by Force, Marie
All My Loving
Butler, Vermont Series, Book 5
By: Marie Force
Published by HTJB, Inc.
Copyright 2020. HTJB, Inc.
Cover Design by Kristina Brinton
E-book Layout: E-book Formatting Fairies
ISBN: 978-1950654963
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.
MARIE FORCE is a registered trademark with the United States Patent & Trademark Office.
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Reading Order for Green Mountain/Butler, Vermont Series
The Green Mountain Series
Book 1: All You Need Is Love
(Will & Cameron)
Book 2: I Want to Hold Your Hand
(Nolan & Hannah)
Book 3: I Saw Her Standing There
(Colton & Lucy)
Book 4: And I Love Her
(Hunter & Megan)
Novella: You'll Be Mine
(Will & Cam’s Wedding)
Book 5: It's Only Love
(Gavin & Ella)
Book 6: Ain’t She Sweet
(Tyler & Charlotte)
Get the entire Green Mountain Series
The Butler, Vermont Series
(Continuation of Green Mountain)
Book 1: Every Little Thing
(Grayson & Emma)
Book 2: Can’t Buy Me Love
(Mary & Patrick)
Book 3: Here Comes the Sun
(Wade & Mia)
Book 4: Till There Was You
(Lucas & Dani)
Book 5: All My Loving
(Landon & Amanda)
Book 6: Let It Be
(Lincoln & Molly)
The Butler, Vermont Series Boxed Set: Books 1-4
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter One
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your
one wild and precious life?”
—Mary Oliver
Days after the fire at the inn, the smell of smoke clung to Amanda’s hair and skin, the stench pervasive despite multiple showers and shampooing her hair so many times, her scalp had begun to hurt. As she sat in front of the woodstove in Landon Abbott’s cozy cabin, Amanda noted the irony of needing the fire to stay warm when fire was the thing she was now most afraid of.
While a late-May Nor’easter raged outside, she had nothing but time to think and relive the horror of her near-death experience.
It’d been a week since the Admiral Butler Inn had burned, trapping her with a badly sprained ankle until Landon’s identical twin brother, Lucas, had come to her rescue. They’d been on the way out of the room when the ceiling had come down on top of them, trapping them.
She shuddered every time she thought of that explosive moment and how Lucas dove on top of her. He’d been the more badly injured one, suffering a broken arm that had required surgery to repair, as well as smoke inhalation.
Amanda had been briefly hospitalized to receive oxygen and IV fluids as well as treatment for her ankle. When she was released, Landon had brought her home to his place to recover, as the next closest lodging was two towns away.
Since most of her possessions had been lost in the fire, Landon had bought her new jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks and underwear at his family’s Green Mountain Country Store, probably in consultation with one or all of his three sisters. They would’ve been able to accurately guess her sizes. He’d even gotten her a new coat and boots to navigate the lingering mud season, and his family had delivered enough food to feed ten people.
Her own mother had been in a panic after hearing about the fire. Once Amanda finally succeeded in assuring her that she was fine, her mother, who was also her boss, had sent a new cell phone and laptop. They were already configured to the company’s servers, so she could get back to work whenever she felt up to it.
She had everything she needed to resume her life already in progress, if only her hands would quit trembling. If only she didn’t see and hear and smell the fire every time she closed her eyes. If only she could shed the bone-deep fear that followed such an incredibly close call. She’d relived it a thousand times, from waking up to find the room engulfed in fire, to jumping out of bed and landing wrong on her ankle, to Lucas storming in to rescue her and shielding her from the falling ceiling with his own body.
There’d been just enough time before Lucas showed up for Amanda to contemplate the very real possibility that she might die from the flames and toxic smoke that filled the room so quickly, she barely had time to process what was happening, let alone react, before it became too late to do anything.
Prior to the fire, she’d been on autopilot, traveling through life with no attachments, no responsibilities other than work, no emotions and a stubborn refusal to reexamine her painful past. After the fire, she could think of little else but what she might’ve missed if she’d died that night.
For one thing, she’d never been truly in love. She’d been in lust that she’d mistaken for love, but that didn’t count. In the seconds before Lucas arrived to save the day, it had occurred to Amanda that she could actually die before experiencing true love. She’d never skied or zip-lined or bungee-jumped or traveled to Europe or been on a cruise or gone swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Even though she’d been to Los Angeles for work at least six times, she’d never once bothered to swim in the ocean. She’d always assumed she’d have plenty of time to do those things. There was always more time to be had in the future.
Now she knew better.
