*
Sawyer Gallagher looked up from the tree he was passing through the baler to scan the lot, something he’d been doing regularly for the past couple of hours as he anticipated his sister’s arrival. This time, his vigilance was rewarded by the sight of Lacey walking toward him.
His sister was home. She was free. She was safe.
The rush of relief that hit him was so profound he had to reach out a hand to steady himself on the tree baler.
Finally, it was over. There would be no more fighting off dread every time the phone rang out of polite hours, and he would never again have to trek into Billings and go through the time-consuming process of being cleared to visit an inmate. Most importantly, he would no longer have to watch the light in his sister’s eyes harden and, finally, dull until all he could see inside her was the dogged determination to endure and survive.
Hard on the heels of his relief came an unexpected rush of anger so primal and visceral the heat of it scorched through him like a blowtorch. He exhaled on a rush, sideswiped by his own emotional response. And then he got it—for so long it had been about the trial, and then Lacey’s safety. But she was home now, which meant he could cease worrying about what might happen and simply be furious with her for the way she’d messed up her life.
And she had messed it up, spectacularly. His sister had made so many bad decisions, been so willfully blind… He’d warned her, but she’d gone her own way anyway, and it had broken their parents’ heart and destroyed Lacey’s future.
When Lacey stopped in front of him, Sawyer didn’t know which was stronger – the urge to hug her or the urge to shake her until her teeth rattled in her head. Caught between the two impulses, he simply stared at her, taking in her pallor and the new fullness to her face while he fought for a grip on his runaway emotions.
“Was beginning to think they hadn’t let you out,” he said after a long beat.
“There was some stuff going down at the prison,” Lacey said.
She glanced at the ground, averting her face momentarily, and he knew he’d wounded her with his tepid welcome. It was too late to go in for the big welcome home hug now, though. The moment had passed, and his chest still burned with the unexpected force of his anger.
“How did the big pick-ups go?” Lacey asked.
He’d had a number of Scout troops through this morning, picking up their annual allotments for local fundraising drives. Between him and Henry, one of his full-timers, they’d loaded up nearly a hundred trees.
“They went. Sorry I couldn’t reschedule them.”
The original plan had been for him to collect Lacey from prison, but her release date had been moved several times, finally landing on a day that he simply couldn’t be absent from the business.
“It’s nearly Christmas. I get it,” Lacey said with a shrug.
They’d both grown up around the family’s Christmas tree farm, and were familiar with the intense workload of selling season.
“Your room’s all ready and there’s plenty of food in the fridge if you’re hungry. I won’t be able to stop for long, not today,” Sawyer said.
During the few minutes they’d been talking, two more cars had pulled into the parking lot, and a slim woman with bright auburn hair and glasses was hovering near one of the oil drums, warming her hands while she waited for someone to come serve her.
“I’ve had lunch already. I’ll just get a coffee for Jenna, then I can pitch in and help out,” Lacey offered.
“You don’t have to jump right in,” he said.
Even though an extra pair of hands would be a gift from heaven right now, his sister had just spent three years inside, having her every movement monitored and corralled. Lacey deserved a couple of days to decompress, at the very least.
“I want to get back into things. I want to work,” Lacey said, her tone uncompromising.
He was about to respond when she turned and waved at the auburn-haired woman waiting by the oil drum.
“Jenna. Come meet my brother,” Lacey called.
Sawyer took a closer look at the woman who’d taken on his sister’s case as Jenna moved toward them. He’d exchanged a couple of emails with Lacey’s new lawyer when it had become clear he wouldn’t be able to collect Lacey today and he’d gotten the impression from them that she was an older woman.
But this woman wasn’t old, not by a long shot.
She was tall and slim-hipped, her long legs clad in black tailored trousers. On top she wore a matching black blazer with a crisp white shirt buttoned to her neck, the lot covered by a hip-length, navy peacoat that wasn’t doing enough to protect her from the crisp weather if her crossed-arm posture was anything to go by.
She had very fair skin, which he figured went with the red hair, and a neat little nose. When she stopped in front of him, he found himself looking into a pair of pale, almost translucent green eyes. He could see bright intelligence behind them, as well as a good measure of professional reserve.
“Jenna, this is Sawyer, my brother,” Lacey said.
Jenna’s smile was polite as she offered him her hand. “Good to meet you, Sawyer.”
Her slender hand disappeared within his, and suddenly he was acutely aware of the fact that he hadn’t had a haircut for six months and that his I’m-too-busy-to-shave beard probably made him look like a crazed axe murderer. Then there was the fact that there were sap-stains on his jeans, scuff marks on his metal-toed boots, and duct tape criss-crossed on one shoulder of his puffer jacket, covering the slash he’d scored last week wrestling with a recalcitrant Douglas fir.
“You, too,” he said, quickly averting his gaze from her face. It was that, or get lost staring into her striking eyes.
“You want a coffee?” Lacey said to Jenna.
Sawyer frowned. The cabin was not visitor-ready right now. He’d tidied up a little in honor of Lacey coming home, but she was his sister. He knew she wouldn’t give a crap about the pile of dishes in the sink, or the tower of magazines and newspapers on the coffee table, or the fact that the toilet seat was almost certainly up.
Jenna Macintosh would notice those things, though. It had only taken one glance into her clear, green eyes for him to know she paid attention to what was going on around her.
Lacey started herding Jenna across the parking lot before the other woman had a chance to respond to her question. He watched them for a few seconds, taking in the feminine sway to Jenna’s walk.
Shoving his hands into his coat pockets, he started after them, feeling more and more caught short with every second. His boot steps rang loudly as he climbed the stairs to the front porch behind the two women. Lacey led the way into the cabin, peeling off her jacket the moment she hit the warmth of the central heating. Jenna did the same, and Sawyer froze on the threshold as he got an eyeful of her backside.
Nice. Very nice.
He used his foot to nudge the door closed, and it slammed shut, causing both women to glance his way.