Green Mountain Collection 1 by Marie Force (25)

“Shit,” Nolan muttered, running fingers through his hair.

“At least we were dressed,” Hannah said with a small smile.

“There is that.”

“Feel free to sneak out. I’ll let them know it was on the up and up. Not that I feel the need to explain myself to them, but I will just the same.”

“I’m not sneaking out. We’ll face them together.”

That he was unwilling to take the easy way out of an embarrassing encounter with her parents made Hannah’s insides flutter.

“Shall we face the music?” he asked with a wry smile that drew one from her, too.

“If we must.”

Nolan’s hand on the small of her back eased her nerves as Hannah walked into her kitchen to find her mom bustling about making coffee and her dad pretending to be absorbed in the newspaper he’d already read at home.

“Sorry to barge in on you,” Molly said.

Was it Hannah’s imagination or was her fearless mom having trouble looking at her or Nolan? Her entire family had been coming and going without so much as a knock at her house since Caleb died. They’d never had to worry about walking in on something because nothing had ever happened. Until last night . . .

“We just wanted to check on you,” Lincoln added, seeming mortified by the entire thing. “After Homer and all . . .”

“It’s fine, Dad. We were talking and fell asleep. Nothing scandalous.”

“We . . . didn’t see your truck outside, Nolan, or we never would’ve come in,” Molly said, her face flushed with embarrassment that was so far out of character for her that Hannah could only stare.

“It’s in the garage.” Nolan’s voice was calm despite the awkwardness of the situation. “We didn’t want the whole town talking about us before we were ready to be talked about.”

The press of his fingers against her back reassured her, as did his steady presence next to her. She’d forgotten what it was like to be half of a couple. Not that she’d go so far as to call them an official couple, but having him stand by her side in front of her parents went a long way toward lowering her defenses where he was concerned.

“Makes a lot of sense,” Lincoln said gruffly, which brought back fond memories of how ridiculously overprotective he’d been when Hannah first began dating. He’d grilled all her dates as if they were planning to run away and marry her rather than take her to the movies. Only Caleb hadn’t been intimidated, but he’d known her dad for years by the time he started dating Lincoln’s daughter. “That coffee ready yet, Mol?”

“Coming right up.”

Nolan took advantage of their preoccupation with the coffee to press a light kiss to her temple. “I’ve got to get to work. I’ll call you later.”

Hannah smiled up at him and nodded.

“See you later, Mr. and Mrs. Abbott.”

“Bye, Nolan,” they said in unison.

Hannah walked him through the mudroom and held the door to the garage open for him as he stepped into the boots he’d left there the night before. “Sorry again about my folks.”

“They’re fine,” he said. “They’re doing what any decent parents would do the day after their daughter suffered a painful loss.”

Hannah experienced a pang of sadness at the thought of Homer. She was really and truly alone now. Well, except for her humongous family and loving friends, especially the one who was looking at her now with concern etched into his handsome face.

“You okay?”

“I will be. Your company helped a lot last night. I appreciate you staying.”

“It was a terrible hardship, but somehow I survived.”

Her smile stretched from ear to ear.

“That’s a beautiful thing,” he said softly, gazing down at her with unabashed affection. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and ran his finger over her cheek, making her nearly swoon from the sweetness of his gesture. Then he zeroed in on her lips, making her body heat from the memories of what had transpired between them during the night.

Hannah licked her lips, and his eyes burned with desire as he gazed at the slide of tongue over lips. “What’s a beautiful thing?”

“That smile. I’d do anything to see it every day.” He brushed a kiss so fleeting over her lips that Hannah barely had time to register that he was kissing her before it was over.

She wanted to plead for more, but this wasn’t the time or the place for more.

“I’ll see you soon.”

Hannah nodded and pressed the button to the garage door opener, closing it after he’d backed his truck into the driveway. Before she returned to face her parents, Hannah took a series of deep breaths, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt. She pressed cold hands to her face, but that did nothing to address the pounding of her heart or the dryness in her mouth.

When she walked back into the kitchen, her dad popped up from the table with comical speed. “I’ve got to get going to work.” He kissed his wife, who patted his arm as she smiled at him. “George and Ringo are probably tearing up the Rover waiting for me.” He kissed Hannah. “Let me know if I can do anything for you, honey. Anything at all.”

Hannah leaned into him, breathing in the familiar and comforting scent of the aftershave he’d worn all her life. “Thanks, Dad.” She had no doubt that he’d sell his soul to the devil to save her from one additional minute of pain in her lifetime, and she loved him for that. But she also knew he had no desire whatsoever to hear the details of her evening with Nolan.

Her mother on the other hand took a seat at the table with a steaming mug of coffee, settling in to talk it out.

Her dad left, and Hannah turned to face her mother.

