Cloudy With A Chance Of Love

by E M Lindsey

  Cloudy with a Chance of Love

  E.M. Lindsey, Kate Hawthorne, E.M. Denning

  Copyright © 2020 E.M. Lindsey, Kate Hawthorne, E.M. Denning

  Edited by: Jordan Buchanan

  Cover Design: AmaiDesigns

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical reviews and articles.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not meant to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  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

  Epilogue

  About E.M. Lindsey

  Also by E.M. Lindsey

  About Kate Hawthorne

  Also by Kate Hawthorne

  About E.M. Denning

  Also by E.M. Denning

  Chapter 1

  Collin and the great painted goat

  “…twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eigh—”

  “Meehhhhh.”

  His grip on the bar weakened, and he dropped to the floor, the cold piercing through the bottom of his bare feet. Collin braced himself just before the firm strike of an impossibly hard, furry forehead hit his calves, sending him stumbling a few feet through the doorway.

  It had pissed him off once upon a time, but now it made him smile as he turned to see the small pygmy goat staring at him with a single baleful eye, the rectangular pupil narrow and calculating.

  “Let me guess, you want your brekkie?”

  The rest of his pull-ups could wait.

  Collin grabbed his t-shirt, the air too cold against his sweat-soaked skin as his body wound down from his morning work-out. The mountain air was always a bit frigid before sunrise, but the spring rains were just starting to take shape, making everything damp and chillier than they would be with the soft summer air. Not that Collin hated any of the seasons there in the preserve.

  He’d begun coming there as a boy, soaking up every single moment he was allowed to trail at his dad’s knee. His summer life was such a far cry from the stuffy, uptight London streets, and he would spend hours at school fantasizing about what it would be like to ditch his mother’s place in upright society and spend his years following in his father’s rugged footsteps.

  Funny how things changed. He hadn’t even noticed how quickly his life had gone off the rails until he was taking the podium in his first-ever lecture hall at King’s. Somehow, his fussy, city-boy brother had taken the reins of his father’s work, and Collin had taken his forestry and zoology doctorate into a classroom instead of the field.

  It wasn’t a bad life. At least, not at first. Collin stayed active even without the preserve. He wrote his thesis with his research on mountain goats, worked part-time at the London Zoo, then spent six months in the Amazon tracking moth migration patterns, and he loved every second of it.

  Then Grant walked into his life and wanted stability. Collin was willing to compromise, was willing to give up things that made him happy, because Grant made him laugh, and cry, and gave him bloody good orgasms.

  His brother, Charles, was seven years younger and completely obnoxious, and wasted no time taking the piss every single time he called. “Smokey the Bear wasting away in his office, found dead on a pile of paperwork.”

  Collin rarely gave the idiot a second thought—just like he’d done through their childhood—but the more dull his life got, the harder it was to withstand his brother’s harsh sense of humor. Collin had made it a point not to check up on Charles and their father apart from holidays and birthdays. He had walked away from the preserve after Charles took over, and he was happy with that decision.

  But as his marriage became strained, as he realized it had been seven months without even kissing his husband, he started to wonder if maybe he’d made all the wrong choices.

  He was forty-eight when Grant walked out on him and didn’t come back. He was fifty-two years and six months old when Charles called him with their father’s terminal diagnosis. “He’s got six weeks left and I’m in over my head here, man. I never planned to do this on my own. I was just trying to help Dad out. There’s so much going on over here. I need you.”

  Collin hadn’t hesitated to put in a leave of absence and buy the plane ticket. He assumed he was rescuing his brother from emotional turmoil, but that all quickly unraveled when he met Charles in the preserve gift shop and saw the posters.

  Take a rafting tour and see the rarest species in the world: The Painted Goat

  “What the bloody hell is that?” Collin demanded, pointing to the scenic view with the smallest white speck etched on the side of a cliff.

  Charles snorted. “The Painted Goat.”

  Collin narrowed his eyes, then he realized what exactly he was seeing. “That’s an actual painted goat, isn’t it?”

  Charles couldn’t seem to help his laugh. “It wasn’t really my idea. Brad and I were stoned a few years ago and he told me it would be a good way to make some cash. He actually broke his arm right after he finished when he slipped, like, twenty feet down the cliff.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Charles,” he started, stopping himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The place looked like it had been vomited out of some American tourism magazine. Everything had either the state flag, the American flag, or the business name etched in too bright colors. The tour was a sham, the information was all false, and nothing benefited the environment. None of it was his dad’s plan--was their plan, when it first got started.

