by Marie Force
Colton had planned his attack stealthily, coming down off the mountain on a rare Thursday to see his dad at the office. Waiting until most of his siblings had left for lunch—except for Hunter, who never seemed to leave the office for any reason except a fire alarm—Colton had sat in his truck and watched his dad step out of the diner and head back across the street to the office above the family-owned Green Mountain Country Store in “downtown” Butler, if you could call Elm Street a downtown.
Colton had emerged from his truck and followed Lincoln up the back stairs that led to the offices where he and five of Colton’s siblings ran the store. Colton kept his head down as he walked past Hunter’s office and knocked on his dad’s door.
“Hey,” Lincoln said with obvious pleasure. His father was always happy to see him, which was one of the many things in life Colton could count on. “This is a nice surprise. Come in.”
Colton shook his father’s outstretched hand and took a seat in one of his visitor chairs.
“To what do I owe the honor of a rare midweek visit from the mountain man?”
“I needed a couple of things in town, so I figured I’d stop by.”
“Everything okay up the hill?”
“It’s all good. Quiet and relaxing this time of year, as always.” Colton thought of early summer as the calm that followed the storm of boiling season, during which he produced more than five thousand gallons of the maple syrup that was sold in the store. After nine years of running the family’s sugaring facility, his life had fallen into a predictable pattern governed by twenty-five thousand syrup-producing trees.
“I’m glad you stopped by. I was going to come up to see you today or tomorrow.”
“How come?”
Lincoln rooted around on his desk, looking for something in the piles of paper and file folders. “Ah, here it is.” He pulled out a light blue page and handed it over to Colton.
As he scanned the announcement of a trade show in New York City, he skimmed the details until he realized what he was reading. “What the hell, Dad? Pleasure aids and sensual devices? What’s that got to do with me?” He nearly had a heart attack at the thought of his father thinking he needed such things to move the relationship no one was supposed to know about forward.
“I’m considering the line for the store, and I’m looking for someone to send to the show. Since this is your off-season, I thought you might be able to make the trip for us.”
While trying to wrap his mind around the idea of “pleasure aids and sensual devices” on sale at their homespun country store, he tried to keep his expression neutral. Though he was slightly appalled at the reason for the mission, the location appealed to him very much.
In the interest of keeping his big secret a secret, he kept his reaction casual and indifferent. “What do the others have to say about that product line?”
“I haven’t exactly mentioned it to them yet. I figured I’d let you check it out first and see what you think before I bring it to them.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you? Everyone else is up to their eyeballs in work and life stuff, so it seemed to make sense to ask you now that your busy season is over for the time being.” Lincoln shrugged. “But if you’re not up for going—”
“Never said that.” He’d be a fool to pass up a chance to spend a whole week with her. “I’ll do it, but with the caveat that I think this product line has no business in our store.”
“So noted.”
“And I think you’re in for yet another battle royal with your kids over it.”
“I live for a good row with my kids,” Lincoln said with a grin that made his blue eyes twinkle with mirth.
“Don’t I know it,” Colton muttered. The latest row had involved the website designer Lincoln had hired behind the backs of his children, who’d made it clear they had no interest in taking their store online. Then Cameron Murphy had come to town and won the hearts of the entire Abbott family, especially Colton’s older brother Will, who was now madly in love and living with Cam as she designed the website for the store. Lincoln Abbott had a way of getting what he wanted, and Colton and his siblings had learned to be wary of their father’s motivations.
In this case, however, Colton couldn’t care less about his father’s motivations. Not when he was looking at a full week with his lady.
“Talk to Hunter about getting you registered,” Lincoln said, clearly pleased with Colton’s capitulation.
“I will.” Colton folded the flyer into a square, with the images on the inside, and stashed it in his pocket. “Since you now owe me a favor, I was wondering if I could use the lake house this weekend.” When his father gave him an oddly intuitive look, Colton added, “I feel like doing some fishing.”
Lincoln didn’t move or respond for a long, uncomfortable moment.
Colton had begun to sweat under the steely stare his father directed his way.
“Of course, son,” Lincoln finally said, withdrawing a set of keys from his top desk drawer and handing them over. “You remember the code, right?”
Since the code was his parents’ wedding anniversary and had been for as long as they’d owned the house, Colton nodded and stood. “Thanks.”
“Have a good time.”
“I will.”
“Are you taking the dogs with you?”
“I thought I would if that’s okay.”
As Lincoln Abbott was the biggest “dog person” Colton had ever known, he wasn’t surprised when his dad said, “Of course it is.”
Now as Colton drove to the lake with his dogs, Elmer and Sarah, asleep in the backseat, he pondered the odd look his father had given him when he asked to use the lake house and wondered what it had meant. He thought about the bizarre conversation with his older brother Hunter, who’d questioned what in the hell their father wanted with pleasure aids and sensual devices in the store, before he begrudgingly registered Colton for the trade show that would take place in New York in two weeks.
