Lucy left the office and got into the four-wheel-drive SUV she’d bought to get around in Vermont and headed back up to the mountain where she lived with Colton. As she drove through town to the one-lane covered bridge and then past Hell’s Peak Road, where the Abbotts lived in their big red barn, she thought about everything that’d happened in the months since she met Colton. She’d come to Vermont with Cameron to present the first cut of the website and had taken one look at the burly mountain man, and her entire life had changed for the better.

She, who’d never needed a man to make her feel whole, now needed him as much as she needed air and water and food to survive. He was everything to her, and the life they’d put together between Vermont and New York worked far better than she’d ever expected it to. For the next few months, Vermont would be home during the upcoming sugaring season that she couldn’t wait to experience firsthand after hearing so much about it. This year, the season promised to be more intense than ever before due to the additional acreage the family had procured on the mountain, adding more than ten thousand new sap-producing trees to the twenty-five thousand they already had.

In April, they’d head to the city, where she’d meet with clients and he’d work on his side business of selling syrup to a wide array of gourmet shops in the city.

When she first met Colton and was faced with the enormous challenge of how to meld her city life with his mountain life, she never would’ve imagined the arrangement they’d ended up with. It was perfect for them, and things that had once seemed preposterous, such as the lack of indoor plumbing at his home on the mountain, now were routine. The cabin on the mountain was home to her as much as it was to him.

He’d brought color and adventure and laughter—so much laughter—to her staid and boring existence. A day without Colton would be like a day without chocolate, and that rarely happened. Emma was right. It was time for her to put her cards on the table with him and tell him what she wanted. She had nothing to fear from telling him the truth.

One thing in her life she was absolutely sure of was his love for her. He demonstrated that love in a thousand big and small ways every day, from the way he looked at her, to the way he cared for her, to the passionate way he made love to her every chance he got. She needed to have faith in him—and in what they’d built together—by being honest with him.