Her Cowboy Billionaire Birthday Wish

by Liz Isaacson

  “My wife’s in the living room?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes,” Colton said. “With Lily and Beau and your mother.”

  “Can you stand here with Chrissy?”

  The little girl whined, and Andrew leaned down and placed a kiss on her forehead. “I’m just going to go check on Mommy. I’ll be back in two seconds. Hold Colton’s hand.” And just like that, Andrew stepped away, and Colton stepped into his spot.

  Annie’s heartbeat went wild, but she managed to get one more cloth and wipe away the last of the blood. “Lean your head back, Chrissy. Let Auntie Annie look in your mouth.”

  The little girl did what Annie said, and she found there was more than just a couple of missing teeth. The roof of her mouth looked like ground meat, as did the inside of her lip. She whined, and Annie dropped her lip back into place. “Uncle Liam should be here soon,” she said. “He’ll tell us what we need to do.”

  “Should I make it cold?” Patsy asked, and Annie nodded. She switched the water and prepared another cloth.

  Chrissy actually seemed to sigh at the colder touch of the rag to her mouth, and Annie asked, “Can you hold it there, baby? As tightly as you can.”

  The little girl lifted up her free hand, wobbling a little until Annie balanced her, and held the rag against her lips and teeth. She did not let go of Colton’s hand, and he stayed right at Annie’s side, his hand covering Chrissy’s.

  “You’re doing great,” he said. “Once, when I was a little boy, I fell out of this tree house my brother built.” He put a warm smile on his face, and Annie couldn’t help melting at the sight of it. “He had no idea what he was doing, and I just went poof! Down through the floor.”

  Chrissy looked at him with wide, hazel eyes, clearly entranced with the story. Truth be told, Annie was too.

  “It was close to the trunk, but I had nothing to hold onto, and I just went right on down. The bark scraped up my whole body, and when I landed, I bit my own tongue. It hurt so bad.” He chuckled and shook his head, the sound quiet and the movement slow and soft.

  Annie sure did like him, her feelings for him so strong they made no sense. She barely knew him and had only met him a couple of days ago. But somehow, she sensed that they were cut from the same cloth, and she wished he could feel it too.

  Who says he can’t? she wondered. But he’d spent most of his time here frowning, and Annie didn’t want to push him into somewhere he didn’t want to go. And that was also how she felt—that she was ready for a new, wonderful relationship, but he was not.

  And he’d admitted that he might never be.

  Annie swallowed and looked away as Colton continued his story, claiming he’d had to get a stitch in his tongue because the gash was so deep.

  Chrissy pulled the rag away from her face. “Wow. Can I see?”

  Colton opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. The little girl examined it, her own injuries clearly forgotten. “Can’t see it, can you?” he asked.

  She shook her head, and Annie took the cloth and exchanged it for a new one. “Hold it on there, sweetheart.” Chrissy did, and Annie heard chatter and talking coming from the living room.

  “It healed up real good,” Colton said. “So don’t worry. You’re going to be just fine.”

  “Chrissy?” Liam asked, and Colton stepped to the side as he and Andrew both arrived at the kitchen sink. Liam’s gaze swept the sink, which held plenty of gory cloths, and he added, “Oh, we’ve got some mouth bleeding.” He grinned at her, though he was extremely calm. “Your mom showed me your teeth. Let’s see what else you’ve got.”

  Annie stepped out of the way, and Liam took her place, easily balancing Chrissy against his body too.

  Her adrenaline ebbed, and she turned away from the medical examination, sighing. Before her sat the trail of blood, and thankfully, everyone who’d come in and out of the kitchen had possessed the wherewithal not to step in it.

  “I’ll get the bucket,” she said to Patsy.

  “I’ll start the laundry,” she said. “Then I’ll come help clean up.”

  “I can help,” Colton said too, hopping over the line of blood. “Point me to the bucket, and I’ll get it started. You might want to go change your clothes.” He let his eyes slide down the front of Annie’s body, and she followed his gaze.

