The interactions were a testament to the respect the workers held for the Robertson family, and vice versa.
Paxton got that funny feeling in her stomach again, the one that suggested that maybe she’d judged Sawyer unjustly.
She was certain that if she thought long and hard enough, she would be able to recall an incident back during their days at Gauthier High when Sawyer had earned the spoiled, arrogant rich-boy label she’d placed on him.
But for the life of her, she could not remember a single one.
Had she been wrong this entire time?
Could that mean she was also wrong about other things, like not believing Shayla when she said Sawyer had always been interested in her?
Her stomach twisted with the plethora of doubt and hopefulness swirling through it.
The Saints game ended in a heartbreaker, with the Falcons returning the favor of that earlier interception and running it back for a touchdown. Their touchdown, however, came in the last two minutes of the game and handed them the victory.
Despite the loss, the crowd remained upbeat, and just about everyone came up to Paxton and Belinda to tell them how much they enjoyed themselves, and how they planned to be back on Saturday for the LSU football game.
The regulars all promised to be back tomorrow.
Now that Harlon’s—Paxton had just accepted it would never shake that name—served real food, she suspected it would acquire a larger set of regulars.
“It’s pretty late,” Sawyer said when she returned to the bar. “How much longer are you staying?”
“We have to clean up.”
“Do you need any help?”
Paxton couldn’t keep the incredulity off her face if she tried. She didn’t try.
“What?” he asked. “I have washed dishes before, you know.” He pulled the towel from her shoulder and snapped it on the bar top. “I can bust suds with the best of them.”
Her sharp laugh was so loud that she drew the attention of several of the people still lingering around the bar.
“You don’t believe me—do you?” Sawyer asked.
“I’m trying to picture it.” She looked him up and down. “No, I really don’t see you rolling up your sleeves and—how did you put it? Busting suds?”
“You’ve pegged me all wrong,” he said. He leaned in closer and whispered against her ear, “I’m going to have fun changing the way you see me.”
Decadent shivers of need cascaded along her skin as her body screamed, Let him!
“Now, do you need help or don’t you?” he asked.
“No, she doesn’t.” Donovan appeared from seemingly out of nowhere, sidling up next to her and clamping his arm around her shoulder. His six-foot-two frame towered over her, much like Sawyer’s. He puffed his chest out. “I’m here to help her. It’s my job.”
Paxton rolled her eyes as she disengaged from his hold.
Sawyer hooked a thumb at Donovan. “Is this Harlon’s grandson that you used to babysit back in high school? The one who bit Mr. Washington the year he posed as Santa Claus?”
“Yes, it is,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
Donovan was not so amused. He gave Sawyer an assessing look from head to toe, a slow and pissed-off perusal. Paxton couldn’t help but chuckle. This poor kid really thought he had a chance with her. She didn’t know whether to be charmed or exasperated by him on any given day.
“I appreciate both offers to help, but I think we’ve got things under control. I’ll see you at the office tomorrow,” she told Sawyer. She looked at Donovan. “You did a good job tonight, but you should go home and check on your grandpa.”
“He’s okay,” Donovan said.
“Well, then, just go home and get some rest.”
“You’re going to miss me when I’m gone,” he said. And, of course, he winked.
If she could get away with it, she would superglue his eyes shut.
“Are you really putting me out, too?” Sawyer asked.
“Yes,” she said, taking him by the hand and tugging him toward the exit. She walked him to his car, which was one of the last remaining in the parking lot. It was a good thing he was driving his dad’s Buick. His luxury car would have stood out among the dusty pickup trucks and dented sedans.
“So, have you thought about what I suggested?” he asked.
She cocked her head to the side. “Refresh my memory?”
“Me, you, and three weeks of no-strings-attached fun before you go back to Little Rock.”
“Oh, that.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m too tired to think up a good excuse to say no. Ask me again tomorrow, when I’m well rested and on my game.”
He ran his hand along her hair. “There’s only one answer I’ll accept, and no isn’t it.”
