Colton Family Rescue Read online

  And now with the raise, they would be fine. She hadn’t thought of all the ramifications of that extra money coming in. She gave Emma an even wider smile and the girl giggled.

  “What’s this?” Jolie asked, pointing to a blotch of several colors on what was apparently supposed to be a fluffy white cloud.

  “A rainbow,” Emma said seriously. “It’s not borned yet.”

  Emotion welled up and nearly spilled over at the child’s simple words and beautiful imagination. “I love you, Emma Peters.”

  “Love you back, Mommy. Can we go now?”

  “We can. I have a little treat in store for you tonight.”

  Emma’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  It tugged at Jolie’s heart that a treat was so rare it astonished the girl. Maybe it could be more often now, she thought as she took the girl’s hand and they headed back to where she’d parked. Emma clutched her painting as they stepped outside and the wind threatened to steal it. Visions of it blowing away with Emma in hot pursuit made her grimace. There wasn’t much traffic back here; the only person she saw was a woman on foot walking past the back door of the boutique shop next door, but you just never knew.

  “Why don’t I hang on to that, and you go get in the car?” she suggested, hitting the button that unlocked the doors.

  “’Kay.”

  Jolie took the painting with her free hand, keeping her eyes on Emma as she ran to the passenger side of the car and pulled the back door open.

  “Jolie? She forgot this.”

  The call came from behind her and she turned her head to see one of the day-care monitors in the doorway, holding out Emma’s favorite headband, paint stained from being used to hold her hair back while she was creating. Jolie glanced back, saw Emma was safely in the car with the door closed. Just in case, she locked the doors before she walked back to take the headband. The woman smiled as she handed it over, and waved to Emma before going back inside. Jolie stuffed the headband into her pocket, wondering if the paint was there forever, or if it might wash—

  Somewhere nearby, a car backfired, and she felt a split second of satisfaction at the maternal instinct that had told her not to assume cars wouldn’t be around.

  Emma screamed.

  Jolie whirled, running before she was completely turned around. She could see her. Could see that she was looking out the side window, staring at something in great distress.

  There was no one else around. She reached the car. Saw that Emma was apparently unhurt. But still staring. Jolie turned around.

  The woman she’d seen behind the boutique was lying on the ground. Blood was pooling around her. It took a moment for Jolie to process what seemed impossible. And when she got there, her breath jammed up behind the knot in her throat.

  That hadn’t been a car backfire.

  It had been a gunshot.

  Chapter 2

  T.C. Colton leaned back in his chair, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at Dallas. He could see the Reunion Tower to the right, past the edge of the hotel complex built around it. He smiled as he usually did when he spotted it, remembering the first time he had, when he’d asked his father why they’d built it to look like a shifter. It had taken Eldridge a moment to realize it did indeed look like the stick shift on his car, and the old man had laughed.

  Because it looks out over the place where the movers and shakers work, son.

  Worry over his missing father spiked through him yet again. He tamped it down. He couldn’t let chaos creep in today; there was too much to do. Right now he envied his brother Zane, who as head of security was able to keep himself busy outside this building by visiting all the various Colton holdings for spot security checks. Here, things had gotten shoved aside in the initial panic after the senior Colton had vanished, and while Colton Incorporated was built to run efficiently no matter what happened, the distraction of every Colton at the top was beginning to show.

  Not, he thought ruefully, that having Fowler distracted was a bad thing. At least he hadn’t left any messes for T.C. to clean up. That he knew about, anyway. Yet. But there would be something. There always was. There were many things not in his job description as executive vice president of Ranch Operations that had become his responsibility, and cleaning up after his ethics-challenged half brother was one of them. He couldn’t seem to help himself; if there was a devious or underhanded deal to be made, or a manipulative scheme to be hatched, Fowler Colton would find it, or come up with it himself. They’d clashed about it too often to count.

  “You know if you put half that energy into honest dealings, we’d be right where we are, but I wouldn’t have to run all over town placating people and paying off the ones you’ve screwed over.”

  “But it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun, little brother.”

  Fun.

  Not something he strove for in his work. Oh, he enjoyed what he did, and truth be told he didn’t mind putting out fires. It was what intrigued him about his work, the various problems that cropped up and how to best solve them. Even Fowler had to admit his approach worked; T.C. hired good people and then trusted them, offering help if needed, but leaving it to them if they said they could handle it. Something his brother freely admitted he would never be able to do.

  “I never trust anyone outside of family, T.C. And sometimes not even them. Especially not even them.”

  He’d have made a hell of a politician, T.C. thought sourly. It was all like a game to Fowler, a game he was the best at. And that he took great glee in winning. He truly did have fun with all his machinations, and nothing pleased him more than triumphing over someone who was fool enough to be honest in his dealings.

  Whereas T.C. hadn’t really had fun in...four years.

  The memory shot through him the way it always did when his guard was down. He’d been fixated on his worry about his father and his weariness with his brother, leaving the door open for the thoughts he dreaded most.

