Page 11 of A Deceitful Pact

“You tired?” I ask, wrapping my arms tight around her.

“It’s not every night a hot guy in a bar takes me back to his motel room and fucks me senseless.” She laughs, and I like how that sounds, too.

In fact, there isn’t a single thing about this girl I don’t like. Other than the fact she’s an FBI agent.

I decide not to tell her that it ain’t every night that the guy from the bar asks a woman to sleep beside him. In fact, it's never happened once.

“You should sleep,” I tell her, stroking my free hand through her hair and wondering what it would be like to be able to keep her. Special Agent Riley Hale and the hired hand bar owner from little old Clearwater Creek. Just the thought of it makes me laugh.

“What’s so funny?” She looks up at me with those beautiful, green eyes, and I make the most of admiring them because I know that after tonight, I can never see them again.

“Nothin’s funny, sweetheart, you just get some sleep.” I place a kiss on her temple and lie still beside her. I guess if she was here to arrest me she’d have done it before she let my tongue get acquainted with her sweet-tasting pussy.

“Goodnight.” She closes her eyes, and I watch her for minutes that end up turning into hours before I finally drift off myself.

Sun breaks through a gap in the curtains and warms the side of my face, and when I go to pull the girl back toward me, all I feel is empty space. My eyes quickly open, and I sit up, looking around the room to see where she is. But she’s gone.

I scratch my stubble as I get closer to town, trying to understand why I’m so desperate for Riley to say yes to my offer. She was right when she said it was a stupid idea, especially since what I told her was a lie.

I meant every word I said about me being happy to give her a kid, but if she thinks for a second that I’d put my baby inside her and then back off, she’s wrong. I don’t want to be a fuckin’ donor, I want her to be mine. I want any babies she carries to be mine too, and as I pull up outside my bar, any doubts or hesitation no longer exist.

The decision is made… If anyone is gonna be knocking up our sassy town sheriff, it’s gonna be me.

RILEY

THREE MONTHS LATER

During my time here, I’ve come to learn that Sunday mornings in Clearwater Creek are Sawyer-free. He never goes to church, the bar doesn’t open till noon, and I’ve heard Daphne tell Alice Walker that once his bar closes on a Saturday night, he drinks himself stupid with the cowboys who work on Jace Sullivan's ranch. So while Sawyer nurses his hangovers each Sunday morning, I enjoy the time I get to roam around town without having to worry about bumping into him.

“Riley.” I hear his voice come from behind me as I’m about to step inside the grocery store, and it makes me freeze. Slowly, I turn my head toward the other side of the street where it came from.

Sawyer checks for oncoming traffic before crossing, and my reckless inner voice tells me that a man who can make road safety look sexy fully qualifies for a space in my uterus. I shake that voice out of my head as he dashes toward me and force myself to smile.

“Looks like you won this,” he tells me as I stare up at his handsome smile and get that ridiculous fluttery feeling in my stomach again. I’m thirty years old, not thirteen

“Won?” I shake my head, wondering what he’s talking about, and when he drops those glistening blue eyes to the huge hamper he’s carrying, he smirks.

“The church raffle,” he reminds me.

I totally forgot that Isabel had railroaded me into buying a ticket this morning. Since I still haven’t accepted her and Mayor Kelley’s invite to join them for dinner or attended a single Sunday service since I’ve been in town, I felt obliged.

“I forgot all about that.” I laugh as I take it out of his hands and almost topple over from the weight of it.

“You’re lucky, you got Jean’s contribution to the prize table. That’s much better than old man Harris’s rotting homegrown vegetables, ” he assures me.

“Old man Harris?” I don’t recall him. I’ve been in this town for four and a half months now. I thought I was familiar with everyone.

“Ahhh, you won’t know him, he only ever comes into town for church on a Sunday, or for a funeral, and I hear from a very reliable source that you ain’t a churchgoer, Sheriff Hale.” I can tell from the huge grin he’s wearing that he’s teasing me.

“Well, I hear from my own source that neither are you.” I swipe back.

“Too late for me darlin’, my soul’s already damned.” He shakes his fingers through his hair and somehow makes being damned look cute.

“Are you sure all this running around on a Sunday, delivering raffle winners’ prizes for Jean, isn’t an attempt at redemption?” I question him, wondering how I’ve managed to keep myself away from this man for so long. He always seems to put me on an instant high.

“Nah, I just figured you couldn’t keep avoiding me if I found a reason to talk to ya.” He scratches the back of his neck in the same nervous way he did when he offered to give me a baby three months ago, and that reckless inner voice screams at me again.

I have been avoiding Sawyer, but all for good reason. Taking him up on his offer would be a complete disaster. I’ve chosen Clearwater Creek as the place to raise my child, and this town is his home. His being my child's father and not being part of its life would never work with us being so close to each other, yet every time I think about having something that’s his, growing inside me, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes me desperate to say yes.

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