Colton Storm Warning Read online

  Danger, he can handle.

  But what about desire?

  When security expert Ty Colton is assigned to protect a young heiress, he doesn’t know what to expect. Turns out that Ashley Hart is a committed philanthropist with a real target on her back. She’s earned a very dangerous enemy, and Ty’s sense of duty takes over. As a storm bears down hard, will their growing feelings prove a fatal distraction—or the bond that saves them both?

  “Stay with me.” Ashley didn’t even care about all the ways those words could be interpreted.

  Ty’s eyes fluttered open. His right hand moved and lightly grasped her wrist. Her gaze shot to his face. He held her gaze. “I trust you.”

  The words echoed in her head. I trust you. Even after this morning, when she’d been so furious with him, when just an hour ago she’d been yelling at him, he trusted her. Trusted her to do what was necessary, even if the task was ghastly.

  Which told her he knew her better than she thought he did.

  Then his fingers tightened a little. “Last night...still should never... But I’m not sorry.”

  He said it with more energy than she would have thought he had. And apparently it was the last he had, because the moment the words were out, his eyes rolled up a little and he passed out.

  * * *

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  Dear Reader,

  Every book I write is special to me in one way or another. But this one I felt a particular affinity for, because of the setting. I was born about three hundred miles from the fictional town of Braxville, Kansas, albeit in Iowa. True, we had moved before I was a year old, but we went back to visit family every year (by car, mind you, an endless trip when you’re a kid), and it frequently involved a stop in Kansas. And I remember those trips vividly, the vast distances, the real, true amber waves of grain and the flat of it all. Sometimes I think that’s why I’m not truly happy now unless I can see mountains. Probably why I now live where I can see them every day. But I digress.

  What I remember most about those trips through the Heartland are the people. When we got a flat tire, a man driving down the road in a tractor stopped and helped my dad change it. When we encountered some major road construction and ended up having to ask for directions to the interstate (yes, there was a time before Google Maps), we didn’t just get directions, the gentleman actually drove out of his way to lead us to it. And I remember we once had an overheating problem, and the owner of the gas station we stopped at let me watch TV in his home behind the station while he and my dad fixed it. Because that’s who they are, these people of the Heartland.

  It was a pleasure to revisit them in this story. Happy reading!

  Justine Davis

  COLTON STORM WARNING

  Justine Davis

  Justine Davis lives on Puget Sound in Washington State, watching big ships and the occasional submarine go by and sharing the neighborhood with assorted wildlife, including a pair of bald eagles, deer, a bear or two, and a tailless raccoon. In the few hours when she’s not planning, plotting or writing her next book, her favorite things are photography, knitting her way through a huge yarn stash and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster—top down, of course.

  Connect with Justine on her website, justinedavis.com, at Twitter.com/justine_d_davis or on Facebook at Facebook.com/justinedaredavis.

  Books by Justine Davis

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  The Coltons of Kansas

  Colton Storm Warning

  The Coltons of Roaring Springs

  Colton’s Secret Investigation

  Cutter’s Code

  Operation Midnight

  Operation Reunion

  Operation Blind Date

  Operation Unleashed

  Operation Power Play

  Operation Homecoming

  Operation Soldier Next Door

  Operation Alpha

  Operation Notorious

  Operation Hero’s Watch

  Operation Second Chance

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com,

  or justinedavis.com, for more titles.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Excerpt from Family in the Crosshairs by Jane Godman

  Chapter 1

  “It’s your own fault.”

  Ty Colton gave his colleague a sour look. Mitch was a good friend, but he was also a sarcastic son of a gun. At least to his colleagues he was. He managed to rein it in with clients. Or maybe he was sarcastic to them because he had to rein it in with clients.

  “How did getting stuck babysitting get to be my fault?” Ty asked, letting some of his irritation into his voice.

  “If you hadn’t gone all heroic and saved that Sawyer kid last year, you’d still be flying under the radar, dude.”

  “If I was heroic,” he pointed out, “I should be getting rewarded, not punished.”

  “Would that life were that way,” a deep yet quiet voice came from behind them. They both turned to see Eric King, the founder of Elite Security, the man who was technically Ty’s partner but whom he most times deferred to as his boss, walking toward them with his ever-present tablet in his hand. “But then again,” Eric went on, “a true hero doesn’t ask for any reward.”

  Ty studied the older man for a moment, judged he wasn’t really angry and said deferentially, “You would know.”

  He meant it. He admired Eric King more than any man he knew. Including—perhaps especially—his own father. Fitz Colton was many things, but a loving, involved parent was not one of them. From the first day he’d met him, Eric seemed to care more about the path Ty was on than his father ever had. Once he’d decided the family business wasn’t for him, that seemed to be the end of his father’s interest in his eldest son.

