by Lilian Darcy
“Are you sure he set it up?”
“I saw him talking to the master sergeant before the debate,” she confided. “I have absolutely no doubt that he planted him in the audience to stir up trouble.”
“Well, I don’t think the tactic was nearly as successful as he’d hoped, not after your little speech.”
She shrugged. “I was there because I want to be an informed voter. My personal bias aside, I wanted to hear what the candidates had to say, how they responded to questions. Everything I saw and heard tonight confirmed my belief that Collin is the best mayoral candidate, and I wanted to make sure that people left the hall talking about him—not you.”
“Well, I appreciate what you said, anyway,” he told her. “I know it couldn’t have been easy to speak up in my defense—even if it was for my brother—after...everything.”
* * *
After...everything.
Sutter’s words echoed in Paige’s mind, making her wonder if that was really how he thought about the fact that he’d broken her heart and shattered her hopes and dreams. Had their relationship been so meaningless, and their breakup so inconsequential to him, that he could just categorize those events as “everything”?
She looked up at him, amazed and annoyed that even after five years a simple glance was enough to make her heart pound. Of course, he probably had that effect on a lot of women. At six feet two inches, with the solid, muscular build of a real cowboy, he turned heads no matter where he went. The thick, light brown hair, deep blue eyes and quick smile kept those heads turned in his direction. She deliberately tore her gaze away.
It infuriated her that after five years, her heart was still aching from his callous dismissal, while he seemed completely unaffected. But there was no way she was going to ask for clarification. Instead she only said, “It was a long time ago.”
“Was it?” he challenged, his voice quieter now and tinged with a hint of sadness.
Or maybe she was only hearing what she wanted to hear.
“I’ll admit, there are days when it seems like our relationship was in a different lifetime,” he told her. “And there are other days when I would swear it was only yesterday. When I can close my eyes and see you right in front of me, reach out as if to touch the softness of your skin, breathe in and catch the scent of your perfume.”
She wouldn’t let the soft seduction of his words or his voice sway her. “I think you’ve been breathing in something that’s not legal in this state without a prescription.”
“Ouch—that was harsh.”
“What kind of response did you expect?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe I just wanted to know that you think about me sometimes, too.”
“I don’t. Because it wasn’t yesterday—it was five years ago, and I have too much going on in my life right now to think about what used to be or might have been.”
But her words were a lie. The truth was, she didn’t just think about Sutter sometimes. She thought about him far too often. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d been gone for five years, because her heart had never quite healed. And even after all that time, whenever she saw him—which, thankfully, hadn’t been very often before the horrible flood had brought him back to Rust Creek Falls—it felt like ripping the scab off of the wound.
And yet when a stranger who didn’t even know him started attacking his character, Paige couldn’t seem to help herself from flying to his defense. Because regardless of what had happened between them, she knew that deep inside Sutter was a good man. The man she’d once loved more than anything.
“So tell me what’s going on in your life,” he said now.
She turned to look at him. “Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“Well, I’ve been teaching my fifth-grade class in my living room because we don’t have a school anymore—which is one of the reasons I’m so invested in the outcome of this election. We need to get the new school built because our kids deserve better than what we’ve been able to do for them so far.”
“Fifth grade?” Sutter frowned. “I think Dallas’s eldest is in fifth grade.”
She nodded. “Ryder’s in my class.”
“He’s had a rough go of it...since his mother walked out.”
“It hasn’t been easy on any of the boys.” She felt herself softening in response to his obvious concern about his nephew, just a little, and steeled herself against it. “But when one person walks out of a relationship, it’s inevitable that someone else is going to be hurt.”
His gaze narrowed. “Are we still talking about Ryder?”
“Of course,” she agreed, the picture of innocence. “Who else would we be talking about?”
“Us,” he said bluntly. “I thought you might have been referring to the end of our relationship—when you dumped me.”
She hated that he could still see through her so easily. “I wasn’t talking about us, and I didn’t dump you,” she denied. “I simply refused to run away with you. Because that’s what you did—you ran.”
“I’m back now,” he told her.
And standing close to him, it was all too easy for Paige to remember the way she used to feel about him. Far too easy to want to feel that way again. Thankfully she wasn’t a naive teenager anymore, and she wouldn’t let it happen. Because sooner or later Sutter would leave Rust Creek Falls again. He always did.
“Yes, you’re back now,” she acknowledged. “But for how long?”
Sutter’s gaze slid away. “Well, as Collin’s campaign manager, I’ll be hanging around until the election.”
His response was hardly unexpected, and yet Paige couldn’t deny that she felt a pang of disappointment in response to his words. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“It’s not easy being here,” he reminded her. “No one has ever welcomed me back with open arms.”