Colton had merely shrugged and refused to engage in the war of words that would no doubt take place between his father, the CEO, and his brother, the CFO. Let them duke it out. No way was Colton going to get in the middle of their dispute when he’d been handed a free pass to a week in New York.
He couldn’t wait to tell her the good news.
An hour later, he pulled up to the lake house that was one of his favorite places in the world. Made of timber and beam and glass and stone, the house sat on the shores of Lake Champlain, right outside Burlington. His parents had gotten a sweet deal on it about ten years ago when it was sold at auction after the previous owner defaulted on the mortgage. The Abbotts had enjoyed many a good time there in the ensuing years.
In fact, his older sister Hannah would marry her fiancé, Nolan, at the lake house in a few weeks.
The house was stuffy and hot from being closed up, so he walked straight through the massive living room to open the sliding door to let in the breeze coming from the lake. He never tired of that view of the lake with the mountains in the distance. Late on this Friday afternoon, a handful of Jet-Skiers and water-skiers were enjoying the warm sunshine and the all-too-short Vermont summer.
Relieved to be out of the truck after the long ride, Elmer and Sarah ran straight down to the private stretch of beach, where they frolicked in the water.
Colton smiled with pleasure and relief at being here, at having pulled off another escape from Butler and the Abbott family clutches, and at knowing he had four full days to spend at his favorite place with the woman who was quickly becoming his favorite person.
Three hours later, Colton had been to the grocery and liquor stores to stock up on necessary supplies, and he was beginning to worry.
While he waited, he made dinner—pasta with grilled vegetables, salad and bread, which was now keeping warm on the stove while he paced from one end of the big house to the other, filled with nervous energy.
When he got tired of pacing, he flopped onto the big s
ectional sofa that faced the two-story stone fireplace.
Sarah came over to give him a lick, which he rewarded with a pat to her soft blonde head.
“Thanks, girl. I know she’ll be here soon, and you and your brother are going to love her.” If anyone knew how often he talked to his dogs, he’d be committed. But they were his only companions on the mountain, and he kept up a running dialogue with them during the long days and nights he spent completely alone with them.
For his entire adult life, he’d lived by himself on that mountain, happily content with his no-frills lifestyle. He was the only person he knew who lived without running water, electricity, TV, an Internet connection or any of the modern conveniences most people took for granted.
He’d lived that way since he was seventeen, fresh out of high school and anxious to take over the sugaring facility that had been in their family since his grandparents—the original Sarah and Elmer—had bought the place as newlyweds. His mother had hated the idea of him living up there alone when he was so young, but his dad had encouraged her to let him be, and he’d been there ever since.
Rather than pine for what he didn’t have, Colton had preferred to focus on what he did have—a beautiful home in the midst of the majestic Green Mountains, two dogs whose devotion to him was boundless, a job he loved and was good at, a family he adored close enough to see at least once a week and a life that made sense to him.
Until lately.
For the first time in the nine years he’d spent on the mountain, what he didn’t have had begun to bother him. For one thing, he wished he had a phone so he could talk to her every day. For another, a computer with an Internet connection would come in handy as he navigated a long-distance relationship.
He was twenty-six years old and forced to use his parents’ phone to call her because he didn’t own one of his own. That was one thing he planned to do something about soon. His mountain was one of the few places around Butler that had reliable cell service thanks to its clear proximity to the cell towers near St. Johnsbury.
But the rest of it, the electricity, the running water, the Internet connection . . . Those were things he needed to think about. He’d yet to bring her to his home on the mountain, mostly because he was afraid of what she might think of it. She was used to the city where she had everything she wanted or needed at her fingertips.
What did he have to offer someone who was accustomed to so much more when he didn’t even have electricity or running water? What modern woman would find his lifestyle attractive? And was he willing to change everything about who and what he was for a woman he’d known for only a couple of months?
Unfortunately, he had no good answers to any of these questions, and the more time he spent with her, the more muddled his thinking became on all of them.
And then there was the fact that she was happy in her life, settled in her work and home, living close to her own family and not at all interested in uprooting her existence. He knew this because she’d told him so. But knowing that hadn’t kept him from seeing her almost every weekend lately. It hadn’t kept him from wanting more of her every time he had to leave her. It hadn’t kept him from lying awake at night and wondering what she was doing and if she missed him between visits the way he missed her.
What if she didn’t? What if she never gave him a thought from one weekend to the next? He had no way to know if she did or not because he didn’t talk to her very often between visits. That had to change, and getting a cell phone would be the first thing he did after this weekend.
Maybe by then he’d have a better idea of how she really felt about him and what’d been happening between them. He had this niggling fear that for her it was just a fun interlude with someone different from the guys she normally dated, while for him it became something more involved every time he was with her.
