Colton, Chapter 3
*Cowboy romance *Billionaires *Holiday reads *Family saga *Christmas at Whiskey Mountain Lodge
Annie left Colton standing in room three and went to the storage closet under the stairs. She pulled out clean sheets, a couple of garbage bags, and her cleaning bucket. She turned, smashing right into the very solid body of Colton Hammond.
He grunted, and she sucked in a breath that sounded somewhat high-pitched.
“Sorry,” he said, backing up. She shoved the bucket at him, a reaction done without specific thought. He took it, his eyes locked on hers.
“I’ll grab the vacuum cleaner,” she said, tucking the garbage bags into the bucket only a couple of feet away. “You can start with the trash.”
“All right.” He turned and walked away, and Annie tried not to stare. Tried, and failed. He didn’t have the same western twang she’d heard Graham or Beau speak with. Eli had been all over the world and didn’t have much of a cowboy accent either. Andrew worked as the public relations director for Springside Energy, and every time he spoke, it was with polish and precision.
Finn and Zach definitely carried some cowboy in their voices, as did Todd. Liam worked at the clinic, and he only wore a cowboy hat on weekends, if Rose was to be believed. Annie knew many of the men around Coral Canyon, and their accents made her smile—the same way Colton’s did.
He possessed some refinement too, and Annie wondered where that had come from. College? Family business? A job? Did he only wear his cowboy hat on the weekends too?
Annie shook the questions out of her head, reached for the vacuum cleaner, and followed Colton. A full trash bag sat by the door, and Annie found Colton inside the room, stripping the blankets and sheets from the bed.
He tossed them against the wall, while Annie parked the vacuum in front of the closet doors. “I’ll take those.” She bent to pick up the used comforter and sheets, dumping them beside the trash bag in the hall.
She tried to find something to ask him as he handed her one end of the fitted sheet and went around the queen-sized bed. But for the life of her, all of her chatty genes had gone to sleep. They worked together in silence, making up the bed with fresh sheets and a new comforter. She put the pillowcases on the four pillows while Colton ran a disinfectant wipe over the desk, the nightstand, and the slim television cabinet.
“I’ll run the vacuum if you want to go get your bags,” she said.
He ducked his head and left the room, and Annie breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t even sure why. Colton existed on a new level of handsome she hadn’t seen in a while, and maybe that just made her nervous.
She’d heard him say he was only going to be in town for one night, but Annie knew the snow would keep him here for at least two, probably three. Maybe more, her mind whispered, and her heart leapt.
“No,” she said out loud, as she often did when she vacuumed at the lodge. She liked to get things out of her mind, and the best way to do that was to say them out loud. The curtains and bedspreads didn’t care what she said, and she’d been able to work through several problems by chatting it up with the vacuum cleaner.
“No,” she said again, moving the machine back and forth over the carpet. “You’re not interested in having him stay for longer than it takes for the roads to clear. He’s closed off—obviously—and he doesn’t live here. You do.”
She did. And she didn’t want to leave.
“So be kind to him. Enjoy the holidays. Maybe you can join one of those dating websites once the New Year starts.” Her last several words echoed around in the room, as the vacuum cleaner had come unplugged, and the roar of it had silenced.
Annie turned to plug it back in, freezing at the sight of Colton standing there, a bag in each hand. Their eyes met, and Annie’s stomach fell to her toes. Colton definitely had some experience dealing with difficult or tense situations, because he simply put his bags down, bent, and plugged in the vacuum cleaner.
The roar returned, but Annie had lost her train of thought. Colton straightened, and his gaze now barely beamed out from underneath the brim of his cowboy hat. Annie tore her eyes from his dark, dreamy ones and looked at the floor. Vacuuming. Yes. She moved the machine along the line she’d already made, determined to get out of there before she embarrassed herself further.
Colton moved out of her way as she backed her way out of the room, and she finally switched off the cleaner and leaned down to pull the plug. “Good night,” she said, because she couldn’t just pull the door closed without saying anything.
“Ma’am,” he said, touching the brim of that white cowboy hat that only made the dark-and-silver beard that much more appealing. And his manners called to Annie’s sensibilities as well. She felt tethered to him, and she didn’t know how to sever the connection. They’d spoken for a few minutes, and she’d sat by him on the couch to eat. Her feelings were ridiculous, and Annie commanded herself to regain control of herself.
She reached for the doorknob, and the door closed between them. Relief covered the tense situation, and Annie breathed out harshly. She wound up the cord on the vacuum and reached for the trash bag. It could wait in the closet, just like there would be time to do the laundry tomorrow.