She would have. If he’d come home at any time during those first six months that he’d been gone, she would have welcomed him with open arms and a heart so full of love for him that it was near to bursting.
But he hadn’t come home, not at all in the first year or for a very long time after. And the longer he was gone, the more she realized that the overwhelming love she felt for him wasn’t reciprocated—at least not in the way she needed it to be if they were going to build a life together.
Instead, they’d each moved on without the other. By all accounts Sutter was doing very well in Seattle. Apparently he’d opened his own stables in the city and had established quite the reputation for himself. Paige had been sincerely happy to hear the news and genuinely pleased for him, because she was more than content with her own life in Rust Creek Falls.
She loved her job, she lived close enough to her family that she saw them regularly—although she sometimes wondered if maybe a little too frequently—she had good friends and she even went out on occasion. She didn’t want or need anything more—and she certainly didn’t want Sutter Traub turning her life upside down again.
“You saw that tonight,” he pointed out to her. “No one has forgotten what happened, why I left, and no one will miss me when I’m gone again.”
She could tell that he believed it, and her heart ached for him. “This is your home,” she told him. “Whether you choose to live here or not, this is where you belong—with your family and your friends and everyone else who cares about you.”
He managed a wry smile, but his tone when he responded was more wistful than skeptical. “Would you be included in that list?”
Chapter Two
“Of course,” Paige agreed. “Despite everything that’s happened between us, we’ve always been friends.”
Even as the words tumbled out of her mouth, she wished she could haul them back. Because as much as she believed coming home and making pea
ce with his family was the right thing for Sutter, she knew it wouldn’t work out so well for her. Not when even this brief conversation had her churned up inside.
“Well, speaking in confidence to a friend,” Sutter said, “I’m afraid Collin’s fighting an uphill battle in this election.”
She was surprised, and grateful, for the change of topic. “What makes you say that?”
“The fact that every time I go into town, I hear rumblings—and none of them are very subtle.”
“What kind of rumblings?”
“Just the other day I was at the general store and I heard Ginny Nigh comment to Lilah Goodwin that it’s a sorry state when people nowadays don’t understand the importance of family values. It used to be that when a man got a woman pregnant, he did the right thing and married the mother of his child.”
“You think she was talking about Clayton?”
“I know she was. Of course, she didn’t mention the fact that Clay didn’t even know Delia was pregnant until she showed up on his doorstep with the baby—or the fact that Delia turned around and hightailed it out of town only a few days later.”
“Leaving your brother with the son he never knew he had—which, to me, proves that he does understand family values. He stepped right up to be a daddy to Bennett and never tried to pawn him off on anybody else.”
He smiled, just a little. “I wish you’d been at the store with me.”
But of course they both knew that such an occurrence would have generated gossip of a different kind.
“Anyway, you shouldn’t worry about Ginny—everyone knows she’s just an old busybody.”
“Unfortunately, she isn’t the only one who’s been talking. Even the minister in church the other day was talking about wedding vows and that ‘till death do us part’ needs to mean till death and not until one of the spouses decides he or she has had enough.”
“Pastor Alderson has never made any secret of the fact that he’s opposed to divorce.”
“And Dallas is divorced—but he only took the step to end his marriage after his wife walked out on him and the kids.”
“I think most people around here know that the divorce was instigated by Laurel’s abandonment.”
“Do they?” he challenged. “Or do they see it as proof that the Traubs don’t reflect the traditional family values that are a cornerstone of Rust Creek Falls?”
“Collin has to pick his battles,” Paige said reasonably. “He can’t expect to win every argument on every issue, so he should focus on what he’s doing and not worry about rumors.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do,” Sutter admitted. “The purpose of his national online initiative to help rebuild Rust Creek Falls was designed to give people a reason to look past the devastation and focus on the positive.”
“‘A vote for Collin Traub is a vote for success and prosperity for the future of Rust Creek Falls,’” she quoted.
He grinned. “You’ve been reading our press.”
“I’ve been reading everything in the press,” she clarified. “I like to make an informed decision.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, stunned by the abrupt change of topic. “How is that any of your business?”
“Maybe it’s not,” he admitted. “But I heard that you’ve been keeping company with a foreman at the lumber mill, and I want to know if it’s true.”
“It’s true.” She started walking again. “I’ve been dating Alex Monroe for a few months now.”
“Is it serious?”
“Again—none of your business,” she said, because she wasn’t going to admit to Sutter that her relationship with the other man wasn’t anywhere close to being serious.
Alex was a great guy. He was attractive and well mannered and she enjoyed spending time with him. Unfortunately there was no real spark or sizzle between them, nothing to make her think that their relationship would ever progress to the next level.