Molly raised a brow in silent inquiry. “So.”

“So.” No one said Hannah had to make it easy on her.

“Not in the mood to chat?” Molly asked.

Hannah took her time pouring a much-needed cup of coffee. She moved deliberately to stir in cream and a bit of sugar. “Not particularly.”

“Hannah . . .”

“Mom . . .”

Molly blew out a breath that gave away her exasperation. “You always were the toughest of my nuts to crack.”

“In a pack of ten, a girl’s gotta do what she can to stand out.”

“I have to say that in spite of your decision to torture your poor old mom, I’m glad to see you smiling this morning. We were worried that Homer’s death would be a setback for you.”

“I’m trying not to let that happen.” Hannah stared into her mug as the dream from the night before resurfaced with clarity that made her heart ache.

“What is it, honey?” Molly asked. “I hope you know I’m not looking to pry, but I want to help if I can.”

“I know you do.” Hannah debated for a full minute, trying to decide if she could really give voice to the torturous thoughts that had plagued her since she woke from the dream. “Last night,” she began haltingly, still staring at her mug, “I dreamed about Caleb for the first time in a long time.”

“Oh honey. That happened when Nolan was here?”

Hannah nodded. “He was great about it though.”

“I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

“In the dream . . . Homer was running to Caleb.” She finally glanced at her mother. “The way he used to.”

Molly’s eyes glistened as she smiled. “Leaping into his arms?”

“Yeah. They were so happy to see each other.”

“Of course they were.” Molly brushed at a tear as she forced a cheerful tone. “They were the very best of friends.”

“Caleb looked so good. He was smiling and laughing and holding out his arms to Homer. His hair was long, like in college, and he just seemed so . . . alive and so . . .”

Molly’s warm hand covered hers. “So what?”

“So beautiful,” Hannah said with a sigh. “He was so beautiful. He hated when I said that. He said it made him feel like a pussy.” Molly’s ringing laugh made Hannah smile. “Sorry, I know you hate that word.”

“Caleb loved a lot of words I hate.”

“That he did.” Her husband’s colorful vocabulary was one of the things she missed most about him, even if his language had mortified her at times. There was nothing he wouldn’t say, and the word filter wasn’t in his dictionary.

Molly continued to chuckle and dab at her eyes. “I can so hear him saying that.”

“He said it all the time because I told him frequently how beautiful he was.”

“He never had a doubt that you loved him with your whole heart and soul, Hannah. Not one single doubt.”

“I know. When I saw him in the dream, I wanted so badly to run to him, but I couldn’t. Even though I was asleep, I knew I could only look but not touch. And then when I woke up with Nolan . . .” Hannah swallowed hard because this was the part that had torn her up. “I realized that if faced with the choice, I’d always choose Caleb, which is so unfair to Nolan. How do I start something with him knowing I’d always choose Caleb over him?”

“You’ll never have to make that choice, honey. Life and fate and God or whatever you want to believe has already made it for you. Caleb was your past, and perhaps Nolan is your future, but you don’t have to choose one of them over the other. You’ll always love Caleb, and any man you end up with will have to understand that Caleb is as much a part of you as your lovely brown eyes or your art or your great big family.”

“What if, in the next life, they’re both standing there before me at the gates to heaven, and I go running to Caleb?”

“If you were to have thirty or forty years with Nolan, you might not run to Caleb. Did you consider that?”

It had never crossed her mind that she might one day come to love someone else more than she’d loved Caleb. How was that even possible? But if her mother was right, it was not only possible, it was probable that she might form a deeper bond over decades than the one she’d shared with Caleb in the twelve years they’d had together.

“What’re you thinking?”

“That I probably have no business starting something with Nolan when I’m still so screwed up over Caleb.”

“You’re not screwed up, Hannah. You’re the strongest, most courageous, resilient person I’ve ever known, and I couldn’t be more proud of the way you’ve conducted yourself in the years since we lost Caleb.”

Her mother’s forcefully spoken words brought tears to Hannah’s eyes.

“You’ve earned the right to be happy, and if Nolan makes you happy, spend time with him. Give yourself permission to start over.”

“I want to. I really do, especially because it’s him, and he loved Caleb so much. He gets it, you know?”

Molly nodded in agreement. “When he first took a shine to you, I couldn’t decide if his friendship with Caleb would be a pro or a con. I can see how it would help you to move forward with someone who lived through it and understands what you’ve lost.”

“Right. But . . . I often wonder if it would be easier and less risky to just be by myself.”

“It’d be both those things and awfully lonely, too.”

Hannah could attest to the loneliness. After years of contentment with her own company, she’d begun to chafe a bit lately at the boundaries she’d set for herself. As the long cold winter came to an end and spring began to bloom all around her, she wondered if it wasn’t also time to step outside the cocoon and start over again.

