The Bad Boy's Redemption (9 page)

Not a hundred feet ahead, Olivia was halfway up a limber pine, hugging the trunk while a pack of wolves circled beneath her.

As Colton came into view, the animals turned assessing gazes in his direction, but didn’t run away. Colt cut the gas, his thoughts racing as he assessed the situation. Everything he knew about wolves said that the animals should have scattered when they heard the snowmobile approaching or at the very least when they caught a glimpse of him. The fact that they were still here, loping back and forth in front of the tree, waiting to see what he was going to do next, wasn’t good.

For some reason, this pack had lost their instinctive fear of humans, which meant they might not respond favorably to the techniques he’d learned to intimidate wild wolves. But he had no weapon, no desire to kill the animals if he could help it, and he had to get Olivia out of that tree.

Now.

She hadn’t even turned to look at him. She was straddling a limb with her eyes closed and her forehead bowed to rest on the trunk, looking pale and justifiably terrified. She could be going into shock or suffering from exposure. There wasn’t any time to waste.

Trusting his gut, Colt thumbed the gas again as he unzipped his coat and held his left arm up and out to the side, making himself appear as large as possible as the snowmobile surged toward the wolf pack.

“Get on. Get out of here. There’s nothing here for you. Go on, get!” He shouted the words in his best clean-your-act-up voice, the one that had scared the piss out of new recruits misbehaving in his dorm back when he’d been the officer in charge on his floor. “Get! Go on!”

All too quickly, the vehicle ate up the freshly powdered ground between him and the pack. The smaller wolves crouched low and scuttled away a few steps, but the largest wolf, a golden-eyed male with a “make my day” expression on his lupine face, didn’t waver.

The animal stood his ground, staring Colt down as he continued to flap his coat and yell. Colt silently wondered what the fuck he was going to do if he didn’t succeed in scaring the alpha away. He was good at hand-to-hand combat, but he’d never had reason to fight anything with teeth and claws and he didn’t want to start now.

Thankfully, as he got close enough to the tree that he was forced to ease off the gas, the pack leader suddenly took off into the trees, followed by the rest of his wolves. Colt came to a stop in the snow, watching the animals flow over a fallen tree like water washing over stones and disappear into the woods, moving so silently it was no surprise Olivia had been surrounded.

Thank God she’d had the sense to climb a tree and stay there until help arrived. He was so grateful to see her—and to see danger moving away from the woman he loved—that he forgot she was most likely angry with him until she said in a rough voice—

“Go away.” She sniffed, tucking her head closer to her chest. “I don’t want to see you.”

“Olivia, I can explain,” he said. “Come on, sweetheart. Let me help you down, get you somewhere warm, and we can talk.”

“I’m not your sweetheart.” She sucked in a breath that emerged as a soft sob. “You’re leaving. So just leave and leave me alone.”

“Baby, you can’t—”

“I’m not your baby, either,” she said in a louder voice, swiping the tears from her face with her fist. “Now go away. I’d rather take my chances with the wolves.”

Heart lurching, Colt swung off the snowmobile and came to stand at the base of the tree, looking up at the bottoms of Olivia’s snow boots, dangling on either side of the limb she sat on. They looked so little from this angle. She looked so small and vulnerable, hugging the wide trunk of the tree, that all he wanted to do was get her down and hold her.

But first he had to convince her that this had all been a misunderstanding.

“Olivia, look at me,” he said. “I wasn’t going to leave. Not without telling you and having a long talk with you about it first.”

“It’s only nine days away. When were you going to tell me—the night before? And what does it matter anyway,” she said, pushing on before he could answer. “You’ll still be there and I’ll be here and I’ll probably never see you again. And you might even get k-killed and then I’ll have to go to your funeral and I don’t want anyone else I love to die. Because I love you, even though you’re a huge asshole.”

She broke off with a sob, a pained, strangled sound that broke his heart all over again. He had to get through to her, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to have much luck staying here on the ground. Olivia wasn’t one to take words too seriously. She needed to look into a person’s eyes and see the truth for herself.

With a sigh, Colt reached up, grabbing the lowest limb and pulling himself up into the tree.

Olivia glanced down, scowling at him through her tears. “What are you doing? I told you to go away.”

“I’m not going away,” Colt said, continuing to climb. “I wouldn’t leave someone I hated out here alone with a wolf pack this close, let alone the woman I love.”

Olivia sniffed, her mouth trembling as she scooted farther back on the limb she was straddling, putting as much distance between them as she could when he settled onto the limb beside her. “You have a weird way of showing you love someone.”

“The only reason I asked Daisy not to say anything about the letter was because I wanted to pick the time to tell you,” he said gently. “I didn’t want to ruin your Christmas or rush things too much. I thought if I could have a couple more days to—”

“To bang me before you told me you were leaving?” she supplied with a huff.

“This had nothing to do with banging,” he said, holding her gaze, even when she shot him a scowl so exaggerated it would have been funny if she weren’t so upset. “Seriously, Olivia. This had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with making sure I didn’t scare you away.”

The creases between her eyebrows smoothed just a little, becoming a wrinkle instead of an impassable canyon. “You’re the one leaving.”

“Not without you,” he said, dying to take her hand, but realizing she’d probably slap him if he tried. “I haven’t even decided whether or not to take the commission. A lot has changed in just a few days and I wanted time to think and a chance to talk things over with you before I made the final call.”

He paused, gathering his courage, wishing he could wait to say what he was about to say, but he couldn’t risk losing Olivia. He couldn’t hold anything back, not even the stuff he was worried might scare her. “But if I do decide to sign back up and you want to come with me, we won’t be able to live together on base unless you’re my wife. And I already know I don’t want to spend another night away from you if I can help it.”

