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“Thank you,” Jolie said. “Thank you very much.”
Mrs. Amaro dismissed the gratitude with a palm-out gesture, but she was still smiling. “Thank the governor.”
Jolie couldn’t help smiling back. “I’ll just drop in this afternoon and tell him.” When the woman’s smile became a grin, she added, “But thank you, too. You’ve always been more than fair to me, and you’ve understood about Emma, and I appreciate it so much.”
The grin changed to a thoughtful expression. Then the older woman said softly, “I was where you were once. A young mother, alone, scared, trying to get myself off a wrong path.”
Jolie’s breath caught in her throat. It was hard to imagine Martine Amaro as anything other than in control. “I didn’t know.”
“Not something I advertise,” she said rather gruffly. “But you’re doing well. And I think you will continue that way. You know what’s important, setting an example for your little girl.”
“It’s the only way I know to show her how to be,” Jolie said, feeling her eyes begin to sting. She fought the tears. She would not break down, not now, when things were looking so rosy. Or perhaps that was why she was getting emotional.
“You’ve been fighting so long you don’t trust anything good. I get that, too.”
Someday she would love to hear this woman’s story, but she knew this wasn’t the time or the place. There was one thing she felt she had to know, though. “Your child?”
The smile Martine Amaro gave her then warmed her to the core. “He’s twenty-three and already a licensed contractor, and I couldn’t be prouder of him.”
“And he of you, I suspect,” Jolie said.
“As Emma will be of you. Now, get on with you. Go buy yourself something nice.”
Jolie laughed, warmed even more by the hope that those words would be prophetic.
Something nice? she wondered as she headed out toward her car, pushing her dark hair back as the breeze tossed it. It had been a very long time since that possibility had been within reach. But maybe...something nice for her and Emma? The girl loved it when they wore matching things, so maybe something like that.
As she drove the short distance, she thought about taking Emma out for dinner to celebrate. They did it so rarely it was quite the treat for the little girl, and she always behaved immaculately; more than once Jolie had been complimented on the child’s behavior by total strangers.
She realized she was smiling. Realized with a jolt that what was making her smile was happiness. A feeling she normally didn’t experience unless she was with Emma.
The old alarms went off in her head. Don’t trust it. Don’t trust anything.
She’d had a very short learning curve on trust. Except it had been more like a roller coaster since her parents had died, one with more downs than peaks. The first real peak had been Kevin Oberman, Emma’s father, who had convinced her he loved her and vanished the day after she’d told him about the plus sign on that little stick. The second had been the day she was hired at the Colton Ranch. Which had led to the third.
And that one, the biggest one, followed by the longest drop, she tried never to think about. And when she couldn’t stave off the memories, she let them come in the nature of a reminder, pounding home a lesson learned the hard way.
Don’t trust.
She’d trusted with all her heart just once. It had been the biggest mistake she’d ever made. Even bigger than Kevin, because at least that had resulted in the child who was the sole highlight of her misbegotten life. The one person she loved without reservation, and who loved her back unstintingly.
But those trusting, halcyon days on the Colton Ranch, when she’d briefly but so very sweetly let herself think she’d found the treasure she’d coveted since her own childhood, a real family, seemed long ago now.
But the lesson learned was harsh and close and real, and she would do well to keep it that way. And to remember not the sweetness she’d had so briefly but the bitter ending. In fact, she would do well not to think about T. C. Colton at all but to remember every vivid, painful moment of that last meeting with his parents. Whitney and Eldridge Colton had presented a united and brutal front, and she’d been helpless to stand against them.
Now, she thought with no small amount of pride, they might find her not quite so easy to push around. Setting that example Mrs. Amaro had talked about. She wanted Emma to be a different kind of woman, and the only way she could see to ensure that was to be what she wanted her daughter to become, to show her the way.
Showing Eldridge and Whitney Colton they’d been wrong about her was just a bonus.
And T.C.?
“No,” she muttered under her breath as she pulled in to the back of the day care, where it was easier to find a place to park. “Not going there.”
She never let herself think about that part, that he had let her go, hadn’t even come looking for her. True, she’d never answered his calls or texts—that had been part of the deal—but she’d thought he might at least be curious enough to look. And she knew him well enough to know that if he decided to look, he would find; he was not a man who gave up easily. Unless he wanted to.
He never even missed you. He’d probably replaced you by the end of the day.
The old lecture played like a worn-out loop in her head. She could accept that. What she couldn’t accept was how he had let Emma go, too. She would have sworn he loved her. He’d been hesitant at first, unused to babies, but tentatively, he had begun to interact with her. She would never, no matter how hard she tried, forget the look on his face the first time he’d lifted the child above him and made her break into a rain of delighted giggles. His smile had matched the baby’s, and in that moment she’d believed in forever.
I can take it, she thought. But how could anyone not miss a child as sweet as my Emma?
No, she knew she’d done the right thing. For all three of them. His actions—or lack of them—afterward had proved that. He’d probably been relieved, since he’d made no effort at all to change her mind.
She hastened inside the day care, greeted the administrator in the foyer with a nod and a smile, and headed for the pickup area in the front of the building. Her first sight of Emma, as always, drove all the negative thoughts out of her mind. The little girl shrieked with joy when she spotted her, and ran to her with arms raised.
“Mommy, Mommy! Look what I painted!”
The child waved a large piece of heavy paper at her. Jolie looked at it dutifully. After a second’s scrutiny of the splotch of green and blue, she smiled. “It’s the park,” she said.
Emma was delighted she recognized it. “See the tree?” she asked, pointing at the slightly crooked shape that leaned toward the water, rather isolated and alone.
“I do.”
That park was why she’d taken that apartment despite the neighborhood, even though it was a bit over her initial budget. Having the park with the pond right across the street was worth it. She didn’t have to drive to give Emma room to run and play, and what she saved in gas money probably evened it all out.
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 (#ulink_b087c47a-a0a3-529b-971c-17de4c366c45)
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 her 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.”