  “We were doing well at first,” Charles eventually said, sinking into the chair behind the register. “I mean, we had a great web presence and yeah, it was kitschy, but people wanted that. It just…didn’t last. Now we’re barely above water. We barely get two tours a week, if that. I can’t keep this place afloat.”

  Crossing his arms, Collin let out a sigh. “I wonder why.”

  “It’s not my fault people started giving an actual fuck about nature,” Charles complained. He rubbed his temples, then gave his brother a pointed look. “I was hoping you might help me out.”

  With a snort, Collin turned away, fingering a row of popular name keychains. “With what? A new marketing plan? More rubbish to sell at the shop?”

  Charles cleared his throat, then pushed to stand, leaning over the counter. “It’s just…with Dad dying,..” Collin barely hid his wince, “I think it’s time to move on. I think we should sell the land. I’ve got some great offers--the National Park Service or whatever they’re called--they’ve been interested for years. I’ve already put a down payment on a house in Rhode Island. Christina’s family’s from there and she wants to settle down, you know?”

  Turning, Collin felt rage rushing through his veins. “Hang on. You bully Dad into running this
place into the ground, and when you’ve completely and thoroughly fucked yourself in the arse, you want to fuck off to Rhode Island. And you want me to clean up your bloody mess?”

  “I mean…you’re into all this rubbish, Coll. Nature and everything, innit? It’s all...plants and animals and mountain air. You like it.”

  “I did,” he said. “I liked it when Dad was running a sanctuary, protecting wildlife, and using the hiking tours to raise money for preservation. Not…not this. Not fake tours to swindle people out of money!”

  Charles didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. “Dad was skint way before I got here. Living off old oatmeal packets and beef jerky, mate. He barely had his head above water. The tours got us both a nest egg for a while, but it didn’t last, and it’s not worth much now. And anyway,” he hesitated, and this time he didn’t meet Collin’s eyes, “he left it to you. So it sort of is your responsibility now.”

  In the end, Collin knew he could have contested the will. He could have paid for a lawyer to prove that his brother should be saddled with the burden of the land, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The place had meant something to him once. The place had been his sanctuary away from his hateful mother and disinterested husband, and the concrete jungle that had slowly sucked the life out of him.

  The preserve was nothing to anyone now. It was finishing out a year’s worth of sporadic, booked-up tours, and then he could close up shop and figure out what the bloody hell he was going to do after that. The only thing Charles or his father had kept in the preserve were the Arapawa goats, and they were the one thing keeping him sane. They lived in a six acre fenced area; a rare breed, his father had been working for years to raise their numbers in the States. There were two dozen now—not nearly enough, but it was progress. Of course, when he sold, he couldn’t keep them. Wherever he was headed, it would be no place for a herd, and that tore him up a bit.

  Robert was the one exception, of course. He was a simple pygmy, not the Arapawa, but he was the first real and honest thing Collin had done with himself since he’d laid his father to rest and signed the papers, taking responsibility for the entire preserve. One of his friends had put him in contact with a sweet kid named Chaz who had a runt rejected by its mother. Born too small with three legs and one eye, he was diagnosed with failure to thrive.

  Collin spent six weeks with a baby bottle and a slurry of goat formula and somehow managed to raise up the most stubborn, obnoxious, terrifyingly intelligent creature he’d ever laid eyes on.

  Digging a hand into the back of Robert’s neck, Collin sighed. “We don’t need a husband, do we? We have each other.”

  “Meeehhhhh.”

  Collin rolled his eyes as his companion head-butted him again, so he reached for Robert’s bowl and began to compile his food mixture. “You wouldn’t want to trade this mess for some beans on toast, would you, mate? Wouldn’t mind an easy morning here and again.”

  Robert would, in fact, love beans on toast, but Collin never gave in. He fed Robert before letting him out to graze, then took his own coffee and an iced bun to the porch to stare out at the fog drifting through the trees.

  One more tour. He had one more camping and rafting bullshit tour with six city dwellers to get through, and he could kiss this part of his life goodbye. He could take back control and do something that felt like real work. He wasn’t entirely sure what yet, but he would. Probably. Someday.

  Even if today wasn’t quite that day.

  Collin arrived two hours ahead of his upcoming party, his truck rumbling to a stop around the back of the station. He saw Michael’s car there which meant the rafts were probably prepped and ready, and all they’d have left was an equipment safety-check and to review the next day’s storm and rapids report before heading out.

  With a sigh, Collin hopped out of the truck, going around the back for his equipment bag, then walked in through the side door. Michael was inside at the desk with his feet up on the corner, but instead of his hiking gear, he was in his Park Ranger uniform.

  “You can’t be going in that, mate,” Collin said, lifting a brow. “It’s a two day trip.”