  Her entire shirt had blood soaked into it, and Annie gave another sigh. “Okay, let me show you.” She took him around the corner to the closet, where more cleaning supplies were kept. “There’s a bathroom right down the hall there, around the corner on the left. I’d use the tub there. Mop here. Cleaner here.” She plucked the pine-scented floor cleaner from the shelf and handed to him. “I’ll be right back.”

  His eyes burned into hers, but all he did was nod. Annie wanted to say something more to him, but there was simply too much going on right now. So she turned and left him to get the mop bucket ready.

  By the time she returned, all traces of blood had been removed from the kitchen. Colton now worked in the living room, and Patsy had the spot cleaners out as well.

  “It’s on the rug,” she said. “I thought we might be able to get it out one drop at a time, but for every one I get, I find five more.”

  “Just throw it away,” Colton said, swiping the mop back and forth two times. “I’ll get them a new one for Christmas.”

  Annie thought that was a fine idea, and she said, “I agree with Colton. It’s just a rug. Not worth the effort.” She glanced into the kitchen, then to the empty couches. “Where is everyone?”

  “Liam said they should go to the dentist, just to make sure everything is okay,” Patsy said. “He went with Andrew and Becca, and Beau and Lily went for moral support.”

  Annie nodded, her mind cloudy as to what she’d been doing before the emergency. Patsy started spraying the bloodstains on the hard floor, making it easier for Colton to swipe them away with the mop.

  “Where’d you put Elise?” she asked. “She didn’t look good.”

  “Uh, she was right here,” Colton said, looking around as if he could possibly miss a human being in the living room.

  “Maybe she went down to one of the bedrooms,” Patsy suggested.

  “I’ll go find her,” Annie said. “She probably shouldn’t be alone.”

  Colton’s eyes once again weighed on her as she left, but Annie kept her back straight as she disappeared down the hall. Only when she knew he couldn’t see her did she allow the stress to pull through her body.

  She found Elise in the guest bedroom next to the bathroom, her eyes closed as she lay on the bed. “Elise?” she said quietly as she entered. “Are you okay?”

  Elise opened her eyes slowly and nodded. “Yes, I’m okay now.” She sat up, and Annie reached for her hand. Elise worked hard around the lodge, and Annie had always liked her.

  “I didn’t know I couldn’t handle that much blood,” she admitted. “I nearly fainted.”

  “Good to know now,” Annie said with a smile. Elise was fifteen or sixteen years younger than Annie, and she had a charming, fresh-faced look about her that said innocent and pure.

  “How is Chrissy?”

  “She’s doing okay,” Annie said. “They took her down to a dentist.”

  “I think I’d have been okay if I hadn’t just eaten,” Elise said. “Honestly.”

  “I understand.” Annie enjoyed the quiet stillness of the bedroom, the barely-there scent of flowers hanging in the air, the presence of a friend beside her.

  “Hey,” a man said, and Annie blinked a couple of times before she recognized Colton’s voice. “Sorry to interrupt. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Elise patted Annie’s knee and said, “Go on. I’m feeling fine, I swear.”

  Annie looked at her, all of her excuses gone. So she got up and nodded at Colton. “Sure.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Colton led Annie down the hall and down the steps too. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he ended up in the theater room. Annie followed him
like he was in charge, and she closed the door behind them.

  “There’s a movie in here in forty minutes,” she said. “Gulliver’s Travels.”

  “Oh yeah?” Colton didn’t want to talk about the family activities at the lodge, though. He still hadn’t even eaten lunch, and with the sight of all that blood, he wasn’t sure he could stomach anything right now anyway. “I think I’ll be skipping that.”

  A smile slipped across Annie’s face. “Me too. Not my favorite movie.”

  “Bree does a good job with having things for people of all ages, though,” Colton said. “I signed up for a slot to decorate the tree.”

  “Did you? I still haven’t done that.”