Her sisters, Lani and Lindsay, claimed that Paige wouldn’t ever be able to have a serious relationship with Alex—or any other man—so long as she was still carrying a torch for Sutter. She, of course, denied that was true, because she’d given up hope that Sutter would come back to her a long time ago.
But standing beside him now, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the memories of what they’d once shared, and she realized that maybe she had been comparing other men to “the one who got away.” But she didn’t think that was so unusual. After all, Sutter had been her first love and her first lover, and she couldn’t imagine any subsequent relationship having that same depth and intensity.
And she wasn’t going to waste even another minute of her time worrying about it tonight. She started walking again, and he fell into step beside her.
A few minutes later, she paused outside a two-story saltbox-style house with steel-blue clapboard siding and wide white trim around the front door and windows.
“This is mine,” she said, and felt a familiar thrill when she spoke those words. Two years earlier, when she’d put in her offer for the house, she’d been excited—and then absolutely terrified when it was accepted. Gradually the terror had subsided, beaten back by endless weeks and months of intense manual labor to scrub and shine and prep and paint until she felt as if it was well and truly her own.
He gave the house a quick once-over. “Nice,” he said approvingly.
She didn’t want or need his approval, but she found herself smiling anyway. Because it was nice. More important, it was hers.
“Are you going to invite me in for coffee?” he asked.
“No.”
His brows lifted. “Just no? You’re not even going to make up some kind of lame excuse as to why you can’t invite me in?”
“I don’t need to make up an excuse,” she told him. “The fact is, tomorrow is a school day and I have lesson plans to review.”
The smile that flashed across his face actually made her knees weak.
“For a minute it was almost like we were back in high school,” he said.
She’d thought the same thing as soon as the words were out of her mouth. There had been a lot of times when Sutter had tried to convince her to stay out with him instead of going home to finish her homework or study for an upcoming test. And a lot of times when she’d let herself be convinced. And when he’d finally walked her home, they’d still been reluctant to part, so they’d stood in the shadows of the back porch of her parents’ house and kissed good-night. He’d spent a lot of time kissing her good-night.
Obviously he was remembering the same thing, because he took a step closer and said, “Are you going to let me kiss you good-night?”
“No.” Though she knew she should hold her ground, she took an instinctive step back.
Sutter smiled knowingly. “Are you busy Thursday night?”
This second abrupt change in topic made her almost as wary as his previous request. “Why?”
“It’s election night,” he reminded her. “And the candidates and their supporters will be gathered at town hall for the results. Since you’ve declared your support for Collin, I thought you might want to be there.”
She did believe Collin was the best candidate and he was definitely going to get her vote, but hanging out with his family and friends at town hall meant being around Sutter, and she wasn’t sure if that was something she could handle.
“I’ll think about it,” she finally agreed, because once he’d made the offer, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to not think about it. But she also knew that there was no way she could go.
The only hope she had of protecting her heart was to stay as far away from Sutter Traub as possible.
* * *
Since it wasn’t an outright refusal, Sutter decided not to press Pai
ge for a firm commitment. He simply waited until she’d unlocked her door, then he wished her a good night and headed back to town hall. He hadn’t realized how far they’d walked until he had to make the trek back again without the pleasure of her company.
He’d enjoyed walking and talking with her like they’d done so many times before. But that was the past. He retraced his steps as he’d lived the past five years of his life—without her. And he tried not to think about everything they’d once meant to one another, and everything they’d lost.
Paige Dalton had been his soul mate and best friend. His heart had belonged to her, wholly and completely. She was the one woman he’d imagined spending the rest of his life with. He’d even proposed marriage before he’d left town, but she’d turned him down and turned her back on him, and he’d gone to Washington alone.
The transition from Rust Creek Falls to Seattle hadn’t been an easy one, and for the first several months Sutter had doubted it would be a successful one. He’d tried working at various office jobs in the city, but he never found one that seemed to fit. Or maybe he was just too restless to sit behind a desk all day. It was only when he heard about a job opening for a horse trainer at a local stable that things began to turn around for him.
He’d always been good with animals and he’d quickly established a reputation for himself with the local horse set. After a couple of years working for someone else, he had both the money and the confidence he needed to venture out on his own.
Three years earlier, he’d opened Traub Stables, and he was gratified by its success. He was also pleased that his business had created a second market for CT Saddles—Collin’s custom-made saddles and leather-goods business. That was all Sutter wanted—all he needed. Or so he’d believed until he’d come back to Rust Creek Falls again.
When he’d left town five years earlier, he’d vowed that he would never return. Of course, he’d been younger and more impulsive then, and the simple fact that his family was in Rust Creek Falls guaranteed that he wouldn’t be able to stay away forever. Despite the harsh words that had been thrown around in the Traub household, he could never really turn his back on his family—even if he felt they’d turned their backs on him first.
