Tough Luck Hero (17 page)

She opened the door, and her heart stalled out. “Colton. What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“I mean, you could. But I live here, so it isn't really that big of a mystery that I should be here.”

“Except, that you don't live here, not right now. And you left the house early this morning, and you didn't say anything about when you'd be back. I called your phone. I couldn't get a hold of you.”

She cringed. She probably had the app set so it wouldn't interrupt the music. “Sorry. But, I don't think we're really in a position where we keep tabs on each other, are we?”

“Whatever our relationship is, I don't want you dead in a ditch.”

“Well,” she said, waving a hand. “Here I am. Undead and not in a ditch.”

“Are you
not
dead, or are you
un
dead? Because those are two different things. If you're undead then you're a zombie, and at some point you were dead. Probably in a ditch.”

“If I were a zombie I would have eaten your brains by now. So your rescue mission would be a huge failure. It would be too late to save me, and too late to save yourself.”

He pushed past her, into the living room.

“I didn't invite you in. Even zombies need their personal space.”

“If you were a zombie, technically this would be meal delivery.”

“Great. If I give you a tip will you take your body away and leave your brain behind?”

He arched a brow, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “No. I'm not going to do that.”

“So, you just came to collect your wayward wife?”

“I came to make sure you were okay. I figured that if you were anywhere it would be here. Your office was my next choice.”

Well, both guesses were logical, and showed that he had a basic understanding of her. Which made her feel strangely warm in her chest. As opposed to feeling warm in her stomach, and lower, which was a little bit more typical of her Colton feelings.

“I'm glad you don't want me dead. That's... Well, it's not really the highest praise, but I'll take it.”

“Is everything okay? I mean, are you hiding from me?”

“Why would I be hiding from you?” She kind of was.

“I don't know, but I haven't seen you since last night.”

“It was a big deal, and it takes me a little while to wind down from things like that. It's kind of intense.” That much was true. An event like that where you were the sole focus was more than a little enervating.

“Fair enough. I wouldn't know. I go to a lot of events, but I'm not usually the star of the show.”

“And I just want to do a good job.” She shut the front door and moved back to her pile of pamphlets, standing where she'd been sitting before. “I want to win this election. It's really important to me. I want to do the best job. I want to be the best person for the job.”

“Most people only care about the winning.”

“I know. But I really do care about this town.”

“I know. You probably care about it more than anyone I've ever met.”

She drew in a breath. “Because I... Do you know what it's like to feel like you're walking on eggshells in your own house? Like every corner of it belongs to someone else, and you're just kind of there.”

He frowned. “No.”

“I wasn't allowed to have friends over. And I was just weird. I cared about things, but not the things that other kids cared about. And I never had anyone to talk to about how alone I felt. I couldn't do anything to fix it. To top it all off, at home I just felt like I didn't belong. And when I moved here everything changed. It was like I found this place where what I was good at mattered. Where who I was mattered. I bought this house. And everything in it is mine. And I can be as loud as I want, or as quiet as I want. Let's face it, it's not like I go through the place turning cartwheels. But, either way, it's mine.

“To finally feel like you have a place is the best thing. The most amazing thing. So yes, I do love Copper Ridge. And maybe it's even kind of a selfish love. But I would still do anything for this town.”

She had never said any of that out loud to anyone before. She didn't like talking about her past. She didn't like talking about her family. And everything she had just told him was vague enough.

It had hardly been a tell-all. Really, who didn't have a little bit of dysfunction in their past. It was her experience that everybody was a little bit messed up, no matter how idyllic a childhood they might have had. So, confessing that was not exactly groundbreaking.

“I never really thought of it that way. Of the town being a support system.” He shifted his stance. “I've kind of always seen it like living under a microscope.”

“I guess it can be that way.” She hesitated, knowing that the subject of Natalie really should come up. “Speaking of small towns...I talked to Natalie today.”

“Really? What rock did you find her under?”

“No rock. Just a coffee shop. For what it's worth, she seems kind of broken up about everything that happened.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Good.”

“You're happy that she's unhappy?”

“Yes. To a degree.”

She sort of envied that pure, petty emotion. Because even when she'd been faced with Natalie's cheating confession, Lydia had been so reluctant to feel or be too negative.

You're always afraid of losing people.

She swallowed hard. “She said...well, she said that the two of you didn't really have a...conventional relationship.”

He looked thoughtful, but not surprised. “I guess not. I mean, I wasn't wildly in love with her. She wasn't wildly in love with me. But we both knew exactly where the other stood. At least, I thought we did.”

“What's the point of getting married if you aren't in love?”

“Marriage is stability. It's everything that I wanted. When I look into my future, that's the kind of man I see. Married, children.”

“But the only thing that makes that good is love. Otherwise, you're stuck in a house with people that you have to endure.”

“I liked Natalie. And I know that a lot of people don't. But I do. She didn't hesitate to speak her opinion, but ultimately, she always supported what I wanted to do.”

“Damn.
I
should have married her. She sounds like she's the perfect politician's wife.”

“Yeah,” he said, “she kind of is. And when you spend a lot of time going to various charity events and other community functions, all throughout the state, she's valuable to have. When I take over the family ranch, I'm going to need somebody by my side to fulfill the role that my mother has now. She could do that for me. I knew she could.”

“It just sounds...well, it sounds chilly.”

She didn't like the expression on his face. The one that clearly said she should talk about chilliness. Whatever. He didn't know her. Not really.

