Can the golden boy of Copper Ridge, Oregon, get a second chance at happy-ever-after?

Ranching heir Colton West knew his wedding would be the talk of the town. But he didn’t expect to get left at the altar—or to escape on the next flight to Vegas with Lydia Carpenter, the woman who gets under his skin like no one else. The only thing crazier than honeymooning with Lydia is waking up married to her. So why does he find himself entertaining his new wife’s desire to stay married—and fantasizing about a real wedding night?

As Copper Ridge’s prospective mayor, Lydia can’t risk a divorce scandal so close to election time. But pretending to be blissfully in love with her new husband is more confusing than she’d thought. For a man who’s always rubbed her the wrong way, Colton suddenly seems to know exactly what to do with his hands. And his lips. Now Lydia’s wildest mistake could turn out to be her luckiest move, if they’re both willing to take the ultimate gamble…

Praise for New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates

“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.”

—Booklist on Part Time Cowboy

“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”

—USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog

on Part Time Cowboy

“Yates writes a story with emotional depth, intense heartache and love that is hard fought for and eventually won in the second Copper Ridge installment… This is a book readers will be telling their friends about.”

—RT Book Reviews on Brokedown Cowboy

“Wraps up nicely, leaving readers with a desire to read more about the feisty duo.”

—Publishers Weekly on Bad News Cowboy

“The setting is vivid, the secondary characters charming, and the plot has depth and interesting twists. But it is the hero and heroine who truly drive this story.”

—BookPage on Bad News Cowboy

Tough Luck Hero
Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT

Praise

TITLE PAGE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

SHE DIDN’T HAVE a chandelier hanging from her bedroom ceiling. But somehow, when she opened her eyes, that was what she saw.

Lydia Carpenter’s bedroom ceiling was sedate, and mostly nondescript. White. It was not bright yellow with diamonds painted around a—well, yes, it was still a chandelier.

She squinted in the dim light and looked to the left, at the curtains—bearing a similar pattern to the ceiling—and the near-blinding shaft of light they let into the room.

Wind from a vent somewhere shifted the curtains and let in more light. Light that promptly stabbed her in the eyeballs.

She hissed and rolled onto her back, her head pounding, the room spinning slightly.

She wasn’t at home. Where else would she be?

The wedding.

Oh right. The wedding of the century, at least according to the town of Copper Ridge, Oregon. The wedding that hadn’t happened. The wedding of her ex–best friend Natalie Bailey to Colton...

His name hit her like a brick. A brick thrown directly at her head. She turned away from the window and looked across the bed. She covered her mouth with both hands, trying to prevent the horrified squeak from escaping and disturbing the man that was lying there. The very beautiful man, whose brown hair was shot through with gold, and looked perfect, even in sleep. The man with the exquisitely square jaw, and lips that looked like they existed to kiss a woman. The man who was barely covered by a very brightly colored hotel bedspread.

She had never, ever, ever done anything like this in her life. Ever. Ever.

At least, she was pretty sure they had done this. Her memory could not be trusted at the moment. How was that even fair? She was in bed with Colton West and she didn’t even remember what had happened.

She was... She lifted the sheets and cringed in horror. Well, she wasn’t dressed, either. So there was no way to deny the very likely happenings of the night before.

What kind of friend was she? What kind of bridesmaid slept with the groom?

Though, in fairness to her, Natalie hadn’t shown up to the wedding, so the groom hadn’t really had a bride. And also in fairness to her, her friendship with Natalie was already splintered and—according to her friend—Lydia had already committed a heinous betrayal by running for mayor against Natalie’s father.

But the bridesmaid dresses had already been ordered and fitted, and there had been no way to shuffle things without creating ripples in the community. And both Lydia and Natalie had wanted to avoid ripples.

Lydia nearly laughed. At the moment she wasn’t experiencing a ripple. Right now she was in the middle of a tidal wave.

She got out of bed, dragging the sheet with her while making sure the thin bedspread stayed in place to keep Colton covered, and started to tiptoe around the hotel room. She assumed it was a hotel room. Unless Colton’s bedroom was very strangely decorated.

Her hideous bridesmaid dress was on the bar. The hideous bridesmaid dress her mother had pointed out was her unlucky number three bridesmaid dress.

“Three times a bridesmaid, Lydia. You know what they say.”

Well. She had not actually been a bridesmaid. So her mother’s fears were unfounded. At least, that specific fear.

The bar was huge, with a wide selection of alcohol her dress was currently draped over. This wasn’t just a hotel room. It was a suite of some kind.

In Copper Ridge? There wasn’t a place like this that she could think of.

She wandered across the room and grabbed the edge of the violet-colored dress, then dropped the sheet as she quickly put it on, the tulle and netting rustling as she tugged it up over her bare curves.

There. Now her dignity was restored.

She laughed, a kind of short, hysterical sound that she quickly tried to tamp down. She did not want him to wake up. Not now.

Sanity. She needed sanity. And coffee. And to figure out what had happened to bring them to this point.

Lydia had never, ever gotten drunk enough to leave the previous night a total blank space in her mind. She had never even been hungover. It wasn’t fun. Not at all.

From across the room, Colton groaned and rolled onto his back and Lydia froze.

Please, don’t wake up. Please, don’t wake up.

She tiptoed across the room and over to the window, because she needed to try and get her bearings so she could figure out how she was going to get home. Without involving Colton in any way.

Maybe they would never even have to speak of this. Maybe they could pretend it hadn’t happened.

She paused in front of the curtains and steeled herself for more sunlight. It looked awfully bright out there beyond the curtains for their misty Pacific Northwest mornings. Maybe it wasn’t even morning. How would she know? She was disoriented. And fuzzy. And she’d had sex for the first time in way longer than she wanted to admit and she didn’t even remember the sex.

Today was not going to be a good day.

Taking a bracing breath, she pulled the edge of the curtains back and poked her head past them, trying to minimize the amount of light she let in so she didn’t wake her partner in licentiousness.

And her stomach dropped straight into her feet.

The view in front of her was a sun-washed contrast to the misty green of Copper Ridge. The sky was pale and clear, the mountains in the distance brushed a hazy tan color that made them look thin and faded. Like the sun had burned the intensity out of everything it touched, leaving only a husk behind.

Then she started soaking in the rest of the view. A concrete sprawl rising up out of a desert and—and the Eiffel Tower.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly not caring if she woke Colton up at all. “Oh no.”

She heard rustling behind her, a very masculine groan that skittered along her already frayed nerves.

The view didn’t look like Copper Ridge, because they weren’t in Copper Ridge.

Another piece of the puzzle locked into place, and when it did, it hit hard.

They were in Las Vegas. She put her hand on her forehead, trying to remember exactly what had happened.

She’d been at the front of the aisle. And Colton had been too. Then the music for the bride had played. And played. And played.

But there was no Natalie.

Colton had taken charge and told everyone to go ahead to the reception. Natalie’s parents had been frantic. And then...well, then Colton had gotten a text and it had become clear that Natalie had chosen not to show up.

The reception had been overtaken by manic energy. Colton’s father had been holding court, trying to take control of the situation, while his mother had started drinking.

Natalie’s parents had been fighting.

Colton’s brother-in-law Ace had been worrying over Colton’s very pregnant sister, and his other sister, Madison, had been nowhere to be seen.

And then she’d seen Colton slip off by himself.

For some reason—a moment of insanity, of compassion—she’d followed after him.

Let the sound of the reception fade into the background.

“You want to get out of here?”

He turned his head, his brows lifting in surprise. “With you?”

“Why not? The alternative is hanging out and waiting for Natalie to decide to come back.” For some reason, she hadn’t been able to stand the idea of him doing that. “Do you want to be here if she does?”

“Hell no.”

“Well...almost everyone is here. So no one will know if we make an escape.”

And they had. They’d gone to Ace’s bar—where Ace was not since he was still at the non-wedding—and started ordering shots.

From there, Colton had called the airport. And after that, things were a little blurry.

She knew they’d had a discussion about where they could get to quickly, and she knew they’d had more to drink on the plane and landed and...and...

She couldn’t remember much more after that. But hey, they were naked in a hotel suite. The blanks sort of filled themselves in.

She heard the covers rustle behind her and she realized that her chance to process this alone was coming to an end. She had to face the music. And the naked guy that was in her bed.

She swallowed hard, turning away from the window and looking very determinedly past the bed at the back wall. Whatever had happened last night, she didn’t remember it. She was not about to refresh her memory.

No. Some things were better left buried.

“Good morning,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice crisp and even. A sharp stab of pain answered immediately. Her hangover obviously didn’t appreciate her tone.

“What?” His voice was very male, very husky. Unfamiliar. She did not often wake up with men, so she didn’t usually hear their rusty morning voices. And she had never, ever, heard Colton West’s rusty morning voice.

First time for everything.

“We’re in Las Vegas, Colton,” she said, sounding a little harsh even to her own ears.

He sat up, the motion drawing her eye to him and she gave thanks that the sheet was firmly over his lap. “I...” He studied her. “I’m not supposed to be in...Vegas. What the hell?”

“Well,” she said, “I’m not supposed to be in Las Vegas, either. I don’t gamble. I don’t really drink, for that matter.”

He laughed, then winced. “If you have a headache like mine I’m pretty sure we both had something to drink last night.”

“I have a feeling last night contained more than one aberration.”

“Right.” He looked around the room. “How did you get into my room?”

She snapped her mouth shut. She was wearing the dress from last night, and, ever since he had been conscious, she had been standing. Which meant he didn’t realize... She considered, for a couple of seconds, allowing him to maintain the illusion. But, ultimately, she kind of wanted him to be horrified by his behavior right along with her.

Assuming they had behaved as badly as it had appeared when she had first woken up.

“I slept here.”

He didn’t say anything. In the dim light, she could make out a slow shift in his facial expression. “We left the wedding together.”

“Yes,” she said, speaking slowly and softly for both of their benefits. “Natalie didn’t show up, Colton.”

He nodded slowly. “Right.”

“And then we...” She scrunched her face. “Obviously we ended up here.”

She heard a loud, low vibration coming from the nightstand by the bed. “Text,” he said, picking up the phone.

Her phone. She needed to find her phone.

“I have to turn on the light. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to both of us.” She moved to the lamp next to the window and flicked it on, then she scanned the expanse of the room. “I had to have a purse, because it has my ID. And I couldn’t get on a plane without my ID.”

“Do you have to think out loud?” he asked, wincing.

“Right now, yes,” she said.

She was starting to remember why she and Colton didn’t often have conversations. He was so bossy and obnoxious. High-handed, irritating as hell.

Which was why she felt a little bit like her skin was too tight for her body when she was near him. And nothing else and no other reason at all.

She spotted her purse finally, shoved into a dark corner of the room. She never did things like that. She did not shove her possessions.

Everything had a place. Everything.

Just not in this room.

She growled and took a small amount of satisfaction when the sound made Colton flinch. Then she walked across the room and sank to her knees, grabbing her purse and frantically digging for her phone. Thankfully, it was there.

She picked it up and clicked the home button, her heart hammering hard when she saw the screen filled with texts.

So, some people knew she was gone. Great.

She entered in her passcode and for the first time noticed that something on her hand felt weird. She hadn’t noticed before because her whole body felt messed up. Her head, her balance, her mouth. And she was tingling. With some kind of strange, euphoric feeling leftover from the night before. One she’d certainly never associated with sex, but these were strange and interesting times, so really, how could she tell what it was from?

She looked down at her left hand and froze. There was a band there. White gold with diamonds. Or some cheap metal with cubic zirconia, for all she knew.

“No,” she muttered, unable to tear her gaze away. “No, no no no.”

“I think yes.”

She turned to face Colton. “What?”

He held his phone out, the bright screen facing her. “Apparently I spent some time texting Natalie last night about her failure to appear.”

She squinted from her position on the floor. “I can’t... Is that a picture?”

“Yes. Of us.”

She sprang into action then. She jumped up and crossed the room in three large steps, leaning into the screen. There she was. Her arms around Colton’s neck, with what looked like Ace’s bar in the background and a couple of empty shot glasses in front of them.

She couldn’t imagine putting her arms around Colton. And yet, clearly she had.

She had also undressed with him. And very likely...

She looked down at her hand. Right. At the moment sex was the least of her worries. She held her hand up so that he could see. “What. The hell. Happened last night?” she asked.

It was her phone’s turn to buzz, and that reminded her of the texts. She looked down at the phone. She had several from Sadie Garrett; a couple from Marlene at the Chamber of Commerce, where Lydia was president; and a couple more from coworkers.

She touched the line with Sadie’s first.

LYDIA I AM ALL CAPS YOU NEED TO RESPOND

Lydia blinked and scrolled up, to see Sadie had texted several times. Each time a little bit more frantic. It had graduated from what are you doing? to are you dead in a ditch? since last night. Or rather, early this morning.

And when she reached the top she saw exactly why.

There were texts explaining the photograph, but Lydia didn’t need to read them. Because a picture was worth a thousand drunk texts.