The night she’d spent with Nolan, the heated kisses they’d shared, the desire he could barely hide made her want to reach for the brass ring that’d been out of her reach for so long now.

“Why are your cheeks suddenly bright red?”

Damn her mother’s never-ending intuition. “No reason.”

“That doesn’t look like no reason to me. You know you want to tell someone . . . Why not me?”

Hannah laughed at her mother’s shameless campaign for info. “Fine! I kissed him. A lot. There! Are you happy?”

“Are you? That’s the more important question.”

“I’m . . . intrigued.”

“That’s not happy—yet. But it’s an excellent start.”

After a quick stop at home to shower and change, Nolan arrived at the garage where six cars had already been delivered by their owners. His eyes were gritty from the lack of sleep, and he was chugging his second coffee of the morning as he started with the easiest job—an oil change and filter on a Dodge SUV.

An hour into what should’ve been a half-hour job, Nolan snapped out of a daze to discover he was staring at the engine as he relived the amazing night with Hannah. Thinking about how it had felt to hold her and kiss her and sleep with her in his arms ran through his mind like a movie he never wanted to stop watching.

For so long, he’d thought about what it might be like to spend that kind of time with her, but the reality was much better than the fantasy. And if he continued to think about her, he’d still be here at ten o’clock tonight when he certainly had better things to do.

He buckled down and finished the oil change, rotated tires and dug into a complex transmission issue, all before noon when his so-called assistant, Skeeter, came rambling in looking like something the cat had dragged home. That thought made Nolan chuckle under his breath as the always eclectic Skeeter was known throughout Butler for putting his dead cat in his mother’s freezer and forgetting about it for ten years.

“Mornin’,” Skeeter grumbled. His fine white hair stood straight up, giving him the appearance of having grappled with electricity and come out on the bad end of the encounter. At just barely five foot, eight inches, he had a wiry, compact frame and a face full of broken blood vessels thanks to his love of moonshine.

“Afternoon.” Nolan knew it was pointless to remind Skeeter that he’d promised to show up early in the day to deal with two cars in need of body work. No one did bodies the way Skeeter did, which was one of many reasons Nolan tolerated his flakiness. When he decided to show up, that is.

“Had to help Dude with the puppies.”

The best part of Skeeter’s flakiness was the wide variety of excuses he always arrived with. “What puppies?”

“Her bitch Maisy had a litter couple weeks ago. Them pups are driving poor Dude crazy with their nonstop yippin’ and crappin’.”

“What breed is Maisy again?”

Skeeter snorted out a laugh. “Who the fuck knows?”

“Take me to see the puppies.” The words were out of his mouth before he took the time to think about what he was saying.

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Now.”

“As long as you ain’t gonna blame me if the work don’t get done.”

“Now, Skeeter, when have I ever blamed you for not getting your work done?”

“Shit,” Skeeter said with a low chuckle as he spat out a stream of chewing tobacco into the parking lot. “When doncha blame me?”

Chuckling, Nolan wiped the grease off his hands, closed the main garage doors, switched the office phone over to the answering service and locked up. When he emerged into the parking lot, he wasn’t at all surprised to see Skeeter sitting in the passenger seat of his truck. He was miserly when it came to gas, hoarding the free gas Nolan gave him once in a while.

Nolan drove through town, over the one-lane covered bridge and past the huge red barn on Hells Peak Road where Hannah and her siblings had grown up. The sight of the barn spurred the memory of her parents catching them sleeping together on the sofa that morning. So embarrassing. Nolan hoped Mr. and Mrs. Abbott didn’t think less of him, because that would truly suck. He’d always loved them and their family had given him a respite in the storm of his childhood. He would hate to lose their respect.

“Whatcha want with puppies anyhow?” Skeeter asked as Nolan navigated the twists and turns on the way to the home of Gertrude “Dude” Danforth, Skeeter’s so-called girlfriend.

“A friend of mine recently lost an older dog, and she might be in the market for a puppy at some point.”

“A friend, huh? Would this so-called friend be related in any way to Hannah Guthrie?”

Damn if the question didn’t make Nolan want to fidget. He resisted the urge and shrugged in reply to the question. “Maybe.”

“Heard she lost old Homer yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“He was Caleb’s dog, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s gonna be tough on Hannah.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re sweet on that girl, ain’tcha?”

Nolan released a gruff laugh. Sweet on her. That was putting it mildly. “Something like that.”

Skeeter grunted in reply, but didn’t pursue the matter any further. For that, Nolan was grateful as he pulled into the long dirt driveway that led to Dude’s place. The rusty wagon wheel that held up her mailbox was the only indication that anyone lived in this remote corner of Butler, and Nolan drove slowly as one never knew what creatures they’d find patrolling Dude’s property.