“What about you? Your ex-boyfriend tells me that you didn't want to get married. That you didn't think marriage was for you. What kind of a future is that. You're going to spend it alone?”

“I'm not alone. I have the whole town.” Oh, good Lord. Even she knew that sounded sad.

She sat back down and started to fold her pamphlets again. She did not need to justify herself to Colton. To a man who was willing to get married to somebody he didn't even love just so he could have a wife.

“That's not the same, and you know it. You don't want kids? You don't want companionship?” Those words made something uncomfortable settle in the pit of her stomach. She didn't look at him. “Sex?” That time, she did look up at him, but mostly because she couldn't control the reaction.

“Just because I'm not married doesn't mean I can't have sex,” she said, her tone crisp.

She sounded like a pearl-clutching maiden. Not someone who would be jumping on the casual sex bandwagon anytime soon.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So you're going to be the mayor of a small town by the sea with a rather conservative constituency and you're going to remain an unmarried spinster who takes lovers?”

“Copper Ridge is not a Regency romance novel.”

“I didn't say it was. I'm just saying you knew that you couldn't get divorced in the middle of an election because of what people would say. What if you were just carrying on sexual liaisons? You think they would be any kinder about that?”

“I think saying I didn't want to get married four years ago is not the same as never actually wanting to get married. But, unlike you, I would have to be in love. And I really just haven't met that man.”

“I don't know what love has to do with anything. My mother is in love with my father. All he does is hurt her.”

“But you see the value of love. I've seen you with your sisters. I've seen you with your mother. You love them.”

“I do. And they love Gage, who pissed off into the mountains somewhere. We all love him, for all the good it does us. But when the other person doesn't love you back in the right way it doesn't mean much of anything. And if I would rather have a transaction where both people are going into it with cool heads and an understanding, I'm not going to apologize for that.”

“Okay, I can't really blame you for that.” She folded another pamphlet and set it into the finished stack. “But, now you get to revisit your plan. I mean, I have a feeling that Natalie would take you back, when we're finished.”

“Well, I'm not going to take her back. I thought we had an understanding. I thought she was on the same page I was. Clearly she wasn't.”

“She said she was with someone. Before the wedding. She said that was why she couldn't marry you.”

“With someone? What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, she cheated on you.”

His eyebrows shot up. “She
cheated
on me? That is...well, it's almost hilarious, considering she was the one who enforced months of celibacy before the wedding.”

“She
what
?” Lydia was struggling with a few weeks of celibacy around Colton. She could not for the life of her imagine what Natalie had been thinking. She had the man on a string, ready to marry her, she had access to his body whenever she wanted, and she had enforced celibacy?

“Yeah.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I guess I was the one being celibate. Alone.”

“She felt bad about it,” Lydia offered, not sure how she'd landed in the position of being apologetic about Natalie's crazy behavior.

“Oh, great. She got laid, and she felt sorry for me.”

“I just mean, she thinks that she threw away something real for something that didn't matter.” The words felt wrong on her tongue. Was it real if they didn't have passion? Was passion pretend? It felt real when Colton touched her but honestly she wouldn't know. It lasted as long as his hands, his lips, were on her. But then reality set in and it all faded away. She swallowed hard. “But she did say that the two of you didn't have very much...passion.”

“I guess we didn't. But I don't see what that has to do with anything.”

“No love
and
no passion.”

“I'm sorry, you're judging me? Do you have either of those things in your life?”

“I guess not.”

He huffed out a laugh. “You guess not. I'll take that as a
no
.”

“Just... You know. Stop it,” she said, frowning. “My life is not open for dissection.”

“If you really think that, you're the most naive political candidate ever. You're public property.”

“On the campaign trail. Not in my freaking house.”

“But in your house, my life is up for examination?”

“Well, the issue at hand is your fiancée.”

“Ex.”

“Sure,” she said, folding another pamphlet a little bit angrily.

Colton settled across from her, grabbing another pamphlet off the stack. “Trifold?” he asked.

“Obviously.”

“Let me help with your obvious trifolds.”

She waved a hand and started to work on another piece of glossy paper.

“I get the feeling you're ungrateful.”

She looked up and met his gaze, an electric shock piercing her body. “Um. No. Ungrateful is not...me. Undead is the only un.”

She was tongue-tied and ridiculous and she just didn't do either thing. So what on earth was wrong with her?

“Zombies need help, too. And they can say thank you.”

“You're so fixated on manners,” she said, keeping her focus on the picture of her own face on the pamphlet she was folding. “Well, my manners.”

“Fine. Don't thank me, rude zombie bride.”

She looked up at him that time, curling her lip. “I am not your zombie bride.”

He shrugged and went back to folding, and she didn't know what possessed her next. Didn't know what exactly made her want to poke at him when they could easily sit on the floor and fold pamphlets in peace.

Maybe because they really couldn't fold pamphlets in peace. Because no matter what she pretended was happening, the fact he was here with her like this wasn't a stagnant event leading to nothing. It was electric. And she knew exactly where it was headed.

“Natalie said...that she was always a little jealous of me,” Lydia said, watching Colton out of the corner of her eye.

“The only thing Natalie has ever been jealous of is a Pegasus. Because they're magical and have wings. Also they don't exist so the jealousy is theoretical.”

Lydia laughed at that, and recognized her chance to turn back. But she didn't. Maybe a little bit for her pride, but also because she just wanted to keep pushing. For once, she didn't want to test something gently and retreat the moment it turned intense. For once, she wanted to push through and see what might happen.