by Marie Force
Maybe if he’d gone to college and gotten a degree, he’d have some options now that life had put an amazing woman in his path and forced him to reconsider every choice he’d ever made.
He was losing his mind. That much was for certain. They’d only made love for the first time two days ago, and here he was contemplating the possibility of tossing his whole life to be with her.
“Hey, mountain man. What’s a girl gotta do to get some coffee around here?”
Colton turned and his brain totally froze at the sight of her wearing one of his flannel shirts buttoned once in the middle and nothing else. She was leaning against the post on his porch, arms crossed under her breasts. Her hair was curly and rumpled from bed, and she’d never looked sexier.
He dropped the axe and went to her, so powerfully drawn to her that the emotional wallop took his breath away. Coming to a stop at the bottom of the steps, he reached up to run his hands over her smooth, silky legs, gasping when he encountered naked buttocks under his shirt.
“Fuck, Lucy,” he groaned as he pulled her closer and pushed his face into the softness of her belly. “You make me crazy. One minute I’m chopping wood and the next minute I’m sporting it.”
Laughing quietly, she put her arms around him and combed her fingers through his hair.
“You’ve ruined me for every single day that doesn’t start just like this,” he said.
“Good morning to you, too.”
He tightened his grip on her bottom and lifted her into his arms.
She squawked with surprise but recovered quickly, wrapping her legs around his hips and tightening her hold on his neck.
“Kiss me.”
“No, I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“Lucy . . .”
“Colton.”
Moaning with frustration, he went to work on her neck, making love to her sweet skin with openmouthed kisses and lots of tongue that had her squirming in his arms. He went up the stairs and into the house, kicking the door closed behind him.
“You’d better be leading me to coffee, mountain man. Ain’t nothing else happening around here until I get that.”
“Nothing?”
“Not one thing.”
He ground his throbbing erection into the V of her legs. “You drive a hard bargain, city girl.”
“I’ll drive your hard bargain—later. First I want coffee, then a shower, and then I want a full and complete tour of this place. I want to know everything there is to know about making maple syrup, and be prepared. I have a lot of questions.”
He kept up the kissing and licking and sucking on her neck. “How about we drive the hard bargain now, while it’s actually hard, and then we see to all those other things?”
“No deal. I need coffee and a toothbrush and a shower before we do any more driving.”
“That’s not the way country girls roll.”
“So noted. You might’ve also noted that I’m not a country girl.”
No, she wasn’t. She was all sorts of refined city girl and was being an exceptionally good sport about roughing it on his mountain. “Does this place sort of horrify you?”
She pulled back to look down at him. “Horrify me? Absolutely not. I love it here. It’s amazing and beautiful and peaceful. Well, except for the pesky harem, but I think we took care of that problem.”
Colton thought it best not to mention the gift he’d awoken to on the porch. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, especially since he had no plans to see Brandy or any of the other women who’d once kept him company. Not as long as he was lucky enough to have Lucy in his life.
“I really appreciate you sharing your home with me, Colton. I can’t wait to share mine with you.” She kissed his forehead. “Now about that coffee?”
He very reluctantly put her down but took another squeeze of soft ass cheeks before he released her and got to work stoking up the fire in the woodstove so he could make her coffee. “You’ve got a few minutes if you want to grab a shower while it brews.”
“That sounds delightful.”
“I don’t know if it’ll qualify as delightful, but at least you’ll be clean. Come on. I’ll show you how.”
“Colton.” He stopped on his way to the door and turned to her, raising his brow in question.
“I really do like it here. I’m not just saying that. I like that it’s simple and rustic and devoid of all the insanity of modern life. But more than anything, I like that you’re here, and I can see how much you love it.”
Her words touched him deeply, in a place where no other woman had ever gone before. “Thanks for that. I appreciate that you appreciate it. Means a lot to me.” He cleared his throat and gestured for her to go out ahead of him. In the bathhouse, he walked her through the steps of taking a shower.
“When you need water, just tug on this cord and you’ll get nice warm water, but when you’re soaping up, keep the water off. That way you’ll have enough warm water to rinse off.”
“Okay. Got it.”
“Like I said, not luxurious, but it gets the job done.”
“It’s fine, Colton. This is an adventure for a spoiled city girl like me.” She looked up at the tank that sat above the shower stall. “Where does the water come from?”
“Rain and snow all year round, and it’s heated by the sun. There are solar panels on the roof.”
“That’s very cool.”
“It’s literally cool in the winter when the sun isn’t quite strong enough to heat it.”
“I don’t think I’d like that.”
“You get used to it.”
“If you say so. Now if I use all the warm water, what will you do?”
“I can make do with cold. Doesn’t bother me.”
“Or you could join me and we could share the warm water.”
As she said the words her full-body blush traveled from her chest to her cheeks, making him smile. “I know I’m blushing, so deal with it. Do you want to join me or not?”
