Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 138588 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138588 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Sawyer likes things the way they are. Alone. No serious connections. Just him simmering in his own unresolved trauma. Like a real man should. But the new schoolteacher is making it hard. And the reappearance of Wyatt in his life isn’t helping. Years before, Sawyer had joined an outlaw MC when his brother had gotten in trouble. Wyatt had been a true friend, and when he needs a short-term place to stay, Sawyer can’t turn him out. Short term turns way longer, and the baddest man in Bliss has to admit it’s not terrible to have a friend. But there’s no way he’s getting involved with the sweetest thing he’s ever met.
Wyatt wants Sabrina the minute he sees her. He’s spent his whole life in the equivalent of a criminal, violent cult, and he wants some softness. He wants the white picket fence dream of Bliss. His best friend. Their wife. Throw in a super-cute rescue dog and a couple of kids and Wyatt would be in heaven. When his scheming gets all of them snowed in together, he knows he’s got his shot at making this work.
But the MC isn’t done with Wyatt or Sawyer, and Sabrina is exactly the bargaining chip they need…
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Sawyer Hathaway stared at the Bliss Town Hall like it was a snake that could bite him. Would bite him. Might bite him. Maybe.
He growled and was reminded he wasn’t alone when a canine head came up, swiveling and looking around for a threat. The German shepherd mix was proof that things happened to him when he moved into this weird world. He’d found the dog eating out of the trash bin behind the bar he owned. She’d been skinny as hell and flea bitten and scared. He should have shooed her away, but he’d known the minute she whined and tried to grab a moldy, half-eaten sandwich that he would at least take her in for the night. He’d fed her and given her a warm place to sleep and taken her straight to Noah Bennett’s animal clinic here in Bliss.
And somehow he’d left with her and a bunch of medications Noah had convinced him she needed. Now he had a dog.
He wasn’t a guy who had a pet. He was a badass, a once upon a time criminal, a dude the sheriff feared. He wasn’t a dog dad.
“It’s okay.” He reached out and patted her head. “The only threat here is to my dignity. The sheriff doesn’t like me. Probably because he’s an ex-DEA agent and I used to be a member of an MC that ran a shit ton of drugs. I didn’t do it for the money, but I don’t think the sheriff wants a rundown on how I went into a life of crime to try to save my brother.”
The same brother who’d stood in front of him and told him he didn’t want to see him again because Sawyer was part of a life he wasn’t ever going back to. Now Wes had a wife and kid and a house in Denver, and Sawyer hadn’t seen the brother he’d spent much of his life and pieces of his soul trying to protect in years.
The dog stared at him with soulful eyes. She was a good listener. She was probably the only listener Sawyer’d had since he’d joined the Colorado Horde. He’d had friends before then. Ty and Lucy and River. He’d pushed them away because of the danger he’d represented in those years and was only now finding his way back, which was precisely why he was sitting in his Jeep as the town Christmas party went on in front of him. He watched as Max Harper herded one of his kids inside. The boy. Sawyer would bet his wife Rachel had taken their oldest, Paige, with her when she came in to set up for the party. Sure enough, Rye Harper, Max’s twin brother and Rachel’s other husband, hustled in behind them.
Max Harper. Sawyer shook his head. “Even after all these years it’s weird to think of Max as a dad. As a husband, really. He’s the single biggest asshole I’ve ever met, and I’ve met Taggart. Max was born an asshole. Like the man was born without a single fuck to give. The good news is his brother seems to have gotten an adequate amount. Still have no idea how Rachel puts up with him. Not that I know her well. She doesn’t exactly frequent Hell on Wheels.”
Hell on Wheels was a world he understood. It was the bar his granddad had started over forty years before, and Sawyer had ended up in charge when he’d died five years back. Just in time for Sawyer to find refuge there. The bar had become the bane of his existence and his sanctuary. He worked and then went home to sleep, and then started it all over again. He rarely came into Bliss, preferring to drive hours to larger towns where no one asked questions or tried to make small talk.
No one asked about his dog or if he’d finally named his dog, and how the hell did he have a dog?
There was a tap on his window, and it took everything Sawyer had not to reach for the gun he kept close at all times—a habit mostly from those years when the world had been brutal and dangerous. Luckily he’d trained it out of himself enough so he didn’t point a gun in Jax Lee’s face.
The smiling dude waving at him while standing in the snow had married Sawyer’s childhood friend years before. “Hey, Sawyer. How’s it going? You missed the dinner party last Saturday.”
It was past time to get this over with. He might be able to pawn everything off on Jax and get back in time to… Work a shift he wasn’t supposed to work? Lark would get pissy with him since she rarely got to handle the bar by herself. Apparently he was overbearing or something according to his employees. Lark had been happy to send him off, perfectly thrilled to have a Saturday night all to herself. Well, and the other three employees working this evening. Lark and Sidney would handle the bar and customers, while Gil worked the fryer and Joe punched the crap out of anyone who thought Lark and Sid were on the menu. The Saturday night crowd could be rough. It was precisely why he almost never skipped one.