Colton's Twin Secrets Read online

  She couldn’t imagine that kind of life. As Fenwick Colton’s daughter, she had rarely had reason to be afraid, as a child or now. Even the disruption of her parents’ divorce hadn’t lasted long; she’d seen little of either of them anyway by then. Her life had gone along smoothly, staff and servants seeing to her needs, her father dropping in occasionally with some glitzy new woman on his arm and a guilt gift for Gemma in his hands. She’d learned to arrange—okay, manipulate—everything to her liking, and she planned to keep it that way.

  She would make Devlin Harrington see sense, he would realize he loved her, they would get married, and eventually—that “someday” Dante had mentioned—there would be children of her own. She would show Dev he was wrong about her, they would put it back together and then she’d find a way to stall his rush for children. The plan fell into place easily in her mind. She would make it happen. She wanted Dev, and she’d never been thwarted when she really, truly wanted something.

  Funny, though, how Dev wanted children so much but would have to wait to have them, and Dante, who hadn’t, suddenly had two. Of course Dev’s father would want his son’s children to be his own. And mere nieces wouldn’t be enough for him. He would want Dev to have a son, or sons. He’d said as much the first time she’d met him, last year, before she and Dev had started dating. It was some party or other, and he’d spoken expansively of expanding his empire, and those plans included the next generation of Harringtons. Male Harringtons, sexist that he was.

  And all of that had been blasted right out of her mind when she’d turned around and seen Dev for the first time. It had taken a few months of carefully arranged but apparently coincidental meetings before he finally asked her out. She’d heard rumors he’d been intent on another woman for a while, but she’d won in the end. She always did.

  But what his father had said came back to her now. And for a moment, looking at the two sweet, innocent faces as Dante gathered up what seemed a bewildering array of their accoutrements, she felt a qualm. Mere nieces? How could anyone look at these two and think they were mere anything? Less than anyone?

  She shook off the unsettling feeling. Dev might want to do what his father expected of him, but that didn’t make him like his father. He didn’t think that way, she was sure.

  Mind eased now, she eyed the grocery bag Dante had stuffed all the baby things into. That would never do. She’d have to get a better bag. Not one of those cheesy plastic things, but maybe a nice, big designer leather bag she could adapt.

  And she would need to go home and pack her own things. But that should wait until she saw what her living situation would be. She hoped her room would have a big enough closet.

  It only took until they got down to Dante’s car for things to start to unravel.

  “Does he go with you everywhere?” she asked, nodding at the dog lumbering along beside them.

  “Pretty much,” Dante answered. “He’s got a kennel here, and I can leave him over at the training center if I need to, but mostly he’s with me. He’s my partner.”

  “What about on dates?” she asked, not certain why she’d asked. Why it even mattered. She told herself it was only curiosity and idle chat to keep the conversation going. Which it did, but in a way she hadn’t expected.

  “That’s easy. Then he’s my sorter.”

  She blinked. “Your what?”

  “He sorts the good from the useless. I go by how they treat him.”

  “You mean if your date doesn’t like your dog—”

  “It’s a one-date string.”

  “Love me, love my dog, then?”

  “Pretty much,” he said again.

  Gemma smiled, and she wasn’t quite sure why. The Red Ridge K9 program had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember, yet she herself had never had a dog. And it had always been pounded home to her that these were working dogs, with a job to do, not pets.

  As they reached his vehicle, Dante nodded back toward the building. “And if you hadn’t reached out to him in there, I never would have taken a chance on you.”

  “So I needed his...stamp of approval?”

  “In a way. If you couldn’t get along with him, there was no point. It’s a package deal. As I said, he’s my partner.”

  “Smells like it,” she said when he opened the big SUV to put the carriers in the back seat. He paused, gave her a look that said...she wasn’t sure what. “I wasn’t complaining,” she said hastily, “It’s not a bad smell. I just noticed.”

  “Most bloodhounds have their own scent. No getting rid of it.” His mouth quirked. “Some people think it smells like Cheetos.”

  She laughed, the description instantly clicking. “So that’s why I suddenly wanted something crunchy!”

  He grinned at her, and it transformed him. In that moment when the worried, weary expression was gone, she realized it wasn’t just that trim, muscled body that was attractive, that overall, Dante Mancuso was quite a package, dog partner not withstanding.

  “You don’t happen to have an engineering degree, do you?” he asked with a glance at the back seat of the vehicle.

  “Um...no.” She did, in fact, have a degree in business, at her father’s insistence, but she’d never pursued the MBA he’d wanted her to. She hadn’t wanted to end up like her sister Layla, with no other life except work. But that was not something she wanted to discuss. “Why?”

  “Because that’s what it takes to get these things fastened right,” he muttered, lifting the first carrier into the seat and starting to wrestle with the seat belt. She saw a pile of things on the floor—a large stack of towels, a clipboard with some sort of checklist and, making her smile, a bag of dog treats. She guessed the things had once been on the seat itself, but all had been cleared for the new occupants.