  And unlike his father, Eric didn’t bark out orders gruffly. He didn’t have to. Ty’s sister Jordana, a police detective, had once told him his boss reeked of command presence, and he supposed that was a good description. He reminded Ty more of his Uncle Shep—newly returned to their hometown of Braxville—than anyone. Not surprising since Shepherd Colton had spent even longer in the Navy than Eric had in the Marines. Not, Eric pointed out, that anyone ever really left the Marines.

  “Buttering me up won’t get you out of this, Colton,” the man said, although his eyes warmed enough that T
y knew the compliment had registered. “They asked for you specifically, so you’re locked in. Mitch, you’ll be his backup.”

  “Damned social media,” Ty muttered, knowing that was probably how this family had discovered him, in that photo that had gone viral of him carrying little Samantha Sawyer from the warehouse where she’d been held for ransom. The rescue operation had been kept under the radar, but these days everyone with a phone fancied themselves a journalist, and one of them had caught that moment. When he’d first seen it, he’d simply been glad the terrified little girl’s face had been hidden as she sobbed into his shirt. By the fiftieth time he’d seen it, he’d been well and truly annoyed.

  Jordana had teased him, pointing out every time the shot turned up somewhere, and telling him to enjoy his fame. His brother Brooks, on the other hand, understood. “I wouldn’t want it,” he’d said. “It’d be hard to stay a private investigator when your face is all over every public domain in the country.”

  Of course, Brooks had been a lot more understanding about many things lately. Especially since he and Gwen Harrison had gotten engaged.

  Ty barely stopped a grimace. He was happy for them. He was happy for Jordana, too, whose growing happiness with businessman Clint Broderick was obvious. Even Bridgette, the girl of the Colton triplets, had settled into a happy reunion with her high school sweetheart.

  So the Colton kids are three for six on the happy-ever-after front. Too bad the oldest can’t get it in gear.

  He shook off the fruitless thoughts—he’d about decided that kind of happy wasn’t in the cards for him—and focused on the matter at hand. He didn’t like the idea of being pulled off the case his family had been sucked into after the grim discovery of two bodies sealed in the walls of an old Colton Construction building. He was getting close, really close, to unraveling that decades-old case.

  But Elite Security had first call on his time, and the police—including his sister the detective—had warned him about jurisdiction issues, and not contaminating the case. Not that that had stopped him from doing a little digging of his own. But that was going to have to go on hold, at least for now.

  “So what’s the deal?” he asked.

  “Parents worried about their daughter, who’s been threatened. They’ve got a lot of clout, and this could be a good thing for the company.” Eric grinned at him. “Almost as good as your heroics.”

  Ty grimaced. Dealing with bigwigs was never his favorite thing. “Is it a credible threat, or are we just keeping them happy?”

  “Research is working on that.”

  “Who threatened the kid, and why?”

  “Some guy named Sanderson, out of Kansas City. Another reason they came to us.”

  Ty frowned. “Name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

  “Research is working up a profile now.”

  “Research is busy,” Mitch put in with a lazy smile. “What do they have on the parents?”

  For the first time in this discussion—perhaps the first time since he’d known him—Eric looked...not uneasy, Ty didn’t think he even could, but wary. And that alone made the hair on the back of Ty’s neck stand up. “Research didn’t need to find out who they are. I’m guessing we all know.”

  Uh-oh. “Drop the bomb,” Ty suggested, already not liking it.

  “Her name’s Ashley Hart.”

  Ty frowned as he discarded the first thought that had come to him. Mitch let out a low whistle, indicating he hadn’t discarded the seemingly impossible idea. And another look at Eric’s face told Ty he shouldn’t have been so hasty.

  “Not...Andrew Hart? The Westport Harts?” In wealth and prominence, the Connecticut family ranked right up there with the likes of the Rockefellers. Although by Hart standards, the Rockefellers might still be considered new upstarts; the Harts had been American aristocracy as long as, say, the DuPonts.

  “The very same,” Eric said.

  Ty groaned. “Great. So I get to not just babysit, but babysit some spoiled rich kid?”

  Mitch snorted. Ty looked at him. “Like you weren’t one, Colton?” his friend said, but he was grinning.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he retorted, his own grin a bit wry. “Hardly on that level.”

  “Speaking of babysitting,” Eric said rather pointedly, “if you two are through?”

  “Sorry,” Ty muttered. “So where do I connect with the little darling? Westport?” Hartford airport, he thought. It was about twenty miles farther than La Guardia or JFK in New York, but a lot less hassle. He’d make up the time just getting out of the airport. Then he—

  “No,” Eric said. “She’s in McPherson.”