There she was with Colton, arms around his neck, but it wasn’t Ace’s in the background of this picture. Nope. It was a chapel. A tacky, Vegas chapel. She was in her bridesmaid dress and Colton was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

Picture Lydia was holding her hand partly in front of the screen, displaying the very ring that was on real Lydia’s finger, up close and blurry. She was grinning like—well, like an idiot. Colton’s eyes were half-closed, a big smile on his face, and his hand was resting high on her waist, perilously close to her breast.

“I guess...” She sat there, completely stunned, feeling dazed and more than a little confused. “I guess there was a wedding yesterday after all.”

As she stared at the picture, it all started coming back in a full color blur. They’d gambled, they’d drunk, and it had all gotten increasingly...hilarious.

They were in Vegas! She was supposed to be the bridesmaid in a wedding that hadn’t happened! He was a groom with no bride, and he had spent half the day in a damned tux—his words exactly—and that was just wrong.

So they’d thought the discrepancy should be remedied. And then...sometime, just before midnight, she had stumbled into a chapel on the Las Vegas strip, and she, Lydia Carpenter, front-running candidate for mayor of Copper Ridge, levelheaded community pillar and responsible citizen, had not been a bridesmaid for the third time. No, instead, she had been a bride. And she had married Colton West.

CHAPTER TWO

COLTON WEST COULDN’T remember the last time he had gotten blackout drunk. Maybe college? Maybe. It was hard to say if in those scenarios he had passed out because of the alcohol or because they were still awake at five in the morning after some ridiculous party.

Though at none of those ridiculous parties had he married anyone.

And, judging by the messages overflowing his phone, he had gotten married last night.

Which wouldn’t be that weird since yesterday was supposed to be his wedding day. The weird part about it was that he had married a bridesmaid. Not the bride.

And not just any bridesmaid.

Lydia Carpenter.

There were three other bridesmaids. All of whom he was more likely to get drunk and marry in Vegas than Lydia. Or at least, he would have thought so if asked prior to his hasty Vegas marriage.

Actually, had he been asked prior to his hasty Vegas marriage he would have said there was no way on earth he would ever get drunk and marry anyone spur of the moment. He was not a spur-of-the-moment kind of guy. Colton was a planner. Colton had never set one foot out of line.

After his older brother had taken off and completely abandoned the family, it had been up to Colton to establish himself as the likely heir to his father’s business. It had been up to him to be the son his father needed. And he had taken that duty very seriously.

Hell, the wedding yesterday was a prime example of that.

The wedding that had originally been scheduled, not the wedding that had ultimately taken place.

This was a nightmare. Unacceptable in every way.

So take it back.

It was the only thing to do. Unlike his brother, who had run when he didn’t want to deal with his life, and unlike his father, who had buried his mistakes, Colton would meet his head-on.

He looked up from his phone at his scowling—he winced—wife.

“Well, I can honestly say this is the last situation I ever expected to find myself in,” he said.

“No way,” she said. “You do not get to look this annoyed about the situation. This is your fault.”

“How is this my fault?”

“Granted my memory is questionable, but if I remember right, we were drinking in Ace’s. Then you were the one who suggested we go somewhere. You were the one who said you had the time off and wanted an escape. You were the one that facilitated the car to take us to the airport and said we needed to get a nonstop flight to somewhere that would be fun. And lo, we boarded a plane to Vegas.”

“At no point did you say no,” he said, wishing he could remember the events a little bit clearer. Maybe she had been hesitant. Maybe she had said no and he’d talked her into it.

But he was going to bluff his way straight through, dammit.

She folded her arms across her chest, crinkling the ridiculous lavender fabric of the bridesmaid dress she was wearing. One of Natalie’s choices. And honestly, he hadn’t cared. Not about the entire spectacle that she had put together with his mother from top to bottom. It hadn’t concerned him at all. The only thing that mattered to him was that Natalie was an appropriate choice. She’d been raised in a family like his. Highly visible in the community, with a lot of concern given to appearances. There were expectations placed on her as the daughter of the long-term mayor, and they matched the expectations placed on him. Plus, he was attracted to her. He liked her. A lot.

He’d liked her more before the wedding plans had started to get really intense. But, ultimately he had been confident in her as his choice of bride. So, the wedding had seemed like an incidental detail to him. Something that would have to take place to appease his mother, Natalie’s family and the populace of Copper Ridge, before he could get on with his life.

He hadn’t paid attention to things like bridesmaid dresses. And now he wondered if he hadn’t paid enough attention to Natalie, either. Well, obviously, since she had left him standing there at the altar without anything other than a quick apology text.

Actually, it hadn’t even really been an apology.

One line, obliterating a relationship that he had spent two years building. A relationship that was supposed to shore up the foundation of his life. And she’d just knocked it all down.

I can’t do this.

That was all she’d said.

Fast-forward a little bit—through scenes he couldn’t even remember—and here they were.

He swung his legs down over the side of the bed, something beneath his foot crinkling as he did. He shifted it, groaning when he saw what was there. “You didn’t happen to wake up fully clothed, did you?” he asked Lydia.

Her mouth was a flat, angry line, which was par for the course with her. At least when he was talking to her. “No,” she said.

“Dammit,” he said, looking down at the condom wrapper that stood as pretty hard evidence as to what had happened after their hasty wedding. He couldn’t remember that portion of the evening any better than he could the hours before.

It had been...well, it had been a long damn time since he’d had sex. Something to do with Natalie wanting their wedding night to be special.

Well, his wedding night had certainly been something.

He just couldn’t remember what. And here he was, looking at a very rumpled, rather attractive woman, not having a clue in hell what had happened between them.

She shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze. “What?”

“I don’t suppose you remember last night?” he asked. “After we got here, I mean?”

“No,” she said, her voice tight.

That was very Lydia. Rigid. Tight. Determined and single-minded in ways that were designed to dig beneath your skin and keep digging until you crawled out of said skin and left it behind. Something about the way she was made him feel like he needed to take a step back from her. And even then, that space between them always felt alive. He didn’t like it.

“Maybe we used a condom to make balloon animals?” he suggested.

Her face turned bright red. He wasn’t entirely certain he had ever seen Lydia flustered, but that was the only word for what she was right now. And something about that grabbed him, hard and fast, low in his gut.

A memory of something. Or maybe just a fleeting reminder of fantasies he didn’t let himself have. Images that pushed at the back of his brain. That he never, ever let come forward.

Just what it would be like to see her lose all that control. To him.

He gritted his teeth, ignoring the fact that his dick was deciding to wake up. Ignoring those thoughts that he couldn’t afford to have. Not now. Not ever.

“Somehow, I doubt it,” she said, clipped. “Did you find...”

He bent over and picked up the wrapper, holding it up.

Lydia’s entire frame seemed to sag. She clutched her head, a low moan escaping her lips. “I don’t do things like this,” she said.

“You think I do?”

“No. But I really don’t do things like this. I am not spontaneous. I am not irresponsible. I do not...sleep with men that I don’t like.”

He snorted. “I don’t usually sleep with women with superiority complexes.”

And he’d ended up with Natalie how? But she didn’t ask that out loud because she thought it best not to poke that particular beehive. “Why? In case they conflict with yours?”

This was a return to form for her. Rumpled she might be, in yesterday’s dress, with her makeup drifting down her cheeks and her dark hair fluffier than usual, but she was buttoned-down inside. Completely. Thoroughly.

He’d damn well let her stay that way.

“Listen, I think it’s pretty easy to get an annulment,” he said. “Especially here.”

She looked stricken. “You can’t get an annulment if you...consummated, can you?”

“We don’t have to tell them that we consummated,” he said. “Hell, you don’t even remember. Maybe we didn’t.”

“There is a condom wrapper,” she said, her cheeks getting even redder. “And you are...you are naked.”

He looked down at the blanket that was covering his lap. He was suddenly very aware of how little was between them. No one was here. He wasn’t wearing clothes. And Natalie had run off, so he didn’t even have a fiancée as a buffer.

No, you have a wife now. Good job.

“Turn around,” he bit out.

She obeyed with no argument. He stood, holding the sheet up in front of himself and surveying the room, in search of his clothes.

“If it helps,” she said, “I found my dress on top of the bar.”

He rubbed his hand over his forehead. He didn’t do this. He didn’t drink to excess, and he didn’t have casual sex. When his brother had abandoned the family it had been up to Colton to hold it all together. To hold the people he loved most together.

Then, a few weeks before his wedding he’d found out that his father had had an affair that had resulted in a child who was now Colton’s age.

Now he was holding everyone together from that latest blow, too. His mother was so fragile one more thing would break her completely.

And this morning was evidence of why he had to live life the way he did. With control. With a code. Without it, he wasn’t much better than the other men in his family.

“We can’t get an annulment,” Lydia continued.

“We sure as hell can.” He spotted his pants and dropped the sheet, striding across the room and taking hold of them, tugging them on as quickly as possible.

“We sure as hell can’t,” Lydia said, turning around, her eyes going to his chest, then determinedly to his face. “I don’t know about you, but I texted quite a few people last night to let them know about our happy news.”

“Well, that isn’t my problem, princess.”

Seriously, he must still be a little bit drunk. He had no idea where the endearment had come from. Not that he was using it as an endearment.

“So, your plan is to return to town and let everybody know that we got married by accident? Tell them that we got drunk and made a mistake? People are going to assume we hooked up. Correctly, if the evidence is any indication.”

“What’s your plan?” he asked. “Staying married?”

“Yes. That’s exactly my plan.”

“Maybe you hit your head last night.”

She treated him to a withering glare, her brown eyes full of scorn. “Obviously I sustained some kind of head injury, Colton, if I slept with you,” she said.

He offered her a tight smile. “Maybe we both hit our heads.”

“Whatever. I don’t know if it’s escaped your notice but I’m currently running for mayor.”

He laughed. “Oh, I know. There’s no possible way I could have missed that, since that little stunt almost ruined the wedding.”

It was her turn to laugh. Hysterically. “First of all, it’s hardly a stunt. Second, I only almost ruined your wedding. Natalie actually ruined your wedding by not showing up.”

“You are her bridesmaid—her friend—and you started a campaign against her father.”

“Can you honestly tell me you think an...institution like Richard Bailey is the best thing for Copper Ridge? He’s entrenched in old-school ideas. He doesn’t know the new, vibrant economy the way that I do—”

“Are you actually stumping for votes right now?”

“No,” she said, her tone fierce. “I’m trying to explain to you why this annulment can’t happen. We have to find a way to spin the marriage, Colton, otherwise my campaign is doomed. I cannot come out of this looking flighty or like marriage is a joke to me or something.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “This kind of thing would be serious for anyone, but as a woman it’s even worse. The fact that I was single was never in my favor, because people questioned if I was cold or somehow felt above marriage and family and I just... This is the worst. I have to somehow manage to not look like a crazy person or I’m doomed.”

“Uh-huh.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “And can you explain to me why I should care about the state of your campaign?”

“Well, I don’t know. It could be because I am the best thing for the town, and that isn’t me being full of myself. It’s a fact.”

“I’ll reserve my judgment on that.”

“Go ahead. While you’re at it go ahead and reserve judgment on whether or not the sky is blue.”

“Honey, we live on the Oregon coast. The sky is usually gray.”

“Bite me.”

The command, which was really very immature, simmered between them. It did more than that. It caught fire. Sparks racing over his skin, prickling at the back of his neck. Being around her was always unsettling. But this was something else.

He gritted his teeth. “I very well might have last night. Neither of us remember, though, so I can’t be sure.”

He needed to get out of this hotel room. He needed to get out of this situation. Talking to Lydia, being near Lydia, it always made him feel edgy. Of all Natalie’s friends, she was his least favorite to deal with. There was just something about her that bothered him. And it was definitely mutual.

Right now, so was this other thing. That was a pretty serious problem.

She closed her eyes. “I’m going to ignore that.” She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, staring him down.

She moved mutely around the room, straightening things that didn’t need to be straightened, vibrating with unspent energy. He knew she was holding back a rant, which suited him just fine. He didn’t have any desire to hear it. Not at all.

He silently finished doing a sweep for his things, then looked back at his phone.

He had not sent any photos of Lydia and himself to his parents or to his sisters, thank God. He didn’t seem to have texted them at all, other than that one placating response to his mother.

Sierra had texted to ask if he was okay. And he also had two missed calls from her. His youngest sister was obviously very concerned. While Maddy, his other sister, had sent a text commanding him not to do anything stupid.

He looked across the room at the very, very stupid thing he’d done.

Too late for that.

“Here’s the thing,” Lydia said, as though sensing his attention shifting to her. “Natalie left you at the altar. She could have told you she was having second thoughts anytime, and she didn’t. She humiliated you in front of the entire town. And now you have a chance to get revenge.”

The damn woman was like a dog with a bone.

“You want us to stay married so that I can get revenge on her?”

She shook her head, dark hair cascading over her shoulders. “No, I want us to stay married because a scandal like a divorce is going to completely ruin my chances. If we tell people that we’ve always had feelings for each other and Natalie not showing up at the wedding gave you the perfect chance to fully realize those feelings...”

