Pause. SNOW overnight, a bitter wind tearing down the valley all day. No chance of a sap run.
—Colton Abbott’s sugaring journal, April 2
In the time it took to walk across the small room, Lucy summoned her inner she-cat vixen and prepared to do battle. Unlike the visitor she’d heard Colton talking to outside earlier, this one sounded young. She’d bet there was no lack of women interested in spending some time with her mountain man.
Her mountain man. Where in the hell had that thought come from, and when had she begun to think of him as hers? Probably about five minutes after she met him, if she were being honest with herself.
Realizing she needed to pull out her biggest guns, she tugged the neckline of her dress down to put her considerable cleavage to good use.
She cracked open the door wide enough to poke her head out, but not wide enough that the strikingly gorgeous blonde on Colton’s doorstep could see inside. “May I help you?” Lucy whispered.
Cold brown eyes took a quick assessing look at Lucy and dismissed her as no significant threat. She was used to the instant dismissal as well as the disdainful look. She’d been on the receiving end of it from other women for most of her adult life. “Where’s Colton, and who are you?”
“I’m Lucy, and Colton is under the weather.”
“What does that mean? Under the weather?”
“He’s not well.”
Blondie took a step back. “Oh . . . Who are you again?”
“Lucy.”
“And you’re his . . . his . . . ?”
“Nurse,” Lucy said. “I’m his nurse. I was called in to manage his injury.”
“Injury? What injury?”
“Oh you didn’t hear?” Lucy grimaced dramatically. “The axe caught him. In a bad, bad place. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but he might not be able to, you know, ever again.”
Blondie’s eyes got all buggy. “Ever?”
“Never,” Lucy said gravely. “It’s as bad as it gets.”
“God, that’s an awful tragedy.”
“Indeed it is. I’ll be happy to tell him you came by, but he’s on some serious painkillers. It might be a while before he’s lucid again.”
“Yeah . . . Um, sure. Tell him Angie was here, and I’m really, really sorry to hear about his . . . um, his injury.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him. It was so good of you to check on him.”
“I’d better go. I wouldn’t want to disturb him.”
“That’s very kind of you. I’m sure he’ll appreciate your consideration.”
Lucy watched Angie run more than walk to her car and smiled with satisfaction when Angie left a cloud of dust in her wake. That, Lucy thought, should take care of that. Pleased with herself and her quick thinking, she shut the door and turned to find Colton standing right behind her.
She let out a shriek of surprise.
Wearing only basketball shorts, he moved toward her, forcing her to back up until she was pinned against the door by his much bigger body. “You are positively evil, do you know that?”
“Evil is such a strong word.”
“Do you know it’ll take about fifteen minutes for all of Butler to know that I chopped up my boy parts with an axe?”
She batted her eyelashes, going for pure innocence. “Will it take that long?”
“Evil,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Look at the bright side.”
“Is there a bright side?”
“Of course there is.” She smiled brightly. “We won’t have any more visitors.”
“I’ll let you explain my devastating injury to my family at dinner since you’re the one who started the axe rumor.”
Lucy would never admit that she hadn’t given his family a single thought as she conspired to get rid of Angie—and anyone else who might be on the way up to visit—as expeditiously as she could. “Maybe they won’t hear about it,” she said hopefully.
“Oh they’ll hear, and so will we. You can count on that.”
She flattened her hands on his chest. “I’m really sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” he said with a bark of laughter. “You’re not the slightest bit sorry.”
“Well, I’m a teeny tiny bit sorry that your mom might hear the rumor and worry about you.” She looked up at him. “But I’m not at all sorry if my story keeps all the single ladies off your mountain for the foreseeable future.”
“Is that your way of saying you want to be exclusive?”
She recoiled in horror. “We aren’t already?”
Colton shrugged. “I wasn’t sure. You’ve been sort of uncertain about this whole thing from the beginning. You only told me yesterday that you want it to be a thing and not just a fling.”
Lucy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So you’ve been like . . . seeing other people between our weekends? How many other people? Angie and who else?”
“Wow, you sound kind of pissed.”
“Kind of?” Infuriated was more like it. Had he been playing her this whole time? She pushed hard on his chest, trying to dislodge him, but the beast wouldn’t budge. “Get off me!” She curled her hands into fists and pounded, which only hurt her hands when they connected with solid muscle. “Are you laughing?”
His entire body was shaking with silent laughter.
