“Jesus, Maxine, you go to the police when you’re threatened, you don’t go gallivanting around the mountains unprotected.”
“She knows that, Shane . . .”
“. . . And?” Shane finally asked when she didn’t elaborate.
“They said they couldn’t do a dang thing until she was physically harmed. Can you believe it?”
“Say that again?” he ordered.
“No, I don’t suppose a man like you with all your training could believe it any more than I did. Anyhoo, that’s why I’m calling. Can she borrow a gun? If the police don't help her, then I will. I was gonna show her how to shoot and maybe throw an ax, then I’ll—”
“I’ll be there in ten,” he clipped short then hung up and grabbed his keys.
Ten minutes later, he pulled up in front of Maxine’s cabin and found Chester’s police cruiser sitting in the drive. He was instantly mad at his friend. A tiny woman like Sage deserved police protection, not the runaround or bureaucratic red tape.
He didn’t knock when he reached the door; he walked straight in like he’d done all his life. He heard voices coming from the kitchen and found Martha Tallchief, Chester’s mother and the town’s postmaster and head gossip, sitting with Maxine at her table drinking coffee. Unlike Maxine, Martha was a stout woman with short, gray hair of Native American heritage and she dressed like most of the men in town. Flannel shirt and work boots. Shane scanned the room but didn’t see his old friend.
“Where’s Chester?”
“Talking with Sage, I suppose.”
“Where’s Sage?’
“Out on the deck,” she answered with a grin.
Shane turned and headed for the deck, his earlier decision to stay away from Sage forgotten in the wake of the danger to her person. When he opened the door and stepped outside, he froze in place. Sage was bent at the waist, pulling on shorts over a heart-shaped ass, her T-shirt soaked from having been in the hot tub, and Chester was watching her as she dressed. Chester was an old friend, one he trusted until that moment. At nearly six-foot, Chester didn’t have Shane‘s height of six-foot-two, nor his bulk. The only man bigger in town than Shane was Max. But Chester was a good-looking Native American man with black eyes and a wicked smile the ladies loved, and right then, knowing he was watching Sage, Shane hated him.
Sage turned when she heard the door shut, and her gaze locked with his. Her white shirt clung to her curves, transparent from the water. When he caught a glimpse of rose-colored nipples, possessiveness the likes he’d never felt surged, and he erupted, knowing full well Chester couldn’t have missed the sight.
His voice, when he finally spoke, was a deep, rolling thunder, menacing, in a tone that left no question of his anger. “You wanna give the lady some privacy?”
Sage looked down at her shirt when she caught the direction his focus had landed and quickly covered her breasts with her arms before turning to grab a towel.
Chester turned his back on her, and Shane leveled his friend with a murderous look. Chester heeded his warning, mumbling, “I’ll wait inside,” leaving him alone on the deck with Sage.
A spark of jealousy reared its ugly head once Chester left, and he asked accusingly, “You always change in front of strange men?”
Caught off guard by his anger, Sage widened her eyes at the bite in his voice and then narrowed them.
“I was in the hot tub and he asked me to come inside. I asked him to turn around while I got out and he did.”
Shane looked over his shoulder and glared at Chester through the window. It looked like he’d be adding a second topic of conversation to his list of shit to set straight with the man.
“All right, but explain to me why you were in the hot tub in the first damn place if you knew a man was on his way over?”
“Listen, Sergeant, I don’t like what you’re insinuating. I didn’t know that—”
“Shane,” he corrected. He didn’t want to be referred to as Sergeant, not by anyone, least of all her.
“Fine. Shane . . . Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot earlier and I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know, but please don’t come out here—”
“Why’d you come to Trails End?” he interrupted. He didn’t want to think about the why and how of her and Chester alone on the porch, he wanted to know why the hell she came here in the first place. That question had been nagging him all the way to Maxine’s cabin. Why, if she was in trouble, would she look up a man she didn’t know instead of heading to her family or the authorities?
She hesitated when he asked, and looked down at her feet. After a moment of pause, she squared her shoulders, lifted her head, and answered with a casualness that didn’t ring true, “I was in the area and remembered you lived here. I thought I would pop in and thank you for—”