“Anybody who knows us will know that is not true.”

She lifted her hands up in the air and brought them back down hard, slapping her thighs. “And yet, we’re married. So, what does it matter what they know?”

He grabbed his phone off the bed and looked back down at it. He had a text from Natalie, response to the picture he had sent of Lydia and himself hanging all over each other in the bar.

What the hell is going on, Colton?

That was a good question, though he didn’t feel like the woman who left him at the altar had the right to question him. But even if she did, he didn’t have the answer.

He couldn’t remember being that person. Couldn’t remember that moment. And he certainly couldn’t reconcile the woman in the picture with the one standing in front of him glaring like he was something she had stepped in in a pasture.

He went back to the main screen in his messages. He had sent a few pictures of the impromptu wedding to some of the guys who worked for his construction company and hadn’t received any responses. A few of them probably had phones that were too old to view pictures. He had a feeling he had been intending to send them to Natalie, but had failed, thanks to his advanced state of inebriation.

And further down there was a text from his mother. He almost didn’t want to look. He knew it would be full of hysterics—since she often was. And he also knew that he would have to calm her. As he always did.

“Who did you text?” he asked.

Lydia fidgeted. “Sadie Garrett.”

“Dammit. Who else?” Sadie Garrett, owner of Copper Ridge’s most popular B and B, was like a small blond explosion. She did nothing quietly, and she tended to throw parties on a whim.

Lydia winced. “A few of the ladies at the Chamber. Who are probably already making...banners and things.”

Great. News would be spreading already. He wondered if it had gotten to his family yet.

His mother, who was likely apoplectic over the abandonment of Natalie and the utter destruction of the wedding she had spent months working on.

He let his thumb hover over the message from her, and then he touched it.

Colton, please tell me you know where Natalie is. Please tell me there will be a wedding.

Oh, shit. Finding out about his dad, the fact he’d fathered a child out of wedlock more than thirty years earlier, had shaken her already fragile foundation. This on top of it would be so difficult for her.

He wasn’t the one who broke things. He repaired them. That’s what he’d always done. And he would fix this, too.

Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.

He sent the message, then put his phone back down. He took a quick scan of the room and saw his T-shirt wadded up in a corner several feet from where he had found his jeans. He had changed before going to Ace’s, that much was obvious, though, he couldn’t exactly remember that. There were large gaps in all of his memories from yesterday, then suddenly something would hit, blindingly bright and clear.

He pulled his shirt on over his head, fighting against one such memory as he did. Standing at the head of the aisle, waiting for Natalie to appear in the flowered archway she had spent weeks worrying about, debating which blossoms would look the most effective, the most bridal. He’d stared at it, expecting her to appear any moment, even long after the bridal march had stopped playing. Because she had chosen each and every one of those flowers, so how could she fail to come and stand beneath that damn archway?

He sighed heavily and pulled up his email, taking a look at the receipt for the tickets he’d bought for Lydia and himself. Dammit to hell, they were booked to stay in Vegas through next weekend. What the hell?

Drunk Colton was an ass.

“Coffee,” he said, shoving that memory to the back of his mind.

“What?” She blinked rapidly.

“We’re going out for coffee. And then we’re going to get our tickets changed and get back to Copper Ridge.”

Lydia hesitated, her hands clasped in front of her, making her look vaguely mouse-like. “We’re going back already?”

“Unless you want to stay and play the slots.”

“Of course I don’t,” she said, smoothing her hair.

“I think your hair is a lost cause.” He reached out and brushed a strand from her face. Too late, he realized that was a damned mistake.

Lightning shot from where his fingertips brushed against her, straight down to his cock. His unrest around Lydia had always been a vague, unsettling thing. Like static just beneath his skin. But all at once it was like the veil had been torn away and he saw it for what it was.

Attraction. Desire.

Hell no.

He pulled his hand away.

She turned, looking into a mirror that hung on the far wall, her eyes round, her hand shaking as she brushed her hair away from her face. She was just as affected by this. By him. “I need...probably to be dipped in a vat of mousse.”

“No time for that.” He needed to get out of this hotel room. Away from her.

He was going to leave these strange feelings in Vegas and never look back. The marriage might not be something they could leave behind, but this insanity was staying in Nevada, where it belonged.

She looked around. “I’m wearing last night’s dress.”

“And that’s another thing we can take care of. Unless you want to wear it on the plane ride back.”

She cringed. “No thank you.”

“Then come on.”

She made a low whining sound, but ultimately followed him out of the room. “Please slow down. The room is spinning and I’m wearing high heels.”

He continued to stride down the hall, paying as little attention as possible to the tacky decor. Natalie would be appalled. She had planned for them to honeymoon in New York and spend some time in a posh hotel in Manhattan. He’d just been along for the ride, because he failed to see the appeal in the rush of a city that size.

But then, he’d ended up in Vegas when drunk and left to his own devices, so he supposed he had no room to judge.

“You’re so mean.” She stepped into the elevator with him.

“I’m efficient,” he said, hitting the button that would take them to the lobby.

“Is that the positive spin that assholes put on their inconsiderate behavior?”

“Yes,” he said, not really feeling the need to defend himself. What would be the point? Lydia didn’t like him anyway. He had never liked her. He didn’t have to explain himself to her.

She let out a long, slow sigh, no doubt designed to demonstrate just how deeply she disapproved of him. Finally, the doors to the elevator slid open and he walked out ahead of her. He could hear her clicking along behind him, her steps unsteady on the high-gloss marble in the lobby.

He paused, turning to face her. “First coffee. Then we’ll do something about that.”

“About what?”

“That,” he said, indicating her attire.

“You’re going to make me hobble to get coffee first?”

“We can fix your head or your feet first. Choose.”

She grumbled. “Coffee. Fix my head. Please fix my head.”

There was a coffee shop down at the other end of the lobby, and fortunately, since it was getting to be the middle of the day, it wasn’t all that crowded. He quickly procured them two very strong Americanos.

“Do you need sugar or anything?” he asked, pointing to the stand in the corner that held half-and-half, cinnamon and any other items you could possibly want to doctor up a coffee.

“I just need you to stop talking. And some sunglasses.” She squinted, looking a little bit like a pathetic rodent that had been prematurely rooted out of her burrow.

“One of those I can get you.”

“I can buy my own sunglasses, thank you, Colton.”

“It’s our honeymoon, dear. The least I can do is buy you a new outfit.”

Color washed over her face. “It is not our honeymoon.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is. Especially since you’re insisting that we stay married.”

“It’s the only thing we can do.”

“I guess I see your point,” he said, turning toward the gift shop that was located across from the café.

He didn’t want to see her point, but he did. His mother was already on the verge of a breakdown, and he was going to be the primary topic of town gossip for months. Adding to it all with this weird marriage and a quick divorce seemed...well, it seemed like the path of most resistance.

Lydia clicked after him. “You do?”

“I have a reputation in the community that I need to maintain.”

“I suppose drunkenly marrying your former fiancée’s bridesmaid doesn’t really jibe with that.”

“Less so quickly divorcing her. I’m not sure if Natalie told you about my father.”

Lydia blinked. “It may have escaped your notice that Natalie and I weren’t exactly on fantastic terms there in the end.”

“Oh, it did not escape my notice.” He began to rifle through the clothing racks. There wasn’t anything normal in this place. It all had dice and glitter on it. Lydia didn’t seem like the sort of woman who would wear either. “What size do you wear?” he asked. He was happy enough to change the subject away from his family.

“I can find my own clothes,” she said, grabbing hold of a large pair of sunglasses that had small glittery dice on the earpieces and putting them on quickly. She turned around, grabbing a fuzzy black zip-up hoodie off a rack, followed by a matching pair of pants. “These will do fine.”

He turned around, snagging a white T-shirt from a nearby rack and holding it out. It just so happened to say Bride across the chest in rhinestones. “You might want something short-sleeved,” he said.

She frowned. “That’s tacky.”

“But true,” he said.

Lydia scowled, taking a pair of black shoes with gold dice on them that looked an awful lot like men’s smoking slippers. Then she took everything over to the counter, where a young woman was waiting to check them out.

“So,” the girl said, taking the sunglasses from Lydia and scanning them. “You just got married?”

Lydia smiled, and it might have looked genuine if he was standing a little farther away. If it wasn’t so apparent to him how intensely she was grinding her teeth together. “Yes. I bet you don’t get a lot of newlyweds in here.”

Lydia’s dry tone completely went over the woman’s head. “Oh, we do. Getting married is a pretty popular pastime here.”

“What else are you going to do in a desert?” Colton asked.

“Pretty much nothing,” the girl responded, folding up the sweatshirt and then starting on the pants.

“Actually,” Lydia said, “I kind of want to change now.”

“Must have had some party after the wedding, huh?” the checker asked.

Lydia touched her hair again. “Or something.”

“She’s dressed a lot fancier than you,” the woman said, this time directing her comment at Colton.

“Yes, well she was standing outside a chapel waiting around for her groom. I just happened to show up.”

“I should have been waiting where you were waiting,” the checker said, winking at Lydia.

“If only you had been,” Lydia responded drily. “I’m just going to go change.”

Lydia disappeared for a few moments and Colton pretended to look at the merchandise in the store. Merchandise he would never in a million years consider buying. But it was better than attempting conversation with the woman at the counter. When Lydia reappeared her hair was still a disaster, and she looked a little like a Real Housewife of Somewhere. All she was missing was a small dog.

“Are you checking out?” the sales clerk asked.

“Yes,” Lydia said emphatically.

“In a hurry to start the honeymoon?” the woman asked with a grin.

“Something like that,” Colton said as they left the store.

While they waited in line to check out, Colton took his phone out of his pocket and dialed the airline. After giving all of the relevant information, he made a request for a change of flight.

“Mr. West, that is going to be an expensive fee,” the woman on the other end of the line—Julia, according to her initial introduction—said.

“I don’t care,” he responded.

“Four hundred dollars a ticket,” Julia continued.

He gritted his teeth. It didn’t really matter to him, in any way beyond principle, anyway. “I understand. But my new wife and I need to get back as quickly as possible.”

Lydia shot him a deadly glare. He shrugged.

“You’re on your honeymoon?” Julia asked, sounding surprised and delighted now.

“Yes. But regrettably we have to cut it short.”

“When you get to the airport, explain the situation,” she continued. “I can’t make any guarantees, but let’s see what they can do.”

He hung up after that, then smiled at the man behind the counter. This was an awful lot of human interaction for being this hungover. “Just checking out,” Colton said.

“Oh yes, Callie from the gift shop called over to let me know you would be over here. Newlyweds.”

He rubbed his hand over his forehead. “Yes.”

“Do you need transportation to the airport?”

“Yes,” Lydia supplied for him. “A taxi would be great.”

“I think,” the guy said, smiling as though he had just managed to procure them heaven and earth, “I can make that a little bit more special for you. The car will be waiting at the curb in a few moments.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Colton said.

“Of course it is, Mr. West,” he said. “We want to make sure you have the best possible service during this special time.”

Colton supplied his credit card and everything else, signing the bill before handing it back to the man.

“Thank you,” Colton said, keeping a tight leash on his temper.

Because that was what he did. Regardless of how he felt. Even when all was right with the world.

Then he walked toward the automatic doors that would lead them outside into the bright midafternoon sunlight. And when they arrived outside, they both stopped in their tracks.

CHAPTER THREE

“NO WAY,” LYDIA SAID, looking around the inside of the Hummer limousine they were currently taking to the airport. “There’s a stripper pole over there. In the limo.”

“Maybe it’s just so people have something to hold on to.”

“Well, that’s all I would be using it for.”

“This is our honeymoon,” he pointed out, probably just to rile her because there was no way in all the world Colton was sincerely suggesting she get up and dance.

“Does that mean you’re going to get up on the pole for me?” Lydia asked, leaning back in her seat and stretching her legs out in front of her. She was doing her very best to keep her tone casual, to keep from blushing. To keep from remembering anything that might have happened last night.

This entire morning—afternoon—had been a study in walking through the deepest darkest pit of hell as far as she was concerned.

A hangover like she hadn’t experienced in ever, a walk of shame in a ridiculously fluffy bridesmaid dress and rhinestone-encrusted high heels along with hair so large she would inspire envy in beauty pageant contestants everywhere.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Experiencing this with any guy would be traumatic. Experiencing it with Colton West was just too much. Her dignity was now a rare and endangered species. Like a spotted owl or snowy plover. She needed someone to come and protect it. Maybe if she had feathers people would be more concerned for her well-being.

Her dignity might have been damaged, but her sense of self-pity had never been healthier.

“You say that, Lydia, but I have a feeling you would actually pay me good money to stay off the pole.”

“True,” she said, gripping her purse tightly, as though it might shield her from yet more embarrassment. Plus, focusing on clinging to that specific item helped keep her brain busy so it didn’t do anything stupid like imagine how Colton might look if he were to engage in any sort of striptease.

Nope. No.

She might not be able to remember last night, but her memories of him shirtless in the hotel room were still way too vivid for comfort.