In answer to her question, he pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped his shorts, revealing the erection that had never quite subsided after she appeared on his porch wearing only his shirt.
She eyed his poor cock disdainfully as it got even perkier in the fresh air. “Does that thing ever take a break?”
“Not lately, but that’s not his fault. It’s yours.”
“And how is it my fault?”
“You’re here and you’re breathing and you’re you and you’re sexy and hot and wearing my shirt oh so well and . . . I’m only human and so is he.”
Her lips formed an adorable pucker as she seemed to contemplate what he’d said. “No one has ever found me hot before.”
“Maybe you just needed to find me because I think you’re very, very hot.” He kissed her nose, unbuttoned the flannel shirt and pushed it off her shoulders. Then he turned on the water and nudged her into the shower stall that was really only built for one—and how shortsighted had that been? Truth be told, when he’d added the shower to the bathhouse, he’d never expected to share his home on the mountain with anyone.
They stood together under the spray.
“Did I mention the water pressure is somewhat lackluster?”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re a very good sport, Luce.”
“I’m not nearly as high maintenance as you’d like to believe.”
“I know you aren’t.” Even still, he was surprised by how well she was rolling with life on the mountain. In some ways that only made it more difficult for him. If she’d come here and hated everything about it, he would’ve had a much easier time letting her go tomorrow. Instead he was quite certain that after she left, he was going to be extremely lonely for the first time in all the years he’d lived here.
They soaped each other up, which led to the kind of inappropriate touching he loved best with her. If he’d had his way, they would’ve taken care of busi
ness right then and there, but he didn’t want her to think that was all he wanted from her. Rather, he rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and then bent his head so she could do the same for him.
When they were clean and dressed, Colton made scrambled eggs, potatoes and toast to go with the coffee, which they enjoyed on his front porch.
“This is really, really good,” she said. “You’re a great cook.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but as you well know, I do love to eat.”
“I’m impressed, and this coffee is about the best I’ve ever had.”
“It’s the fresh mountain air. It makes everything taste and smell better.”
“Will you show me your mountain, Colton, and tell me everything there is to know about how you make syrup?”
“You really want to know?”
“I really do.”
“Then let’s go.”
CHAPTER 18
I couldn’t get warm all day, though a few weeks ago 32 degrees would have been T-shirt weather. Last night may have been the final freezing night of sugar season. Today began the predicted warm-up on a south wind. The snowpack in the sugarbush is helping to keep the temp in the 40s.
—Colton Abbott’s sugaring journal, April 7
“We’re going to need to get you some hiking boots,” Colton said as he eyed the running shoes she’d worn to climb his mountain. “What size do you wear?”
“Seven and a half.”
“I’ll get you some at the store for next time.”
Next time. Those two little words filled Lucy with excitement and anticipation, both of which were dangerous emotions for a girl who hadn’t planned to get overly involved. No sense denying she’d done just that during the course of this weekend, during which everything had changed between them.
His big hand wrapped around hers helped propel her up a well-worn path through the trees that lined the hills above his home. Since she was following him, she had a fantastic view of his muscular ass and legs as he moved easily up the steep incline. While she was huffing and puffing and beginning to perspire, he’d barely broken a sweat. Watching Sarah and Elmer effortlessly bound up ahead of them made Lucy feel like even more of an out-of-shape loser.
After they’d traveled in silence for about twenty minutes, the path leveled off. He stopped and handed her the water bottle he was carrying. “Take a drink.”
She did as he directed, grateful for the cool water on her parched throat. “Thanks.”
“You doing okay?”
“I’m great.”
“Your face is all red.”
“Happens a lot in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.” He glanced at the next incline, which was even steeper than the earlier one. “We don’t have to go all the way up if you don’t want to.”
“I do want to. Let’s go.” She’d pay for this tomorrow, but for right now, it was worth the effort to be able to see everything he wanted to show her. “How many trees do you manage?”
“About twenty-five thousand, give or take a few hundred.”
“And you have to tend to all of them every year?”
“In some way or another, yes.”
“Tell me how it all works. I want to know everything.”
“Everything is a lot,” he said with a laugh.
“Start at the beginning, and I’ll ask all my questions.” If he did the talking, that would give her time to breathe, which was becoming harder the farther up they went.
“Late winter into early spring is our prime season,” he began, speaking effortlessly despite the steep climb that was nothing new to him. “The flow of sap begins after the first hard freeze followed by a thaw. The best time for flow is after it freezes at night and the temperature rises to forty to fifty degrees Fahrenheit during the day. So we start around January with drilling new tapholes, checking the lines for blowdowns and critter damage and getting everything ready for that first big freeze. After it thaws, then we need a freezing night to recharge the trees. It’s the freeze-thaw ‘yo-yo’ that we need.”
