When the last of the crumbs had been consumed off the dessert plates, they returned to the fifteen-conversations-at-once plan that was a Colton staple. Somehow Melissa still managed to take the floor.
“Have any of you seen the recent social media posts from Dominique de la Vega, the investigative reporter from the Grave Gulch Gazette?” she asked. “She’s been posting about asking sources for info about corruption about the GGPD.”
Clarke nodded. “I’ve seen them. The way she’s talking about the story, you would think she was looking at the keys to the Watergate Hotel. Who’s going to be her Deep Throat, do you think?”
Melissa frowned. “Thanks for that historical comparison, dear brother. You make me feel so much better.”
“I’m sure it’s going to be fine,” her fiancé, Antonio, offered out of obligation.
She leaned forward and continued. “Anyway, she’s asking for anyone with information about the GGPD, and especially its former forensic scientist, to contact her. This could be awful for all of us.”
Clarke leaned in and glanced down the table at his only remaining uncommitted sibling.
“Didn’t you two used to be a serious couple?”
Stanton shifted in his seat and frowned. “Why’d you have to remind me of that?”
“You could be the one to explain to her how dangerous this investigation is,” Clarke said. “And then you could convince her to leave the investigation to us.”
Stanton scoffed at that. “No problem. I’ll just do that on my lunch hour tomorrow.”
Frank, who’d kept quiet most of the meal, spoke up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m telling you, any time I’ve run into Dominique in the past two years, she’s glared at me and walked in the other direction.” Stanton shook his head. “So, I’m definitely not the man for that job.”
“Hey, I thought that was all women when they saw you coming,” Travis said, earning the laugh he was going for.
Stanton chuckled, too, but he wasn’t his usual jovial self. He was clearly unnerved after hearing Dominique’s name.
The party broke up soon after, which was just as well since Travis needed to get his new fiancée back to their condo and hopefully wrapped in something much more comfortable. Like him. With their life already so perfect, he’d worried that adding marriage as well might be asking too much. But he would never forget the look on her face tonight when she’d said yes.
A short while later, as they lay sated in the soft sheets, Travis smiled down at her.
“How are you feeling, future Mrs. Colton?”
“Can’t complain,” she said, dreamily, as she lay draped across his chest.
“So, you made it through another night with the Colton clan showing no visible scars.”
She shook her head. “Your family’s amazing, and you know it. You’re so lucky.”
“You’re part of that family now, too.”
She became quiet then, as she often did when they spoke of family.
“Thinking about your dad?”
Her lips lifted. “Is it so obvious? I’m glad your sister didn’t bring him up at dinner.”
“Melissa understands. Still no sightings of him since the lake?”
She shook her head against his skin. “Since I led the police to him. I’m not sorry. I still worry he’ll follow the pattern and kill again in two months though.”
Travis brushed his fingers through her hair. He couldn’t remove her pain or her worries, but he could be there to support her as she faced them.
“Do you think the copycat threw him off his pattern?” he asked.
“I hope so.”
“Either way, you can be at peace knowing you did the right thing.”
“I am,” she said without hesitation.
He brushed her hair until she drifted to sleep, her arm still covering him.
Travis continued to stare down at the amazing, beautiful woman, who’d just tonight agreed to be his wife. A man who hadn’t fit in anywhere and a woman whose whole world had collapsed had found a home in each other. He couldn’t wait for the moment they would become a family of three.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781488071409
Colton Nursery Hideout
Copyright © 2021 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Dana Nussio for her contribution to The Coltons of Grave Gulch miniseries.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Jessica ducked as a gunshot took out the passenger side mirror. “I’m sorry, Wes—”
“Save it.”
This was the last time she was likely to speak with him, and he was going to hear her out. “There’s no cover out here. I’ll likely be dead before you get here, so shut up and listen. I truly am sorry for what I did to your career. But I genuinely believed you would be killed. And I cared—care—far too much for you to let you die. If that pisses you off, so be it. I forgive you for being mad at me. I don’t want you to beat yourself up with guilt after I’m gone. I chose to come out here and warn you. This is on me. Whoever killed me did it because of mistakes I made in my past. There was nothing you could have done to protect me.”
Wes’s voice was ragged when he said, “If your shooter’s zeroing in on you, he’s in a stationary position, maybe in a sniper’s nest. Get away from there.”