He was...he was everything a man should be. Broad-shouldered and lean. A chest and stomach so defined he looked like he belonged on the cover of a men’s magazine, making other men feel insecure about their lack of abs.

Except, in order to be on a men’s magazine he would have to be waxed bare. And Colton was not.

She swallowed hard, her throat dry. She did not need to be pondering his chest hair. Or his muscles. Or anything at all except the predicament they were in.

The drive to the airport seemed interminable. She could only hope they would be able to get seats far, far away from each other on the plane.

Of course, that turned out not to be the case. When they arrived at the airport check-in the very helpful, very friendly man at the counter offered them a free ticket exchange, and a bump up to first class. For the newlyweds, he’d said, overly cheerful.

Why was it that today of all days they were experiencing the height of customer service everywhere they went?

She was so accustomed to people not giving a damn, and in this situation she would have preferred it.

But no. Everyone was doing their best to make sure that Colton and Lydia got to spend as much time together as possible.

Still, she thought ruefully, as they sat on the small plane waiting to take off and the stewardess poured champagne into a real glass, it could be worse. She lifted the bubbly to her lips, needing a little bit of a crutch to boost her for the journey.

“Your attempt at a hangover cure?” Colton asked, nodding toward her glass.

“At this point there’s no making it worse, really.” Her head still hurt, in spite of the coffee.

“Don’t drink too much,” he said.

“You’re not the boss of me,” she muttered.

“No, but when you start drinking you find it difficult to keep your hands off me.”

She scrunched her face. “Colton, me being a little bit buzzed is the only way we’re going to make it through this flight without me doing you serious bodily harm.”

“So you’re saying there’s a happy alcohol medium you’re reaching for?”

“Yes. Totally sober I would like to strangle you. Completely trashed I apparently...” She let that sentence die as her face heated. “But a glass of champagne or two might just take the edge off.”

“The edge? Because I’m so horrible.”

“You aren’t horrible.” She looked down at her glass. “You’re...you know...well, you’re you.”

“That’s very informative, Lydia.”

She gritted her teeth. “You’re high-handed. A bit bossy.”

He laughed. “That’s funny coming from you.”

“I already know I don’t want to know why you think that’s funny,” she bit out, determined to ignore him now.

Thankfully, the flight from Las Vegas back up to Portland wasn’t terribly long, and she busied herself answering texts thanks to the onboard Wi-Fi. Though she wasn’t entirely certain answering those texts was any less uncomfortable than making conversation with her groom.

Because people wanted explanations. And in all honesty, she couldn’t give them one. She didn’t have an explanation.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the plane touched down, but that was short-lived when she fully realized that they now had to make their way back to Copper Ridge.

Their town was too small to have its own airport. Which meant they had to make an hour and a half drive over to Portland’s whenever they wanted to go anywhere.

“We have to rent a car,” she said, feeling extremely persecuted.

“I’ll handle it,” he said.

“I know you’re a West, Colton,” she said, following after him. “Success leaks from your pores, lightning from your fingertips and all that hyperbole. But I do have my own money.”

“Yes. I know you do. Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you hang out? Spend some time admiring the carpet, I hear it’s famous.”

“No, the carpet they ripped out was famous. This carpet isn’t famous.”

He lifted a shoulder, his expression one of supreme disinterest. “I only caught part of the news story.”

“The carpet was the Grand Marshal in a parade,” she continued, because she knew about it and he didn’t. And it felt important to exert superior knowledge, even if it was about an old airport carpet and the general strangeness of the Portland area.

His eyebrows shot upward. “We really need to get the hell out of Portland.”

They were sorted into their rental car quickly and on the road only a half hour later. They headed out of the city, taking a winding two-lane road that led to the coast.

“I haven’t been on a road trip in a while,” she said. “Well, not since we went to the airport yesterday.”

“But we had a driver,” he pointed out. “That isn’t the same.”

“True. So,” she said, taking a deep breath, “what...are we going to do?”

It occurred to her then, now that the earlier fog was wearing off, that she and Colton had never actually had a conversation when they were alone. They were usually in groups, or standing somewhere where they had friends nearby. Because they never willingly interacted. It was always circumstantial. Always something they had to partake in to be polite. Definitely not something either of them would ever do on purpose. And now they were trapped in a car together.

Now they were trapped in a marriage together.

Lydia’s heart started beating faster. Her palms were sweating. She was officially starting to panic.

Then suddenly, a hysterical bubble of laughter exploded from her lips.

“Something funny?” he asked.

“All of this,” she said, the words coming out as half a screech. “We hate each other. And yet...we’re married.”

“I still don’t think it’s very funny.”

“It’s hilarious,” she said. “Made even more hilarious by the fact that we made it impossible to fix this. Because we texted the whole world. And even then...if we were anyone else...it wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“Maybe not.”

The hysteria subsided, and suddenly she felt just...much less. Much less everything. Small and weak sitting next to Colton. Unsure of what to do with what had happened. Unsure of how to cope with the reality of the situation they were in.

And she was never unsure. Not anymore. She’d found her place. Her people. And she knew what to do with that.

She hated this. She had to get it together.

She took a shaky breath. “The election is in four months,” she said. “I can’t have anything messing up my chances.”

“Of course not,” he said, sounding resigned.

“Why did Natalie... I mean, maybe we talked about this last night, but I honestly don’t remember. Why did she leave?”

“Hell if I know,” he said, the words harsh. “She did nothing but obsess about this wedding for the past eight months. She was...I would say overly invested in the idea of marrying into a family like mine.”

“You mentioned...you mentioned something about your dad.”

There was a slight pause, and she turned to look at him. His arms were tense, his hands gripping the wheel tight. “My dad, it turned out, had a bastard child some thirty-two years ago,” Colton said, his tone dry. “That may have had something to do with her deciding not to show up, it’s true.”

She tried her best to process that bit of information. But it was a lot. Nathan West had never seemed like anything but the perfect husband, father and role model for the community, at least not from her point of view. It was difficult to imagine him betraying his legacy like that.

“But,” Colton continued, “since causing a scandal was her primary issue with that bit of information about my dad, I can’t really imagine she would have abandoned me at the altar to try and avoid gossip.”

“You have a point.” She worried her lip. “Wait... Do we know who...”

“Jack Monaghan.”

Lydia nearly choked. “Jack Monaghan is your half brother?”

She had gotten to know Jack in passing over the years. Really, every woman in town was aware of him on some level. Most of them on an intimate level, prior to his getting engaged to Kate Garrett.

Lydia didn’t know him that way. Lydia had never gone there. She wasn’t one for bad boys with wicked blue eyes and charming smiles. Well, she noticed them. She thought they were hot, and spent a little bit of time staring at them, but she didn’t pursue one-night stands. Not with anyone.

She remembered last night and groaned.

There was nothing wicked about Colton’s blue eyes, nothing particularly charming about his smile. Yet, even while she thought of that, she realized that his eyes were the same color as Jack’s.

But they seemed cold. And he didn’t have that easy way about him. That breezy charm that seemed to roll off of Jack in waves. No, Colton was rigid. He was controlled. He was inflexible.

“I was going to say that I can’t believe it,” she said, “except, you do sort of look like him.”

“I guess,” Colton said, his words clipped. “Lord knows how long before this gets spread around. I think it’s kind of a miracle it hasn’t already. But then, it isn’t just my dad making waves. There’s Sierra, taking up with a bartender.”

“Ace owns the bar, so it isn’t quite like you’re making it sound.”

“Pregnant out of wedlock,” he pointed out.

“Didn’t they get married after?”

He shrugged. “I guess so. I’m just listing my family’s sins. Of course, there’s Madison. And her little indiscretion, but she was seventeen. Still, people tend to blame her for what happened with that dick because she was painted as some kind of home wrecker, even though she was still a kid.”

“For respectable pillars of the community you do have a lot of skeletons.”

“I think respectable pillars of the community do tend to have more than their fair share. Respectability makes a wonderful smoke screen.”

“And what about you?”

He laughed, a rueful sound. “I’m actually respectable.”

“Me too,” she said.

Common ground with Colton. That was almost as weird as being married to him. Almost.

“I guess we just blew all that to hell.”

“No. We didn’t,” she said. “Because true love.”

He took his focus off the road for a moment, the electric blue of his eyes sending a shock straight down through her system. “True love?”

“That’s how we’re going to spin it.”

“Definitely better than the truth.”

They were silent for the rest of the drive. She was too exhausted to think of anything logical to say. She had a feeling that if she tried to continue making conversation with him they would only fight. She didn’t have the energy for that, either. So she kept her focus pinned on the scenery. The trees that grew thicker and taller as they drove farther out from the city. The mountains shrouded them on either side, making it feel darker here. As though they were shielded from the sun, a canopy of lush greens protecting them from the harshest rays.

Unlike most of the locals in her age group, she was not originally from Copper Ridge. She had moved there from Seattle eight years ago.

Most people left for a while, came back later to settle down. Or, if they were first-time residents of Copper Ridge, they were usually retirees. She was the odd one out. But she loved her adopted home more than anything. Expanding the tourism there was a passion of hers, and had been from the moment she had arrived. Strengthening the economy, making it more viable for people to stay. For people to raise families and thrive doing something other than working hard in the mills, or deep-sea fishing. She had carved out a place for herself there. The place she had never had anywhere else. She couldn’t face the idea of losing it now.

“Do you know where I live?” she asked, as they entered town finally.

She looked at all the beautiful brick buildings, their facade like something out of an old Western, made completely and wholly unique by the nautical details that clung to the exteriors like ornate barnacles. And again by the ocean beyond them, gray with whitecaps rising and falling with the tide. That was Copper Ridge.

In case you needed to escape some sort of high-pressure situation you could scurry into the mountains or float away in the sea. It was one of the things she liked about it. Multiple escape routes. Not that she was paranoid, she was just a planner.

“No,” he said. He said it almost like he was pleased.

“I’m here in town,” she said. “Just past where the buildings end. On Hyacinth.”

She loved her sweet little home by the ocean. She had spent a good amount of time cultivating a nice garden, making sure every bit of it was cozy and comfortable, and absolutely for her.

“You won’t be able to stay at your house,” he said. “You know that, right?”

“What?”

“You’re going to have to move in with me,” he said, his voice steady as the road they were driving on.

“I...” Oh, well, she hadn’t thought of that.

“We can’t live separately. That negates the whole thing.”

“But we...we don’t even... We can’t even have a conversation without swinging wildly between stilted and hostile. How are we supposed to live together?”

“We just will,” he said, his tone shot through with steel. “I don’t run from my mistakes, Lydia. I own them. I fix them.”

“If by own you mean obscure with a more convenient version of the truth.”

“My mother can’t know this isn’t real,” he said.

“Your mother...”

“Is still reeling from finding out about my dad. She was very close to Natalie. She poured everything into this wedding. It’s been her therapy. So yeah, I’m with you. For now, this has to look as real as possible. That means you’re moving in with me.”

She hated him and his infallible logic. “Why do we have to do that? Why can’t you move in with me?”

Just as she said that, they pulled up to the front of her house. That at least was exactly as it should be. Pristine and well kept, the lawn green and freshly mown, the white fence newly painted, flowers matching the name of the street growing through the slats.

Her front porch was cheery, a wreath made of sunflowers hanging on the door, a bright red ribbon wound through the blossoms. There was a chair and table in a matching red that was just her style. She liked to sit out there in the evenings, with a blanket over her lap, listening to the sound of the waves on the rocks. This was her place. The most important place in the entire world to her.

“Because it’s tiny,” he said, effectively dismissing the most important thing in her world with incredible ease.

“But it’s my home,” she said.

“I have a ranch,” he said. “Not a huge operation, but I have livestock. And yes, I do have men to come work on the property, but I can’t leave it abandoned. My property is big, my house is big. It will accommodate both of us better.”

She looked longingly back at her little two-bedroom. She couldn’t really deny the wisdom of what he was saying.

Mostly because when she thought of Colton West’s large, muscular frame filling up the tiny rooms of her house she got hot all over. She didn’t need that. Didn’t need memories of cohabiting with him there. That was one of the beautiful things about her house. It was a clean slate. It was all hers. She had never lived in it with anyone else, had never had to make any concessions to another human being within those walls. And she didn’t intend to start.

So, on this, she had to reluctantly concede he was right.

“I can’t... Not tonight,” she said.

He nodded once. “I have to figure out what to do about Natalie’s things, anyway. My house has a few bedrooms, and she was using one of them. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”

“Oh,” she said, slightly puzzled by what he was saying. But she imagined that when Natalie had moved out of whichever home she’d been living in before, she’d had to put some of her extra furniture somewhere. “I guess you have to get a hold of her.”

“Or, I just throw her shit out on the lawn,” he said, sounding cheerier than he had all day. The coarse language on his lips was odd, slightly jarring. He was usually much more...appropriate. Even when she’d first met him at Ace’s he hadn’t talked like a lot of the men in the group who used profanity like a comma. It just wasn’t him.

“I don’t think you should do that. Especially since you’re trying to look like you’re in control of the situation.”

“It might be worth it.”

