Tough Luck Hero

“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.”