  She watched him finally get it done, picked up the other carrier—Zita of the pointed brow—and walked to the other side of the SUV.

  “I think,” she said as she lifted it in and began to copy his actions, “it’d be easier to just leave these in and put the babies in and out.”

  “Occurred to me,” he said. “Now just figure out how to maneuver both babies, their stuff and Flash into my condo without ever leaving any of them alone to get into trouble, and you’ll have something.”

  She frowned. Straightened up and glanced at the dog, who had jumped heavily into the back of the vehicle. “Isn’t he a little big to live in a condo?”

  “Yes,” Dante said, and it was clearly heartfelt. “That’s why I spend hours at the dog park or in the hills with him on slow days. If he isn’t worn-out by nightfall, he’ll remodel it for me.”

  “You have to take him inside? He won’t just follow you?”

  “Always.” His tone was dry. “Unless there’s a scent trail too exciting to resist. Like a mouse having run by a week ago.”

  “It sounds,” she said carefully, “like a lot of work.”

  “It is. But it’s worth it.” He looked the dog himself, and there was no mistaking the affection in his expression. “We’ve been working together for three years. He’s put away more bad guys than any partner I’ve ever had. And he’s saved a life for every one of those years.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  He nodded. “Five lives, actually. Found a family of three lost hiking, just hours before they probably would have frozen to death. Found a guy who literally fell off a cliff, and a woman caught by a rock slide. Add in the burglar he found hiding in a tree, the armed robber he tracked to the storage room of a convenience store and all the evidence he’s sniffed out and he’s got a clearance rate we all envy. So he’s worth the work and then some.”

  “Wow,” she said, honestly awed. She’d known, of course, how useful the animals were, but she’d never had an itemized list for a specific animal quoted to her before. “But now you have all the work of these two added on.”
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br />   “And I have a feeling they’re going to make Flash look like a cakewalk,” he said wryly.

  She looked at the two innocent faces, thought of the harried mothers she’d seen—and that was with just one baby. And she had a feeling he might be right.

  What had she let herself in for?

  Never mind. You said you’d do it and you will. This is the perfect chance to prove to Dev that he’s wrong about you.

  And once she’d accomplished that, things would happen just as she intended. Of course, Dante would have to find another nanny then, but at least he wouldn’t be in such a panic. Oddly, that made her feel as good as the thought of her impending marriage—because she would get that all fixed up—to Devlin Harrington did.

  * * *

  “Oh.”

  It was all she said, but Dante read the undertone easily. “Not the big, ritzy place you expected to be living in?” he asked, an edge in his voice.

  “It’s fine,” Gemma said, recovering. “Nice, even.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “It’s just...small for four.”

  In fact, the condo, the front one of six in a remodeled brick building that had once been a warehouse, was spacious for what he’d paid for it. More importantly, it was only two blocks from the park with the fenced area for dogs and a couple of miles from both open range, the K9 training center and the PD. But ritzy it was not. The furniture had been chosen for comfort, not style, and there wasn’t a lot of it, since Flash needed some room just to turn around. And while he wasn’t a slob, he sometimes got in a hurry and tossed a shirt here or shoes there. Fortunately, there were only his hiking boots tossed in the entry today. And then he resented that he’d even thought the word fortunately. This was a job, not a date to be embarrassed in front of. She’d just have to take what there was, like it or not.

  And he laughed inwardly at the very idea of dating a Colton. The Fenwick branch of the famous family was way out of his league. He liked the ranchers better, but Finn Colton was his boss, and he didn’t fish in that pool. Not that there were any fish—Finn’s sisters were both spoken for, anyway.

  Who you kidding? You’ve got the most in common with Rusty Colton and the Pour House bunch. Same side of the tracks, that’s where you’re from.

  Not that he didn’t like Quinn, and feel bad at what she’d been through with the bombing near her father’s dive bar. Or Brayden, a fellow K9 officer. And he admired Shane Colton, who’d gone through the hell of a wrongful murder conviction and had come out stronger and making a good thing of his life.

  Of course, then there was Demi. Speaking of murder.

  He wasn’t assigned to the Groom Killer case that had the entire Red Ridge PD on edge. No one liked to admit Rusty Colton’s youngest daughter, a tough girl with a hair-trigger temper that had likely gotten her into this worst kind of trouble, had managed to elude them for months now. But the first victim was her own ex; Demi had become the prime suspect in the murders of several grooms right before their weddings and was still at large.

  He wasn’t sorry not to be in that ugly mash-up. Besides, the Larson twins were giving him enough trouble. He’d stake his badge—and Flash’s—on them being dirty as hell, but they were also smart and slick. They—

  “—sleep?”

  Dante snapped out of his reverie. “What?”

  She gave him a rather odd look but repeated her question evenly enough. “Where are you going to have the babies sleep?”

  “I...don’t know. Last night I kept them in my room, in case they woke up and were scared, being in a strange place.”

  She looked surprised, first at him, then the twins. “Do you think they even realize?”

  “I don’t know. I just felt better, being close. A decision,” he added sourly, “I came to regret about the eleventh time they woke me up.”