“You won’t think so later.” She had no idea. She had never felt passionately enough about someone to consider throwing their things outside and leaving them to rot.

For a while, she had had some feelings for Eli Garrett, Copper Ridge’s sheriff. Those had been pretty strong. So she thought. But when Sadie had come into the picture she had fully realized just how little he liked her, by watching him interact with the other woman.

There had been no reason to keep after him at that point. She had her pride. And she had never seen the point of making yourself a crazy person over attraction.

It was funny, because on the surface Colton seemed a lot like Eli. Tall, broad, dark-haired and responsible. But whenever she had been around Eli a sense of serene calm had come over her. Whenever she was around Colton she wanted to punch him in the face.

“I’ll... I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, still feeling dazed when she got out of the car and stumbled up to the front walk. Her hands shook as she shoved the key in the lock, and they didn’t stop shaking, even when she went inside and closed the door behind her.

She leaned against it, her heart pounding heavily. It was strange. Everything here was undisturbed. Everything here seemed the same. But in reality, everything had changed. And in that moment, she sort of resented her house for maintaining its calm, cozy order when everything inside of her was thrown completely out of whack.

She walked back toward her bedroom in a daze, staring down at the extremely feminine, floral bedspread and the matching curtains. She wondered what Colton’s bed would look like.

“That,” she said out loud, “doesn’t matter. Because you’re not going to sleep in his bed.”

Just the thought made her stomach turn over violently.

They would get through this. Basically, they would be roommates. Roommates until everything with the election was sorted, and until all of the gossip over the Wedding That Wasn’t died down.

And yes, then they would have to go through the very public process of a divorce, and that wouldn’t be pleasant. But as long as they could remain amicable, she imagined the town could, too. By then, they would trust her in her position as mayor, and it wouldn’t be so dependent on everything in her life looking stable.

Maybe. She hoped.

She flopped down onto the bed. “You are insane,” she said, her face muffled against the mattress.

She turned over onto her back and took a deep breath. No. She wasn’t insane. She was in an insane situation; that much was true. But everything would be okay. Because she had a plan.

CHAPTER FOUR

“HOW IS MOM?” Colton asked, settling across the small wooden table from both of his sisters. The Grind, Copper Ridge’s coffeehouse, was in a lull between the early-morning, before-work crowd, and the retired set that would come and fill the tables sometime around nine. Which made it a safe enough place to have this conversation.

“Catatonic.”

If Colton was hoping to get reassurance from his younger sister Madison, he should have known he was looking in the wrong place. Sierra, the youngest West, was a better bet for reassurance—false or otherwise.

Evidenced by the fact she was currently glaring at Maddy as though Maddy had just stabbed Colton in the eye with the stir stick she was using in her coffee.

“It’s not that bad,” Sierra said, lifting her tea to her lips, then frowning. “Cutting down on caffeine sucks.”

At nearly eight months pregnant, Sierra was in the throes of pregnancy discomfort. And making her husband fully aware of it, Colton imagined.

It still screwed with his head. That the baby of the family was the first one of them to turn into an actual adult.

“Well,” Maddy said, her voice crisp. “There you have it. Mom isn’t that bad. Sierra’s caffeine consumption however—”

“I’m round, Maddy,” Sierra said, her pale brows locking together. “Spherical. I’m entitled to complaints.”

“I’m sorry for your roundness,” Colton said. “But can we get back to my situation?”

“Your fiancée was horrible,” Maddy said.

“She was,” Sierra added. “Like...basically one of the servants of hell. And I’m sorry you got left at the altar, but it’s really just more evidence of the fact that she’s the worst.”

“The actual worst.”

“So forget about Mom,” Sierra said. “How are you?”

Both of his sisters had grown large-eyed. He shifted beneath their uncomfortably dewy gazes. “I’m fine,” he said.

He realized how true it was the moment he said it. He really was fine. Pissed, sure. Sierra was right. Leaving someone at the altar was a low move. There were any number of ways Natalie could have gone about ending things with him, and not ending them until the entire town had watched him get stood up was about the worst way to do it.

He was angry. Completely, justifiably so. But otherwise he really was fine.

“Right. That’s why you flew to Vegas for one night.” Maddy was looking at him skeptically.

He gritted his teeth. He had to do this. There was no other option. And right then and there, he knew he had to lie to his sisters too. He didn’t like it, but there really wasn’t another way to play it. He didn’t need them opposing him when it came to dealing with their mother. And, since his youngest sister was married to the town bartender, who was the commander of the town gossip hub, he had to be even more careful than he might have been otherwise.

“Well, I didn’t just go to Vegas overnight for no reason. I went to Vegas to get married.”

“You’re having a psychotic episode, aren’t you?” Maddy’s face contorted. “Please don’t tell me that you married a stripper. If some Las Vegas stripper ends up with a portion of our inheritance because you married her without a prenup...”

“I did not marry a stripper. I went to Vegas with Lydia Carpenter.”

“You did what?” Sierra’s voice had risen several octaves.

“I’m kind of surprised you didn’t hear about it already.” He watched their faces closely, using their responses as a primer for what it would look like to confess all of this to his mother. Not to mention his father.

Though he didn’t really care about his father’s response. His father’s sins were part of why he was in this mess. He had a feeling the scandal had influenced Natalie’s behavior. More than that, it was one of the biggest reasons he couldn’t afford to disappoint his mother.

“Why would we have heard about it? Did you print an announcement in the paper?” Maddy asked.

“Lydia may have...sent some texts.” He cleared his throat. “And I might have sent one or two myself.”

Maddy arched a brow. “And you didn’t text your sisters. You got married in Las Vegas to someone that we barely know and texted a bunch of random people to tell them?”

“Texting decisions were made. They were not made entirely sober.”

“So, you got drunk and you got married in Las Vegas,” Maddy said, her gaze pointed.

“It doesn’t matter if I was drunk or not. I’m married.”

“Wow,” Sierra said. “I really didn’t expect you...”

He looked down at her rounded belly pointedly. “I’m not sure you’re in a position to judge about drunken actions.”

Sierra’s pregnancy hadn’t exactly been planned. But then, her entire relationship with Ace Thompson had been more or less unplanned. And though Colton would never have thought his sister, the town’s rodeo princess, would have worked with the flannel-wearing once-confirmed bachelor, he had to admit that they did.

“I’m in love,” Sierra said, flipping her hair.

“And I stand by my decision,” he said.

He wasn’t going to go throwing around the word love. He hadn’t done so even when he’d been engaged to Natalie; he was hardly going to do so now.

Maddy noticed. “So, you marrying the woman running against Natalie’s father has nothing to do with...I don’t know, revenge?”

Lost somewhere in the murky mists of time was the reasoning behind his decision to marry Lydia. Maybe it had been about revenge. He had a feeling when they’d started taking shots together in Ace’s that it had absolutely been about revenge.

But after that? He couldn’t remember a damn thing.

So he could pretty much give her whatever answer he wanted to and it wouldn’t really be a lie. As long as it sounded reasonable.

“No. I’ve known Lydia for a long time. It’s just that I was involved with Natalie and...”

“And you were going to marry another woman anyway? But then Natalie just so happened to leave you at the altar?” Maddy asked.

“I was committed to Natalie. But then she didn’t show up for the wedding. And Lydia and I...”

“You were overcome?” Maddy pressed.

“Yes,” he said, turning his cup in a circle. “I was overcome.”

Colton had never been overcome by anything in his entire life, but if that was what Maddy needed to hear to accept the situation, then that was what he was going to tell her.

He was not going to tell her this was only temporary. He was not going to tell her that he had never felt much of anything but irritation for Lydia, and for some reason a little alcohol added to that mix had resulted in the two of them ending up in bed together.

Maybe he had been overcome. But not by emotion. And he wasn’t about to explain that to either of his sisters.

Even with Sierra visibly pregnant, and married, he preferred to pretend that neither of them would have any idea of what he was talking about.

He didn’t really have any idea of what he was talking about. Because he still couldn’t remember.

“Anyway, obviously I’m going to have to have a talk with Mom,” he continued.

“Obviously. And maybe a therapist.”

“Thank you, Madison. Would you kindly refer me to yours?” he asked, a little bit of bite in his tone.

“My therapist quit and retired to the Bahamas with all of the money I paid him. He said it was really nice that working with me was so financially successful for him, but unfortunately he was going to have to use a good portion of that money to pay for his own therapy,” his sister said drily.

“Maybe it’s just as well. Lydia is going to be moving into my house today. So I’ll be a little busy.”

“This is borderline scandalous behavior,” Maddy said, her lips curling up into a smile. “How nice of you to join the rest of us in disgrace.”

“You know, you could work a little harder to look concerned for my well-being.”

“I’m just saying,” she said, lifting her shoulder, “it is a bit daunting to be the sister of Saint Colton West. And more than a little satisfying to see your halo get tarnished.”

He looked at Sierra. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding apologetic at all. “It is kind of nice to know that you can make impulsive decisions.”

“Impulsive, maybe. But I stand by it,” he reiterated.

“You’re too stubborn to do anything else,” Sierra said.

It was easy for Sierra and Madison to sit there and give him side eye. Yes, Madison knew what it was like to be the center of a scandal. And the town, their parents and the dressage riding community had all been unkind to her when she had been caught in an affair with an older man when she was seventeen.

Colton had wanted nothing more than to break the other man’s jaw. Before he killed him. Slowly. But far too many people had held his underage sister responsible for the whole thing.

Madison made a practice of laughing it off now, but Colton knew that she didn’t really find it all that funny.

“I’m steady. All things considered, you should appreciate that. I’m not the kind of person to run for the hills when things get difficult.” It was always easiest to turn the condemnation to Gage. Their oldest brother had left town under a cloud years ago.

“So instead you ran off and married a near stranger.”

“I told you, Lydia isn’t a stranger.”

The moment he said that he realized what a lie it was. He had seen Lydia out of the corner of his eye at events for years. Hadn’t really started speaking to her until he’d gotten involved with Natalie. And then, every time they’d spoken, it had ended pretty badly.

He always managed to get her hackles up, and he didn’t feel a whole lot more sanguine about her.

Of course, now he was going to be dealing with her long-term. In close proximity.

Maybe this was what happened when you spent years being responsible. Eventually, it all imploded and you made one decision that was so bad it rendered all the others useless.

And, thinking of said bad decision, he had to go yank it out of its den and force it over to his place. And he was imagining that was going to go over well, even though they had agreed on it yesterday. Why? Because he and Lydia couldn’t seem to have an interaction that went well.

Actually, they either didn’t go well, or they went too well.

He had the sudden impression of fingertips trailing over his bare chest and the sensation shocked his system like a bolt of lightning.

“Are you okay?” Madison asked. “You look like someone just let a hamster loose in your shorts.”

He frowned. “Thanks for that. I have to go.”

“In all seriousness,” Maddy said, standing as he did. “If this is a hostage situation, blink twice.”

“It is not a hostage situation. And that wasn’t serious.”

“Really seriously now. You aren’t having a crisis, are you?”

“I know what it’s like,” Sierra said, rising slowly and unsteadily. “That feeling of just being...lost. This—” she pointed to her stomach “—this is where that ends.”

His entire face felt like it had been pushed into a barrel of bees. “This is different. Lydia is a completely sensible choice.”

“And is that all marriage is to you? A sensible choice?” Sierra asked.

“Why else would you get married?”

Sierra practically flailed. “Love?”

“Not you,” he said, looking at Sierra, then to Maddy. “You. Why else would you get married?”

“I wouldn’t. So you’re on your own here.”

“But if you did...”

“Obviously it would be for money,” Maddy replied. “And a big penis.”

Sierra snorted. “Nice.”

“Thanks for that,” he said.

“If you can’t stand the heat, don’t come into my kitchen,” Maddy said. “Or something.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Look, I’m going to make time to come by and see Mom. Until then, don’t tell her anything.”

“Don’t you think the news is going to make it through the gossip chain?” asked Sierra.

“The odds are high. But you said Mom was catatonic, so I’m assuming she’s avoiding the garden club at the moment.”

“She’s avoiding anything that isn’t prescribed by her doctor at the moment,” said Maddy.

“That will probably buy me some time. Until I get a chance to sit down with her. And figure out how to spin this in a way that isn’t going to cause even more trouble.”

“And until then?” Maddy tilted her head to the side, her golden-brown ponytail swinging with the motion.

“Until then...I have to deal with my wife.”

* * *

LYDIA HAD JUST hung her purse on the peg in her office at the Chamber when Sadie Garrett burst through the door.

“So. I’m going to need to hear this entire story from the beginning, with no detail spared.” She plopped down into the seat across from Lydia’s desk, her blue eyes a little too keen for Lydia’s liking.

“Good morning to you, too,” Lydia said.

“The greeting was implied.”

“We couldn’t have done this over the phone?”

Over the past year and a half she and Sadie had become fairly close, which was surprising considering they had started out as romantic rivals. Okay, they hadn’t really been romantic rivals. That implied that Lydia had ever had a fighting chance with Sadie’s gorgeous sheriff.

