“Yes, something happened. I found out my grandfather is a scum-sucking, piece-of-shit asshole.”
She gasped.
He looked up to find her sweet face gone blank with shock. “Not Elmer.”
“Thank goodness you didn’t mean him.”
“I mean the other one, the one I’ve never met. The one who kicked my dad out of his family because he wanted to marry my mom rather than work for the family business and now…” He brought the ax down on the imaginary head that apparently wasn’t dead enough yet.
Lucy approached him and gently took the ax out of his hand, tossing it aside.
Colton put his hands on his hips, breathing hard from exertion.
“Now what?”
“Now he expects my dad to drop everything and come running just because he’s dying and has apparently developed a guilty conscience that he wants to purge before he croaks. And it’s all just so fucked up.”
“Oh, Colton. That’s so fucked up.”
“I’m glad you think so, because everyone else is telling him he should go and take us with him so they can see what came of this marriage they were so opposed to. But I’m like, whoa, people. Why in the world would we let him do that when this guy hurt him so badly? It makes no sense to me.”
“Let’s go inside and talk about it.”
“I’d rather stay out here and smash things.”
“Is that helping?”
“No, but…”
She took hold of his hand and gave a gentle tug, stopping to scoop up his coat and shirt on the way to the house.
The dogs followed them in and snuggled up together in front of the fire in the woodstove.
“You want a drink?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah, I do. A really big, stiff drink would be good.”
“Coming right up.”
She poured bourbon straight into a glass and handed it to him.
He drank half of it in one swallow, relishing the burn as it traveled through his system.
“Better?” she asked, watching him warily.
He couldn’t have her wary around him. “Much better, baby. Thank you. How are you? How’s my little bruiser?”
“We’re fine, just worried about you.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to come home hot.”
“Where else should you go when you’re upset?”
“My dad… He’s like the best guy ever, you know?”
“I do know. I absolutely know that, and he raised seven amazing sons who are just like him in all the ways that matter most.”
Colton was appalled to feel a lump form in his throat as tears burned his eyes. He placed his hands flat on the counter and dropped his head. “The thought of someone hurting him that way, especially his own father… It just makes me a little crazy. I was pretending to smash the head of a man I’ve never met on the logs.”
Lucy laughed as she came to him and wrapped her arms around him, compelling him to lean on her, which he did. Happily. She was his favorite person.
“What you said about your dad being the best guy in the world…”
“What about it?”
“That’s why he has to go to see his father. You know that, right? Deep inside, despite all the hurt, he’s still the dutiful son who goes when his father calls. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t.”
Colton sighed and sagged into her warm embrace. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make it seem so logical when it’s anything but to me?”
“You’re running on emotion. That makes it hard to see the logic.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight to her, his love, his rock, his everything. “Thankfully, I’ve got you to tell me what I should be thinking rather than letting the emotions take over.”
“I’m always happy to set you straight.”
When he’d arrived home, he would’ve thought it impossible that he’d laugh at anything tonight, but he laughed at that. Pulling back from her, he looked down at her adorable face and kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose and then her lips, lingering over the sweet taste of her. “Thanks.”
“Any time. So does this mean you’re going to Philadelphia?”
“I guess it does,” he said, sighing.
Working the night shift at the firehouse after the family meeting had Lucas out of sorts, wishing he was able to spend the evening at home with Dani and Savvy and Dani’s parents, rather than having to stay at work. He and Landon had to do some juggling to cover their upcoming fire department shifts as well as the final days of sales at the Christmas tree farm that Landon managed so they could go on the trip to Philadelphia.
Before his shift, Lucas had put a rush on finishing the rocking chair he’d made for Ella at Gavin’s request. Now that the juggling was done, Lucas was left with a long night to think about everything he’d learned about his family that day.
He wanted Dani, and he needed to tuck in his little girl.
Without worrying about coming up with an excuse for the other guys on duty, he grabbed a radio off the charger and told one of the others he was running home for a minute but would be back. By now, his future in-laws would be settled at the B&B where they were staying, and he could hopefully have a minute alone with Dani.
“Got it, LT,” his colleague said without looking up from the book he was reading in the lounge.
They joked that being a firefighter was either deadly boring or the biggest adrenaline rush you could ever experience, with not much in between those two extremes. Thankfully, in Butler, Vermont, it was mostly boring. As he drove the short distance to home, he recalled how he used to yearn for a little more action. Until the Admiral Butler Inn burned to the ground in May and nearly took him—and Landon’s now-fiancée, Amanda—with it.
Since then, he had a new appreciation for the boring, the mundane, the routine aspects of life and was just fine with a shift in which they never received a single call. Something about thinking you’re going to die before you ever really got the chance to live did something to a guy’s sense of adventure. He still loved doing the outdoor exploits he and his brothers were known for, but now that he had a fiancée and daughter to think about, he took his safety much more seriously than he used to. That was especially true knowing how Dani had lost the baby’s father in a tragic accident when she was pregnant with Savvy.
Since he met Dani and Savvy and fell in love with both of them, Lucas had everything to live for. At home, he ran up the two flights of stairs to their cozy third-floor apartment and used his key in the door he insisted she keep locked when he wasn’t home, even though the crime rate in Butler was extremely low. He slept better at the firehouse when he knew they were locked in.
Savvy let out a scream when she saw him and came toddling over to him on unsteady legs. She’d started walking right before her first birthday in November and, like his niece Callie, had advanced quickly to running. The Christmas tree in the corner was decorated only above where she could reach, which was one of many things about her that delighted him.
Lucas scooped her up and gave her a squeeze.
“Lu, Lu, Lu.”
“Hi, baby.” One of his favorite things ever was the way she recoiled in horror from his identical twin brother. Nothing amused him more than the way she reacted to Landon as she tried to figure out how it was possible that someone else looked almost exactly like her beloved Lu. He kissed her ticklish neck until she screamed with laughter.