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“But you made everything beautiful. Will you come upstairs with me for a minute?”
“Sure. Excuse us,” she called out to Colt without looking at him.
“Don’t be long, ladies. It’s my birthday and I’m ready to party.”
Allie laughed. “I thought you were upset at being a year older! Come on, Katy.”
Together they hurried through the house and up the stairs to Allie’s bedroom. Kathryn eyed Colt’s flushed-faced daughter. “You look fully recovered from your flu.”
“I feel great!”
“That makes me very happy.”
Her brown eyes glowed. “Your being here for Dad’s party is perfect!”
“Jake took the day off from his work so my sister could fly us here this morning for a talk with your father. When I realized we would be arriving on his birthday, I brought a present that I thought you and Matt could give him along with your other gifts. It’s guaranteed to be a hit. I’ll get it.”
Allie picked up a shopping bag full of presents and followed her to the guest bedroom.
“Here. Take this one in your other hand.” Kathryn handed her the framed, gift-wrapped poster. “I’ll bring my other presents.” After putting the rolled-up posters beneath her arms, she said, “Let’s go before your father gets too impatient.”
They started down the stairs. “He’s going to have a cow when he sees all this!”
Kathryn tried to keep a straight face. “Is that good or bad?”
“Definitely good,” Colt answered for his daughter. There was nothing wrong with his hearing. He stood in the foyer with Matt. His eyes locked with Kathryn’s. She couldn’t read what was behind that enigmatic gaze. If he feared she was hoping for a repeat performance of what had happened in the storeroom, he didn’t need to worry. His grateful tribute had cured her.
Matt rocked on his cowboy boots. “Noreen’s got everything ready.”
They proceeded to the dining room. It was growing darker out. The addition of a lovely cloth, candlelight and a decorated chocolate cake forming the centerpiece provided the magical touches to the birthday feast. Kathryn read, “Happy 36, Dad.”
“Here. Let me.” Ed, the older, dark blond rancher now free of his cast, helped Allie spread her packages around the pile already visible on the hunt board. Both he and Colt gave Allie a curious stare as he lifted the framed poster and rested it against the wall.
While Matt helped Kathryn to the table, Colt helped his daughter. Noreen brought the ribs from the kitchen. Ed said grace and they were ready to eat.
For the next half hour, conversation centered around the twins and their latest activities. Kathryn mostly listened, only now and then asking a question. Throughout the delicious meal she avoided looking at Colt.
Once they’d sung “Happy Birthday” and had eaten cake, Matt and Allie took turns giving their dad a present to open. Every gift appeared to be a winner: a robe, sweats, cologne, socks, a Western shirt, leather gloves, ski gloves, new ski goggles, a couple of T-shirts … everything for the well-dressed rancher.
Kathryn finally dared to smile at Colt. “That’s quite a haul. I think it’s time somebody else around here got a present.” Five pairs of eyes blinked in surprise. “Matt? Will you hand one of those cylinders to Noreen and Ed? Then give one to Allie and take one for yourself.”
While everyone started unwrapping their gifts, Colt stared at Kathryn with a bemused expression on his rugged face.
The responses were everything she could have hoped for. Cries of “Dad! Colt!” resounded as they unraveled the posters of the beloved man seated at the head of the table. “Oh, my gosh! You look so young!”
Allie ran over to Kathryn. “Where did you get this?” she cried out with tears in her eyes. “I love it! I can’t wait to show all my friends! They’re going to die!”
“You’re so awesome, Dad!” Matt’s voice croaked. “Rich has got to see this!” He stood in the corner of the room examining it.
Noreen and Ed’s eyes grew misty as they handed their poster of the legendary rodeo champion to Colt for him to see. Ed handed him a pen. “I want your autograph. This could be worth a fortune someday.”
Kathryn understood everyone’s joy because she felt it herself, but it was time to make her exit. Otherwise she might never be able to pry herself away.
“Happy birthday, Colt.” She got up from the table. “Thanks to all of you for letting me be part of this celebration. Noreen? The food was out of this world, but now I’m afraid I have to leave.”
Allie looked stricken. “Where are you going?”