All she’d ever done was pine. Without any subtlety. But she didn’t want to remember that whole chapter of her life.

She was happy with the way things had turned out. She needed a friend more than she needed a boyfriend.

“No,” Sadie said, her voice getting shrill. “We cannot discuss your hasty Vegas marriage over the phone.”

“It’s way too early in the morning to discuss my hasty Vegas marriage.”

“That’s why I brought coffee.” Sadie smiled broadly, pushing a large white cup halfway across Lydia’s desk. “It’s a peppermint mocha. Full fat. The good stuff.”

“With whipped cream?”

“I’m not an animal. There is both whipped cream and little candy cane pieces.”

Lydia sat down grudgingly, pulling the cup toward herself, curling her fingers around it. It was warm, and she hadn’t realized she was cold until the heat from the cup began to seep into her skin.

She lifted the cup to her lips, the minty sweetness exploding on her tongue. “Okay,” she said, swallowing her first sip, “you have earned details.”

“Excellent. When I say details I mean...below the belt details. Details about the interior of his pants.”

Lydia winced. “Sorry. I don’t have those.”

Sadie frowned. “What?” She tilted her head to the side. “Is this one of those moments where you tell me you’re too much of a lady to do this kind of back-and-forth? Because it occurs to me that we haven’t ever talked sexual details.”

Mostly because Lydia had not had any sexual details to share with Sadie over the time they’d been friends. But she didn’t want to admit that.

“No. I’m not too much of a lady. It’s just...in order to get married in Vegas I had to get blackout drunk. Which means...”

“You don’t remember.”

“No. I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I don’t like Colton. I think he’s an arrogant son of a bitch.”

“Well, that’s because he always is to you.”

“I know!” Lydia took another sip of coffee. “But...when I was standing up there with all of the other bridesmaids, and the groomsmen, and there he was... I did feel bad for him. And...what was Natalie thinking? It was her wedding, for heaven’s sake. Everyone was there. The entire town. And she just...left him there.”

“I get pity sex, Lydia. Trust me, a guy in his position really needed some, but a pity marriage I get less.”

“It just started as pity shots. We went to Ace’s and started drinking. And one thing led to another.”

Sadie held up a hand. “Again, when most people say that, they mean they went back to his place and had sex. You two went to Vegas and got married.”

“I guess that’s what happens when the person you end up taking shots with is stupid rich.”

Sadie’s eyes went round. “Oh, that’s right. He is. I bet you he didn’t sign a prenup before this quickie marriage.”

“I don’t want his money. I don’t need his money. I earn my own. I don’t want to owe anyone anything, least of all Colton West. But I still kind of have to stay married to him.”

“Why?”

Lydia let out an exasperated sigh. “You can’t tell anybody. Because Colton is busily telling his family that this is the secret love match of the century.”

Sadie laughed, allowing a crack of sound in the small space. “And they’re going to believe that?”

“He seems to think so. But I know that you won’t believe it. You know too much.”

“I do. I’m extremely perceptive.”

“Not really so much that as I’ve told you a little too much about my feelings for Colton.”

“Fair enough. But you have to stay married to him... Why?”

“My campaign,” she said, tightening her hold on her cup. “Can you imagine? Lydia Carpenter goes to Las Vegas for a drunk quickie marriage, divorced already! It would be in the Copper Ridge Daily Tidings, and you know it.”

“Was that supposed to be the headline? Because that isn’t a good headline. It would have to be like Mayoral Candidate’s Marriage Didn’t Stay in Vegas!”

“Okay, that’s a cliché.”

Sadie shrugged. “It’s a small-town newspaper. You’re not going to get much better than cliché.”

“That’s beside the point. I’m up against an incumbent that makes this place look like it’s a monarchy.”

“Close enough,” Sadie said. “He’s been mayor for as long as I can remember.”

“He usually runs unopposed. Well, I’m opposing. And I know that I would be better for the job. I understand where the town is going...” Suddenly, she remembered Colton looking at her in the hotel room, his expression filled with disbelief as he asked her if she was stumping for votes. Maybe she had a little bit of a problem. But she had spent the past few years as a workaholic, and she didn’t really know what else to focus on. Particularly when things were chaotic. She tended to fall right back onto the topics she found easy. Right now, that was her campaign. And since her marriage, or rather, the continuation of it, was directly related to that campaign, it was particularly easy to do now.

“You know you have my support,” Sadie said. “And Eli’s. I mean, he can’t actually force people to vote for you under threat of arrest—I asked—but if anyone talks to him about it he makes his preferences pretty clear.”

“And I appreciate that. I appreciate the support that he’s given me, always. Which I mean in a nonsexual way.”

“I know.”

“Eli, in my opinion, is Copper Ridge. You two. The best, the future.”

“I feel like you’re avoiding giving details.”

Lydia let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m running against an institution. Not only that, he’s a man. It seems like the personal lives of women are always more scrutinized in these types of situations. I was single, which already made me somewhat unapproachable. I mean, people wonder why. They want to know if I even care about family. If I throw a quickie marriage and even faster divorce onto the pile...well, that’s it. I’m done.”

Sadie nodded slowly. “Okay. I see your point. So...what’s the plan? You stay married to him forever?”

“No. I stay married to him until I get elected. But, basically we’re just going to pretend to be married. I mean, we’re going to actually be married, but without the love, or the sex.”

Sadie frowned. “So, marriage with all of the annoying things like compromise, cohabitation and having to eat what he wants for dinner, without the things that make it fun?”

“For a limited time. We’re going to be roommates. Roommates who don’t like each other and who probably had sex and don’t remember it.”

“Wow. Good luck with that.”

“That is not helpful to me, Sadie. You’re an optimist. You’re supposed to be optimistic about this.”

“Sorry. Realist Sadie is the one who feels like weighing in. This is going to be a giant pain in your butt.”

It was Lydia’s turn to frown. “I think Realist Sadie is a pain in my butt.”

“She’s a pain in mine, too. I’m just saying, you honestly think that you’re going to live with Colton West for the next few months and pretend to be his wife and that isn’t going to be...awkward?”

“Oh, it’s going to be awkward.”

“Let me rephrase. You aren’t going to sleep with him?”

“No,” Lydia said, feeling each and every one of her muscles begin to tense up. “I’m not. The situation is complicated enough. We’re not going to mess it up further. It’s a blessing that we don’t remember what happened.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I believe that sex often overrules common sense.”

“Well,” Lydia said, “that has never been the case for me.”

“Except with Colton.”

Lydia set her cup down on the desk and threw her hands up. “I don’t remember it. It’s basically the same as it not happening.”

“Except that it did.”

“It isn’t happening again.” She picked her cup back up again, then set it back down. “You know what? I haven’t had sex in four years.”

Sadie’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”

“So celibate, Sadie. So celibate. I don’t think a couple of months sharing a very large space with Colton is going to undo my willpower.”

“Except, you did... A couple of days ago. With him. He was the one that broke the celibacy.”

“Whiskey broke the celibacy. Alcohol is to blame. I’ll just...stay sober. Which is fine, because I usually am.”

“I support you.”

“But you don’t believe in me.”

Sadie shook her head. “Two different things.”

“You just can’t tell anyone that our marriage isn’t a real marriage.”

“Well, I’m going to tell Eli.”

Lydia scrunched up her face. “Do you have to?”

“Sorry. Husbands before... Well, nothing rhymes with husbands. But, I don’t keep secrets from him.”

The fact that it was Eli made it slightly worse. Lydia was over her Eli crush, but since she had been occasionally pathetic in his presence already, she didn’t want to add to it by having him fully aware that her marriage wasn’t real.

A very unsettling thought occurred to her. Even if people believed the marriage was real, she still looked kind of pathetic. The bride hadn’t shown up, so Colton had snagged the nearest bridesmaid.

But you weren’t the nearest bridesmaid. You were on the other end. So, he passed over like three bridesmaids to get to you.

The thought made her scowl.

Sadie clearly thought the scowl was directed at her. “He won’t tell. Not anyone. Not even Connor.”

“I believe you.” She couldn’t imagine the very serious, upright sheriff gossiping to his brother like a couple of hens. If there was one thing she trusted in, it was Eli’s goodness. He was one of the most truly responsible and decent people she had ever known. Which, really, explained her attraction. That and the fact that he was an integral part of the community that had become so important to her. The community that she wanted so desperately to be part of.

In a deep way. Not just a superficial way. She wanted Copper Ridge to be hers. Not out of a thirst for power; that wasn’t why she was running for mayor. It was just that she cared. She cared so deeply about this place, this place that was perfect in ways she could not begin to describe.

The sharp, salt air; the fresh scent of the pines; the way the mist hung low over the mountains. It was in her blood. It was part of her. When she had first driven into town with her car full of her earthly possessions eight years ago, ready to make a fresh start, she had felt like she’d crossed the earth, not just into the next state.

Had felt for the first time like something was hers. For her.

And she wanted more. Something that couldn’t be taken from her. It was an ache, a longing that she had a difficult time articulating, even to herself.

“So, where do you go from here? What’s next?”

“I guess...I’m moving.”

CHAPTER FIVE

LYDIA HAD NO idea what she should bring with her. Obviously, she wasn’t going to bring her furniture. She was going to have to forward her mail. She would need clothes, but mostly early fall clothes. Maybe a winter jacket. Definitely nothing for the late-coming spring. Because they weren’t going to be married that long.

She was standing in her living room pondering these things when there was a knock on her door.

She wondered if it was Sadie with more mochas, or perhaps that was more of a fantasy than a wonderment.

“Just a second.” She turned, moving to the door and jerking it open without checking to see who was on the other side. “Hi,” she said, trying to ignore the fluttering in her stomach when she came face-to-midchest with Colton.

He was so tall. It was borderline obscene. Tall and broad and extremely muscular. Utterly masculine, with just a few days growth of gold-tinted whiskers covering his square jaw. And it made her feel a little bit regretful that she didn’t have any memories about the interior of his pants.

No. No, she was not going to go there.

“I just came to see if you needed help with anything,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“I’m fine,” she said, very aware of the fact that she didn’t have everything together at all.

“So, are you about ready?”

“I mean, I’m ready kind of. Mostly. Also, you didn’t have to come and pick me up.”

“Sorry, I’m a little rusty on the protocol of how exactly you help your fake wife move into your house for a temporary period of time.”

“Yeah,” she said, “we may have to pioneer that.”

“Do you need any help?”

Absurdly, she was ridiculously edgy about the idea of him coming into her house. Possibly because when all was said and done, she kind of wanted to go back to life as it had been before she had decided to make a Colton-sized mistake.

“No. I have it. Just wait there. You can sit in...” She didn’t really want him sitting in her porch chair, either. But denying him a spot to wait was a little bit shrewish. “You can sit in the chair,” she said finally.

“Okay,” he replied, looking rather like he thought she was insane.

Well, maybe she was. But he had married her. So, that didn’t say anything good about him.

“Just a—” She held up a finger. “Just a second.”

She slammed the door shut and turned back around, looking at her half-packed duffel bag. She picked it up, turning quickly into her bedroom, then grabbing some clothes that were hanging in the closet and stuffing them into the bag. They didn’t fit. She was going to have to get a suitcase.

Several suitcases, probably.

What had she been thinking? She had been thoroughly convinced that this was some kind of overnight trip, and she was going to pack a bag, and then she was going to return to her house as though nothing had happened. She was moving in with him. That was completely different. It was... Okay, now she felt like she was going crazy.

“I was tired of waiting out on the porch. I thought the entire point was that we minimize gossip.”

She turned around, starting when she saw him standing in the doorway. “I did not invite you in. I, in fact, did the opposite of that.”

“Do you really want people to start talking about how your husband was standing on the porch looking lonely only hours after your wedding?”

“That’s so dramatic,” she said, attempting to look less perturbed than she felt.

“You’re the one with a lot of concern about appearances.”

“You’re not...disinterested in appearances, yourself. I have to find a suitcase.”

“I thought you were almost ready.”

“Okay, let’s not stand around acting like you would be fully on top of the procedure for going about all of this. I admit, I was feeling a little shortsighted. Like, I was kind of thinking of packing an overnight bag. And then I realized that we’re going to be living together for a few months.”

She could have sworn that Colton paled slightly when she spoke the words. “More like a month and a half.”

“Semantics. But we have to stay together until after the election. And presumably you need some time to allow your mother to adjust... Or whatever it is exactly that you’re waiting for her to do.”

“I would like to avoid giving her a mental breakdown,” he said, sounding exasperated.

“Right. Well, I don’t really know your mother, so I don’t really understand the situation. But I do understand that it’s kind of complicated. But all that means is that it’s not going to be a quick weekend stay at your place. And maybe I was in denial about that.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” he said, while his expression said something else entirely.

“No,” she said, “not at all. We just have to learn to coexist.” She opened up her closet and began to rummage around, digging in the bottom until she produced her suitcase, which she hadn’t used in years.

“How hard can it be?”

Neither of them spoke the obvious, which was that they had a difficult enough time coexisting when they lived in the same small town, let alone the same house.

