I sighed with anticipation. There were worse things in life than having to work with attractive people. There were much worse things in life than having to work one on one with attractive people on a topic like who your child’s father was.
“Anyways, I appreciate you hearing out my insane fears, Kelly. I guess bringing Liam back into the picture made me conscious of it all, so—”
“You call me any time you think you’re in danger or need help,” I said, all the humor going from my voice. “I don’t care how stupid you think it is. I’ll be that person whom you can call if you so much as think your mailbox has an embedded code that warns Sean is coming back.”
A pause came.
“You’ve been watching too many crime shows, girl,” Emily said. “But thank you. I’ll let you go on your walk now—you can sing with Mother Nature and talk to the coyotes and wolves, good Lord.”
We shared one more laugh before I hung up the phone. And then I did something that many people might have found strange, perhaps even stupid, but was essential for me on these walks.
I stuffed my phone into my mailbox so that I could walk without it.
Some would say that I was leaving my lifeline to help if I needed it. But people like that, like Emily, underestimated how well I could take care of myself and Charlotte. No, I didn’t take my rifle with me.
But I had Bucky by my side, and I couldn’t think of a bigger reason that I was able to live out here than him. I was getting better at living on my own and adapting to this neck of the woods, but I couldn’t pretend that I magically had become a female Bear Grylls. The howling of coyotes, the roar of bears—oh, those definitely had me on alert regardless of the time of day.
But Bucky acted as a security alarm, as a pillow, as a weapon, as a therapist—more or less, whatever I needed that dog to be, it was. I had four acres of land I had to protect on my property, and it was impossible to do on my own. He’d scared off trespassers—accidental ones and purposeful ones—had fought off wildlife when needed, and had even had the audacity to take on a smaller black bear.
I didn’t know how he had lived through that one, and I didn’t have much desire to find out more on my own. But thankfully, I knew Bucky would ultimately give his life to help us if needed.
But for now, on a walk like this, I didn’t need him to sacrifice himself. I just needed the company of a panting, smiling dog, my one-year-old daughter, and the open space under the Colorado sun to relax.
If Emily was right, my world was about to throw a lot more wrenches my way, and the least I could do was slow down my overworked mind before I made it go into even further overdrive. I just hoped that whoever the father was, if he wanted to stay a part of her life, that he was as much a mountain man as I was apparently a mountain woman.
Chapter 8: Liam
Although I had a home there, I didn’t visit the heart of Breckenridge very often.
But now that I was there this early evening, many of the memories came back. The nights on the town, the visit to the lodge I’d made where I hooked up with that woman—who might have been her—and how…
Wait.
Wouldn’t that have been something? What if “that woman” wound up being this Kelly girl? I mean, they shared the same name, but in a weird way, my sexual history made it unlikely that it was the same Kelly. So there was that, right?
I literally laughed out loud to myself, feeling a little ridiculous for doing so. While DOM certainly worked in the world of “coincidences” and Scott had always told me that nothing was truly a coincidence, that was when you were talking about international plots that involved high-level criminals and masterminds. This was just a case of “who fucked who?”
The thought seemed so absurd, it almost seemed hilarious.
Almost like I was tempting fate, I went to the very lodge where I’d first hooked up with that Kelly—where I’d had my only hook up with Kelly, I suppose it was worth clarifying. They had updated their decor a little bit, but I still recognized the moose on the wall, the brown countertop, and the taps of all the beers.
I went straight to a table in the back, only giving a brief nod to the waitress. I sat in the corner and stared at the chairs. Kelly, back then, had blonde hair and a lithe, thin body. She may have been a bit out of her mind, but she was still a great fuck. This Kelly obviously needed help, but she sounded more upbeat. It was too wild to be true.
I called Kelly from a new phone.
“Hello?”
“Kelly, it’s Liam,” I said.
I immediately realized I hadn’t used a voice modulator. But, then again, I hadn’t used one on our first call, either, and that hadn’t led to any terrible consequences. It was perhaps, though, a sign that I was getting a bit sloppy with my work.
“Remind me where you first met this man?”
“It was…uh, Breckenridge Brew Lodge?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, but my immediate, normal response hid the fact that I felt a rush of heat. That was the lodge I was in right now. “OK, Kelly. I would like you to come by here sometime before noon tomorrow so we can discuss further. What time works best for you?”
“Let’s do nine