“This is not funny!”
“It’s hilarious from where I’m standing.”
She grabbed a handful of his chest hair and tugged. Hard.
“Ow! Shit!”
“Not so funny now, huh?”
“Lucy.”
“Let me go!
“Lucy.”
She pushed, she shoved, she pinched, but rather than take the hint that she wanted him gone, he kissed her.
“Lucy,” he said between kisses. “There’s been no one but you since the first time I laid eyes on you.”
Since she was still struggling to break free of him, it took a second for his words to permeate the cloud of rage. And then she realized what he’d said and all her muscles went slack.
“There.” He kissed her again, softly. “No one else, Lucy. Only you.”
“You’re a beast.”
“You impugned my manhood.”
“So this was revenge?”
“Revenge is such a strong word.”
She punched him in the belly and howled when her hand connected with a cement wall of muscle.
He took her hand and kissed her poor knuckles. “Don’t hurt yourself, honey.”
“Don’t call me honey. I’m mad at you.”
Reaching for her other hand, he began walking backward to the bed.
Lucy resisted to the best of her ability, but he’d already proven that her strength was no match for his. That was how she found herself on top of him looking down at his adorably amused face, held in place by his incredibly strong arms. “You really are a twelve-year-old, you know that?”
Laughing, he raised a hand to tuck a curl behind her ear. “I thought I was fifteen, and besides, you had it coming. Did you really tell Angie, of all people, that I’d lopped off my junk with an axe?”
“I only said you’d had an accident. A bad accident. I never mentioned the word junk or the word lopped.”
“Yet she left here thinking Colton Abbott has been neutered.”
“I can’t help what conclusions she jumped to.”
“You knew exactly what you were doing, you little devil.” He framed her face with his big callused hands and drew her into a scorching kiss that he ended with a groan. “We have to go to my parents’ house. We don’t have time to be thorough, and I can’t let the boys get their hopes up again only to have them dashed. They can only take so much disappointment in one day.”
“Poor, tortured Colton. So used to being tended to by all the ladies in town. How do you handle the disappointment when things don’t go your way?”
“I don’t know. It’s never happened before.”
“You really are a beast. Now let me go so I can make myself presentable for your family.”
“You’re already presentable. You’re gorgeous.”
“Keep sucking up. You need all the points you can get right now after that nasty trick.”
“Speaking of sucking up, I haven’t forgotten what was happening when we were rudely interrupted.”
“Dream on, pal. Or better yet, call your friend Angie. I bet she’d be happy to kiss your little boo-boo better.”
“There’s nothing little about it, and the only one who will be kissing it better is you.”
She wriggled out of his embrace and stood by the bed, finger-combing her hair. “So what’s the bathroom situation in this rustic palace of yours?”
“Outside and to the left.”
“Outside.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And is there water?”
“Yep. We’re attached to a well out there and in here. The water pressure isn’t great, but it is what it is.”
“All right then.”
“Want me to get your stuff out of the truck?”
“I’ll get it. Are you going to get ready?”
“I am ready.”
“I’m coming back in my next life as a guy.”
“That’d be a terrible shame, honey.”
Riled and out of sorts after their “fight” but always amused by him nonetheless, Lucy pulled open the door and stepped onto the porch. The air was significantly colder here than it had been at the lake, and she was glad she’d brought a sweater as well as a sweatshirt with her. She stepped off the porch and came face-to-face with a giant animal. Screaming, she took a step back and tripped over a tree root.
Lucy landed hard on her backside as the animal let out a loud “moo.”
Lucy’s scream launched Colton out of bed. He ran for the door and bounded down the stairs to the yard, where he saw Fred the moose having a standoff with Lucy, and judging by the fact that Lucy was flat on her back, Fred seemed to be winning this round.
“Easy, babe.” Colton offered her his hand. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend? He’s a monster.”
“Fred’s a pussycat.”
“That’s Fred? Cameron’s Fred?”
“The one and only.”
Lucy let Colton help her to her feet, and she plastered herself to him, not that he minded. “Holy cow. No wonder her car was nearly totaled. He’s massive!”
“Holy moose, you mean, and he’s big, but he’s a sweetheart.” He brushed the dirt off her backside.
She jolted.
“Are you hurt?”
“Mostly my pride. I landed kind of hard on my butt.” Rubbing her backside, she eyed Fred with trepidation. “I may not be cut out for life in the wild.”