“I’m sure it will be super easy,” she said, hefting her suitcase up onto the bed and throwing it open. “Super, super easy.” She continued muttering as she walked into the bathroom.

She looked around at all of her things. Her makeup, put away neatly in the dark purple case that she kept on the left-hand corner of the counter. Her flat iron, snapped into its sparkly holder, which kept it and its cord carefully contained. Then she turned and looked at the shower, at the carefully organized caddy that contained her shampoo, conditioner and oil treatments.

Everything was right where she wanted it to be. Organized exactly the way it made sense to her. She didn’t have to compromise. Didn’t have to modify herself to be different for anyone. Didn’t have to contort so that she wouldn’t be in the way.

Darn it, she liked having her own space. Needed it, even. And maybe she was being really, really dramatic about the fact that she was going to be sharing a house with somebody for a couple of months. Maybe.

“It’s a vacation,” she muttered, picking up her various items. “A vacation on a ranch. With a surly roommate that will maybe cook breakfast?”

She walked out of the bathroom, back into the bedroom, where Colton was still standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“I thought you came in to help me.”

“You didn’t give me a directive. Did you want me to just aimlessly go through your things and try to decide what you needed?”

She made a scoffing noise in the back of her throat. “Obviously not.”

Silence stretched between them, along with a thick band of tension that seemed to wrap itself around her, more specifically, her throat. She found it difficult to breathe all of a sudden. For some reason, the air seemed to reduce around them. For some reason, she was unbearably conscious of the scent of the soap that he used, and just how familiar it was.

It was a reminder. A reminder that—whether she remembered it or not—she had absolutely smelled it on his skin before. Her brain didn’t remember, but right now, her body seemed to.

“Do you have a food processor?” she asked, because talking about food processors seemed as good a method as any for diffusing the unwanted crackle of tension in the room.

“Of course.”

“There’s no of course about that. A lot of men wouldn’t have one.”

“Well, I have a housekeeper. She cooks a lot of my food.”

Lydia’s eyebrows shot up. “A housekeeper?”

“You feel a little less victimized now, don’t you?”

“No. Thoroughly victimized.” She added as many clothes as she could to her bag, followed by shoes.

“It isn’t like you can’t come back to the house. You can make vague noises about how you intend to rent it out if anyone asks. But we’ll never get around to it.”

“You know, I hear some people live in cities, where nobody knows their name, or pays attention to what they’re doing.”

The corner of his mouth curved upward. “What must that be like?”

“I don’t know. Do you have a juicer? Because I juice.” She had juiced twice. Once right after she had bought the juicer, and another time when her pants had refused to zip after the holidays last year. But then, she had just bought new pants because juice with kale in it was an abomination.

Colton treated her to a baleful look. “Nobody juices.”

She scoffed. “Well, okay, I don’t do it every day. But I do stop at the store on the way to work and buy a bottle of juice sometimes.”

“Do you?” he asked, his tone rife with skepticism.

“I mean, I don’t always have time to stop on the way to work. But I do stop at the store on the way home. For a bottle. Of wine. But it’s almost grape juice.”

“I have wine, and several corkscrews. So why don’t you just leave your juicer here.”

She wanted to run through a list of yet more appliances that she would probably never use in his house, because she wanted to do something to delay the inevitable.

“Did you get Natalie’s things out of your house?” she asked.

“I paid some movers to come by this morning and take care of it. I think they took it back to her parents’ house.”

“Is that where she is?”

“You know, I didn’t make it my mission to figure out where the woman who left me at the altar was. But, seeing as she’s your friend, you might know.”

Lydia swallowed. “I didn’t exactly think she would want to hear from the bridesmaid who ended up marrying the groom.”

He laughed. “Coward.”

“So are you.”

“No, I just don’t think she’s my problem anymore. That woman is a project. And I did my very best to make her happy.”

Lydia should not feel at all like she had to defend her friend. Natalie had abandoned Colton at the altar. Not only that, the relationship between the two of them had been borderline toxic during the planning of the wedding. The only reason that Lydia had continued to be involved was for appearances. Which was what her entire life was beginning to feel like it came down to.

Still, Natalie had been the first friend she had made in Copper Ridge. And things might have been rocky in the ensuing years, but she still didn’t think that Colton had a right to act like he had no stake in what had happened. Natalie cared more about appearances than Lydia did. Possibly more than Lydia and Colton combined.

“Right. You had nothing to do with her running out on the wedding.”

“I told you, I was totally shocked.”

“Totally. Completely. There were no indicators that things were perhaps not completely healthy?”

“I didn’t know. If I’d known I would not have submitted to standing up in front of the entire town with my dick in my hand.”

Heat flooded her face, which was stupid, because he was being crass on purpose, and not talking about his actual...that. Still, it forced her mind there. And that, in combination with the scent of the soap, was a little too real.

“Fine. I’m just saying. It’s clear to me the relationship wasn’t perfect. And I sincerely doubt that she’s the only one at fault here.”

“Oh, are you a relationship expert? Does that mean that this marriage is getting in the way of a close, intimate relationship you’re in?”

She shot him her deadliest glare. “Yes. The relationship I hold most dear. The one I share with my personal space.”

“Well, as the more experienced party, I’ll just say this. There is no justification for leaving someone at the altar.”

“Did you cheat on her?” She didn’t know what was driving her just now, why she wanted to push him. But then, that was kind of the story of her entire history with Colton. From the moment they had been introduced they had pushed each other’s buttons. And that didn’t happen to her. Everyone liked her. She was diplomatic by nature. It was one reason she was going into politics.

More than that, she just liked people.

But him, she didn’t like. She just hadn’t. Not from the first moment they had been introduced. They had been at Ace’s, and Natalie had been chomping at the bit to introduce Lydia to the man she had been dating for a couple of months. It was serious, according to Natalie, so it was time to see if he passed the friend test.

She could remember it clearly because she’d had such a visceral, intense reaction to the sight of him. Like a hand had wrapped itself around her spinal cord, squeezing hard, tension climbing up from that point and up to the base of her neck.

“This is my boyfriend, Colton West.” Natalie smiled like she was holding a winning lottery ticket.

Lydia knew the name Colton West. Everyone in Copper Ridge did. But she’d never met him before. And she hadn’t realized he was quite so good-looking.

Lydia stuck out her hand and he grasped it tightly. Immediate discomfort rolled over her like a wave and she let go of him, taking a step back.

“I’m Lydia,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

Her throat felt scratchy and dry and she felt uncertain. Insecure. She never felt uncertain or insecure.

The corners of his mouth had turned up slightly before flatlining again. “You too.”

She attempted conversation with him all night, only to have every topic killed after a couple of one word answers.

She wandered to the bar, hoping to get another diet soda, since she was driving. And after placing her order she turned and brushed right up against Colton West’s hard chest.

Something raced through her that felt a whole lot like an electric shock, and his already stoic expression turned to granite.

“Had too much to drink?”

“I never drink too much.”

“Then I guess you just need to be a little more careful.”

Anger spiked through her, canceling out that electrified feeling. “I’m always careful.” She didn’t need to be scolded, not by anyone.

“Except for now.”

“Maybe you should make sure you aren’t standing so close to people.”

He looked slightly stricken. “I wasn’t close to you.”

“Close enough for me to run into you when I turned around.” What was happening to her? She didn’t talk to people this way. She took a deep, calming breath. “For which I’m sorry.”

“Good.”

He brushed past her and went to the bar. And the two proceeded to ignore each other for the rest of the night.

He had been arrogant and impossible from the moment she’d met him.

Yes, she liked people. Most of them. Not so much him.

“No,” he said now, through gritted teeth, “I did not cheat on her.”

“I just think that...”

“I think that you should maybe acknowledge the fact that you don’t actually know very much about my relationship with Natalie. You know how she is about appearances. She kept you in her wedding when she was pretty angry with you.”

“That’s just somebody standing next to you at a wedding. You’re the person she was supposed to be married to for the rest of her life. So of course she would go through with keeping me in the wedding to minimize stress and gossip. I don’t think there’s an equivalent to the two.”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter why she left.”

“It doesn’t? I feel like I would need to know why my fiancé ditched me at the altar. But to each his own.”

“Well, when you get ditched at the altar you can make that decision for yourself.”

She sputtered, and he ignored her indignant rage, moving over to the bed to zip the suitcase shut before picking it up, throwing it over his shoulder, then grabbing the duffel bag in what was definitely an over-the-top display of masculine strength.

“Are you ready?”

“I guess so.”

“Do you know where I live?”

It occurred to Lydia then that Natalie had never once invited her out to Colton’s. The two of them had lived together for the past eight months and yet she had never been to Colton’s house.

“No,” she said, knowing she sounded slightly mystified. She felt slightly mystified.

“What?”

“Okay, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Natalie doesn’t do interpersonal relationships the way everyone else does.”

“And what makes you say that?”

Lydia lifted a shoulder. “She never invited me out to your house. She came over to mine. Well, until I announced my bid for mayor.”

“I think that proves my point pretty well. But it’s nice to know that you were only willing to take it on board when the focus was moved to your relationship.”

“Whatever. I’ll follow you to your house. Just load my stuff into the trunk of my car.”

“Saying please wouldn’t kill you, Lydia.”

She just sort of stared at him, feeling that band of tension stretch even tighter between them. It was impossible not to notice the way his forearm muscles shifted as he worked to keep his hold on all of her luggage. The way the muscles in his broad shoulders looked even more pronounced when bearing all that weight.

Tightness crept down her spine, reminiscent of that feeling she’d had the first moment she’d met him. A kind of deep discomfort that overtook her entire body. Like something other than the normal rules of physics was suddenly in charge. And none of it made any sense. She couldn’t anticipate what she might feel next, or how she might respond if he moved just a little bit, just a fraction closer.

Couldn’t decide if she was angry at him, or if she wanted to trace the firm line of his jaw to see if it was as sharp as it looked. To feel that light beard beneath her fingertips, to see if it was as rough as it looked.

She swallowed hard, trying to ignore the insanity currently crawling through her. “Let’s go.”

“Please,” he said, his blue eyes glinting.

He was so hardheaded. Saying please was good manners. That was just the truth. But she did not like being told what to do. “I can carry my own things,” she said.

He shrugged, setting her suitcase roughly on the ground, followed by the duffel bag. “Suit yourself.”

“Really?” she asked.

“It’s that difficult for you to say please?”

“You’re being a jerk.”

The corner of his mouth curved upward. “And you’re being petulant.”

She growled, reaching out and grabbing hold of her suitcase, clinging to the handle as she hefted her duffel bag up and looped it over her shoulder. Then she began to walk toward the front door, her every step weighted by her things.

She turned and looked behind her, saw Colton standing there, his muscular arms crossed over his broad chest, one dark brow raised. Then she turned away from him, continuing on toward the door.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered, walking toward her before taking her suitcase out of her grip. “I’m not going to make you carry that bag down to the car.”

He went on ahead of her, throwing open the front door and taking the porch steps two at a time out to where her little red sedan was parked.

She busied herself locking her door, and trying to ignore the weird sinking feeling in her stomach. Like she was leaving something behind. Like things were changing in a way she would never be able to change back. Maybe because the last time she had left her place, she hadn’t gone back.

But that was dramatic. She was going ten minutes down the road.

She turned and looked to the side, at her little slice of ocean view, taking in a deep breath.

“In addition to not saying please, are you also going to leave me standing here with your bag for the next hour?”

She shot him a deadly glare. “I’m saying goodbye to my house.”

“As mentioned, you’re welcome to come back to your house at any time. You just can’t inhabit it. The neighbors would talk.”

“And you don’t think they’re going to talk about you standing out here looking at me like I’m a particularly distasteful vegetable you just found on your plate?”

“Yes,” he said, a smile curving his lips upward. “You, Lydia Carpenter, are my broccoli.”

“I guess that makes you my peaches.”

“Who doesn’t like peaches? That’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t.” She headed down the stairs, digging in her purse for her keys. “It isn’t ridiculous to dislike something.”

“I mean, you dislike something sweet, delicious, and almost universally enjoyed by the rest of the world. But sure.”

She scowled, pushing the button that popped her trunk, breezing past him. She threw the duffel bag inside, then stood, looking at him expectantly. He put the suitcase in and closed it, a little too roughly for her liking.

“I think maybe peaches are not as awesome as they think they are.”

She sniffed, getting into her car and starting the engine. Then she waited for Colton to get into his truck and pull away from the curb.

She did her best to subdue her panic by focusing on the details of town as they drove down Main Street. Rebecca Bear was outside the Trading Post, her knickknack store, closing shop for the day, taking down the American flag and bringing in the plants that were out on the doorstep.

Cassie Caldwell had already closed The Grind for the day, the little Open sign dim in the large picture window. Most businesses on Main closed early. Copper Ridge wasn’t known for its exciting nightlife. But that was one of the things that Lydia loved about it. It was traditional. It was friendly. Well, for the most part.

It was true that a lot of people moved to a small town because they wanted to be left alone. So far from being the Thomas Kinkade painting that a lot of people imagined, small-town life was full of challenging dynamics. But overall, people were more relaxed and in general they were nicer than in big cities.

