Let It Be (Butler, Vermont #6) - Marie Force Page 0,39
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