Tough Luck Hero

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?”