  He reached for her hand, his heartbeat thrashing against his ribs now. Their skin touched, and a spark flared up his arm. He settled his fingers right between hers, the fire accelerating and singeing his shoulders and down into his chest now. “Maybe you could help me during my slot.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her eyes still too hard though she’d let him hold her hand. “I’ll have to see what the girls are doing.”

  Colton thought fast, trying to remember what Elise had said to say to Annie. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing he needed an apology in there somewhere. “I know I said or did something to upset you, but I’m not one-hundred-percent sure what it was. If you tell me, I’ll fix it, so you’re not upset with me.”

  He really didn’t want anyone to be upset with him, but least of all Annie. What that said about him and their relationship he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure he’d known they had a relationship until that moment.

  She simply looked at him, and Colton blurted, “I think you’re really pretty,” right as he remembered Elise had said it.

  Annie blinked once and then burst out laughing. Colton wasn’t sure if he should join her or unleash the humiliation threatening to drown him. He pushed against that so hard, it prevented him from laughing with her.

  Thankfully, she quieted quickly, taking a small step toward him, though they already stood very close together. “You said you didn’t believe in marriage.”

  Colton tried to remember when those words had left his mouth. “I did?”

  She nodded solemnly. “You said you didn’t really have a lot of faith in marriage right now, so you didn’t know if you wanted kids.”

  Colton’s throat stung, the fire now burning through him in a very bad way. It moved down into his chest, making his bones tingle and his organs shrivel up. “I dated Priscilla for four years,” he said. “We were engaged for another year. Before her, I hadn’t dated in a while. She’s basically been my entire dating pool of knowledge for a decade—and she ditched me while I was in the dressing room, tying my bowtie for our wedding.”

  Annie got what he was saying, didn’t she?

  “So, right now, in this very minute, I don’t have a lot of faith in marriage. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in it.”

  “So you do want to get married.”

  “Eventually,” he said. “Of course. I believe in marriage and family. I’m not really cut out for the bachelor life, and I’m not into just hooking up with whoever.” Heat filled his face. “I’m just…still really embarrassed, and still trying to figure out who I’ve become in the past ten years.”

  Annie stepped right into his personal space then, releasing his hand and wrapping her arms around him. “I know a little bit about who you are.”

  “You do?” Colton let himself hug her back, and wow, that felt so, so nice. He’d missed the touch of another human being, and the steady way her heart beat with his, and the presence of another soul so close to his.

  “A little,” Annie said. “You’re kind, I know that. You’re not afraid of very much, I know that. You work hard—I think I know that from listening to you on the phone with your brother. You’re smart, though maybe not with cribbage.”

  Colton chuckled then, mostly to get her to stop talking. He didn’t want her listing all these things about him as if they were facts. The truth was, he wasn’t always kind. He did get scared of things. He hadn’t worked since the wedding, and he’d literally never be able to figure out cribbage.

  He pulled away slightly and looked down at her. Those honey-soft, dark green eyes smiled back at him. He liked the smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose. He reached up and brushed her hair back behind her ear, his eyes drifting down to her mouth.

  And yep, there came the fear. A bolt of it like lightning to his chest. He couldn’t kiss her. The very idea was ridiculous. His heart groaned as it tried to re-erect the barriers that had somehow formed there on his should-be-wedding day, and he pushed against them just as hard.

  “I think you’re pretty amazing too,” he managed to say. “You know right where everything is, and you deal with stress better than anyone I’ve ever seen. You’re obviously a good mother, and you’re great with kids too. Watching you with Chrissy was like bottling magic.”

  “I’m trained in first aid, that’s all,” she said, her eyes focusing on his mouth too.

  Colton had no idea what to do. He wasn’t even sure how to kiss another woman. Maybe he’d been doing it wrong for years and years, and that was one of the reasons Priscilla had left.

  But he found himself leaning toward Annie, and she tipped her face toward him, creating the just-right angle for a kiss.

  “No fair!” a child yelled as the door swung open. It banged into the wall behind it, and Colton felt sure he’d find a divot in the sheetrock when he looked.