“This is hardly the wild, babe.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He knows I’ve always got some twigs and leaves and other goodies for him, so he stops by for a visit from time to time.”
Sarah and Elmer came running into the yard, barking gleefully at Fred, who nudged at them playfully the way he always did. The three of them were old friends.
Colton kept an arm around Lucy as he walked her to the truck to get her bag and got her safely to what he referred to as the bathhouse. He thought that sounded better than outhouse. He got her a couple of towels and showed her how to work the water.
“How about a mirror?” she asked.
“Oh, um, that might be a problem.”
“You seriously don’t own a mirror?”
“I don’t really need one. I know what I look like, and until recently I hadn’t shaved in years.” She scowled at him, apparently not finding him as funny as he found himself. One thing he would say for Lucy is that she was endlessly amusing. “Don’t you have a mirror app on that fancy phone of yours?”
“A mirror app.”
“Why not? Don’t they have apps for everything else?”
She rummaged through her bag and withdrew her phone. “I thought the signal was supposedly sketchy in the mountains.”
“Cameron says the best service in the area is up here.” He pointed to the east. “Clear shot to the cell towers over in St. J.”
“Ah, look at that. Several mirror apps to choose from.”
“Told ya.”
“Buzz off and let me get ready without an audience.”
He kept his arms propped above his head in the doorway. “What if I want to watch?”
“You’re not watching. Go feed your dogs and your moose.”
“All right, I’m going, but next time I want to watch you get ready.”
She closed the door in his face and slid the lock into place. That door and lock had been there since his grandparents lived here. He figured it was best not to mention that the lock could be temperamental, which was why he never used it.
After he scattered some goodies around the yard for Fred, he brought Sarah and Elmer inside to feed them so Fred wouldn’t get any ideas about sharing in their dinner.
No one was entirely sure how Fred had become so domesticated. Rumor had it that Gertrude “Dude” Danforth, also known in town as Snow White, had worked her animal taming magic on him. As much as Fred was a man about town, the residents were careful not to feed him anything other than what he’d eat in the wild. No one wanted to make it so he couldn’t care for or defend himself if need be.
While he waited for Lucy, Colton changed into a pair of khaki shorts and a collared polo shirt, which were the nicest summer clothes he owned. He stopped short in the middle of the room to wonder why he’d gone to the trouble of dressing up for her. He didn’t dress up for his own mother, so why did he do it for her and why did he do it without even thinking about it?
After a moment of contemplation, he decided he’d done it because he wanted to look nice for her. He wanted to please her. He wanted her to want him, to want to come back again.
She’d certainly dispatched Angie, who was one of the more tenacious of his “groupies,” as his brother Landon liked to call the women who came up to visit him on the mountain.
In the past, he’d encouraged the visits, enjoyed them even. But now, the only woman he was interested in spending time with was Lucy. During the weekends they spent together, he couldn’t get enough of her. While they were apart, he counted down the hours until he could see her again. There was no point in trying to deny that his feelings for her ran deeper than they ever had for anyone else.
He had no idea how long he’d been standing there thinking about her when she came back into the cabin looking sweet and beautiful and nervous.
“Do I look okay?”
Colton realized he was staring at her.
“What? Do I have something on my face or something? The mirror app wasn’t as helpful as it could’ve been.”
Because the attraction was too powerful to resist, he went to her and raised his hands to her neck, using his thumbs to stroke her face. “You look amazing.” He bent his head to kiss her and then took a second taste because the first one was so sweet. “And you have no reason to be nervous.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I can tell by now.”
“Don’t act like you know me so well.”
“I know you, sweetheart, and I also know it’s no small thing to go to dinner at my parents’ house when we were supposed to be spending a quiet weekend alone at the lake. You’ve gotten way more than you signed on for, including a visit with Fred.”
“That is true. You’re going to have to make it up to me when we get back.”
“I’ll try to think of some way I can do that.” He collected her into his arms and held her close. “It’s a big group but a welcoming one. You’ll be fine. I promise.”
“I wish Cam was going to be there.”
“I’ll be right there with you, and I won’t leave your side. I promise I won’t let them bite you or anything.”
“They bite?”
“Lucas and Landon had a little problem with biting for a while there, but they’ve outgrown that now. For the most part.”
“Lovely.”
“I’ll keep them away,” he said with a chuckle. “Shall we do this?”
She took a deep, calming breath and released it slowly. “Yes, let’s go.”