Page 5 of The Unknown Colton
And right now, Troy didn’t have the money or the physical ability to turn the hotel into the business Lakin wanted it to be. After so many weeks of not talking to her, he wasn’t sure that he even had Lakin anymore. After so much time with no contact from him, maybe she’d realized she didn’t need him anymore, that she didn’t want him anymore. But Lakin, being Lakin, wouldn’t break up via email or text. She would wait until he was home to do it in person.
“Let’s talk,” Troy said to his sister. “I want to hear about everything that happened to you. Everything that happened while I was gone.”
She glanced toward the office. “You don’t want to talk to Lakin first?”
He wanted to do more than talk to his longtime love. His body ached for hers; he’d been gone too long. But then his body just ached a lot now. And he was scared of what the future might hold. How angry was she with him for being out of touch for so long? She would also be so upset that they’d missed out on the opportunity to buy the old hotel.
Unfortunately, they wouldn’t have been able to even if he’d been in communication with her. He was helping his mother with his brother’s college tuition; he hadn’t managed to save enough yet for the future Lakin envisioned for them. He needed to work a couple more years on the rigs to get enough for them to open and operate something like a hotel, especially one that needed as many renovations as the old Shelby Hotel.
What if he wasn’t able to physically work on the rigs anymore? He might never be able to help make Lakin’s dreams come true.
And then he wouldn’t be the partner she needed and deserved.
“Lakin’s working,” Troy reminded his sister. “Instead of interrupting something, I should wait until she’s done for the day.”
Hetty’s brow furrowed beneath a lock of her thick black hair. “You know she’s going to be thrilled to see you. She always is.”
True. Every time he came home after months spentaway from her, it felt like they were on a vacation or a honeymoon. Lakin’s entire face would light up with a smile and she’d run into his arms, arms that longed to hold her. She would take some personal days off work, and they would spend as much time as they could in bed or on the couch or in a tent in the woods, just being together in every way. Making up for lost time was what they called it.
The weeks Troy had spent in a hospital bed, waiting for his back to heal, had been lost time. While Mitch figured Troy might have a case against the oil company, Troy wasn’t as convinced. When his dad died, there had been no payout because that would have been an admission of poor safety protocols in the workplace. And the oil company was not about to admit to violating safety rules. The lawyer his mother had been able to afford hadn’t found enough evidence to convince a civil court judge to make the company pay them anything either. Troy wasn’t sure he had enough evidence either.
And if he didn’t, there was no making up for what he’d lost, money, work and maybe even relationship-wise.
* * *
The photograph was more than twenty years old, so it was frayed on the edges and the colors were so faded that it was nearly black and white. Yet the man holding it knew exactly who the people in that picture were.
One of them was him, but a younger, more muscular version with thick hair and a cockiness in the wayhe stood that he didn’t feel anymore. He knew more now than he had then, so much more. He wouldn’t wind up where he had before; he was smarter now.
He drew in a deep breath and focused on the other people in the picture he held in the palm of his hand. He’d been studying it for a while as he sat in the battered pickup truck he’dborroweda few weeks ago. He knew the other people in that old photograph, too, the dark-haired woman and the dark-haired toddler she held in her arms.
That toddler had grown up and looked like the woman now, almost eerily so, like she was her ghost. The first time he saw her in Shelby, he thought he really had seen a ghost.
But she was real, the young woman. He’d finally found her, and he’d spent the past couple of weeks following her around from the coffee shop she stopped at every morning to her job at the adventure tour company. She lived there, too, in one of the small cabins on the property.
He knew everywhere she went and everything she did now. He’d been watching her to learn her routine and to figure out what he was going to do about her.
Or get out of her.
Because there was a reason that he’d tracked down that young woman. There was some unfinished business between them. And it was well past time that he finished it, and maybe her as well.
CHAPTER 2
When Troy’s truck pulled into the parking lot of RTA, Lakin noticed immediately. Even if she hadn’t seen the rusted old pickup through the office’s big windows, she would have known. She’d always been able to sense when he was close; it was as if her whole body tingled with awareness of him. Before she could disengage from the client talking her ear off on the telephone, he was gone again.
He’d been heading toward the office when Hetty caught up with him. She knew, of course, that Hetty was still recovering from her gunshot wound. But was Troy limping, too?
Maybe he’d just been stiff from the long trip from the offshore oil rigs. Of course he wouldn’t have been shot like Hetty. Nothing bad could have happened to him, or someone would have notified her or at least his family.
Troy and Hetty probably had a lot to catch up on, and that was why he’d left. But without even stopping by the office to give her a quick kiss? If she hadn’t been on the phone with a client, she would have runout to greet him like she always did. She’d missed him so much when he was gone that she couldn’t wait to see his handsome face again, to kiss him, to hug him.
And he hadn’t even stuck his head in the office to smile at her before leaving again?
Maybe he’d found out what she’d done, and he was mad at her.
But only a few people besides her knew. And her dad wouldn’t share her secret until she started sharing it herself. He understood her reasons for wanting to keep it quiet until she was ready to announce it to other members of their family. They might be the hardest to tell. And Troy…
Would he be happy about it?