He was determined to get some answers this weekend, to figure out what this thing between them was and where it was going. Then the doorbell rang and every thought that wasn’t about her finally arriving fled from his brain as he sprinted for the door.
Yeah, he had it bad, and he had a feeling it was about to get a whole lot worse.
CHAPTER 2
Sugar season is an exercise in giving up control, starting with the weather. Above all, sugaring is a privilege.
—Colton Abbott’s sugaring journal, February 17
Colton threw open the door and had to hold himself back from grabbing her and dragging her inside so he could kiss her senseless. He forced himself to show some restraint and act like a gentleman when his inner caveman was trying hard to break free.
“You made it.”
“Somehow.” Lucy Mulvaney’s tone was filled with aggravation as she pushed past him into the house, dragging a suitcase behind her.
As she went by, he relieved her of the shoulder bag that was so heavy he assumed it contained her laptop. She’d warned him she would have to do some work while she was there.
“The GPS took me the craziest way. I think I was on forty-seven different roads on the way up here.”
“Well, you made it, and that’s what matters.”
“Yes, it is,” she said with a warm smile for him.
As always when they were first reunited, he sensed her shyness and was grateful for the diversion of the dogs dancing around at their feet, waiting to be noticed by the new arrival. “Lucy, I want you to meet my best friends in the whole world, Sarah and Elmer. Sarah has the pink collar.”
She bent to give the dogs her full attention, which earned her tons of points in his dog-loving heart. “Hi, guys. Aren’t you beautiful? I’ve heard so much about you! Your daddy talks about you all the time.” She let them smell her and kiss her and Elmer even dropped to his back and gave her his belly to rub. Lucy did as directed, laughing at his shameless appeal for attention. “They’re adorable.”
“They’re spoiled rotten, but I love them.”
“This place is incredible.” She rose to take a good look at the house while Colton leaned against the counter and indulged in a long look at her until she brought her gaze back to him.
“Took you too long to get here.” He smiled and held out a hand to her.
She took his hand and let him draw her into his embrace. “You live too far away.”
During the five weekends they’d spent together, he’d learned to go slow at first, to ease her back into their relationship rather than going right to where they’d left off, the way he’d prefer. Haste wasn’t what she needed, and since he wanted her to keep coming back, he aimed to give her what she needed.
Colton couldn’t deny that the two steps forward, one step back approach to dating Lucy was sort of frustrating. He’d found someone he enjoyed being with, and for the first time in his adult life he was interested in a genuine relationship. But he wasn’t sure she wanted the same thing, thus his approach to following her lead when he’d much prefer to take charge and make things happen for them.
“Something smells good,” Lucy said after a long moment of silence as he held her.
“I made dinner.”
“I was talking about you,” she said, looking up at him with big blue eyes.
Without giving much thought to what he was about to do, he bent his head and kissed her. He knew a moment of pure satisfaction—and relief—when her arms came up to curl around his neck and her mouth opened to welcome his tongue. They didn’t normally get right to it like this, preferring to ease into the physical stuff after some food and conversation, but Colton wasn’t about to complain.
Things had gotten pretty hot and heavy last weekend, and he was glad to know they might be able to pick up where they’d left off rather than taking the usual step backward. He loved how she felt in his arms, the way her soft curves pressed against him and the taste of her on his tongue. Framing her face with his hands, he focused entirely on the kiss, not touching her anywhere except for the tight press of his body against hers.
By the time they finally came up for air, Co
lton wanted to drag her to the nearest bedroom and see this through to the conclusion they’d been heading toward for weeks now. But again he chose restraint, afraid to scare her away by showing her how badly he wanted her. He kept his arms around her as he kissed her neck and made her shiver.
“What a long-ass week,” he whispered, breathing in the scent he’d become addicted to.
“Mmm. A very long week.”
“I couldn’t wait to see you.” He’d never come right out and said that before, even though he’d certainly felt it.
“Me, too.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
Serving dinner gave him something else to focus on besides how it felt to kiss and hold her, how amazing she smelled, the way her shorts hugged her sexy ass and how great her hair looked.
“What happened to your curls?” he asked as he dished up the pasta, vegetables and bread while she opened the chilled bottle of chardonnay he’d gotten for her.
“They met a straightening iron.”
“I like it, but I like the curls, too.”
“I hate the curls. They make me look like a five-year-old.”
“Not to me they don’t.”
Her cute smile exposed the dimples he’d come to adore. “You’re racking up all kinds of points, Mr. Abbott. This pasta is amazing.”
“Don’t be too impressed. It’s about the extent of my culinary expertise.”
“I’m very impressed, and it’s very good.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
Over dinner they talked about the week they’d had at work, and Lucy shared some more insight into what it had been like to run her web design company alone since her partner, Cameron, moved to Vermont to live with Colton’s brother Will.
“You know when you blow up a balloon and then let it go and it flies all over the place?”
Nodding, Colton refilled their wineglasses.