* * *
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Dear Reader,
This book fulfills a long-held dream of mine to combine a military hero, because who can get enough of those, with a rugged, independent rancher, because who can get enough of those, either!
As if that weren’t enough fun, I also got to throw in my love of mountains—Montana has some of the prettiest ones anywhere—and I got to write about cattle. Now, you might think cows aren’t terribly sexy, but I grew up on a small cattle farm. My family bred and sold Herefords. I can verify that cows are truly like giant, sweet dogs. And in fact, the cow named Number 19 in this book was an actual cow on my
family’s farm.
At any rate, my heroine, Jessica, had to be a heck of a strong woman to stand up to an ex-Marine rancher who also happens to be one of the Morgan boys. I may or may not have channeled a tiny bit of my own life into her, too, but I’ll never tell which parts!
I invite you to hunker down, pour yourself something to wet your whistle and saddle up for a wild ride in this cowboy’s deadly reunion!
Happy reading!
Cindy
The Cowboy’s Deadly Reunion
Cindy Dees
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Cindy Dees is the author of more than fifty novels. She draws upon her experience as a US Air Force pilot to write romantic suspense. She’s a two-time winner of the prestigious RITA® Award for romance fiction, a two-time winner of the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award for Romantic Suspense and an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award nominee. She loves to hear from readers at www.cindydees.com.
Books by Cindy Dees
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Runaway Ranch
Navy SEAL’s Deadly Secret
The Cowboy’s Deadly Reunion
The Coltons of Kansas
Colton in the Line of Fire
Mission Medusa
Special Forces: The Recruit
Special Forces: The Spy
Special Forces: The Operator
The Coltons of Roaring Springs
Colton Under Fire
Code: Warrior SEALs
Undercover with a SEAL
Her Secret Spy
Her Mission with a SEAL
Navy SEAL Cop
Visit Cindy’s Author Profile page at
Harlequin.com for more titles.
Contents
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 1
Wes Morgan looked out his office window at the Washington Monument across the Potomac River, rising like a spire of light into the night. He rubbed his eyes wearily. His boss, Marine General George Blankenship, was angling for a position on the Secretary of Defense’s staff and had demanded a pile of briefings on current political issues ASAP. It had been a long day, and it was going to be a longer night. The general was hard-core bordering on a little maniacal. Only an aide as motivated and hardworking as Wes could keep up with the guy.
His private phone line rang. Great. The boss had thought of more work to pile on his long-suffering aide. He picked it up and said briskly, “Captain Morgan.”
A frantic female voice whispered barely intelligibly, “Wes, it’s Jessica. I’m in trouble.”
He snorted. What was new? General Blankenship’s only daughter was always in trouble.
“Puh-lease, Wesh. I need helllllp.”
He frowned. She sounded drunk. Or high. Which was strange. She partied harder than most, but she was not a substance abuser. Sure, she drank through a long night of clubbing. Her thing was dancing. She could do it all night long. And she was good at it, sexy, flirty and fun on the dance floor. But word-slurring drunk? Not her thing. She was far too much of a control freak for it. In that regard, she was a lot like her old man.
He heard a crashing noise, as if something had been knocked over.
“Oopsies,” Jessica mumbled.
Okay. Jessica was never clumsy. She was arguably the most graceful woman he’d ever dated. And he’d dated a ballerina from the National Ballet before.
“Where are you, Jess?”
“’M in a club.” She was starting to sound groggy.
She’d gone from coherent and worried to stumbling drunk to near passing out awfully damned fast. He swore under his breath. Had she been drugged?
“I got that. Which club?” he asked urgently.
“Pop-up. Shh. I’s seeeecret.”
He swore in earnest now. A pop-up club could have been set up in any abandoned building, warehouse or vacant office space anywhere in the suburban sprawl of Washington, DC, and its surrounding areas. It might have been in place for weeks or just for a single night.
“Where are you, Jessica? Did you see any buildings or street signs on your way in?”
“Don’t know.”
“Think. This is important. What’s the last place you saw that you recognized?”
“Cons...constitu-shuh...”
“Constitution Avenue?” he tried.
“No. Buil...ding...” Her voice faded.
