Her Cowboy Hero (The Colorado Cades) (17 page)

“Yes, but now he’s putting you through a lot. As your best friend, I’m entitled to be annoyed with him. You guys were
good
together.”

We really were.
“I think he knows that. I even think it’s part of the problem. He doesn’t want a relationship, doesn’t want to be vulnerable to anyone.”

“Then he’s going to be a very lonely man.”

Hannah met her friend’s eyes. “He already is. I thought I could fix that, but I was being arrogant.”

She was a single mom and a struggling ranch owner with ambition and baking skill. She was not a miracle worker.

Chapter Fourteen

Justin’s automatic smile of greeting crumpled when he stepped outside and got a better look at Colin’s face beneath the porch light. “Oh, hell. You blew it with Hannah, didn’t you?”

“Coming here was a mistake,” Colin growled. “Cielo Peak’s got plenty of hotels.”

His brother reached out and grabbed his elbow. “Get inside and tell me all about it, you idiot.”

Colin had spent the entire ride to Cielo Peak calling himself far worse names. When he relived Hannah’s wounded expression as she told him goodbye, he hated himself for ever kissing her, much less making love to her. He was a selfish SOB. By indulging his own desires, he’d hurt her in the process.

He’d rationalized that as long as he was honest with her about his intentions, he couldn’t break her heart, but he’d known better. He’d known from the beginning that Hannah was open and loving and full of hope. If he’d destroyed that hope, like some blindly rampaging beast trampling a beautiful flower garden—

“Yo!” Justin snapped his fingers in front of his face. “You haven’t answered anything I’ve said for the last two minutes. Have you gone catatonic on me?”

“No.” But that might be an improvement.

“Well, then get inside,” Justin repeated. “We can do this the easy way, which involves you and me sitting at my kitchen table over a couple of beers, or the hard way.”

“Which would be...?”

His brother gave him a menacing grin. “Me calling Arden and telling her she’s needed for an emotional intervention.”

“You are a heartless bastard.” Nonetheless, Colin followed him inside.

“Before Elisabeth, I think that was true. I was charming when I wanted to be, but mostly heartless. Beth’s made me a better man. I saw glimmers of hope that Hannah was restoring
you
to a better version of yourself.” He popped the lids off of two bottles of beer with a magnetized opener he kept on the fridge, then slid a bottle across the table to Colin. “Why are you here instead of with her?”

“I was coming for the wedding anyway.”

“Not until next week. Cut the crap, and tell me the truth.”

“Her house caught fire.” Even after seeing it with his own eyes, the words were surreal.

Justin’s eyes widened in alarm. “Is she okay? Is Evan—”

“They’re all right.” Thank God. “But what you’re feeling right now? Magnify that by a million, and you’ll start to get an inkling of how I felt.” Colin knocked back a quarter of his beer, but it was nowhere near strong enough to dull the edge of panic that had taken up residence inside his chest. It was as if he were trying to breathe around a lungful of razor blades. “Justin, I can’t go through that again.”

His brother sat back in his chair, looking troubled. “I hear what you’re saying, and I understand it. But it’s a load of manure. What’s your plan, to not give a damn about anyone else for the next fifty or sixty years? What about me and Arden? Or have you already decided you don’t care about us? That would explain moving away and never answering your freaking phone.”

Colin recoiled. “You know how important the two of you are to me!”

“And if I break my neck skiing, would it make you sorry we were brothers? Would you undo that bond now if you could, to prevent having to mourn me later?”

“After everyone we’ve buried, how dare you be glib about the idea of something happening to you?”

Remorse flickered across Justin’s face, but he didn’t back down, merely switched tactics. “Okay, forget that line of argument. Let’s see how well you do debating your own words. Or don’t you remember that verbal ass-kicking you gave me when I almost let Beth slip away?”

Colin downed more of his beer, telling himself the two situations were different.

“You pointed out that when you lost Natalie, you had no choice in the matter, no opportunity to fight for her, whereas I was just too chicken to fight for Elisabeth.
You
could be fighting for Hannah now! You could be building a life with her. I saw the way she looked at you, and that woman is in love.”

Colin’s throat clenched. He was torn between pure, ecstatic joy and sheer horror that Hannah could love him. “She deserves better.”