“How long does sugar season last?”
“The taps can be in the trees up to twelve weeks, but the window for making syrup is the end of February through mid-to-late April. The span from the first sap run to the last run can be two weeks or eight weeks, but we only boil—actually make syrup—an average of twenty days. Obviously, if it were a two-week sugar season, we’d boil fewer than twenty days, but that happens some years.”
“How many gallons of sap does it take to make a gallon of syrup?”
He smiled down at her. “You weren’t kidding when you said you had a lot of questions.”
“I’ve done my homework.”
“So I see. It takes anywhere from thirty-five to fifty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, depending on the sweetness of the sap or how much maple sugar it contains. The sweeter the sap, the less sap it takes to produce a gallon of syrup. I could go on and on about reverse osmosis, which makes the sap sweeter before we boil it. There’s as much science as there is art behind it.”
She fanned her face dramatically. “Reverse osmosis. That’s hot.”
“Right,” he said laughing. “The reverse-osmosis machine makes the sap sweeter before we boil it, but the vacuum pump aids the flow of sap from the trees to the sugarhouse. Two separate functions.”
“You’re really smart, Colton. It’s impressive.”
“I’m smart about this one thing, so don’t be too impressed.”
“How do you power the machine and pumps?”
“We rely on solar energy and generators during the season.” He pointed to a copse of trees off in the distance. “We can’t run tubes to all the trees, so we still do the bucket method in those cases.”
“What kind of trees are these?”
“Most of them are sugar maples. They’re the best for making syrup because they have the greatest concentration of sugar. We use mature trees that are on average about a foot to three feet in diameter that get decent sun exposure. We call the trees a sugarbush. The first step is the tapping, which involves drilling a hole on the side of the tree that faces the sun for most of the day. We drill about three feet from the bottom and an inch or two deep. See right there?” He pointed to a hole the size of a pencil in the lower part of one of the trees. “That’s where we tapped last season. Into that hole goes what we call a spike spout that’s then attached to the tubing that carries the sap down to the sugarhouse where we boil in what’s called an evaporator to get rid of the water and concentrate the sugars. We call this ‘boiling down’ and that’s the most intense part of the process.”
“Does the tap hurt the tree?”
“Not as long as we remove the taps at the end of the year to give the tree time to heal in the off season and then choose a different spot to tap the next year.”
“When you’re installing the taps, how many can you do in a day?”
“Depending on the weather and other factors like icing on the mountain, we can do three or four hundred in a day.”
“In a single day?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, as if that was no big deal. “We have to move fast if we’re going to be ready to run. We have such a small window of opportunity, and we need to capitalize. We tap about ten thousand trees each year. I have to get all of that done before the first good run of sap. It’s a pretty delicate balancing act involving weather and timing and a bunch of other factors.”
“The boiling is why you need all the wood. I get it now.”
“Right. Because we don’t have power up here, we still do old-fashioned burn boiling when a lot of outfits are using much more sophisticated equipment these days. It takes a lot of wood to get through a boiling season up here, not to mention heating the house and store.”
“Do you ever think about running power up here?”
“We’ve talked about it, but there’s something so elemental about running this place almost the same way my grandpar
ents did fifty years ago, with a few nods to modern technology. As long as we meet health codes and pass inspection, we’re happy with our output. It suits the needs of the store, and we do a nice little business up here, too.”
“What about when the website goes live? Will you be able to satisfy those demands, too?”
“Probably not without bringing sap in from other sources. We’ve had a couple of meetings about that. I’m in favor of using the site to bring people into the store to buy syrup. Of course my dad wants to be able to sell it online. We’re at a standoff on that point. We’ve been talking to the people who own the spread next door to ours about possibly acquiring some more land. If that happens, I’ll need someone else up here with me pretty much full time. Max is the most likely candidate, but with the baby coming . . . I’m not sure what he’s going to do yet.”
“I saw on the website mockup that there’re different grades.”
“Uh-huh. The early-season syrup tends to be lighter and sweeter, and the maple flavor isn’t quite as strong as it gets later in the season when it becomes what we call medium amber or dark amber. The next level is Grade B, which has a much stronger maple flavor, but the color isn’t as great. The other thing we have to watch for is that the sweetness tends to be less as the maple flavor intensifies. All syrup, the finished product, is the same sweetness. It’s the sap that varies in sweetness.”
“I’m trying to picture the boiling season. Do you boil around the clock or just during the day?”
“Sometimes around the clock, but not every day. The whole family pitches in at various times and we make a party out of it. We also hire people from town to help and have a bunch of kids who live on the mountain who come up after school to help feed the fire. Thank God it only lasts about three to four weeks most years. By the end of that I’m so tired I’m like a zombie.”
“It sounds like fun, actually.” She wanted to offer to come up to help next year but couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud.
“It is fun. It’s just very intense.”