Commanded (Club Sin 6)

She swallowed the emotion oddly shooting through her at his concern. “I do this job because it helps people. Sometimes that’s a wife who’s got a cheating husband, or a woman who’s being seduced by a man who plans to drain her bank account.”

His eyes softened. “How do you stay so…pure?”

“Pure?” She snorted. “You think I’m pure?”

“I know you are.” His intense eyes searched hers for a long moment. “You have this light about you that’s unusual. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. So tell me, how do you not allow all this shit to taint you?”

She stared at him. Sawyer was such a contradiction—intense, yet sometimes gentle, too. “I don’t know how it doesn’t bother me. It just doesn’t.” She paused, considering his question more deeply. “Or I guess maybe it’s that I won’t let it.”

Emotion passed over his face. “I hope you’ve been told, by somebody other than me, how amazing you are.”

She blinked at the unexpected statement. He’d been bold in his physical attraction to her, yet this caring side was appealing. She’d never had a man take so much notice of what was inside her and liked what he saw there.

For the first time since she’d met Sawyer, she didn’t fight this thing between them; she inhaled the warmth of it and let his affection spiral around her. Under his watchful regard, questions began swirling in her mind.

Why am I refusing him? Clearly on a physical level, they were attuned to each other.

Does it really matter how long Josh and I have been broken up when the relationship actually ended a long time ago, just as Sawyer said?

Why do I care how others perceive me when Sawyer seems to think the world of me?

Things were different with Sawyer and amazing in a way she had thought possible only in fairy tales. Why was she stopping things in their tracks instead of letting them happen and seeing how they turned out?

She let honesty spill from her lips. “I think it’s time to tell you the reason I broke up with Josh. With you, I—”

The ringing of her phone startled a gasp from her throat. Sawyer’s harsh curse followed.

Her hands trembled as she reached into her pocket, taking out her phone. She glanced at the screen. “It’s Shane.” She clicked on and said into the phone, “I’m taking it you have good news.”

“Both good and bad,” Shane replied. “What do you want to hear first?”

“The bad.” That meant things could only get better.

“The credit cards led nowhere.”

“Well, that sucks.” Chloe watched Sawyer’s frown deepen. “What’s the good news?”

“Luckily for you, I dug deeper, and I’ve got a hit on his debit card.”

Chloe nibbled her lip, cringing. This was good news for them, yes. But given Sawyer’s lecture a minute ago about skirting the law, she wondered how he would feel about Shane’s involvement, considering that Shane had gone a step further into illegally hacking Travis’s accounts. “Okay. Where?”

“The Cowboy Saloon about a half hour ago.”

“I owe you big-time, Shane. Thank you.”

“I’ll bill Porter. You owe me nothing. He’s the one who pays me the big bucks.”

The connection ended.

Chloe snorted a laugh. Shane wasn’t cheap, but Chloe thought he was worth every penny. Sometimes fighting bad people meant you had to play the same game they did. She rose from the bench, tucking her phone into her pocket. “Shane’s got a hit on Travis’s debit card. We should go in case he’s still there.”

Sawyer stood up, brows knitted. “Wasn’t Shane tracking Travis’s credit card?”

“Hmm, how strange.” Chloe tapped her lip, pretending to think hard about it. “I have no idea how Shane obtained his debit card information.” As Sawyer opened his mouth to speak, Chloe stuck up her hand. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”

He stared at her hard for a few long seconds, then shook his head. “You’re right, I don’t want to know. Let’s go.”

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