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“You could marry me.”
Mirabella’s mouth dropped open. She stared at Zane in absolute stunned silence. And then she shook her head, certain she had misheard him.
“I am really getting delusional,” she half laughed. “For a second, I thought I heard you say I could marry you.”
Zane moved in a little closer. Now that he’d said it out loud, it just seemed like it was the right solution. He didn’t know why it had taken him this long to come up with it.
“You did. I did. You can.”
She could only continue to stare at him in utter disbelief. “You’re serious,” she cried.
He didn’t see the problem. Why was she having so much trouble accepting this? Had he been wrong about the attraction he thought was between them? “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, for one thing,” she began to enumerate, “it’s insane. For another, you don’t love me.”
Too late, Mirabella realized she hadn’t phrased that properly. What she should have said was that they didn’t love each other. But she had isolated it to just him who didn’t love in this case. Had he picked up on the fact that she’d slipped, inadvertently letting him know how she felt about him?
* * *
We hope you enjoy this dramatic series:
The Coltons of Texas: Finding love and buried family secrets in the Lone Star State…
www.millsandboon.co.uk
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two-hundred-and-fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.
To Daddy,
Who introduced me to
All those Western series on TV And
Sparked my love of the
Old West.
I miss you.
Contents
Cover
Introduction
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Extract
Copyright
Prologue
He refused to believe it was true.
Eldridge Colton, the man who had adopted him, the only man he had ever really known as a father, had been kidnapped a month ago, and everyone now believed that the wealthy head of Colton Incorporated was dead.
But Zane Colton didn’t. He refused to.
This, despite the fact that there’d been no ransom note, no mysterious caller, his or her voice effectively disguised thanks to modern technology to sound like some criminal in the witness protection program testifying in closed court. No one had even attempted to bargain, demanding a king’s ransom in exchange for the wealthy, well-known Texas citizen’s safe return.
Zane held fast to the fact that up until now there had been no body found. And even though there were a dozen explanations for that, until a body was discovered, he was going to continue believing that his stepfather was still alive.
Not just believing it, but actively doing something to find out what had happened to the man and where Eldridge had been all this time since the morning that Moira, the family housekeeper of long standing, had been dispatched to the patriarch’s room because his wife, Whitney, had wanted him by her side as she attended another society breakfast.
Zane could still hear Moira’s scream ringing in his ears. Moreover, he could hear his mother as she’d first railed indignantly at the housekeeper for making a scene, then dramatically dissolved into histrionics when Whitney had seen the blood on the bedroom floor and the windowsill. It was at that moment she had realized that her husband of almost thirty years was not just missing, but could quite possibly be dead.
Well, his mother might believe that, but Zane didn’t. Oh, his stepfather was definitely missing—and had been for the past month, despite the presumably best efforts of Sheriff Troy Watkins and his two deputies. And since the blood in the bedroom had been tested and had turned out to be his stepfather’s, he knew that Eldridge Colton was definitely hurt.
But dead? No, the man wasn’t dead. Seventy-five-year-old, short, skinny Eldridge Colton was one tough SOB; he always had been. He couldn’t be killed. Zane was certain that his gut would have told him otherwise if his stepfather was no longer among the living. The way he saw it, Eldridge had to be alive because he, Zane, hadn’t really reached his own goal yet—to live up to what he felt were his stepfather’s expectations of him.
Eldridge had married his mother when she was a widow with two very young children. At the time, Eldridge was a widower with two children of his own, Fowler and Alanna. The man hadn’t had to adopt him and his sister, Marceline. He could have just as easily ignored them.
But he hadn’t.
Instead, Eldridge had incorporated them into his life and, when the time had come, into his business—or at least he’d tried when it came to Marceline. But Marceline harbored her own ill will against Eldridge and refused to have him do anything for her that would place her into further debt to the man.
Eldridge had treated Zane well. He hadn’t dictated to him like a despot whose word was law but had spoken to him like an understanding parent. When Zane had indicated to his stepfather that he was really very uncomfortable being a corporate suit in the grand scheme of things, Eldridge hadn’t expressed disappointment, hadn’t railed at him. Instead, his stepfather had made him his head of security for Colton Incorporated.
In his own way, the man had tried his best to be understanding when he really didn’t have to be.
Eldridge Colton was a good, decent man, and Zane intended to find out just what had happened to him. He owed him that much. With luck—and Eldridge had once taught him that a man made his own luck—he was going to find the kidnapped CEO, and he was going to bring him back to his family.