“Then
be
better. You told me at Christmas that you would have traded anything for one more day, one more hour with Natalie. I’m not saying Hannah’s a substitute for her—Natalie and Danny are irreplaceable—but life has given you a second chance! There is a wonderful woman out there with the incredibly bad taste to adore you, and you’re letting the hours and days you could have with her slip away.”

Although Justin was making a lot of sense, it was difficult for reason to combat panic. “It’s not as easy as you’re making it sound.”

“Of course not.” Justin’s smile was sympathetic. “Love takes work, and when it’s real love, it’s damn scary.”

Then Colin’s feelings for Hannah Shaw must be very, very real. But how could he find the courage to do anything about them?

* * *

C
OLIN
HAD
BARELY
slept a wink when his brother got up the next morning for work. They exchanged nods while the smell of brewing coffee filled the kitchen, but neither attempted actual conversation until they had caffeine running through their veins.

Once Justin drained his mug, he seemed sufficiently awake to start worrying. “I hate to leave you here by yourself all day.”

Colin rolled his eyes. “I’m a grown man, not an unsupervised toddler.”

“I know. But if you need me to take the afternoon off or—”

“Quit. The best man isn’t supposed to be a burden on the groom-to-be. It’s the other way around. Don’t you have something useful I can do?”

“Now that you mention it...” Justin glanced around the kitchen. A large cardboard box, marked KITCHEN, was sealed and sitting against one wall. Another box, sitting open, took up a big chunk of counter space. “The Donnellys and a couple of guys from my patrol are coming the day after tomorrow to help move stuff, and I’m not finished packing yet. I ran out of tape and paper to wrap the dishes and glass stuff. You can take that over if you need a distraction.”

It was clear from Justin’s knowing tone that he meant a distraction from thinking about Hannah. Which Colin was
not
going to do. Except for the thought he’d just had...and the roughly two thousand other thoughts that had plagued him during the night.

Her expression as she’d said goodbye haunted him. He wanted to pick up the phone and make sure she was all right. A clean break seemed less selfish, though.

“Packing,” he said. “I’m on it.”

Once Justin left, Colin made a quick run to town for supplies, eager to have something to do.

When he returned, wrapping plates and stacking them inside the box gave him a soothing sense of purpose. But it didn’t take long for the silence of the house to press in around him. He’d become accustomed to Evan’s chatter and the background noise of Hannah’s mixer whirring or the metallic slide of a cookie sheet going into the oven. Even when Colin had been busy outdoors, there’d been the nickering of horses or—

A frustrated snarl escaped him. Why couldn’t he go five minutes without thinking of Hannah and her ranch?
Give it time.
After all, he’d said goodbye to her only yesterday.

He loaded the packing tape into the sharp-edged dispenser so that he could seal up the box. The abrasive sound of tape being stretched across the seam of cardboard and then ripped away from the roll was distinctive. It filled him with a sense of déjà vu. Not too long ago, he and Justin had helped Arden pack up her belongings as she prepared to move to Garrett’s ranch.

You packed up your own boxes, too.
Colin had a lot of stuff in storage. It seemed an apt metaphor for his life. His siblings were moving on, moving forward to be with the people they loved. Colin was in stasis, his untouched possessions growing musty in a dark, padlocked unit he never visited.

He used to hear Natalie’s voice in his head on a fairly regular basis, imagining what she might say to him, but it had been weeks. Now, in the unnatural stillness of Justin’s house, he could hear her exasperated tone loud and clear.
The worst part isn’t that our stuff is neglected and forgotten—it’s just stuff. No, the worst part is that
you’re
moldering away. Life is short. And you’re squandering it.

Colin knew better than most how fleeting life could be, yet he was here while so many others had died too young. He glared at the tape roller in his hand. If he didn’t start building a real life instead of drifting from place to place, he might as well box up his heart and shove it in that storage unit alongside the furniture and old photo albums. He owed it to the people he’d lost—owed it to
himself
—to live and be happy. And to love.

* * *

T
HE
INSURANCE
SETTLEMENT
was going to be more generous than Hannah had expected. She tried to use that discovery to buoy her battered optimism as she strolled into the town diner at noon on Saturday. She had a lunch appointment to interview the man Colin had recommended. Dwayne had sounded competent and genuinely interested over the phone. Maybe it would go well, and this man would be a solid replacement for Henry.

