A Maverick under the Mistletoe. Brenda Harlen

campaign since Collin threw his hat into the ring, but dragging a war veteran into this debate solely to discredit your brother...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “That’s a new low, even for Nate.”

      “Are you sure he set it up?”

      “I saw him talking to the master sergeant before the debate,” she confided. “I have absolutely no doubt that he planted him in the audience to stir up trouble.”

      “Well, I don’t think the tactic was nearly as successful as he’d hoped, not after your little speech.”

      She shrugged. “I was there because I want to be an informed voter. My personal bias aside, I wanted to hear what the candidates had to say, how they responded to questions. Everything I saw and heard tonight confirmed my belief that Collin is the best mayoral candidate, and I wanted to make sure that people left the hall talking about him—not you.”

      “Well, I appreciate what you said, anyway,” he told her. “I know it couldn’t have been easy to speak up in my defense—even if it was for my brother—after...everything.”

      * * *

      After...everything.

      Sutter’s words echoed in Paige’s mind, making her wonder if that was really how he thought about the fact that he’d broken her heart and shattered her hopes and dreams. Had their relationship been so meaningless, and their breakup so inconsequential to him, that he could just categorize those events as “everything”?

      She looked up at him, amazed and annoyed that even after five years a simple glance was enough to make her heart pound. Of course, he probably had that effect on a lot of women. At six feet two inches, with the solid, muscular build of a real cowboy, he turned heads no matter where he went. The thick, light brown hair, deep blue eyes and quick smile kept those heads turned in his direction. She deliberately tore her gaze away.

      It infuriated her that after five years, her heart was still aching from his callous dismissal, while he seemed completely unaffected. But there was no way she was going to ask for clarification. Instead she only said, “It was a long time ago.”

      “Was it?” he challenged, his voice quieter now and tinged with a hint of sadness.

      Or maybe she was only hearing what she wanted to hear.

      “I’ll admit, there are days when it seems like our relationship was in a different lifetime,” he told her. “And there are other days when I would swear it was only yesterday. When I can close my eyes and see you right in front of me, reach out as if to touch the softness of your skin, breathe in and catch the scent of your perfume.”

      She wouldn’t let the soft seduction of his words or his voice sway her. “I think you’ve been breathing in something that’s not legal in this state without a prescription.”

      “Ouch—that was harsh.”

      “What kind of response did you expect?”

      “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe I just wanted to know that you think about me sometimes, too.”

      “I don’t. Because it wasn’t yesterday—it was five years ago, and I have too much going on in my life right now to think about what used to be or might have been.”

      But her words were a lie. The truth was, she didn’t just think about Sutter sometimes. She thought about him far too often. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d been gone for five years, because her heart had never quite healed. And even after all that time, whenever she saw him—which, thankfully, hadn’t been very often before the horrible flood had brought him back to Rust Creek Falls—it felt like ripping the scab off of the wound.

      And yet when a stranger who didn’t even know him started attacking his character, Paige couldn’t seem to help herself from flying to his defense. Because regardless of what had happened between them, she knew that deep inside Sutter was a good man. The man she’d once loved more than anything.

      “So tell me what’s going on in your life,” he said now.

      She turned to look at him. “Why?”

      “Because I want to know.”

      “Well, I’ve been teaching my fifth-grade class in my living room because we don’t have a school anymore—which is one of the reasons I’m so invested in the outcome of this election. We need to get the new school built because our kids deserve better than what we’ve been able to do for them so far.”

      “Fifth grade?” Sutter frowned. “I think Dallas’s eldest is in fifth grade.”

      She nodded. “Ryder’s in my class.”

      “He’s had a rough go of it...since his mother walked out.”

      “It hasn’t been easy on any of the boys.” She felt herself softening in response to his obvious concern about his nephew, just a little, and steeled herself against it. “But when one person walks out of a relationship, it’s inevitable that someone else is going to be hurt.”

      His gaze narrowed. “Are we still talking about Ryder?”

      “Of course,” she agreed, the picture of innocence. “Who else would we be talking about?”

      “Us,” he said bluntly. “I thought you might have been referring to the end of our relationship—when you dumped me.”

      She hated that he could still see through her so easily. “I wasn’t talking about us, and I didn’t dump you,” she denied. “I simply refused to run away with you. Because that’s what you did—you ran.”

      “I’m back now,” he told her.

      And standing close to him, it was all too easy for Paige to remember the way she used to feel about him. Far too easy to want to feel that way again. Thankfully she wasn’t a naive teenager anymore, and she wouldn’t let it happen. Because sooner or later Sutter would leave Rust Creek Falls again. He always did.

      “Yes, you’re back now,” she acknowledged. “But for how long?”

      Sutter’s gaze slid away. “Well, as Collin’s campaign manager, I’ll be hanging around until the election.”

      His response was hardly unexpected, and yet Paige couldn’t deny that she felt a pang of disappointment in response to his words. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

      “It’s not easy being here,” he reminded her. “No one has ever welcomed me back with open arms.”

      She would have. If he’d come home at any time during those first six months that he’d been gone, she would have welcomed him with open arms and a heart so full of love for him that it was near to bursting.

      But he hadn’t come home, not at all in the first year or for a very long time after. And the longer he was gone, the more she realized that the overwhelming love she felt for him wasn’t reciprocated—at least not in the way she needed it to be if they were going to build a life together.

      Instead, they’d each moved on without the other. By all accounts Sutter was doing very well in Seattle. Apparently he’d opened his own stables in the city and had established quite the reputation for himself. Paige had been sincerely happy to hear the news and genuinely pleased for him, because she was more than content with her own life in Rust Creek Falls.

      She loved her job, she lived close enough to her family that she saw them regularly—although she sometimes wondered if maybe a little too frequently—she had good friends and she even went out on occasion. She didn’t want or need anything more—and she certainly didn’t want Sutter Traub turning her life upside down again.

      “You saw that tonight,” he pointed out to her. “No one has forgotten what happened, why I left, and no one will miss me when I’m gone again.”

      She could tell that he believed it, and her heart ached for him. “This is your home,” she told him. “Whether you choose to live here