Alive.
Chapter 1
She wasn’t showing yet.
Despite the fact that she felt rounded and pudgy and could almost envision tiny, lightning bolt arrows coming in from 360 different directions, all conspicuously pointing at her stomach, Mirabella Freeman really wasn’t showing yet.
But she knew it was just a matter of time before she would be.
So every morning, after she had showered and got dressed, Mirabella would look herself over very carefully in her wardrobe mirror from as many angles as she could manage. She was trying to reassure herself that her initially ironing-board-flat stomach still appeared that way.
Meanwhile, she did what she could to prepare for the inevitable. Though money had never been plentiful, she’d always known how to buy just the right pieces and make the most of the limited wardrobe she had. She’d always known how to divert attention away from what she felt to be her visible flaws. When she was very young, it had been her unruly red hair, so she had found a way to tame it and make the most of its good features.
Because her curves had come early—way earlier than the rest of the girls in her class—she had worn long blouses that gathered at her hip, diverting the eye there rather than at her rounded chest.
And now she was focused on making sure no one’s attention was drawn to her waist, causing them to possibly suspect she was pregnant.
Society had evolved to the point that it really wasn’t supposed to be a big deal for a single woman to be with child. But the people who ran Colton Incorporated were on the old-fashioned side and she didn’t want to take any chances until she really had no other options but to let them know her condition.
Besides, with her hormones in an uproar the way they’d been lately, she was in no mood to be the subject of gossip and speculation even one second before she ultimately had to be.
As she craned her neck, looking over her shoulder into the wardrobe mirror from what amounted to a torturous angle, Mirabella silently lectured herself that she was being paranoid. How could she look pregnant when she’d actually lost weight in the last month? Some women suffered from morning sickness, especially with their first baby. She found herself suffering from all day sickness. No matter how hard she tried to avoid it, she was on her knees in front of the porcelain bowl several times a day, purging more often than a partying frat boy during his first year away from home. Everything, even water, seemed to make her miserably nauseous these days.
The hardest part, she thought as she slid into her shoes and picked up her purse, was trying not to let her boss, Zane Colton, find out about her frequent communing with the bathroom. Fortunately, the wickedly good-looking man still hadn’t noticed.
She hoped to keep it that way.
As head of Colton Incorporated’s security, it wasn’t as if he was chained to his desk. The man clearly liked being on his feet and active, using any excuse to leave his office and get out both on the floor and into the field. He looked the most pensive and restless when necessity had him spending time at his desk, dealing with end of the month paperwork—even if that “paper” was on the computer.
But even with all the hours he spent away from his office, it was only a matter of time before he’d begin to notice just how often she was away from her own desk. Her desk was situated directly in front of his office, so, coming and going, the man couldn’t miss seeing her—unless she wasn’t there.
As far as bosses went, she thought, locking her front door, Zane was in a class by himself. Leaving aside the fact that the man was as good-looking as they came, with over half the women in the top two floors of the twenty-five-story glass office tower madly in love with him, Zane Colton was not a demanding boss. He was easygoing and completely devoid of an ego, even though he would have been more than justified having one.
He didn’t act like a man who had anything to prove to anyone, except for possibly himself. And best of all, he didn’t throw his weight around, the way some others did. She was extremely happy to be Zane Colton’s administrative assistant and she wasn’t about to jeopardize that for the world.
While she didn’t think he would dismiss her if he discovered she was pregnant, it wasn’t something she wanted to risk finding out, either.
Not until she absolutely had to, she decided with a huge sigh.
Besides, the man had something far more pressing and bigger to deal with than a pregnant employee who might not be able to perform her duties. As far as that went, she definitely was up to doing her job even in her present condition—but she had a feeling that what she said or didn’t say carried very little weight at the moment.
But, be that as it may, something far bigger than the tiny seed growing within her had hit the corporation. Everybody, not just Zane, was still more or less reeling from shock. Zane’s father, that nice old man who had started and owned the company, Eldridge Colton, had been kidnapped a little more than a month ago now and the sheriff still hadn’t been able to find any trace of him.
Mirabella made no effort to suppress the shiver that zipped over her body as she thought about the current situation.
Some of the people she worked with believed Eldridge Colton was dead right from the beginning. Others felt he had been killed some time in the last couple of weeks.
Some people believed that, but not everybody.
From what she had overheard when Zane had been talking to someone on the phone, her boss didn’t belong to that group. Zane was utterly certain his father was still alive.