  Jolie.

  And the worst—or best—of the memories, that moment when he’d given in to an urge he had never expected, to take the only-months-old baby he was still nervous about even holding, the baby who was looking up at him so solemnly, and swing her up above him so she could look down for a change. It seemed to have thrilled her, and she had broken into a peal of delighted laughter. He hadn’t been prepared for that, and certainly not for how it made him feel. Something deep and primal had sparked to life in him in that moment, an urge to protect, to nurture, to keep this beautiful bit of human life safe forever.

  And then he’d looked at Jolie. Standing there, watching them. There were tears streaking down her face, but the glow in her beautiful gray eyes was pure joy. He’d known in that moment that it was right, righter than anything had ever been in his life. They were his, and they would build a life that would be rock-solid and Texas strong.

  A month later, they were both gone.

  She’d thrown them away and, as his mother so coldly put it, taken the money and run. Just as she’d predicted when she first realized her son had taken an interest in the lowly cook’s assistant.

  “She’s a gold digger, Thomas. All she wants is Colton money,” Whitney Colton had said, after storming into his rooms on the second floor of the ranch house. Which he’d always thought was a singularly inaccurate name for a place that looked more like a mansion of the antebellum South.

  “You know people said the same thing about you, don’t you?” he’d snapped back at her. He’d scored with that one; he knew it by the color that rose in her cheeks and the anger that flared in green eyes so like his own.

  “And I’ve proven them wrong for twenty-five years now,” she retorted sharply.

  Yes, he’d scored, but in the end he’d lost, because she’d been proven right. Jolie had jumped at the first chance at a chunk of cash. A big Colton payday must have been he
r goal all along. He’d fought the knowledge, right up until his mother had shown him the cashed check, with Jolie’s signature unmistakably on the back.

  It had been the most painful learning moment of his life. He never, ever wanted to go through something like that again. And it only got worse when he started to wonder if it had been only the money, or if it had been him, too—if he had somehow failed her. So he kept things light, dating occasionally but never seriously, throwing himself into his work with a new energy, and in the process helping create the smooth-running machine that was now Colton Inc.

  Which was a damned good thing, he told himself now, since everything else was in chaos. And the last thing he should have been doing was sitting here dwelling on useless, painful memories. And it irritated him that they were still painful, after all this time. He’d assumed he’d be well past it now. Maybe you never forgot the first time you really crashed and burned.

  With ruthless determination, he shoved it all back into the compartment it had escaped. His father was missing, his nasty half sister Marceline wanted him declared dead so she could get her grubby hands on her inheritance. That had been a family fight he didn’t ever want to revisit, ending with Marceline putting forth the question he reluctantly had to admit had merit; if their father had been kidnapped and was still alive, why wasn’t there a ransom demand?

  And then there was the very real possibility that not only might Eldridge be dead, but someone in the family had killed him.

  A tap on the door spun him away from the view he’d no longer been focused on. His assistant, Hannah Alcott, stepped into the office when he called out an okay. Holding a sheaf of papers in her hand, she strode briskly toward him, her energetic stride belying her age, which T.C. knew to be nearly sixty. Once his father’s executive assistant—and, T.C. suspected, at least partly responsible for his father’s steering away from his more unethical turns—she had nearly quit when Fowler took over the reins of Colton Inc., saying bluntly that she wouldn’t deal with his methods. T.C. had tried to intercede, and been unexpectedly flattered when Hannah said, “You’re the only one in this place now that I could work for.”

  And so she was here, and his life had instantly become easier. She was efficient, smart and utterly trustworthy.

  “Are you happy over here?” he asked as he took the papers she held out. His office was—purposely—on the other side of the building from his brother’s, and smaller, and the adjacent office for his assistant was also smaller.

  “Yes, Mr. Colton.” Her tone was formal, but there was a note of respect that had been lacking when she spoke to Fowler. His brother would have been surprised at how much that meant to him. Respect of underlings, as Fowler put it, didn’t matter as long as they followed orders.

  “Thank you for accepting the offer. You’ve made my life easier.”

  “Thank you for making it. I didn’t really want to leave.”

  They were still feeling their way, and although it felt odd to T.C. that he was referred to deferentially as Mr. Colton by a woman a generation his senior, she seemed to prefer it that way. And what Hannah Alcott wanted, she also seemed to generally get.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever said that I admire you for standing up to Fowler the way you did.”

  She looked at him for a moment, quietly, steadily. “Someone needs to. And I’m here because you are the only other one who has.”

  T.C. supposed Fowler would say he was ridiculous for being so pleased at words from a “mere executive assistant,” but nevertheless, he was.

  “May I ask you something?” she said when he smiled.

  “Only if you promise to stop asking if you can ask.”

  She returned his smile. “Why didn’t you have an assistant before?”

  He gave a half shrug. “I figured I needed to know how to do it all before I asked somebody else to do it.”

