CHAPTER 25
Darby
Linnie lays down a yellow zero on top of my red zero and shouts, “Uno.”
She’s bouncing up and down on her seat at the kitchen table, barely able to contain her excitement.
The play passes to Colt, who studies the four cards in his hand. He grimaces, pulls out a yellow five, and then lays it down.
It’s my turn, and I don’t need to look hard at the two cards left in my hand. I have neither a five nor a yellow card, so I pull one from the draw pile.
My eyes sparkle with competition. I give a smug smile to Linnie before dropping a blue five on top.
Her smile back is ten times more smug than my own. She drops a green five, and I groan.
“I win,” she yells, throwing her hands up in victory before dropping one of them to push her glasses up her nose.
Colt throws his cards down in frustration and looks at me. “It’s unnatural how often she wins this game. That right there was just creepy that she had a three in her hand. If I didn’t know any better, I would say she was cheating.”
“Let’s play again,” Linnie says as she starts gathering all the cards in.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I tell her sternly as I pull the cards out of her hands. “It’s eleven o’clock, and we said that last round was the final hand. It is way past your bedtime, pipsqueak.”
I get a long, drawn out, “M-o-o-o-m-m.”
I shake my head, pointing to the doorway that leads from the kitchen to the staircase. “Upstairs now. Get your teeth brushed, your jammies on, and your booty into bed.”
Linnie huffs with frustration, but she’s also a sweetly obedient kid. She pushes from the chair and looks across the table at Colt. “Goodnight. See you tomorrow?”
Colt smiles at my daughter, and it makes my heart trip a beat. “You got it, sugar.”
Somewhere during one of the early hands of Uno, Linnie had talked Colt into taking her fishing tomorrow. I was invited along, but I don’t do slimy fish.
Linnie turns to me and asks, “Will you tuck me in?”
A surge of tenderness overwhelms me that Linnie still wants me to do something as simple yet needful as tucking her into bed. I get up and say, “Of course I will, kiddo. Let’s go.”
Colt stands up from the table and says, “I better get going.”
I shake my head and give him a sly wink. “Don’t go just yet. I’ll be right back down.”
Colt’s eyebrows rise, and the look of interest on his face only makes him look infinitely more handsome. Knowing he is interested in me on a more intimate level gives me butterflies in my stomach.
Linnie and I trudge up the stairs hand in hand. She chatters away about fishing and pesters me about going to look for chickens. I help her get undressed and slip her nightgown over her head. Linnie crawls into bed, grabs her favorite stuffed animal, which is a beaten-up old brown bear she’s had since she was a baby. She tucks it in close and turns on her side, looking up at me. “Mom… are you going to kiss Colt tonight?”
My jaw drops, and I stare aghast at my daughter. “Why would you ask something like that? You’re only seven—what do you know about kissing?”
Linnie rolls her eyes, meaning my daughter must know more than I give her credit for. Regardless, I shut the conversation down. I had indeed thought about kissing Colt before he left, but I don’t want my daughter thinking about it.
Pulling the covers up to her chin, I lean over and press my lips to her forehead. “You’re far too young to worry about kissing.”
Linnie giggles. In a singsongy voice, she says “Mommy and Colt, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Standing up straight, I give my daughter a chastising look, but turn away from her before I start laughing. I walk to her doorway and before I turn the light off, I glance back at her. She’s so precious laying there staring at me with a sweet smile on her face and a heart full of love.
“Good night, baby.”
“Good night, Mom,” she says. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
My old Linnie is completely back, and nothing in this world makes me happier.
Back downstairs, I find Colt sitting in the living room on one end of the couch. He grins when I come off the bottom step and pats the seat beside him. Shooting me a mischievous grin, he murmurs in a wickedly sexy voice, “Want to come sit beside me and make out for a little bit?”
I put my hand to my mouth, giving him a quick look as I tilt my head and bat my eyelashes. “Why, Mr. Mancinkus… you’re being very bold.”
“You like me being bold,” he asserts confidently in a low voice, no trace of humor at all. He holds his hand out. “Come here, Darby.”
There’s no controlling my feet as I start walking toward him without hesitation. His eyes shimmer in the glow of the table lamp beside him. The minute I place my fingertips against the palm of his hand, I feel that electric snap of recognition and attraction shoot through me.
I put one knee to the couch cushion beside his hip and bring my lips right to his. Somehow, he turns my body so I end up sitting across his lap. It puts me in the perfect position for him to kiss me deeply. More intimately than he has ever kissed me before, even the night he took me to the Carolina basketball game and walked me up to my door. That night we had made out for a few minutes before I went inside, but this is completely different.