Or rather that his stepfather was still alive, Mirabella corrected herself.
But whatever label she affixed to Zane’s relationship with the missing Mr. Colton, she knew her boss cared a great deal about the man and that he wasn’t just going to passively wait for someone else to either stumble across the man’s inert body or find him clinging to life somewhere, perhaps months from now. She knew Zane Colton intended to find the missing corporation founder now—or barring that, as close to now as he could possibly manage.
This was not a man who needed to hear his administrative assistant hesitantly ask for a moment of his time, timidly clear her throat and then nervously announce she was pregnant and throwing up her insides. Then quickly tell him not to worry, that she would find a way to incorporate her frequent dashes to the ladies’ room into her workday so the latter wasn’t adversely affected. She would then conclude by assuring him that all would work itself out for the best.
It was a phrase her grandmother used to frequently tell her when she was a little girl.
Her grandmother’s wisdom not withstanding, Mirabella really didn’t see how that was going to happen. It was hard to hold on to the little bit of optimism when her baby’s father, after being informed of his pending fatherhood, had only four angry words to throw in her direction: Get rid of it.
He had been even less happy when she’d tersely held her ground and announced, No.
Feeling about as energetic as an overworked flea, Mirabella slid behind the steering wheel of her car and buckled up. She couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before she had to adjust both her seat and her seat belt to accommodate her enlarged size.
She supposed there was a small, outside chance she wouldn’t have to. There were, after all, some cases of women who had gone their entire pregnancy hardly gaining weight at all and never looking as though they were pregnant. Those cases were very few and far between, but they did happen.
But usually, in order for that to happen, she thought in the next moment as she started up her car, her baby would have to do only a minimum of growing in her womb—and something like that might wind up having dire consequences for the baby.
Just what kind of a vain monster was she? She couldn’t wish for something like that, Mirabella upbraided herself.
No, she was a big girl who had done big girl things, Mirabella reminded herself, and now it was time to face up to the consequences. The little being inside of her wasn’t going to be made to pay for her one wild, impetuous moment of irresponsibility.
That was on her.
Just not yet, Mirabella thought as she put her vehicle in Reverse and then pulled out of the parking spot.
Coward, the little voice in her head taunted.
Mirabella ignored the little voice. Lately, she’d gotten good at that.
* * *
When he had first begun to work at Colton Incorporated, each time he walked into the building, Zane used to feel as if all eyes were on him. He was certain that all the employees there, from the lowest to the board of directors surrounding his stepfather, were waiting for him to fall flat on his face and fail.
Fail big-time.
He didn’t doubt that these other employees were convinced he was having everything handed to him—especially when Eldridge had promoted him to be the head of the company’s security division. They hadn’t known or realized, at least not at that point, that he’d had to prove himself. Prove himself to Eldridge and especially to himself. It wouldn’t have meant something to him otherwise.
Eventually, he did prove himself.
But it had taken him time. Time to prove himself, to prove he was there to work, to get the job done and to resolve things as fairly as possible, making decisions to the best of his ability after listening to both sides of a problem. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it.
In time, he’d dealt with everything from employee disputes, to embezzlement and to the ever challenging matter of internet security. He liked to feel that he did this all well. Eventually, he had his proof of that. People had begun to seek him out, to trust him to handle things fairly. To treat him with respect.
But that had all changed in the last month.
He was back to square one.
Lower than square one. Because now he couldn’t help feeling that some of the employees were looking at him and wondering if he was somehow involved in his stepfather’s disappearance.
He supposed in a way it made sense because, in reality, he was guilty of doing the very same thing each and every time he and his family gathered around the dining room table for a meal.
To the outside world, the various Colton siblings, as well as the woman who called herself their mother, did what they could to present a united front, to appear to have one another’s backs. Privately, it was another story. It seemed as if they had always been at odds with one another, breaking up into smaller factions.
While Zane was always close to his younger sister, Marceline, she and Eldridge’s oldest son, Fowler, used to go out of their way to make the three youngest Coltons, Thomas, Piper and Reid, miserable. And then there were times that the others would all gang up on Piper, a maid’s daughter, who had been adopted by Eldridge and Whitney when her mother died.
As for himself, Zane had done his best to remain out of it all, focusing instead on just proving himself to the one man who mattered.
And now he was probably included in the mix of suspects, Zane couldn’t help thinking. In these cases, the family was always the first to be suspected.
He stared at the blank screen on the computer monitor on his desk, his thoughts going in a dozen directions at once.