With everything put away, Annie unlocked her room and went inside. Her daughters hadn’t come downstairs yet, and Annie sighed again as she sank into the armchair in the room. Room four was bigger than room three, and Annie realized as she looked at the two queen beds that she couldn’t have traded with Colton. Emily and Eden were staying here with her.
Annie changed into her pajamas and went to the door, opening it and peering out before making the move to the bathroom next door. The four rooms down here shared this bathroom, and the one around the corner, and Annie figured she’d run into Colton again sooner or later.
Back in the room and ready for bed, Annie climbed under the covers just as her phone chimed. She picked it up and saw Graham had sent a link to the group string. Everyone at the lodge for the next couple of weeks was in the group text, and Annie knew where the link would go before she tapped on it.
The holiday schedule.
Excitement built within her, because she did love the Christmas holidays at Whiskey Mountain Lodge. They’d have baking competitions, meals together, game night, movies throughout the afternoons and evenings, fancy brunches, snowshoeing, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, arts & crafts, among other things.
Bree tried to add something new to the schedule every year, and since this was only the third year, Annie expected big things. She tapped, but before the website opened, the door did too, and Emily and Eden spilled into the room, both of them laughing.
“Oh, sorry, Mom,” Emily said when she turned and saw Annie sitting in bed, the pillows all propped up behind her. “Tired?”
Annie put a smile on her face, because she loved her daughters deeply. “Yeah,” she said. “A lot of cleaning in a short amount of time.”
Emily came over and hugged Annie, who patted her back. “Thanks for coming up,” Annie said.
“Yeah,” Emily said, smiling warmly when she pulled back.
“What’s Kelly doing the next couple of days?”
“Oh, he’s working right up until three o’clock on Christmas Eve,” Em said. “He said he’d be up by dinner and the tree lighting though.”
“Sounds good.” Annie looked at her phone again, and the list of activities stretched before her. She’d forgotten about hunting down the perfect Christmas tree, the signups for decorating, the kid’s class for ornament construction, and the children’s caroling. Of course. Who wouldn’t want all the Whittaker grandchildren to knock on the door and sing a rousing rendition of Frosty the Snowman?
Annie smiled just thinking about it.
“I’m going to go shower,” Eden said, taking out her toiletry bag. She disliked talk about Emily’s boyfriend, and it had taken Annie six months to figure out why. She’d finally taken Eden to dinner at Devil’s Tower and said, “I need you to tell me what’s going on with you and Em.”
Jealousy, that was what. Eden had cried and cried while they ate their towers of onion rings and stacks of salad. Annie’s heart had gone out to her in every way, and she’d moved from across the booth to sit beside her daughter and console her.
Emily was the pretty one, Eden had said. The one who got all the boys in high school and gets them all now that she’d returned to Coral Canyon from college. She’d earned a business and bookkeeping degree, and she ran all the paperwork and money in the cleaning business Annie had founded fifteen years ago. She’d done it for something to do after Eden had started kindergarten, but she’d been relying on the income from Swept Away for a solid decade since her husband had died.
All at once, she knew why she was nervous around Colton. She pushed against the feelings building within her. She’d felt utterly abandoned when Ryan had died, though his death had been an accident.
She hadn’t wanted Ryan to fly that day, though. She’d begged him not to go.
She would not do the same again, especially not for a man she’d just met. And he wasn’t planning on staying for any significant amount of time in Coral Canyon—and she wouldn’t be begging him to stay.
“Eden, wait,” Annie said, coming back to the moment. “There’s a guy next door.” She swallowed, the word “guy” coming out of her mouth oddly. “That man—cowboy—who showed up right before we ate? Patsy put him in four.”
“Okay,” Eden said, and then she ducked out of the door, leaving Emily and Annie alone.
Emily changed into her pajamas too, pulling her long, blonde hair out of its ponytail and letting it flow down her back. “I told Eden to sign up for an app to meet someone.”
“You did?” After Annie had learned why Eden practically ran from the room every time Em mentioned a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, or even “some guy I went to coffee with once,” she’d kept it to herself.
Only when the girls had come to one of the worst arguments of their lives, had Eden looked at Annie with tears streaming down her face and said, “Tell her.”
So Annie had told Emily how her sister felt, always being in the shadows. Always being overlooked. Always needing to shop in the plus section while Emily could practically still wear things from the junior department.
“And what did she say?” Annie asked. It had been six months since everything had come out, and while the tension still ramped up from time to time, at least they’d been able to deal with it instead of letting it fester, grow, and then explode.
