Maisey Yates - Tough Luck Hero

“The edge? Because I’m so horrible.”

“You aren’t horrible.” She looked down at her glass. “You’re...you know...well, you’re you.”

“That’s very informative, Lydia.”

She gritted her teeth. “You’re high-handed. A bit bossy.”

He laughed. “That’s funny coming from you.”

“I already know I don’t want to know why you think that’s funny,” she bit out, determined to ignore him now.

Thankfully, the flight from Las Vegas back up to Portland wasn’t terribly long, and she busied herself answering texts thanks to the onboard Wi-Fi. Though she wasn’t entirely certain answering those texts was any less uncomfortable than making conversation with her groom.

Because people wanted explanations. And in all honesty, she couldn’t give them one. She didn’t have an explanation.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the plane touched down, but that was short-lived when she fully realized that they now had to make their way back to Copper Ridge.

Their town was too small to have its own airport. Which meant they had to make an hour and a half drive over to Portland’s whenever they wanted to go anywhere.

“We have to rent a car,” she said, feeling extremely persecuted.

“I’ll handle it,” he said.

“I know you’re a West, Colton,” she said, following after him. “Success leaks from your pores, lightning from your fingertips and all that hyperbole. But I do have my own money.”

“Yes. I know you do. Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you hang out? Spend some time admiring the carpet, I hear it’s famous.”

“No, the carpet they ripped out was famous. This carpet isn’t famous.”

He lifted a shoulder, his expression one of supreme disinterest. “I only caught part of the news story.”

“The carpet was the Grand Marshal in a parade,” she continued, because she knew about it and he didn’t. And it felt important to exert superior knowledge, even if it was about an old airport carpet and the general strangeness of the Portland area.

His eyebrows shot upward. “We really need to get the hell out of Portland.”

They were sorted into their rental car quickly and on the road only a half hour later. They headed out of the city, taking a winding two-lane road that led to the coast.

“I haven’t been on a road trip in a while,” she said. “Well, not since we went to the airport yesterday.”

“But we had a driver,” he pointed out. “That isn’t the same.”

“True. So,” she said, taking a deep breath, “what...are we going to do?”

It occurred to her then, now that the earlier fog was wearing off, that she and Colton had never actually had a conversation when they were alone. They were usually in groups, or standing somewhere where they had friends nearby. Because they never willingly interacted. It was always circumstantial. Always something they had to partake in to be polite. Definitely not something either of them would ever do on purpose. And now they were trapped in a car together.

Now they were trapped in a marriage together.

Lydia’s heart started beating faster. Her palms were sweating. She was officially starting to panic.

Then suddenly, a hysterical bubble of laughter exploded from her lips.

“Something funny?” he asked.

“All of this,” she said, the words coming out as half a screech. “We hate each other. And yet...we’re married.”

“I still don’t think it’s very funny.”

“It’s hilarious,” she said. “Made even more hilarious by the fact that we made it impossible to fix this. Because we texted the whole world. And even then...if we were anyone else...it wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“Maybe not.”

The hysteria subsided, and suddenly she felt just...much less. Much less everything. Small and weak sitting next to Colton. Unsure of what to do with what had happened. Unsure of how to cope with the reality of the situation they were in.

And she was never unsure. Not anymore. She’d found her place. Her people. And she knew what to do with that.

She hated this. She had to get it together.

She took a shaky breath. “The election is in four months,” she said. “I can’t have anything messing up my chances.”

“Of course not,” he said, sounding resigned.

“Why did Natalie... I mean, maybe we talked about this last night, but I honestly don’t remember. Why did she leave?”

“Hell if I know,” he said, the words harsh. “She did nothing but obsess about this wedding for the past eight months. She was...I would say overly invested in the idea of marrying into a family like mine.”

“You mentioned...you mentioned something about your dad.”

There was a slight pause, and she turned to look at him. His arms were tense, his hands gripping the wheel tight. “My dad, it turned out, had a bastard child some thirty-two years ago,” Colton said, his tone dry. “That may have had something to do with her deciding not to show up, it’s true.”

She tried her best to process that bit of information. But it was a lot. Nathan West had never seemed like anything but the perfect husband, father and role model for the community, at least not from her point of view. It was difficult to imagine him betraying his legacy like that.

“But,” Colton continued, “since causing a scandal was her primary issue with that bit of information about my dad, I can’t really imagine she would have abandoned me at the altar to try and avoid gossip.”

“You have a point.” She worried her lip. “Wait... Do we know who...”

“Jack Monaghan.”

Lydia nearly choked. “Jack Monaghan is your half brother?”

She had gotten to know Jack in passing over the years. Really, every woman in town was aware of him on some level. Most of them on an intimate level, prior to his getting engaged to Kate Garrett.

Lydia didn’t know him that way. Lydia had never gone there. She wasn’t one for bad boys with wicked blue eyes and charming smiles. Well, she noticed them. She thought they were hot, and spent a little bit of time staring at them, but she didn’t pursue one-night stands. Not with anyone.

She remembered last night and groaned.

There was nothing wicked about Colton’s blue eyes, nothing particularly charming about his smile. Yet, even while she thought of that, she realized that his eyes were the same color as Jack’s.

But they seemed cold. And he didn’t have that easy way about him. That breezy charm that seemed to roll off of Jack in waves. No, Colton was rigid. He was controlled. He was inflexible.

“I was going to say that I can’t believe it,” she said, “except, you do sort of look like him.”

“I guess,” Colton said, his words clipped. “Lord knows how long before this gets spread around. I think it’s kind of a miracle it hasn’t already. But then, it isn’t just my dad making waves. There’s Sierra, taking up with a bartender.”

“Ace owns the bar, so it isn’t quite like you’re making it sound.”

“Pregnant out of wedlock,” he pointed out.

“Didn’t they get married after?”

He shrugged. “I guess so. I’m just listing my family’s sins. Of course, there’s Madison. And her little indiscretion, but she was seventeen. Still, people tend to blame her for what happened with that dick because she was painted as some kind of home wrecker, even though she was still a kid.”

“For respectable pillars of the community you do have a lot of skeletons.”

“I think respectable pillars of the community do tend to have more than their fair share. Respectability makes a wonderful smoke screen.”

“And what about you?”

He laughed, a rueful sound. “I’m actually respectable.”

“Me too,” she said.