  Ty blinked. “Our McPherson? McPherson, Kansas?” The town of some thirteen thousand just east of his hometown of Braxville hardly seemed like a place someone from Westport would likely be visiting, let alone a Hart.

  “Yes, our McPherson.”

  “Why?”

  “She was there for some meeting about the Lake Inman wetlands expansion.”

  Ty drew back. “Wait, I thought you said she was a kid.”

  “She is.” Eric grinned at him. “But I’m old. To me, you’re a kid.”

  Ty scowled at Eric. The man might be pushing sixty, but he looked a decade younger and was fit enough to put both him and Mitch on the floor. Probably at the same time. But before he could say anything, Eric’s tablet chimed, and he waited as the man scanned the message. Then Eric tapped the screen a few times as he spoke. “Details on where you’re meeting up and the threat report. I’ll send it to your phone. Mitch, liaison with Research and send whatever they turn up on to Ty when it’s ready.”

  “You mean I don’t get to help wrangle?” Mitch’s disappointment was clearly mock.

  Eric finished sending the details before looking up at them. “Ty can handle it. McPherson’s close enough you can get there in a hurry if need be. I’ll be tied up with the loose ends of the Rivera case, but I’ll be on our comms.”

  Ty nodded. The high-end private communication system was one of the things that made Elite work so well. They didn’t have to rely on easily hackable cell networks or internet to connect with each other while on a job. Mitch, meanwhile, just looked relieved at escaping. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing that’s not in the report. Obviously, handle with care.”

  Ty sighed. He was not looking forward to dealing with some East Coast high-society type. But he said only, “Yes, sir.”

  He looked at Mitch, who was grinning at him, his relief obvious now. Eric turned to go, then turned back. “Mitch, make sure you look at the file now, too. You’ll need to know who he’s watching, in case you have to back him up. There’s a photo up front.”

  Ty’s brow furrowed as Eric walked away. There had been something a little too pointed in that look he’d given Mitch, who was pulling out his phone to follow the order.

  “Damn,” Mitch said. And it was heartfelt.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You have all the luck.”

  “Luck? Aren’t you the guy who was just—”

  He stopped dead when Mitch held out his phone. And Ty found himself looking at one of the loveliest women he’d ever seen. The picture had clearly been taken at some formal occasion. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, white trimmed in black, but he barely noticed. Not with those lovely slender shoulders and delicate throat on display. Her face was...refined, his mother would call it. Delicate features. Dark bottomless brown eyes. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into some loose sort of knot, and small gold earrings her only jewelry. Not that she needed any adornment with all that luscious skin showing.

  He sucked in some air, only then aware he’d stopped breathing for a moment.

  Damn, indeed.

  Chapter 2

  Ashley Hart paced her small suite, focusing on the patterned carpet rather intensely so sh
e didn’t look up and glare at her innocent phone again. She’d barely stopped herself from blasting her irritation to the skies via a social media post, but she’d vowed long ago to keep her family, especially her parents, out of all her timelines. She didn’t want to be listened to because she was a Hart of the Westport Harts, but because she was right.

  Because she was telling the truth.

  She stopped at the window that looked out toward the small town. She knew it was half the size of Westport, but that was probably the smallest difference between it and the oceanfront community she’d grown up in. Yet, in a way, looking out over the vast flat of the Kansas prairie was sort of like looking out over the vastness of the Atlantic. It was an interesting comparison, in any case.

  She turned and paced back, this time waving her hand over the silent phone to light the lock screen and check the time.

  Ten minutes. This guy had ten minutes to show up or she was leaving. She was already fuming over this whole thing, anyway. Her parents were overreacting. This was hardly the first time she’d made someone angry with her. When she’d been overseas, in an especially rural area, she’d had an entire community angry with her for helping their long-time enemies set up a medical clinic. And back home, she’d had other communities—for that’s how she sometimes thought of them—here in the US calling her names she hadn’t even known the meaning of. Sometimes her social media feeds held as much anger and threats as accolades and appreciation, almost always hidden behind the cutesy names and the general anonymity of the internet.

  Why this threat was so different, she didn’t know. Except that it had been sent to her parents instead of her. She loved them, adored them in fact, but she was twenty-seven now, and while she always listened to them, they did not tell her what to do.

  Except when they did.

  What they’d told her this morning was to stay in her hotel room until the security they’d arranged arrived. A top-ranked firm, they’d said, as if the Harts would settle for anything less. She wondered, somewhat idly as she paced, what need there was for something called Elite Security here in Kansas, in the middle of—