“Goodnight, Sawyer. Thank you again for coming tonight.”
“Maybe I’ll become a regular,” he said. “Especially now that I know I have competition.”
She chuckled. “If you’re talking about Donovan, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Maybe I’ll become a regular anyway,” he said. “Just because the more you see me, the harder it will be for you to turn me down.” He leaned in closer to her, his lips nearly touching hers. “I’m going to make you see the real me, Pax. That’s a promise.”
She suffered through a full-body shudder.
Could she want him any more than she did right now? Impossible.
He got into the Buick and slowly backed away; the loose gravel kicked up from underneath the tires.
Paxton stood there for several minutes, giving herself time to come down from the stimulating high she’d been on since Sawyer walked through the door. She returned to the kitchen to help Belinda and Jessie clean. Even though they were all exhausted, they were done in less than an hour.
As she and her mother crossed the pasture, heading for their trailer—Heinz trotting alongside them—they chatted about the success of opening night.
Paxton’s chest was so filled with pride that she feared it would burst wide open.
Belinda’s excitement was palpable. Paxton couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her so animated. So happy.
However, once they arrived home, her mother’s mood changed.
Paxton was adding leftover food scraps into Heinz’s food bowl when Belinda came upon her, her expression devoid of the sunniness that had been there all night.
“Is there something I should know about you and Sawyer Robertson?” she asked.
Paxton’s head popped up. “We’re working together. You know that already.”
“What I saw tonight looked like a bit more than just colleagues shooting the breeze.”
“Really?” Paxton chuckled as she walked over to the kitchen faucet and filled a plastic cup with water. “The question,” she said as she poured the water into Heinz’s water bowl, “is what’s going on between you and Sawyer. There was a weird vibe between the two of you tonight.”
“I was just shocked to see someone like him in my bar.”
“Someone like him? Sawyer isn’t an alien,” Paxton said.
“He’s a rich boy from the other side of the creek.”
“Just because he comes from money doesn’t automatically make him a bad person,” Paxton said.
Wait. Had she really just said that? Did she believe that?
Yes. She did.
“I just want you to be careful,” Belinda said. “I know what it’s like to have a rich boy charm the pants right off you.”
Paxton knew she was talking about her father, though she rarely thought of him in those terms. Damien Gaines was the boy who had gotten her mother pregnant. Period.
He’d come from a family of means. They weren’t on the scale of the Robertsons—few in Gauthier were—but the Gaines’s were well off by most standards.
Back when Paxton was in high school, Belinda had imparted what Paxton considered a cautionary tale.
She told her how Damien had sweet-talked her into sleeping with him, and once he found out she was pregnant, he had denied it ever happened.
Her mother was also adamant that she had not been with anyone else, so even though there had never been a paternity test, Paxton had no doubt that he was her father.
It wasn’t as if it mattered.
Belinda had been both mother and father to her, and she’d done a damn fine job of it.
Damien Gaines now lived over in St. Pierre, a small town just east of Gauthier. Paxton would run into him from time to time, but she never so much as nodded his way. He was a nonfactor.
Her mother had always been afraid of Paxton falling into the teen pregnancy trap, even though she hadn’t been a teen in nearly two decades.
“Mom, you don’t have to worry about me,” Paxton assured her. “I know how to take care of myself. You taught me well.”
“I know you can take care of yourself physically. I’m worried about your heart.”
Paxton gathered her in a hug and squeezed. “I can take care of that, too.”
And she would. When it came to her heart, she would do everything she could to protect it.
Using the flashlight app on his phone to illuminate the dead bolt, Sawyer inserted one of two keys that he suspected opened the lock on the front door of the building he hadn’t set foot in since his dad purchased it more than four years ago.
The telling click of the lock rang out into the still night; the only accompanying sound was the hoot of an owl off in the distance.
Once inside, Sawyer used the phone to locate the building’s lights, flipping them on and breathing a sigh of relief.
“Good job, Mike,” he said.