People in town called her Snow White because of her eclectic collection of “pets,” which ranged from a bombastic rooster to a domesticated raccoon to coyotes that used to run wild until Dude took them in and made them part of the family. Some believed Dude was responsible for converting Fred the Moose from a wild animal to the somewhat civilized fellow he was now. The Snow White nickname was particularly amusing once you got a load of Dude, who stood well over six feet tall and at least two feet wide. Nolan had never seen her in anything other than denim overalls, flannel shirts, shitkicker boots and a huge straw hat. Since she was never without the hat, people speculated as to whether or not she slept in it.

Nolan would’ve asked Skeeter if that was true, except for the idea of Skeeter sleeping with Dude wasn’t something he wanted to think about, so he kept his curiosity to himself. He brought the truck to a stop next to the chicken coop where Dude was spreading feed, oblivious to her visitors.

Skeeter got out of the truck and barked out a greeting to her.

She spun around and met him at the waist-high chicken-wire fence with a warm, suggestive smile. “Back so soon, lover?”

Oh my God. Nolan’s stomach turned, and his eyes darted around the cluttered yard, searching for anything to look at besides the kiss Dude was planting on Skeeter’s willing lips. Christ, have mercy. She had to duck her head to even get to his lips. Stop looking!

“Nolan wants to see the pups,” Skeeter explained when they came up for air.

She looked over Skeeter’s shoulder at Nolan. “That right?”

Nolan nodded.

“For you?”

“For a friend.”

“I need to know who before I’ll consider giving one up.”

“Hannah Guthrie.”

“Oh,” Dude said, her face softening again. “Of course. Come have a look.” She stepped out of the chicken coop and led them across the yard to a barn that had a sagging roof and rusty old farm implements discarded outside. To the far left was a tractor that had seen much better days.

Maisy and her pups were inside a stall lined with wool blankets. The new mother was lying on her side as her babies climbed all over her, some of them attached to her extended teats to feed while others wrestled with their siblings. Maisy raised her head to check out the visitors, caught sight of Dude, and relaxed again.

Nolan smiled with delight at the tiny, energetic puppies. They had patches of brown, black and white, their breed impossible to determine on sight. “Any thoughts on their lineage?” Nolan asked.

“Nope,” Dude replied. “Maisy is very private about her love life, so I have no idea who the daddy is. And God only knows what she is. My guess is part beagle, part shepherd, part Doberman, but I honestly haven’t the first clue. She’s a sweet girl though. Wonderful disposition. She’s a lover, too. Very snuggly.”

Mesmerized by the frenetic activity in the stall, Nolan noticed one of the puppies stood off to the side of the fray, taking it all in as his or her siblings carried on. “What’s up with that guy?”

“He’s a bit aloof, that one. Likes to watch the others act like asshats while he remains above it all.”

The description reminded Nolan of the way Hannah was with her siblings. She was quieter than the other nine Abbotts, reserved, more likely to observe rather than seek the center of attention. “Is he spoken for?”

“Not yet.”

Nolan watched the puppy as one of the others approached him, wanting to play. He nuzzled the intruder and sent him on his way with a gentle nudge that made Nolan smile. “I think Hannah would adore him.” He hoped he was right about that. In truth, he had no way to know whether or not she’d welcome the puppy so soon after losing Homer.

“I’ll keep him for her,” Dude said. “They need another week or so with mom before I start finding homes for them.”

“You’ll let me know when I can come pick him up?”

“I will.” She rested her hand on Nolan’s arm. “It’s a sweet thing you’re doing for her. Every time I’ve lost one of my precious fur babies, I always get another one right away. I like to think I’m honoring the memory of the one I lost by giving a good home to a new friend. Your Hannah will think so, too.”

At hearing Hannah called “his” Hannah, Nolan’s heart skipped a happy beat even as he wondered what she’d have to say about being called “his” anything. He’d wanted her for such a long time, and after last night, he wanted her more than ever. It wasn’t even the physical part, which was amazing. It was her. Just her. Being around her calmed him and completed him in a way that nothing or no one else ever could. He’d accepted that fact of his life quite some time ago, when he began to understand it would be her or no one.

“We oughta get back to work,” Skeeter said, jarring Nolan from his contemplation.

The idea of Skeeter being the one to suggest they get to work was as comical as the antics of the puppies flipping over each other in a scrum of paws and tails and sharp little teeth. “Thanks for this, Dude,” Nolan said with one last glance at the little fellow in the corner.

“My pleasure. I think the world of Hannah, and I hope he brings her some much-deserved happiness.”

Nolan hoped so, too, because her happiness was suddenly his top priority.