“Stay with me, Jess. Don’t pass out. That’s an order!” He lurched to his feet, adrenaline screaming, on full battle alert. Sure, she’d pulled stunts on him before, but nothing like this. She sounded genuinely trashed and in real danger.
“Talk to me,” he bit out as he grabbed his keys and raced out of the office.
“Whadya wanna...know?” she mumbled.
“Did you have to go up or down stairs to get into the club? Or are you on the ground floor?”
Silence stretched out for so long he thought she’d passed out. He bolted out into the long corridor of the Pentagon’s E-Ring and sprinted down the nearest stairwell, taking a half-dozen steps at a time.
Jessica surprised him by mumbling, “Up. Wen’ up.”
“Great. Can you see any windows from where you are?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Move over to the nearest one and look out. I need you to tell me what you see.”
“Tired,” she mumbled.
“Move!” He used his best Marine command voice to bully her into motion. Anything to keep her conscious. There was no way Jessica had gotten this smashed by herself. Someone had fed her much stronger booze than she’d realized she was drinking. Or, worse, she’d been drugged. Either way, Jess was in big trouble.
Panic hummed in his gut as he raced past the startled security guards, burst out of the Pentagon into the damp chill of early winter and tore across the parking lot to his pickup truck.
He’d rescued Jessica from her ridiculous and impulsive follies more times than he cared to count during the past four years of working for her father on battalion staff and then here in Washington. But her stunts ran more to speeding tickets or getting caught gluing mustaches to statues on base. This time, however, his gut told him she was in serious danger.
“Are you at the window yet?” he demanded as he jammed his truck into gear and peeled out of the parking lot.
“Uh-huh.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“S’dark.”
“It is nighttime,” he replied drily. “Do you see any buildings?”
“Wash...wash...ton. Mon...ment.”
She was up high, then. “The Washington Monument? How far away is it?”
“Phal...lic...symb...”
“Yes, I know, sweetheart. Is it close or a long ways away?”
She giggled a little. “Tiny.”
“Can you see the Potomac River from where you are?” he tried. If she was on the Virginia side of the river on the high hills overlooking Washington, DC, the wide river should be in sight, also.
“No.”
Okay. The Maryland side of the river then. She’d mentioned the Constitution Hotel earlier. That was on the north side of DC in a posh part of town. He frantically calculated the fastest route to the swanky hotel. It was nearly ten o’clock. Traffic wouldn’t be a serious factor. The Beltway it was. The multilane highway ringed the city and would bypass the congested and convoluted city streets of Was
hington, DC, proper. At rush hour, the Beltway was a parking lot. But at this time of night, it would more closely resemble a NASCAR track. Perfect.
“What else can you see?” he asked.
“Ho...dell.”
“The Constitution Hotel?” he confirmed sharply. She was fading on him.
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. I’m on my way. I need you to fight. Stay awake.”
“Luf...yooo...”
The mumbled syllables stunned him. She loved him? For real? Shock pounded through him. He and Jess had been hot and heavy last summer, and he’d been pretty infatuated with her, too. She was an exotic creature—beautiful and brilliant and wild—and he’d been amazed that she saw anything in him to attract her. He’d worried that he was some sort of revenge against her father with whom she was pretty much constantly at war. But, against all odds, she had seemed to genuinely care for him.
And now this declaration of love? His pulse leaped exultantly—
Stop right there, soldier.
She was stoned out of her mind on something. She didn’t know what she was saying. He had no business getting all worked up at anything she said in her current state. But a little voice in the back of his head whispered, What if the drugs coursing through her system had actually revealed a hidden truth?
Even if she did secretly have feelings for him, getting back together with her was a nonstarter. General Blankenship had been blunt with Wes. Quit dating his daughter or face career ruin. A dutiful soldier, Wes had backed off dating Jess before they could fall any harder for each other. She’d been furious and accused him of being a wimp and not deserving to have her if he wouldn’t stand up to her father.
Yeah. That had hurt to hear. Because she was not wrong.
But he had an overbearing father of his own to deal with. Wes was the Morgan clan’s great hope to follow in his father’s footsteps and have an illustrious career in the Marines. His older brother had come home under a cloud from the Navy and, as the second son, the good son, all the pressure had landed on Wes to uphold the family name.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021 Page 47