Page 24 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

Lottie, the owner of the bar, waddled over in a magenta western shirt stretched over generous curves, rhinestone cowgirl boots, and enough chunky bangles to sink a fishing boat. Her from-a-bottle platinum-blonde curls bounced with every step as she slid a fresh pink bikini martini in front of Sutton.

“What’s this?” Sutton asked. She hadn’t ordered another round.

Lottie steepled her fingertips together, tapping them to her chin like they held a secret of great magnitude. “A gift.”

“From who?”

“Me,” a familiar voice said and Sutton’s heart fell to her toes. She didn’t need to turn around to see who “Me” was. But when she did, her lungs stopped dead in her chest. It was like boom-boom then nothing.

He looked unfairly good leaning against the bar, all relaxed muscles and quiet heat—and the worst part was how her body reacted without permission, giving way to this sharp, traitorous zing that sat low in her belly and told her that this man was a problem long before her brain caught up.

“Are you stalking me?” she asked.

“This is a coincidence. I promise.”

“A good friend told me never to accept a promise from a man sipping from a martini glass.”

“Real men don’t give a shit about what kind of glass they use. It’s all about the promises they actually keep. But I’m glad you noticed what I’m drinking. Are you keeping tabs on me, Freckles?”

“You’re the one buying me the drink.”

“And with that, we’re going to go to the ladies’ room,” Vivi said.

“Are you kidding? This is just getting good,” Jo argued.

Vivi grabbed her friend’s arm and drug her away from the bar.

“Worst wing-girls ever,” Sutton called out but they had disappeared into the crowd, leaving her alone with a man who had no idea who she was or why she was really in Bridlewood.

Omissions aren't lies. Which was, technically, also a lie.

The honest answer—the one she'd never said out loud—was that she didn't have a plan. Not a real one. She'd had a plan for getting here: the PI, the tech program, the twenty follow-up emails on her résumé. She'd had a plan for surviving here: keep her head down, do good work, watch him from a safe professional distance until she understood what she was dealing with.

What she hadn't planned for was him being, well, him. Funny in a way that snuck up on her, gentle with animals and children, and visibly terrible at accepting help. Three qualities that, individually, were manageable. Stacked on top of each other on a man who also looked like that in a snap-button shirt? They were a war crime.

He was the kind of man who bought a stranger a drink then stood there looking like he regretted it but, at the same time, wanted to do it again.

She'd told herself she was waiting for a sign. Some clear, unmistakable proof that he was either safe enough to trust or terrible enough to walk away from. Two weeks in Bridlewood and all she'd collected was evidence that complicated her case. He hadn't done anything wrong, but he hadn't done anything right, either, in the convenient, dismissible way she'd been hoping for. He'd just been—present. Real and increasingly difficult to reduce to a file or a DNA result. Which meant she was still waiting. And the longer she waited, the more tangled the strings became.

For Sutton, lying was a way of life. It started when she was little and would make up elaborate stories about who her parents were and why she was in foster care. Sometimes her mom was a famous actress, other times she was a surgeon who worked overseas saving lives. It was better than admitting the truth—that Sutton wasn’t wanted.

Which was why she was willing to lie—do anything to keep her secrets—until she knew what kind of man she was dealing with. Not having a dad was better than having one bail. And she refused to let Lynlee know what that felt like.

“Why do you need a wing-girl?” he asked.

“Because I have a stalker.”

“I was here first. Which means you’re the one crashing my party.”

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, executing lie number two of the evening.

“Would it have made a difference?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. And that was the cold, hard truth.

CHAPTER 10

Colter figured there were easier ways to have a panic attack than evaluating a field full of horses with two overly enthusiastic brothers.