  “What did you do then?”

  His mouth curved ruefully. “I let myself get played and ended up holding both of them the rest of the night.”

  That smile again. With a touch of surprise, perhaps at his admission. He was beyond being embarrassed at this point. Desperation did that to you.

  “What do they sleep in at home?”

  “I don’t know.” And he was getting damned tired of having to say that. When she gave him an odd look, he shrugged. “I told you, my brother and I weren’t...close.”

  “But he left you his children.”

  “Yeah.” He told me you were the only one he would trust. Because, he said, you were the only one who would see to them properly. Mrs. Nelson’s words echoed in his head, right next to the dull, tired ache behind his eyes. Not doing so great so far, Dom.

  “So he trusted you to take care of them.”

  “My brother,” he said carefully, “was never the most careful guy around.”

  Thankfully, she let it drop. She looked at the bag Mrs. Nelson had given him—diapers, wipes, powders and some other things that he had no idea what they were or were used for.

  “Where are the rest of their things?” Gemma asked.

  “The rest?” God, he was tired of feeling stupid. He was tired, period.

  “Clothes, toys?”

  “Oh. At home, I guess.” She looked at him consideringly. As if she were trying to decide whether she should ask what was on her mind. “Go ahead,” he said. “I can’t feel any worse.”

  “All right,” she said, briskly. “Where did they live?”

  “Over on Brookside Drive.”

  “A house?”

  He thought of the out-of-place building. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Maybe it would be better to stay there, where all their things are, the place they know.” He suppressed a shudder at the thought of living in that house. Apparently he didn’t suppress it enough, because she said quietly, “When you said you and your brother weren’t close, did you mean...estranged?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know what you’d call it. We spoke, but not often. And when we did, it almost always ended in an argument.”

  “So you didn’t see eye to eye on much?”

  “Anything,” Dante said. “Or close enough.” Why the hell was he telling her this? Just because she asked didn’t mean he had to answer. “Look, that’s got nothing to do with the job at hand.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “All right. But you at least need to go there and get the rest of their stuff.”

  “Stuff...” They couldn’t possibly need more than he’d already been lugging around, could they?

  “Babies need a ton of it,” she said. “I have two friends with babies, and I swear, they need a moving van to follow them around.”

  He found himself chuckling despite it all. He was feeling inept and incompetent, and neither were feelings he was used to; he’d worked too damned hard making sure they didn’t apply to him. But that was his work, and this was something entirely different. This was... He didn’t know what this was, besides life altering. In all senses of the phrase.

  Chapter 9

  “I can’t face the idea of living in my dead brother’s home,” he said to Gemma, also realizing for the first time that he had no idea if Dom had even owned the place. He was guessing yes, because he couldn’t see any landlord allowing the decor choices Agostina had made, but maybe it was somebody long-distance who had no idea. “But I guess I should go see what’s there.”

  He wondered if he sounded as tired and lost as he felt. Apparently he did, because when she spoke again, it was in that same brisk tone. “When did you last eat?”

  “I had toast this morning and grabbed an apple at lunch.”

  Her expression told him what she thought of that. “No wonder you can’t think. You need to eat. Is there any food here?”

  “Just some leftover steak from...before.”

  “It’s a little early, but...” She looked thoughtful.
“Any onions? Peppers?”

  He frowned. “A half, I think, from the steak. And canned peppers.”

  “That’ll do.”

  She set down her purse and strode toward the kitchen. He saw her look around, noting the block holding knives and the crockery pot full of other utensils he was too lazy to dig into a drawer for every time, even for the very basic cooking he did. She turned to the fridge and quickly found the rather large piece of steak; he always fixed two meals’ worth because it saved him from cooking one night. Or grilling, at least, on the small patio out back. She also took out the half an onion.

  “Skillet?”

  “Under the cooktop.”

  She looked, pulled it out and set it on a burner. Then went back for the bottle of cooking oil he kept there, because it made the most sense to him.

  “Seasonings?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Assuming you don’t want cinnamon, I’m afraid salt and pepper is pretty much it. But there’s garlic salt.”

  “The best kind,” she said, grabbing the two containers.

  “So...you cook.”

  She give him a sideways look. “Was that supposed to be a brilliant observation or an insult?”

  He blinked, then shrugged. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. “Maybe just an assessment of further job skills.”

  To his surprise, she grinned at that. “You want a cook and a nanny?”

  “Right now,” he said with grim honesty, “I want to not be dealing with this.”

  “Can’t blame you for that,” she said, looking across to the dining alcove where the twins were ensconced on the table he’d found in a furniture store that had once been broken into. He’d gone back later, after Flash had tracked the small-time junkie who hadn’t had time to blow the cash he’d stolen, and bought it, having to forestall the grateful owner from simply giving it to him. He’d liked it for the clean lines and solid feel, and the cheerful, bright colors of the mismatched cushions on the matching chairs.

  “It’s not that I don’t...want them, or...”

  He trailed off, shaking his head.