“She said she’s going to look into it.” Emily peeled back the comforter and went around the bed, untucking the sheets that Annie had worked so hard to put in. She grinned at Annie. “But I’m on that app, and she signed up months ago.”
“What else can you see?” Annie asked as Emily tilted her phone toward her. Maybe a tiny part of her wanted to know the name of the app too.
She already knew Eden had signed up for the dating app, even if she didn’t know the name of it. In the last few weeks, she’d been talking to a guy named Mitchell, too, and she’d sworn Annie to secrecy.
“I can’t see anything,” Emily said, and Annie relaxed a little. “Just her profile, and that she’s single. I can see when she’s active.” She peered closer at her phone. “And she’s active right now.”
“She just wants to find someone,” Annie said, trying to play things off as casual. “We need to be gentle with her.”
“I am being gentle with her,” Emily said, but Annie knew Em simply didn’t get it. She hadn’t ever been passed over for her sister or her best friend. It wasn’t her fault; she couldn’t understand.
Emily tucked her legs underneath her and faced Annie, and the sleep Annie wanted started to fade. She loved talking to her daughters, though, and she’d given up plenty of hours of sleep to stay up late and bond with Emily and Eden.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me—what?” Annie searched her oldest daughter’s face.
She held up her phone, a twinkle in her eye that Annie did not like. Not one little bit. “You should join the dating app.”
“Oh, no.” Annie scoffed, though she’d literally just thought of doing so twenty minutes ago. “There’s not going to be men my age on that thing.” She shook her head and left her phone lying in her lap. “And I’m not looking for someone the same age as my daughter.” She cocked her eyebrows at Emily.
“But you are looking.” Emily tried to bite back her smile, but she couldn’t, and it spread across her whole face.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Annie leaned back against her pillows and looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe? I don’t know.” She’d loved Ryan so much, but she didn’t want to be alone in her later years. Now that she was closer to fifty than forty, maybe she should get more serious about finding someone to sail into her silver years with.
Silver….
Annie closed her eyes as Emily started talking. “Here’s a guy who’s forty-two, Mom. That’s not too young for you.”
“I should hope not,” Annie said. “That’s only four years.”
“This guy is fifty.”
“I don’t want a ‘guy,’” Annie said. “I want a man.”
“Fine,” Emily said, the bed creaking as she got off of it. “Look. This man is fifty. And he’s cute.”
Annie opened her eyes and took her daughter’s phone. The man’s picture filling the top half of the screen smiled back at her with crinkled, blue eyes, straight teeth, and plenty of charisma.
“That’s Will Mayers,” she said. “He cheated on his wife, who left eight months ago to live with their daughter in Butte.” She rolled her eyes and handed the phone back to Emily. She had caught the name of the dating app, though, and she would consider joining.
She’d pray about it, if Emily would ever stop talking. But she prattled on about another man, and how Annie couldn’t expect that every man would cheat just because he had once.
She closed her eyes again, aware when Eden came back into the room, because Emily braided her hair, and the conversation switched to the schedule of activities at the lodge.
Annie conjured up the picture of her husband. Ryan had been a man’s man, with big, broad shoulders, dark, sexy hair, and the ability to grow a beard in twelve hours or less. He’d flown a helicopter for twelve years, taking tourists up into the most remote parts of the Grand Teton Mountains. In the winter, when he couldn’t fly as often, he worked as a backcountry guide, taking people up to spots of snow that had never been touched by humans before.
He’d loved Annie with his whole heart, and she’d been gloriously fulfilled and happy with him too. He’d always listened to her before, when she said she had a hunch he shouldn’t do something, or that the girls shouldn’t go to whichever neighbor’s house.
But for some reason, the day she’d asked him not to take the tour to the top of Mount Moran, he’d gone anyway.
He hadn’t come home.
Annie drew in a deep breath and started a prayer in her mind. Help me, Lord, to be where I need to be, so I can meet who I need to meet. I would like to…meet a new man. Someone who will love and cherish me, and someone who I can love and cherish too.
Practical. Direct. Annie didn’t need to tell God everything she felt; she believed He already knew. He knew even the knotted bits, the parts Annie didn’t understand herself. And He’d always provided a way for Annie to take care of herself and the girls. She didn’t need another client, or a way to pay the bills.
She needed someone to start taking care of her heart.
What about Colton Hammond?
The thought ran through her head, and she couldn’t help wondering if the Lord had put it there, or if she just had the handsome cowboy on her mind.