Olivia’s eyes went wide, wider, and yet wider still until he couldn’t hold back a huff of laughter.

“See,” he said, his throat tight. “Now you know why I wanted to wait. I just wanted a few more days. Everything felt like it was going so perfectly.”

He shrugged, before adding in a softer voice, “Like it was meant to be.”

And now he felt like a fool, an idiot who had taken something precious for granted and now might lose the only thing, the only person, who really mattered.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Colton

Colton glanced up, not encouraged by the stunned expression on Olivia’s face. “Maybe I was wrong, but I thought maybe in a few days it wouldn’t scare you to hear me say something like that. And that’s the only reason I didn’t tell you the truth.”

Olivia swallowed, sniffed, and blinked several times as her troubled eyes searched his, but she didn’t say a word.

She was quiet for so long Colton’s stomach had started to turn inside out when she finally whispered, “You really mean all that? You were really going to ask me to go with you?”

“No, I was going to ask you to help me decide whether we should go or stay,” he said, willing her to believe him. “Because if we’re going to build a life together, we should make big decisions together, don’t you think?”

Olivia nodded. “Yes,” she said, seconds before her face crumpled and fresh tears spilled down her pink cheeks.

Colton reached out, getting as much of his arm around her as he could in their awkward position. “Don’t cry, Liv,” he said, patting her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I never wanted to make you cry.”

“You d-didn’t.” She sniffed, but the tears kept coming, streaming from her big brown eyes. “I should have waited to talk to you before I ran away. I just have such terrible luck and for a person who graduated magna cum laude I make stupid decisions sometimes. I didn’t want to believe you were one. I wanted to believe that you felt the way I felt, but when—”

“I do,” he assured her, searching her face. “Assuming that you want to keep me around for as long as possible.”

She nodded again, her tears thankfully starting to slow. “I do. I love you, Colt. I’ve always loved you. It just feels like part of what I was meant to do with my life.”

“Me too,” he said, wishing he could kiss her, but with her luck he wasn’t going to risk any in-tree acrobatics. “So can we climb down and go home now? I’d like to make sure you don’t have frostbite and eat some Christmas Eve dinner and then take you home and make love to you until there is no doubt in your head that you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Her lips trembled. “Okay, but you have to stop saying romantic things for a little while, or I’m going to start crying again and probably fall out of the tree while I’m trying to get down.”

He nodded seriously. “All right. We can talk about unromantic things. Like picking up some mealworms from Mom and Dad’s compost shed for Godzilla before we leave.”

“Gross,” she said, her smile sending a bolt of happiness and relief shooting through his chest. “And his name is Sir Licks-a-Lot.”

“He told me he didn’t like that name,” Colt said, shifting position until he was standing on a limb a few feet below Olivia’s. “He wants something that more accurately reflects his badassery.”

She grinned as she shifted her leg over the limb. “Maybe Godzilla can be his middle name.” She held her hand out between them, making Colt frown as he caught sight of the torn skin of her palm. “I lost my glove and scraped up my hand.”

“Ouch,” he said, helping her down onto the limb above his.

“And blood dripped down onto the snow,” she continued, holding onto the tree with her good hand. “And I was afraid it was going to whip the wolves into a feeding frenzy and they were going to figure out how to climb the tree and eat me alive.”

Colt glanced around the tree, grateful not to see any sign of the pack. “Let’s not talk about possible nightmarish scenarios until we’re back home, okay?”

“I’m making you superstitious,” she said, as he hopped down into the snow and held his arms up to her. “Aren’t you afraid of hooking up with someone with such bad luck?”

He motioned for her to drop down, refusing to say another word until she was on solid ground. But as soon as she took his hand and landed on her feet in the snow beside him, he cupped her face in his hands, looking deep into her eyes so she would know that what he was about to say was serious.

“I am not afraid of your bad luck,” he said. “The only thing I’m afraid of is not being around to catch you when you fall.”

“Then I guess you should stick around for a while,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Because I’d like to keep an eye or two on your back, too.”

“Lucky me.” He leaned in to capture her lips for a long, slow kiss, knowing he wouldn’t trade this woman for anyone else in the world. She was the sweet, silly, sexy woman of his dreams and whatever the future held, his life was a thousand times richer for having her in it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Colton

Later that night, as he and Olivia were lying side by side in the double bed in his childhood bedroom—they had gotten snowed in at his parents’ house after all, and stayed up until ten talking by the fire while the snow fell outside—he realized that he didn’t want to imagine either of them away from this place, the hometown where they’d fallen in love.

“I’m going to turn down the commission,” he whispered, making Olivia lift her head from his chest to meet his eyes in the dim blue light.

“Are you sure?” she said. “Because if you need this, I’ve been thinking about ways to make it work. I could hire someone to run the store and lease the—”

“No, I’m sure.” He brushed her hair from her face. “You were right the day we went for our run. I was trying to prove something that doesn’t need to be proved. And I wouldn’t be able to fly again, and that was always my favorite part of my job. So I’d rather stay here, take the promotion Seth offered me at the department, and explore other ways to go fast.”

Olivia yipped softly in surprise but didn’t resist when he used the hand he’d slipped between her thighs to draw her on top of him. “Like what?”

“Like moving in with a girl I’ve only been dating for a few days.”

“That is pretty fast,” she said, wiggling out of her borrowed pajama pants as Colt drew them down her legs. “But it has to happen. Either that or you’re coming over every day to feed you know who.”

“Much more practical to just move in.” He slid his hand between her legs, summoning a soft sigh from her lips as he played through where she was already slick. “Why are you wet, beautiful?”