“Back to my motel in Bozeman.”
“Motel?” the twins moaned together.
“Yes. While you people have a whole night of celebrating ahead of you, I need to accomplish a day’s worth of foundation work plus some business for Jake before tomorrow morning.”
“But you can’t go yet!”
“Kathryn said she had to leave,” Colt reminded his daughter in a voice of understated authority. “She flew here from Salt Lake to help us find your mother, remember? Let’s let her get on with her jobs. Matt? Would you bring down her suitcase, please?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t bother to go up, Matt. I left it at the motel.” Avoiding Colt’s piercing gaze, she looked at Allie. “I think there’s one more gift your father hasn’t opened yet. Right?”
“Yes,” the girl whispered.
“Then have fun. I’ll see myself out.”
Kathryn hurried through the house to the back room, where she grabbed her purse and parka. Within a minute, she’d reached the car and was headed for town.
Colt didn’t want her getting any more attached to his children and was glad she’d done the right thing by leaving. That was why he hadn’t tried to stop her. Any goodbye had been said in the storeroom behind the kitchen.
Her pain went too deep for tears. Frozen-faced, she drove straight to her motel needing to talk to Maggie.
Maybe her sister had radar because the second she closed the door to the room, her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her purse and checked the caller ID. It was Donna.
Her stomach knotted because her assistant wouldn’t call this late at night unless she had important news.
“Hello?”
“Kathryn?”
Just the way Donna said her name, she knew what she was about to say. “That body was Whitney’s, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Hot tears spurted from her eyes. “I have to get off the phone now and call my parents. Thank you for letting me know.”
“Of course.”
But the second Kathryn hung up, she threw herself across the bed and sobbed because a miracle hadn’t happened for that little girl’s family. She sobbed for all the helpless kidnapped children who this very night were being molested or killed somewhere in the world. Not even everything the McFarland Foundation could do had prevented this crime against Whitney.
Beyond heartsick, she lay there for a long time in such a deep sorrow, she didn’t realize her phone was ringing. Finally stirring, she sat up and looked at the caller ID. It was her sister. She clicked on.
“Maggie?”
“I’ve been on the phone with the folks. Did you hear about Whitney?”
“Yes. I just got off the phone with Donna.”
Neither of them spoke for a minute. There were no platitudes they could say to comfort each other. Another tragedy had befallen another child. Yet next to her grief lay her guilt for thinking of Colt right now and how incomprehensible it would have been if Allie had been lost to him forever.
“How was the birthday party?” her sister ventured. “You know what I mean.”
“The surprise was everything I could have hoped for. Allie and Matt loved the posters, but I left before Colt opened the framed one.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I got an answer earlier tonight.”
“Translation please.”
Knowing Maggie wouldn’t let it go, Kathryn launched into an explanation of what had happened in the storeroom. “I was ready to explode like a volcano, but his brief, chaste thank-you kiss cooled everything down. He might as well have been the Pope giving me a benediction for my goodness.”
Instead of her sister coming right back with the assurance that Kathryn had misread the situation, she said something entirely different. “You were right about him being a complicated man.”
Maggie’s quiet response set off an alarm bell. There was a message behind her words, otherwise she would have waited until Kathryn had returned to Salt Lake to talk about the little girl who’d been murdered. Kathryn gripped her phone tighter. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“While you and I were upstairs at his ranch house this morning, Colt confided something to Jake. Maybe you already know what it is and have chosen not to tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Her voice shook.
“He never divorced his wife.”
“SEE, DAD? This looks perfect in here! Everyone who comes in will notice it before anything else!”
With Colt’s children helping Ed and Noreen, a little rearranging had gone on and now the framed poster with protective glass hung on one of the walls in the family room. They’d wanted to put it in his den, but he’d ruled it out. Colt used that room to conduct business with the public and disliked the idea of his awards being on display. At least the family room was a little more private.
After Natalie had taken off years earlier, any of the stuff from his rodeo days he’d thrown in a box in the storage shed behind the old house. It was now covered with other boxes. Neither the twins nor the Walters had any idea of its existence. That was the way he’d wanted it. But he couldn’t get away with doing the same thing to Kathryn’s gift. His children wouldn’t hear of it.