After being reminded that time was finite and how quickly the future could be stolen from her, Amanda had begun a list of the things she’d never done. She wanted to take piano lessons, climb a mountain, learn to drive a stick, have an orgasm with a man. Amanda underlined those
three words multiple times. She’d had plenty of the solo kind, as well as a few from trying out her company’s product line, but never once with an actual man.
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. He was too nice to say otherwise.
As soon as she could walk without hobbling, she’d get out of his house. She’d decide where she wanted to make a home base, get an apartment and figure out her shit. Once she did that, maybe she could start working on that list of things she’d never done.
A knock on the front door startled Amanda out of her thoughts, giving her a welcome respite from her own hyperactive brain.
Landon’s mother, Molly, stuck her head in. “Just me with dinner. Don’t get up.”
“Come in. Please tell me you didn’t come out in this storm just to bring me dinner.”
“Oh, this is nothing. There’s an old Vermont saying that if you don’t go out in bad weather, you’ll never go out.”
“Still. It’s very nice of you.”
“I thought of you home alone while Landon is out with the search-and-rescue team and thought you might like some company.”
To her dismay, Molly’s kindness had Amanda crying again. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I have any tears left. I’ve done nothing but cry since the fire. I cry at commercials on TV.”
“That’s totally understandable.” With her usual efficiency, Molly removed her boots and coat and carried in a tote bag. “You had a terrible scare, and it’s only natural you’d be upset afterward.”
It was so much more than the fire, not that Amanda could tell Molly that.
“I’ll put your dinner in the oven on warm, and you can have it when you’re ready. It’s pot roast.”
“Thank you so much. It smells delicious.” She choked on a sob and pulled yet another tissue from the box Landon had gotten for her. “I’m so sorry about the waterworks. Landon says I’m like a hot spring.”
Molly smiled and came to sit next to her. As always, Molly’s long gray hair was braided, and her pretty, youthful face belied the fact that she’d raised ten children. “You look like you could use a hug from a professional mom. Would that help?”
Wanting that more than anything, Amanda nodded and went willingly into the arms of Landon’s mother.
“My poor, sweet girl. It’s only natural you’d be emotional after what you’ve been through.”
“The fire was so frightening, but it’s not just that.”
“If you need to talk to someone, I’m more than happy to listen.” Molly pulled back and straightened Amanda’s hair. “And I promise whatever we talk about stays between us.”
Amanda desperately needed to talk to someone, and she’d already cried all over Landon for days. “I’d like to talk about it.” Maybe if she did, she might be able to stop crying every five minutes. After another pause, she forced herself to say the words. “I had something happen, twelve years ago. It was a very big something that I don’t ever talk about.”
Molly only listened, which Amanda appreciated.
“After that, it was like I shut down. I threw myself into school and then work.” She wiped away new tears with yet another tissue. “I did really well in my job, became my company’s top salesperson. I traveled almost nonstop from one trade show to another, from one product install to another, kept my head down and just powered through. And then the fire happened, and since then… It’s like everything I refused to feel for all those years is trying to get out all at once, and I think that’s why I can’t seem to stop crying.”
“That’s a lot to process on top of the fire.”
“It is, and Landon has been an absolute saint about it. I’m sure he’s regretting asking me to stay with him after days of histrionics.”
“I doubt that. He’s enjoying having you here.”
“He is? How do you know that?”
“Because he told me so when I helped him pic
k out clothes for you at the store.”
“Thank you for doing that.” Amanda wiped yet another flood of tears. “Everyone has been so kind. Your family is amazing.”
“That’s nice to hear. I’m glad you think so.”
“Everyone thinks so.”
“I’m proud of them.”
“It helps to talk to someone. Thank you. I haven’t wanted to unload on my own mom or my friends because they aren’t here, and it would upset them, and Landon has done enough for me.”
“I’m happy to listen, sweetheart, and you’re right. It would upset them. There’s nothing worse than knowing one of your babies is hurting and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Nodding, Amanda wiped tears from eyes that felt raw and achy. “I want you to know, this isn’t me at all. I’m not a basket case, I swear. I’m a planner. I plan every minute of every day so I know exactly what I’m doing. I follow strategic and marketing plans at work.”
“The fire upset your plans and forced you to live without one for the time being.”
“Yes, exactly, and I feel like I’m adrift at sea or something.”
“You will for a while, and then you’ll start to figure out a new plan. I also had something happen to me when I was a senior in high school. I lost someone very close to me. Took me years to move past that, and it wasn’t until I met Linc and fell for him that I truly confronted the loss, so I understand better than you might think.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