A difficult commute in Copper Ridge might mean that a deer ran out in front of you, rather than getting stuck in any kind of bottleneck traffic.

As she let these thoughts wash over her, she felt the stress of the past few minutes with Colton begin to drain away.

Yeah, essentially, this whole marriage would be her lying back and thinking of Copper Ridge.

That was why she was doing this. For her position in the community that she had come to love more than anything else.

The route to Colton’s house wound out of town on a dirt road and into the mountains. She had to admit, she liked that. If there was one thing that she loved at least as much as the bustling main street of town, it was the thick, dark green silence of the mountains that surrounded Copper Ridge.

Colton stopped his truck in front of a large wrought-iron gate with an ornate design on it. A bear, pine trees and what looked like a river were skillfully shaped into the metal. She wondered if that was the work of Sam McCormack. She imagined it was. The McCormack brothers were two of the most skilled metalworkers in town, if not in the whole state. They were also built from all that time spent doing physical labor.

Lydia had been working with them to arrange tours of their forge for visitors to the town. She was always on the lookout for new ways to entice tourists to come to Copper Ridge, and along with that, ways to improve income for small businesses.

That was one of the reasons she and Sadie Garrett had grown so close. Sadie hosted a lot of events at her bed-and-breakfast, which had become one of the most popular places for people to stay. The whole Garrett Ranch put on a Fourth of July picnic that had become a can’t-miss event for Copper Ridge and surrounding communities.

Yes, everything she did, she did for her town.

Colton entered a code on the brick pillar next to the gate, and it swung open. She drove in behind him, trying not to feel too awed by the sight of his house. She had known the West family had a compelling amount of money, but this was evidence she hadn’t exactly been confronted with yet.

The simplistic description of Colton’s home was log cabin. Because it was built entirely of logs. But that did the large, impressive structure a disservice.

If it was rustic, it was in a very intentional way.

It had a green metal roof, built to withstand whatever weather was dumped upon it, and a wide covered porch with some wrought-iron details that echoed the gate they had just driven through.

The door was a dark wood, the natural grain and beauty emphasized by a glossy stain that didn’t disguise any of the imperfections. It was beautiful, but Lydia had a difficult time imagining Natalie living here. Rustic, Natalie was not.

Lydia supposed that love made you do crazy things. She wouldn’t really know.

She parked her car and got out, attempting to minimize the impressed expression on her face.

“Home sweet home,” Colton said, his tone dry.

“I feel like I can deal with it.”

He arched a brow. “Compared to that little shoe box house you live in?”

Heat stung her cheeks, anger a reckless and unreasonable tide inside of her. “My house is not a shoe box. It’s small. And it’s perfect.” And it’s mine.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Why don’t we practice talking to each other like we aren’t enemies. Your house is fine. And mine...”

“Is fine if you’re into luxury and custom details,” she said grudgingly.

Why was it so hard to...unclench around him?

She had the feeling the answer was buried somewhere in the night she couldn’t remember. Because she most definitely hadn’t been clenched then.

“From you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Oh great, now he felt like he was on the moral high ground. Now he felt like he had won the exchange.

She followed him up the steps. “It’s beautiful. Literally one of the most gorgeous homes I have ever seen. And the fact that Natalie left you at the altar has now become one of the great mysteries of our time. Because she didn’t only leave you, she left this house.”

He treated her to a baleful look. Then he unlocked the door and pushed inside. She followed him, completely unable to look unimpressed now. Because, as glorious as the exterior of the home was, the interior was even more amazing. The front room was open, a large, vaulted ceiling adding the impression of endless space. Which paired nicely with the beautiful light cascading into the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a view of the dense green timber that surrounded his property.

“It’s so... There are so many trees. How do you have animals and a barn?”

“They’re up the road. There’s a field, a clearing.”

“I didn’t realize you had such a big spread. Natalie never mentioned it.”

“Natalie didn’t really care. I don’t think she loved being up out of town. In truth, she probably would enjoy living in Portland better than living in Copper Ridge. But outside of Copper Ridge, neither my name nor hers carries very much weight.”

Lydia laughed. “Well, she wouldn’t like that.”

“Where does your family live?”

She was taken aback by the question. “Why?”

“Because. It’s a funny thing. Natalie and I are a product of our family name. I built what I have from what my dad started. I’m a West. For better or for worse. For Natalie it’s the same. Her father has been the mayor since she was born. We have roots here that go all the way down. But you...you haven’t been here all that long, and you’ve made your mark on every part of the place. I’ve never known anyone else to do that.”

She swallowed, her throat getting tight. She didn’t really like talking about her family, but she knew that avoidance was a lot more trouble than working out the most straightforward answer. Just enough information to answer without getting into the details was always better.

“I was raised in Seattle. Went to school there, was born there. My family is still there. It’s a beautiful city, but I like Copper Ridge because it’s small. It’s more personal. I guess I’m a little bit of an old lady trapped in a younger body. Most people that move to Copper Ridge do it to retire, I did it to work. To feel part of something. You don’t get that in bigger places.”

“But your family is there. Are you close to your parents?”

She gritted her teeth. “Not especially.”

“I seem to be close to mine. Even though it isn’t easy. My mom is...well, she’s a project. And the whole bastard child thing kind of put a damper on my relationship with my dad.”

Lydia’s heart twisted. For whatever reason, they seemed to be having a cease-fire right now, and she was going to go ahead and honor it. “I bet. Were you close before?”

“I’m the only son he has around. So yeah, I guess we were.” He shook his head. “I’m not the only son he has around. He has Jack Monaghan. He just spent thirty-five years ignoring him.”

“Family is terrible.”

“You think so?”

“I just told you I don’t see my parents who live one state over. Family is a terrible, complicated thing.”

“On that we can agree.” He lifted a hand. “But, we’re never going to agree about peaches.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“I’ll grab your things, and then you can start settling in.”

Colton headed outside, leaving Lydia alone with her thoughts. She turned a circle in the room, examining the fine details of the space. The rich fabrics on the couch and chair, the rustic coffee table that appeared to be made out of the same logs that had been used to form the bulk of the house, and a piece of sheet metal. Again, something that looked old, but probably cost more than her last paycheck.

She was going to have to live here with Colton, live here and not spend the next few months tripping over him. Not spend the next month clashing with him. She felt like she was being crushed down into a little ball, and that made it difficult to breathe.

She was imagining spending the next few months tiptoeing through this space, doing her best to make sure her footsteps didn’t sound on the hardwood floor.

It reminded her too much of other things. Too much of her childhood home.

Of being the least important person in a space. She swallowed hard, shaking her head, brushing her hair out of her eyes. No, she wasn’t going to do that. Because she didn’t do that anymore. She had driven into Copper Ridge at the age of twenty-two and started carving out niches for herself all over the place. Had made sure that she had effected change in the place, that she didn’t tiptoe, that she wasn’t quiet.

She wasn’t about to behave any other way. Not for anyone. And certainly not for Colton West.

CHAPTER SIX

SHE WAS IN his house. He could feel her moving around. Metaphorically. He blamed the fact that Lydia Carpenter was terminally uptight. And he could feel that tightness following her around wherever she went.

He could feel it in the air the moment he had walked in the place after tending to his horses. He kicked his boots off, pushing them up against the wall by the door before walking into the living area. She had started a fire in the fireplace, which was actually considerate, but he was going to go ahead and take it as an invasion instead.

He had a feeling that the key to sanity when it came to enduring Lydia’s presence was to keep focusing on how irritating she was. Not that it was difficult to do.

The issue was that her ass also looked nice in the tight pencil skirt she was wearing today. He had the passing thought that maybe looking at it could be an excuse to make a word association game. She was a tight ass, with a tight ass. And if he looked at it, he could remember that...

Okay, not even he was buying that.

This entire situation was a ridiculous mess. She didn’t want to be here any more than he wanted her here, but there wasn’t much of anything they could do about it.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out, grimacing when he saw it was his mother. He couldn’t ignore her. Not given the circumstances.

“Hello?”

“You haven’t called me since you got back into town.”

He took a deep breath. “No. Sorry. But I had to get back to work, and I have the small matter of moving Natalie’s things out of my place.”

“I’m so sorry about what happened,” his mother said, clearly not so much sorry because of his feelings, but terribly sorry about the wedding being ruined.

“Me too. But, for whatever reason, Natalie felt like she couldn’t go through with it. And all in all it’s better that she decide that before the marriage, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” she said.

He could tell that she wasn’t at all convinced divorce would have been worse than a very public event like what had just happened. Fifty percent of marriages ended in divorce. The statistic of grooms left at the altar was likely much lower.

He heard light footsteps on the wooden floor, and looked up. Lydia was standing in the doorway, looking at him like she was a deer caught in the high beams. For a second, he had forgotten she was here.

He’d lived with Natalie for eight months. Any other time he’d heard footsteps in the house at this hour he would have expected to see Natalie appear. But Natalie wasn’t here. Lydia was.

It was jarring.

In two days, his life had changed completely. He had been planning on being a husband. He had lived with one woman, and now he suddenly lived with another. He supposed he was a husband still. But not really the kind he had planned on being.

“Colton?” For a moment, he had forgotten he was on the phone with his mother.

“Yes, I’m sorry, I just spaced out for a second.”

There was the small matter of Lydia, whom he had not told his mother about. But Sierra and Madison knew. Of course, he had made them promise not to tell, but his sisters never did what he told them to.

“Your father has been in a rage ever since it happened. He’s dropping all of his support from Richard Bailey’s campaign.”

Colton looked back up at Lydia. “That’s interesting.”

“It’s caused waves at the country club, or so my friends tell me.”

Colton had no doubt it had. Probably bigger waves than when whispers had started moving through that Nathan West had an illegitimate child. Political contributions were a much bigger deal. Anyway, he imagined that particular group had several bastard children to their names.

“I’m sure it did.”

“Your father is humiliated by all of this.”

Colton closed his eyes, sucking a deep breath in through his teeth. Of course his failed wedding was a source of embarrassment to his father.

“I’m sorry for his humiliation.”

“He’s never had any trouble with you before, Colton.”

There really wasn’t a response to that. “Why don’t we meet for lunch tomorrow?”

There was no good way to break the news of his other wedding to his mother. Certainly not over the phone. So, in person it would be.

She sighed. “That would be nice.”

“Let’s meet at Beaches around noon. I’ll see you at your usual table.” He ended the phone call quickly after that, then looked up at Lydia again. “We’re meeting my mother for lunch tomorrow.”

“What if I have plans?”

“Cancel them. It’s very important to the health of your marriage that you do this for me.”

“I’m not really all that invested in the health of my marriage. In fact, if it were a horse I would probably take it out back behind the barn and shoot it.”

“You would not shoot a horse, wounded or otherwise.”

“Fine,” she said, exasperated. “I’m much more likely to feed it sugar cubes and pat it until the vet arrives. But that’s a literal horse. This was a metaphorical horse, wherein the horse represented our marriage. And that horse I would shoot.”

He threw his phone down onto the couch, then followed its trajectory, plopping down in front of the fireplace. “Did you start a fire?”

She arched a brow. “No. The elves did it.”

“I didn’t know you came with elves.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

He appraised her slowly, watching the color rise in her cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had responded to him in this way. Sure, women found him attractive, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to engage in flirtations. He did long-term relationships.

He had a high school sweetheart he’d parted ways with the first year of college, then a girl he had dated until graduation had sent them their different ways. After that, he had been in relationships off and on with women who were practical. Suitable. Potential wife material.

He didn’t do one-night stands. He didn’t do...whatever this was.

But he couldn’t deny there was something a little bit fascinating about it.

“Actually,” he said, giving in to the completely reckless desire to heighten the color in her cheeks even further, “you don’t have all that many secrets from me.”

She stiffened, her dark eyes going wide. “You don’t remember.”

“Maybe I do,” he said, smiling at her for effect.

“No,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “you don’t. I know you don’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I can tell. I can...read it. If you had seen me naked I would be able to see it in your eyes.”

He lifted his hand, rubbing it slowly over his chin. “But I have seen you naked, Lydia. We both know that.”

“No, we don’t. For all you know I got undressed underneath the covers. Actually, maybe nothing happened. We don’t know.”

Heat began to gather in his chest, a ball of fire that spread downward, a streak of flame that combusted in his gut. “I know. Trust me, I know.”

He did, dammit. As much as he wanted to forget. Last night had been a study in torture. He’d been at the mercy of vague impressions of memory he couldn’t quite gain a hold on.

Soft fingertips on his skin, faint, floral perfume mingling with the smell of whiskey and chocolate. Because they had eaten chocolate. He couldn’t remember eating it, but he could remember tasting it on her tongue, mingling with the rich alcohol.

So no, he didn’t remember what happened. Not totally. Only enough to wake up this morning with a hard-on that wouldn’t quit.

He was suffering. She might as well suffer, too.

She was just so damn prickly all the time, and those prickles never failed to embed themselves beneath his skin. The one exception was the night of the wedding that wasn’t.

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