Positive thoughts, Hannah!

Ever since Colin had abandoned them, she’d been trying to remain upbeat and cheerful. Evan was in a fragile place right now, with his idol gone and the second story of their house a charred mess. But even as she smiled brightly and kept her tone chipper, Hannah fantasized about crawling into a pair of ratty sweats and hiding under her comforter with a gallon or three of ice cream.

Unfortunately, she doubted that Ben and Jerry, wonderful though they may be, were going to help repair her roof, clean her walls or replace her furniture. So it was up to her to keep moving forward. Stubborn anger helped. She was not going to give up at the first sign of trouble like Colin Cade, the man who—
was sitting at a booth in the Bingham Pass diner?

Hannah’s pulse went into overdrive. For a moment, she was afraid she might hyperventilate. When she froze in her tracks, Colin rose and came to her. Her feet hadn’t figured out how to move yet, but her eyes roved over him, avidly taking in every detail. He looked so good, and she’d missed him so much. The four days since she’d seen him felt like a lifetime.

“I—I was supposed to be meeting Dwayne,” she stammered. This couldn’t be a coincidence, Colin just happening to be at the diner when she walked in.

“About that.” He tipped his straw hat back on his head. “He and I were talking, and I suggested to him that you may not have a position available after all.”

“You did what?” Annoyance spurted at his heavy-handedness. He’d refused to consider staying on long-term, but he was running off the first man who’d seriously considered it?

“It’s all right, though. I got him a paying gig on a cattle drive.”

A cattle drive? Such as the one he was scheduled to leave for right after Justin’s wedding? “So...the two of you will be working together?” she asked cautiously.

“Nope.”

Feeling a little weak in the knees, she slid into the booth. Colin sat across from her, his expression unreadable. It wasn’t cold or aloof, though—quite the opposite. So many emotions danced in his blue-green eyes that she couldn’t catalogue them all.

She hoped the waitress brought them glasses of water soon. Her mouth had gone bone-dry. “Colin, what are you doing here?”

“Applying for a job.”

Her heart wrenched. A month ago, that would have been the answer to her prayers. After everything they’d shared, however, she didn’t think she could hire him. Any possibility of a platonic, professional relationship had been shot to hell. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

He nodded solemnly. “I understand why you would feel that way. But since I’m here, would you humor me by taking a peek at my résumé? I’d appreciate the feedback.” He opened a folder she hadn’t noticed until then and handed her a crisp sheet of paper.

She stared at it uncomprehendingly, not really seeing the words but needing the chance to recover her composure. But when her eyes landed on a section halfway down the page that read “Related skills: Thorough lover,” her cheeks flamed and any chance of poise disappeared. “Is this some kind of joke?” She lowered her voice to an angry hiss. “I was paying you for the work you did on the ranch, not the...you know, other stuff.”

“No joke. Did you start at the top with my mission statement?”

Her gaze flew to the words she’d overlooked, and her heart melted. In the boldfaced statement, he’d proclaimed his objective of “fearlessly loving Hannah Shaw” and earning her love in return, standing beside her and braving whatever life threw their way.

“Oh, Colin.” Taking her time, she read over the page, each of the heartfelt bullet points heightening the profound joy unfurling inside her. “You could’ve just picked up the phone and said all of this to me.”

“I’m not sure I could have,” he admitted. “I needed time to think it through, to try to put my feelings into words and actions. It’s been an enlightening week.”

“Really?” she asked drily. “My week’s been pure hell.”

He reached for her hand atop the table, his thumb stroking over the pulse point at her wrist. “I’m sorry I put you through that. I know you don’t have any proof, so these may be empty words, but for what it’s worth, I think I was getting there—to a place where I could love you freely, where I could let myself be loved. But then Justin showing up, the fire happening... I panicked.”

“I do believe you.” She’d always had more faith in him than he’d had in himself. And she’d witnessed firsthand how his smiles had come more easily each day, his growing affection with not only her but others around him. He’d made a place for himself where he belonged—only he hadn’t wanted it. “What changed your mind?”

“Other than seeing your face in my head every waking hour, not being able to sleep without dreaming of you and my brother consistently reminding me that I was an idiot for leaving?” He shrugged. “Boxes.”