She’d transformed his birthday party into something else. The posters dredged up memories he’d suppressed for so long, he’d almost forgotten what those sweet days were like when he was single and hungry for a bull-riding title that would help make his fortune.
No one but Kathryn McFarland could have located that framed poster, let alone managed to get the collector to part with it. No doubt she’d been robbed of her money and had enriched the man’s coffers by several thousand dollars, but money in and of itself meant nothing to her.
She’d go to any lengths without counting the cost in order to bring happiness to someone else. Except for disappearing to a motel this evening, she’d made Colt’s twins ecstatic.
Though she was a flesh-and-blood woman whose mouth he could still taste on his lips, he didn’t doubt he’d kissed an angel earlier. As anyone knew, angels went about doing good, especially this angel whose joy at being found after her long captivity might have turned her into another kind of captive. One who couldn’t do enough for others. One you might never be able to pin down, Brenner.
That was Colt’s new agony.
When he’d heard the children coming into the kitchen before dinner, it had almost killed him to let go of Kathryn, but what choice did he have when he was so on fire for her that he still trembled at the thought of holding her again?
“Dad? I thought you wanted to play Boggle.”
His son’s voice jerked him back to the present. “I do.”
“Then let’s get started.”
Colt joined his children at the card table in front of the fire. A half hour later Allie said, “I win again! We need to play this on your birthday more often.”
“Yeah,” Matt chimed in. “You haven’t won once. Usually you beat us by at least fifteen extra words.”
“That’s because you guys gave me such a great party I can’t concentrate. Now it’s time for bed.” The twins protested, but he reminded them they had school in the morning.
Allie lingered on the stairs, holding her poster. “Do you think Katy will come over tomorrow?” It was the first time her name had been mentioned in the past hour.
He shook his head. “My guess is she’ll do her work and fly back to Salt Lake. She’s on a busy schedule trying to help you, honey.”
Her downfallen expression didn’t escape him. “I know. Well, good night.”
Colt hugged her. “Thanks for a wonderful birthday.”
Matt came loping into the foyer with his poster. “Hey, Dad. I just got off the phone with Rich. Would you be willing to train us how to ride a bull?”
Somehow Colt had known that question was coming. Kathryn had opened up the proverbial Pandora’s box. “Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow?”
His son grinned. “I’m holding you to it. ‘Night.” They high-fived each other before he bounded up the stairs after Allie.
The second he saw his son’s boots disappear, Colt wheeled around and left the house, grabbing his hat and jacket on the way. Once in the truck, he phoned Noreen, letting her know he had an errand to run and would be back on the ranch in a couple of hours. There’d be no sleep for him until he’d dropped in on Kathryn and thanked her for her gifts in person.
At the third motel he spotted her rental car in front of Number Ten. Though the curtains were drawn, he could tell her light was on. He levered himself from the cab. A few steps to the door and he rapped on it. If he’d phoned her first, she would have put him off. This way she had to do it in person.
“Kathryn? It’s Colt.”
She didn’t keep him waiting long, but when she opened the door fully dressed, she was on the phone and motioned for him to come in. Though he couldn’t see tears, he knew she’d been crying and had a gut notion why. As he closed the door, he heard her say good-night to her mother before hanging up.
“Was it Whitney’s body?” he whispered.
Her beautiful face crumpled in pain. She had no words. All he could do was pull her into his arms and try to comfort her, but he’d never felt so helpless in his life.
“Oh, Colt! This world can be so terrible, yet so wonderful, too.”
He kissed the side of her temple. “It was wonderful tonight. I opened my last present and discovered that something I’d treasured and thought lost forever had been returned.”
“I’m glad it made you happy.”
“The children have hung it in the family room. That’s twice Kathryn McFarland has restored something priceless to me.”
She eased out of his arms. With a small smile she said, “I hear good things come in threes. Here’s hoping we find your wife before long.”
Colt heard her distinctly. She’d said wife—not ex, not Natalie, not the children’s mother.
