Her body shook with sobs that came over her with alarming frequency every time she thought about how much she would’ve missed, how close she came to losing everything, of dying before she ever got around to actually living.
In addition to making a list of all the things she hadn’t done, she was also listing her mistakes.
Dropping out of college before finishing my degree.
Never actually choosing a career, but falling into a job that paid the bills.
Getting a second credit card. The first one had been more than enough.
Dating both Landon and his twin, Lucas—huge mistake.
She’d caused trouble between Landon and his brother, who was also his closest friend. Amanda deeply regretted that. When they’d asked her out—at the same time—she’d panicked and said yes to both of them, not thinking it through or weighing the many ways it could turn into a catastrophe. Mostly, she’d wanted to avoid hurting any feelings since her company had just landed a major account with their family’s business.
In truth, she figured they’d asked her out because they were fascinated by a woman who spoke about sex toys the way other women discussed shoes or jewelry. She’d grown numb to the salacious nature of the products she represented, but Lucas and Landon had been seriously intrigued.
It hadn’t taken long for Amanda to realize she would’ve been far better off kindly saying no to both of them. The situation had gone from innocent fun to messy in the course of two days. After a delightful evening with Lucas, she’d truly connected with Landon, which was baffling. How could she have such different reactions to identical twins? It hadn’t made any sense to her, but the fact remained—she was attracted to Landon but not to Lucas. He was a great guy—fun and funny and entertaining.
But there was just something about Landon…
He was everything his brother was and somehow more. When she looked at his golden-brown eyes and dirty-blond hair and sweet, sexy lips, she wanted things with him that she hadn’t wanted with anyone.
Not that it mattered now. She’d made a hot mess of things by dating him and his brother, and even though Lucas had since met and fallen for Dani and her baby daughter, Savannah, things had been awkward with Landon before the fire and were even more so now.
No wonder she’d never been in love. Clearly, she sucked at dating. And now she was holed up in Landon’s house, recovering from her fire-related injuries and contending with an emotional tsunami that would freak out any man, let alone one she’d kinda sorta dated before things got weird. She ought to get the hell out of Butler and go home to her mother in St. Louis. Her mom had called daily on Landon’s house phone to check on her since the frightening night of the fire.
“I’ll send a ticket,” her mother had said. “Come home. Let me take care of you.”
Amanda loved her mother, but feared if she went home, she might hunker down, pull the covers over her head and never leave again. That was not an option. The plan was to stay with Landon until her ankle healed enough that she could get around better, and then she’d get back to work and figure out what was next. She’d given up her apartment some time ago, rather than pay rent while she traveled nonstop for work.
Before the fire, she’d decided to stay in Butler for a while longer to work on the rewrite of the product catalog and had been halfway through the project before her laptop went up in the flames. Thankfully, she’d saved a backup copy to an external server, so she didn’t have to start over. But she had no desire to work, not to mention her concentration was nonexistent.
Outside, the wind howled as driving rain fell in quantities she’d never seen before she arrived in the mountains of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Landon was out there somewhere, working with the search-and-rescue team to find some missing kids.
He’d been gone for hours, giving Amanda way too much time to think and add to her lists. Another mistake had been to nurse a crush on Landon after causing so much trouble for him—and not just with his brother. They were sharing close quarters in his small cabin. He’d given her his bed and was bunking on an air mattress in the living room. He said he didn’t mind, but of course, he probably did.