So far, no one had accused him of anything outright, but he had an uneasy feeling it was probably just a matter of time before that happened. Being the outsider was never something shaken off completely. The only way he could make sure he wasn’t ever accused of such a heinous crime was to find Eldridge himself.
He had a far bigger stake in this than Sheriff Watkins did. After all, for him it was personal.
It wasn’t for Watkins.
But how the hell did he go about finding his missing stepfather?
Zane felt as if he was going around in circles again, the way he had been ever since this whole thing had started.
If his father was dead, why hadn’t whoever was responsible for this just killed him on the spot? Why take him and then kill him? It didn’t make any actual sense.
And if his stepfather had been kidnapped for the usual reasons, where was the ransom note?
If he’d been taken for some other reason, as leverage or to be exchanged for something or someone, where was that call?
This whole thing wasn’t adding up, Zane thought, frustrated. It was as if Eldridge had been taken for no reason.
He got up and began pacing around his desk, exasperation and impatience growing by the moment, feeling red-hot and ready to explode.
Zane struggled to hold on to his temper.
Giving in and taking it out on the first thing handy wasn’t going to get him any closer to finding the only father he had ever known.
The best thing he could do for Eldridge—other than finding him, Zane thought ruefully—was to keep the company going in the man’s absence. The company meant everything to the patriarch. This way, when he did come back, the company would be running smoothly instead of having devolved into a state of chaos.
Zane had been doing just that for the last month—keeping his end of the company going—but it was becoming harder and harder rather than easier.
With a sigh, he planted himself back behind his desk. He needed to get something productive done.
Distracted as he reviewed which department needed his attention the most this morning, he thought he heard a noise, but discounted it—
Until it came again.
It took him a moment to realize someone was knocking on the door. Bracing his palms against the edge of his desk, Zane took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He couldn’t be seen losing his grip in front of the employees. Aside from something like that not inspiring confidence, it might very well be the thing which caused the better people around him to either look for another job—or circle his position like sharks, waiting for him to mess up.
Sorry, not about to do that. Not today, Zane promised. “Come in,” he called out.
The door opened and Mirabella took a couple of steps across the office’s threshold. One hand on the doorknob, she had her back up against the door. To Zane it looked as if she was trying to shrink or even disappear into the woodwork.
For just a split second, he found himself wondering about her, wondering what could cause a rather stunning woman like Mirabella to behave as if she was attempting to avoid the attention of the immediate world. Any other time or place, he would have taken an interest in the young woman, perhaps asked her a few detailed questions in order to get to the bottom of her unusual behavior.
But this wasn’t any other time. It was this time, a time of impending crisis if his stepfather wasn’t found. For the umpteenth time, he made a solemn promise to himself to find the man.
Failure was not an option.
“Sheriff Watkins is here to see you, Mr. Colton,” Mirabella informed him.
Instantly alert, Zane half rose behind his desk. “Send him in, Mirabella,” he instructed.
The sheriff, a well-built, imposing man in his early fifties, took his time walking in. His gray eyes scanned the room, missing nothing. Polite, soft-spoken, he was nonetheless not a person to be trifled with.
A show of respect had Troy Watkins carrying his well-worn Stetson in his hand rather than wearing it. There were surprisingly few traces of gray in his dark hair, given the nature of his work combined with his age.
The expression on his sun-wrinkled face was stern, but then he’d never been known for smiling much. This morning was apparently no exception.
“Take a seat, Sheriff,” Zane invited, gesturing toward the chair closest to his desk.
Watkins did so, but he looked as if he wasn’t comfortable about it. Nor did he look as if he was comfortable in his present surroundings. He was a man most at ease when he was moving about in wide-open spaces. In his eyes, crowded cities were just necessary evils to be endured, not something to aspire to.
“What brings you here, Sheriff?” Zane asked, then immediately attached another, far more anxious question to the first one. “Did you find my father?”
“You mean your stepdaddy,” Watkins corrected. “Gotta be accurate at all times, you know. If a man can’t be accurate when it comes to the little details, it means that man’s going to be careless when it comes to the big things.”
He really wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. What he wanted were answers. But snapping the sheriff’s head off wouldn’t get him anywhere. Zane tamped down his impatience and rephrased his question.
“Did you find my stepfather, Sheriff?”
“No,” Watkins answered. He ran his fingers along the inside of his hat, turning the Stetson around in a slow circle. He raised his gray eyes to meet Zane’s dark ones. “But I did find something interesting.”