  Annie jumped out of his arms as a couple of children came running inside. “You never let me pick,” the girl said.

  “No one’s picking,” Annie said, sweeping the few DVD cases from the shelf where the little boy was reaching. “It’s Gulliver’s Travels. Bree said so.” She put the movies in a cabinet that was much too high for the kids while Colton tried to fade into the last row of recliners so he wouldn’t be seen.

  But what did eight-year-olds know about kissing? Surely they wouldn’t read anything into him being in the room with Annie…alone…with the door closed. Not the same way any of the adults here would.

  “Aw, I don’t like that movie,” the little girl said.

  “Well, Averie,” Annie said with a warm smile. “Take it up with Bree. She sets the movies during movie time. You can only pick during non-movie time.” She herded the little girl toward the door. “Come on, Ronnie. You can’t be in here without someone older than you.”

  He looked longingly at the cabinet one more time, groaned, and followed Annie out of the theater room. Colton knew how the kid felt, and he grinned at his unhappiness. He wanted something from this room too, and he hadn’t gotten it.

  Maybe later, he thought as Annie stood at the bottom of the steps and shooed the kids back upstairs, telling them, “Go put some popcorn in the microwave. The movie doesn’t start for another half an hour anyway.”

  She turned back to Colton with a hopeful look in her eyes, but the moment had long since fled.

  “So,” he said, leaning in the doorway to the theater. “You’ll decorate the tree with me in thirty minutes?”

  She ducked her head and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

  “Great.” He approached her, sliding one hand along her waist and giving her a side-squeeze. “Now, I’m going to go see if it’s too late for lunch.”

  “You didn’t eat?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It’s never too late for lunch,” Annie said. “I’ll sit with you.”

  Colton would like that, and as they climbed the steps together, he told himself not to think too hard about Annie. He’d wanted to get away from his real life, and ultimately himself. He simply needed to rediscover who he was, and Colton had never been afraid to tell a woman how he felt.

  He’d just put the last bite of his third taco-dilla in his mouth when Amanda came into the kitchen with Celia and Rose. “You get the hazelnuts going,” Celia said to Amanda. “An
d I’ll get the chocolate melting.”

  “I really think we should add vanilla to it,” Rose said. “I’m telling you, it makes the flavor so much deeper.”

  “We’ll try it,” Celia said, banging around as she got out a pot.

  “I think mocha would be nice too,” Amanda said, and Colton looked at Annie with his eyebrows raised. “Oh, hello,” Amanda added as if she hadn’t seen Colton and Annie sitting side-by-side on the far side of the table.

  Annie smiled in her direction, and Colton looked at the older woman too. “Hey. I’m just finishing lunch, and we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “You’re fine,” she said, her smile as warm and as inviting as anyone’s could be. She reminded him of his mother, and Colton couldn’t help returning the gesture. “We’re just experimenting with our hot chocolate recipe for tomorrow’s contest.”

  “Ah,” Colton said, glancing at Annie again. She was shaking her head no and shooting lasers from her eyes. He looked back at Amanda, whose face transformed right in front of him. The two of them were clearly communicating about something, and Colton had missed the memo.

  “You guys have a lot of contests,” he finally said, almost yelling the words. Annie actually flinched, and Amanda tore her gaze from her.

  “Yes,” she said, turning. “It certainly keeps things lively around here.”

  “I think things are plenty lively around here,” Annie said, getting up and taking her teacup with her. He’d declined the tea, as he’d never really been into drinking anything that could taste like flowers or soap. “Have you heard from Andrew or Becca?”

  “Not yet.” Amanda went into the other half of the kitchen and put some sort of appliance on the countertop. “How much alcohol did we decide goes in this?”

  “A quarter-cup,” Celia said, and Colton watched as Amanda opened a bag of hazelnuts and put them in the bowl of the cooker first. She then painstakingly measured and poured the quarter-cup of gin into the pot too. Satisfied with her work, she latched the lid on tight, and said, “Forty minutes…low pressure…hazelnuts are going.”