  “And that, Mr. Colton, is another reason I’m here.” Briskly turning back to business, she gestured at the papers she’d handed him. “The Wainwright papers are on top, and the analysis you asked for is in the folder.”

  “Already? You are a gem, Mrs. Alcott.”

  “I am.”

  He couldn’t help smiling again, rare enough in these days of worry and mystery that he appreciated it. “I should give you a raise.”

  “You already did. I’m quite sufficiently compensated, Mr. Colton.” But she was smiling as she left the office.

  He realized after she’d left that one of the reasons he liked her was that she imposed a sense of order on things, and amid the current chaos, that was no small accomplishment. She—

  The door opened once more, and Hannah leaned in. “Hurricane Fowler headed this way,” she said.

  He grimaced. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Five minutes?”

  He gave her a grateful look. “Ten. I’m feeling strong today.”

  She nodded and backed out once more.

  His brother at full force was not how he’d wanted to spend this afternoon. He needed a back door, T.C. thought, not for the first time. He even considered a dive into the adjoining bathroom, but knowing Fowler he’d barge in anyway. He smothered a sigh and braced himself. It was easier, knowing that in ten minutes Hannah would remind him of some urgent piece of business that had to be attended to immediately. It felt cowardly to him, but sometimes it was the only way to deal with the steamroller that was his half brother.

  There was a thud as the door was shoved open; the formality of a knock was usually absent when Fowler was involved. He felt—and acted—as if he owned not only the entire building but everyone in it.

  “I know who killed Dad!”

  T.C. stood up; he’d expected some business-related demand, or another lecture on his lack of bloodthirstiness on the Wainwright deal. T.C. believed in healthy competition, and the occasional solid partnership; Fowler believed in wiping the competition off the field.

  “We don’t know,” T.C. reminded his brother, “that Dad’s dead.”

  “Never mind that. I know who did it.”

  T.C. groaned inwardly. Great, he thought. Here we go again. It’s not enough that Mother accused Alanna of all people. Now Fowler’s got some other crackbrained theory?

  “I presume your glee means you’ve found another suspect for them to chase after besides yourself and Tiffany?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Foreboding sparked in T.C.’s chest. Fowler was too gleeful. This was more than just some harebrained idea to throw suspicion off him and his self-absorbed, money-conscious girlfriend. T.C. waited silently, refusing to rise to the bait, denying Fowler some of the pleasure he seemed to get out of making people jump to his tune. Irritation flickered in his eyes.

  “You’re so cool now, but you won’t be. Not when I tell you who it is, who I saw right here in town, not an hour ago.”

  He’d been right. This was more. And it was aimed at him. “Just get it over with, Fowler. I have a busy schedule.”

  Fowler folded his arms across his chest and smirked. “I’ve already called the sheriff, so don’t think you can stop that.”

  T.C. frowned. “Why would you think I would want to stop you?” He wanted his father found, and while he doubted whatever wild claim Fowler was making now would prove true, he also felt every avenue should be explored.

  “Because you’re a pushover and always have been when it comes to her,” Fowler said, in that nasty tone T.C. had learned meant he was about to spring his trap.

  The foreboding exploded into full-blown apprehension. “Her?”

  Fowler’s smirk widened. He was clearly taking great pleasure in this.

  “Jolie Peters.”

  Chapter 3

  Jolie clutched her still-weeping daughter close, rocking her, cooing at her, trying to soothe her. The police were being kind, bu
t as grim as she would have expected them to be, dealing with a cold-blooded murder. The Central Business District had its own dedicated police. They knew the area inside out and were coolly, briskly efficient. If she wasn’t in such shock, Jolie would have been impressed.

  And if it wasn’t for Emma, she might feel safe.

  “It’s all right, honey,” said the uniformed woman kneeling before them as they sat on the edge of the police unit’s front seat. Jolie had purposely put their backs to the bloody scene. The sight of a woman who just a couple of hours ago had been alive being put in a cold, dark bag and loaded in the back of a van was not something she wanted added to Emma’s already horrible images.

  The woman’s voice was soft, gentle, and Jolie liked the way she looked at her for permission before she reached up and brushed her fingers over the child’s tearstained cheek. “Maybe you’ll remember more later when it’s not quite so scary.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jolie said, “but she’s too upset.”

  “Of course she is. Who wouldn’t be? And just knowing we’re looking for a woman helps a lot.”

  “You believe her?”

  The other officers had seemed to doubt Emma’s account, which Jolie understood, given that the girl had been practically hysterical. Although she seemed to be calming down now. As if the quiet, adult conversation going on over her head was soothing her. Jolie’s gaze flicked to the woman’s face and saw she knew that and was doing this intentionally. She glanced at the name tag over her left pocket, which read T. Wilcox.

  “I have a three-year-old boy, Tyler,” she said, “and I know when he’s making things up. I trust you do, too.”

  Jolie gave her a grateful smile. “I do.” She glanced at the people both in uniform and civilian clothes clustered around where the body was, at last, being removed. “But I’m not sure they believe her.”