  Michael gave him a burning look—one Collin had seen on him before. The kind that said, You’re hot when you’re bossy and annoying. And once upon a time, Collin had considered it. When he was a little drunk, a bit lonely, and a lot horny. But as attractive as Michael was, he was not Collin’s type. Hell, no one was Collin’s type these days. He didn’t want to condemn himself to a life of solitude just because Grant was an arsehole and left him during his Tuesday lecture, but it was hard to trust after something like that.

  “Half of the six canceled,” Michael said with a shrug. He dropped his feet and leaned forward, his thick fingers digging around in a box of doughnut holes. “I figured you could handle three on your own.”

  Collin’s brow furrowed. He reached for the file folder with the consent forms and paperwork, and he took note of who was left. There was Spencer Kawa who had been booked with the two others, and then there were Maxwell Caldwell—bloody hell, he could only imagine how the poor bloke had suffered over the years for a name that rhymed like that—and his boyfriend Trent. Collin judged in private. Trent was such a twatty little name, but this one he hoped for the best. He’d gotten an email a few weeks back from Maxwell who had booked the trip, asking for Collin to suggest a good spot for something romantic. He assumed either proposal or engagement photo shoot. Or maybe the poor bloke was trying to impress and wanted to get laid.

  It wasn’t the first time that had happened. In fact, in the short year Collin had been doing the sporadic tours, at least eight percent of them had resulted in a proposal. Ironically enough, it was the same percentage of people who had also said no, but it was usually by a very posh-looking, very blonde, can I hike in these heels, sort of woman.

  Not that Collin wanted to judge gender by name, but he had a good feeling it was two men this time, and the small piece of him that still believed in romance wanted to save what little was left in the world for his community which had been denied it in public for so long. It was the one reason he’d scouted out a location—past the shitty painted goat and through a small clearing of trees. His original plan had been for Michael to take the others to look at a bush or a tree or some other innocuous bit of forest that would have impressed the people who hadn’t seen anything green beyond the succulents inside Starbucks, but the cancelations threw a wrench in his plans.

  “You want me to take the tour?” Michael asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You look a little green.”

  Collin closed the book and shook his head. “I’ve got it. My last ever, anyway.”

  Michael looked startled for a second, and it made sense. Tours were a way for Michael to pass the time, but he’d been a park ranger before Collin got there, and he’d be one long after. “Oh shit, I almost forgot about that. What are you doing next?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? What the bloody hell was he doing next? “Well, I’ve still got the goats.”

  Michael laughed. “Don’t remind me, Heidi. Oh, and by the way, you owe me fudge.”

  Collin grimaced. He had a few projects with his usual supply of goat’s milk. Soaps, lotions, a few sweets, and he bottled some of it for the general store. But it had been a low birthing season with four stillbirths, which cut down on his supply.

  “I’ll get it to you soon as I can, mate.” He nodded, then walked past the other man and through the back door which led down to the creek bed.

  This was the only part he loved—well, aside from the mechanical, boring as hell tour-guide speech he had to give every time. His brother had scripted the worst parts of the tour, and he’d wanted to change it, but he was bound by expectation that his clients had gotten from their website.

  Never again, he reminded himself. Just this once more, and then never again. He dragged his hands through his hair, then set to double and triple-checking their camping supplies. Spring was unpredictable with the fla
sh floods and micro-bursts. More than once, the trails to and from the river had washed out from a spontaneous shower, and the skies weren’t looking promising. They might hold out for the first day, but he was willing to bet rain on the second.

  He threw some extra rain gear into his pack, then pulled out his phone to check the weather. There was a nasty one brewing the next day, but it was slow moving and it looked like he’d have just enough time to get the tour done with and the three men off to the busses before it hit. It might mean hunkering down at the station if the group wanted to stop for photos, but he could live with it.

  The creek would take them to the path which led to his own cabin—not that he ever let the guests hike up that far, but he knew all the nice, romantic spots for something like this. A canopy of trees and a kaleidoscope of butterflies were usually near enough to make an appearance, even in inclement weather.

  He’d get them on their way before the rain hit, and then…

  And then it would be over.

  His job would be done—it would be over, he would be free, and his life could begin. Or end, considering his age, though he tried not to think of his life as close to over. Fifties were the new thirty—or some stupid rubbish he’d read on a Facebook post his sister-in-law had shared.

  He breathed out an unexpected wave of anxiety and loss. It hadn’t even been his for long, and it certainly hadn’t been what he’d envisioned for his dad all those years ago. But he had photos showing his dad in boats with guests, grinning bigger than he ever had, and he knew at one point, it had been good. At one point, this brought his dad joy. And of course, he’d missed all of that.