Something about sitting on a couch across his lap, knowing it would be very easy for us to just lay down on the couch to make out, which could possibly lead to all kinds of hot and bothering things that we have no business doing with my daughter in her room just up those stairs, makes me doubt what we’re doing.
As if Colt had a peek inside my mind and knew in this moment I was thinking of my daughter, he grips my hair at the back of my head and pulls me gently away. “This was probably a bad idea.”
“I know we said we were going to move slowly, but I really am not feeling like going slow right now.”
“Me either,” he admits in a gruff voice. “Which is really why you need to get off my lap.”
I giggle as he takes me by my hips and sets me on the cushion beside him. He takes my hand in his, and we both kick our feet up on the coffee table, staring at nothing.
“You have a really great kid,” Colt says to break the silence. “You’ve done a remarkable job raising her so far.”
I give a mirthless laugh. “I sure as heck didn’t feel like that when we first arrived in Whynot. She was so angry at me that I was afraid I wouldn’t reach her.”
I roll my head on the cushion to look at Colt. He mimics my actions, and our eyes lock. “I don’t think I would’ve gotten through to her as quickly if it wasn’t for you,” I tell him solemnly. “That day you took her horseback riding was when it all changed. As her mother, I just didn’t think about something as simple as giving my daughter back something she really loved.”
Colt smiles and then leans over to give me a very soft, brief kiss on my lips. “You would have figured it out sooner rather than later.”
“I’d like to kiss you again,” I tell him with an impish grin.
Colt gives me a wicked smile. “Kissing again would be really good. And we can’t get into too much trouble sitting side by side.”
Our bodies start leaning in toward each other, and my eyes drop to his mouth as it gets closer. I raise a hand and place my fingertips against his jaw, which is prickly with a five o’clock shadow.
Just before our mouths touch, Colt’s phone starts ringing.
He mutters a curse and pulls his phone out, disconnecting the call and sending it to voicemail without even looking at the screen. Setting the phone down on the coffee table, he turns back toward me and says, “Let’s try that again.”
We don’t even have time to move toward each other before his phone starts ringing again. Colt frowns and grabs it off the table, turning it to look at the screen. “It’s my dad. Let me get this.”
“Of course.”
Colt connects the call and places the phone to his ear. “What’s up, Dad?”
I have no clue what’s being said on the other end, but Colts entire demeanor changes. He stands suddenly from the couch, and his eyes go dead. “I’m on my way.”
I jump up, knowing that something awful has happened. Given that Colt’s father is the one who called, I immediately suspect something happened to his mother.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as I reach out and touch his arm.
Colt only spares me a quick glance. “The vineyard is on fire.”
“What?” I yell in surprise.
“I gotta go,” he says as he starts toward the door.
“Let me get Linnie and we’ll come with you,” I call after him.
He yells back without even sparing me a glance. “No time.”
And then he’s gone out the door with the screen door slamming shut behind him. For a moment, I’m stunned to inaction, but then I think about that dead look in Colt’s eyes and my feet are moving. I run up the stairs and burst into the Linnie’s room.
When I flip on the light, she sits straight up in bed. “I’m sorry, honey… but I need you to get up and get dressed. We have to go out to Mainer Farms.”
“What happened?” she asks as she jumps out of bed and starts frantically pulling her nightgown off.
I grab the clothes we had taken off her earlier from the hamper and toss them her way. “Colt’s vineyard is on fire. We’re going to go out there and see if we can help.”
She doesn’t ask any further questions, but jumps quickly into action, getting dressed faster than I’ve ever seen my daughter move in my life.
It seems to take forever to drive out to Mainer Farms. My heart sinks when I see a red glow in the distance against the night sky as we make our way down the bumpy farm road that leads straight to the vineyard.
As we come over a ridge, I gasp at the eerie sight before us. Several acres of the vineyard are on fire. It looks to be the wooden trellises blazing, but the heat from those flames has got to be singeing and killing the actual vines.
Colt planted ten acres, and I would guess about a quarter of it is on fire.
He doesn’t have a quarter of his vineyard to spare to such a needless loss.
I put my car in park, reminding myself for the hundredth time I need to get a work truck, and Linnie and I both jump out. My eyes lock on Colt, who is standing with both of his hands placed on top of his head. He’s staring blankly at the inferno before him.
I also see his mother and father, Lowe and Mely, as well as Jake and Laken. Everyone is standing around helplessly because there’s nothing that can be done without a water source. Vaguely, I hear in the distance the sound of sirens coming, but the most the fire department will be able to do is to contain the blaze from spreading. There is no saving what’s already on fire.
“Mom… what happened?” Linnie asks softly as she slides her hand into mine.
I can’t tear my eyes away from the blazing vineyard. “I don’t know.”