to make her cry. He’d been teasing. Didn’t she know that?
Where was the woman whose eyes had shot fire at him in Texas?
“Thank you.” She dismissed him with a polite smile, then turned to Celeste. “I think the butterflies work best in this room, Celeste. Why don’t we hang it and let you live with it awhile? If you decide it doesn’t suit, we’ll switch it out for another one.”
“Yes, I like that idea.” Celeste beamed. “Thank you, dear. Colt, can you do the honors for me? You’ll find a hammer and nails downstairs in the kitchen drawer beside the refrigerator.”
“Sure. I’m on it.”
Actually, he was glad to escape the room. He needed a little time to think. How had he misread Sage Anderson so completely? He’d thought she liked to scrap and scrabble. Man, he couldn’t do anything right where that woman was concerned.
Then, because he was a tenacious man, as he descended the staircase he said to himself, “Guess you’ll just have to try harder.”
In the kitchen, he discovered the healing center’s director, Hunter Casey, pouring a cup of coffee. Colt understood that Celeste had lured Casey away from a facility in Southern California. The two men visited a few moments, and Colt congratulated him on Angel’s Rest’s at-capacity occupancy rate while he rinsed his now-empty dessert dish. When Elizabeth ducked in with a question for her boss, Colt made his way back upstairs with a tape measure, a hammer, and a couple of nails. He wasn’t entirely surprised to discover that Sage had bolted in the interim.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings,” Colt told Celeste.
“She’s not herself these days.”
“Oh? Why not?” He measured the spot and marked the wall with a pencil.
Celeste clucked her tongue. “I don’t like to gossip, but I’m quite concerned about her. Our Sage is in a dark place. I know she’s fought long and hard to escape it, but the solitary struggle is weighing her down. I think she needs help finding her way into the light.”
Colt placed the nail. A dark place? From what he’d seen, he couldn’t argue with that. “She’s living in the right town. Eternity Springs helped me when I was in a bad place.”
“Oh, really?” she asked. “When was that?”
Colt rolled his shoulders, his way of acknowledging the scars that crisscrossed his back. “Back in high school, my best friend and I were working after school jobs at a furniture plant when combustible dust exploded. He was killed. I had some minor burns, but they healed fast enough. It was my head that gave me trouble.”
“You came to Eternity Springs?”
“Yep.” He hammered in the nail. “My dad helped me get a summer job at the Double R. I made my peace with the past and found my future up on a mountaintop that summer.”
“I see,” Celeste said as she handed Sage’s butterfly picture to Colt. “That’s why you studied engineering? Why you are working in Washington?”
Colt hung the painting, then got down from the step stool she’d provided. “It’s why I became an engineer. I’ll admit I’m not so sure why I’m working in Washington, but that’s another story.” Moving back, he studied the painting and said, “You know, the butterflies aren’t half bad.”
Celeste slapped him on the shoulder. “Be nice, Colt Rafferty. Now, come with me and I’ll get you the keys and directions to your rental.”
As they made their way downstairs to the office, she explained that the place she had arranged for him was a cabin out at Hummingbird Lake, an eight-minute drive from the center of town. “You’re on Reflection Point, with only one other house near you. There are a couple of lovely trails out that way that are maintained during the winter for hiking and cross-country skiing. One of them goes up to Heartache Falls, which is one of the loveliest spots in the county. Do you skate?”
“I played hockey in college.”
“Excellent.” She patted his hand, and her eyes gleamed with a knowing light as she added, “You’re going to love it out there, Colt.”
He wondered about that look as he made his way to the Trading Post to stock up on groceries before heading out to the lake. Bells chimed as he walked inside, and he waved at Sarah Reese, who stood behind the cash register speaking with an elementary-school-age boy holding a white ball of fluff in his arms. “I’m sorry, Josh, but my answer is final. I don’t need a puppy. I have my hands full with