and unknown. Open your mind and your heart to all the possibilities.
Something wonderful is waiting for you, Colt. Open your eyes and see it.
Your friend,
Celeste
“Hmm,” he murmured, folding the note and tossing it on the dashboard.
He glanced at the aspen log and shook his head. Celeste Blessing was a sweetheart, but she was also one strange bird. See his path in a hunk of wood? Path to what?
“I could carve a club to beat up the nine-to-fivers with, I guess,” he muttered.
The auto heater began blowing warm air. Colt tugged off his gloves and held his half-frozen fingers up to the vent. Once he’d thawed out enough to feel again, he put the SUV into gear, pulled out onto the road, and headed for Eternity Springs. While he drove, he reflected on the day. Life should be full of days like today. Beginning with sharing breakfast with a beauty, then communing with nature for the majority of the day—even if the trout whipped his ass. Topping it off with a fish dinner with Dr. Sage Anderson would have been nice, but hey, no sense being greedy.
Thoughts of his neighbor at Hummingbird Lake lingered in his mind as he drove toward Eternity. Sexy Sage. Brokenhearted beauty. He’d been shocked to find her at his door last night. Despite the fact that she’d cried in his arms on two separate occasions, something about her made him doubt that she indulged in tears all that often. She was a mystery, an enigma.
She’d screamed when he kissed her, but she’d cuddled against him and slept like a kitten.
He blew out a heavy sigh. Shoot, it might be easier to get all the safety measures he wanted adopted by the appropriate agencies than to piece together the puzzle that was Sage Anderson, physician and artist. The woman had DEFCON 1 defenses.
Colt’s route took him through Gunnison, and in the middle of town he stopped at a red light. As he waited for it to change, a display in the window of a flower shop caught his attention. He grinned. When the light changed, he claimed the parking spot in front of Columbine Flowers.
When he walked in, the woman behind the counter set down the paperback book she’d been reading and smiled. “Good afternoon. Can I help you?”
“I hope so. Could I get a flower arrangement made right away?”
“Absolutely. What would you like?”
“Something for a woman. Bright and cheerful. Friendly rather than romantic. And I’d like it in that vase.” He pointed toward the ceramic vase in the window that had lured him into the shop.
The woman behind the counter blinked. “We usually send that to men.”
“I can see why you would, but it’s perfect for my purposes.”
“All right, then. I’ll have it ready for you in …” She glanced at the wall clock. “Twenty minutes?”
“Excellent.” Colt flashed a satisfied smile, then asked, “I missed lunch, and I noticed the café across the street. Food any good there?”
“It’s wonderful. I had today’s special for lunch and it was beyond excellent.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s the special?”
“Fried trout.”
Colt laughed. “Perfect. Absolutely perfect. I’ll be back for my flowers after lunch.”
“They’ll be ready.”
Colt gave the flower lady a quick salute, then exited the flower shop and crossed the street to the restaurant. Sometimes things simply fell into place.
Following a full and rewarding day at the easel, Sage fixed tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for supper, then sprawled on the sofa, remote in hand, and was preparing to indulge in some University of Colorado basketball and their too-hot coach, Anthony Romano, when her phone rang.
For a long moment, she didn’t move but simply allowed it to ring. It was probably Sarah calling, maybe Nic. She should answer and apologize for her outburst last night, but she simply didn’t have the heart for it. So she let the phone ring until it stopped.
It rang again five minutes later. Again she allowed it to go on until it went silent after ten rings. When it sounded again two minutes later, she gave up and switched on her answering machine.
To her surprise, once her leave-a-message recording played, the voice she heard wasn’t one of her ticked-off girlfriends.
“I know you’re there,” Colt Rafferty’s voice rumbled from the answering machine. “I see the lights.”
Listening to him, Sage felt her pulse rate speed up.
“I’m not gonna bother you tonight,” he explained. “However, you need to go check your front door. I left something for you.”
“More chili?” she said aloud.
“It’s not supper,” he continued, as if