A shift in position allowed her to brace one knee on the couch to rise up and press against him. She heard and felt a low rumble in his chest as his arms tightened and he finally surrendered.
The shrill ring of the phone pierced her conscious and one thought overrode all else with frightening domination.
Robert.
Chapter Sixteen
Colton blinked when Kendra jerked from his arms. In a split second, he connected the second ring of the phone with her expression of naked fear. He surged off the couch to snatch the phone in the kitchen and returned to the living room.
“Hey, Jordan…no, I’m busy tonight—sorry.”
Jordan kept talking and Colton’s impatience grew in direct proportion to Kendra’s obvious relief. When she rose to her feet, he took a quick step forward and gave a warning shake of his head. After a moment of hesitation, she sat back down with an expression of resignation.
Colton cut Jordan off mid-sentence. “Listen, I’m sorry, but now’s not a good time. I’ll have to talk to you later.”
He thumbed the hang-up button on the phone and dropped it onto the end table, his full attention on Kendra. “I want some answers, and I want them now.”
Her hands twisted together in her lap before she smoothed her palms back and forth along her thighs. After a moment of tense silence, she raised her chin with a determined expression. It quickly morphed to a frown. “You don’t have to loom over me like that.”
He ground his teeth in frustration and didn’t move an inch. She gave him a mutinous glare and crossed her arms. Their battle of wills ended the moment Colton felt his heart begin a slow, deep thud from staring into her eyes for too long. He’d kept his distance after his admission the other night. At first he’d told himself it was only because he wasn’t about to sleep with his boss’s sister, but that excuse no longer washed. The simple truth was, she wasn’t casual. And he wasn’t about to pretend she was. She deserved a hell of a lot more than that from him. The hell of a lot more that he couldn’t give. It had been a sobering thought.
He sat abruptly.
She looked away, rubbing her hands down and up again before taking a deep breath. “I think Robert’s found us.”
“Your half-brother?” he asked. She nodded. “Why are you scared of him?” She hesitated long enough that his next question made his voice tremble with outrage. “Did he hurt you?”
“He tried to kill us.”
Her quiet, calm, blatant statement made it all the more shocking. A surge of protectiveness shot through him, stunning in its intensity. “He what?”
“We were in an accident a few months ago. My brakes failed and I’m almost positive Robert had something to do with it. I saw him under the hood one day and he claimed he was checking the oil.” She shook her head back and forth, her lips pressed in a thin line. “He never bothered with my car in all the years I’ve been driving.”
Colton shifted to better face her. “So what, you think he cut your brake lines or something?”
“Yes,” she confirmed emphatically. “Only, I had no way to prove it.”
“Wasn’t your car inspected afterward?”
Bitterness twisted her features. “Robert’s best friend Jeremy was in charge of the investigation—if you can call it that—and everything was simply ruled an accident.”
More than resentment resonated in her voice. Cold hatred. Fear. Her small hands curled into fists and Colton reached to cover the closest one, instinctively offering support.
She stared at his hand on hers as she added, “Not long afterward, I heard Robert on the phone telling someone he’d be all set once he had his sister taken care of.”
It sounded like a plot from a movie. Or one of those crazy TV soap operas that played in the background when he visited his father on a weekday.
Colton tilted his head slightly and gently squeezed Kendra’s fingers. “Are you sure you weren’t mistaken?”
She stiffened with a sharp intake of breath and snatched her hand away. “I’m not making this all up.”
Colton huffed out his own breath. “I didn’t say you were, but I don’t understand why your brother would want to kill you and Noah?”
“He’s the beneficiary to our trust funds.”
He frowned and stated the obvious. “So change them.”
“It’s not that simple,” she snapped. A second later, she sighed with frustration and her shoulders slumped. “Robert and I didn’t get along much, but he was the only family I had left besides Noah. The money was my dad’s—Robert’s dad—and Noah has his own Trust fund, so I saw no reason for Robert not to get mine if something happened to me.”
She cast him a hesitant glance, almost as if she expected him to belittle her reasoning, but that part made perfect sense to him. When he simply waited silently, she drew herself up straight, and squared her shoulders with the iron will he’d come to admire.
“Obviously, now things have changed. That lawyer I met? The one you thought I was using for a sexual harassment suit?”—another quick glance and a quirk of her lips—“He’s actually helping me with the trust fund and stuff. We’ve changed mine, but I can’t touch Noah’s until I turn twenty-five and become his legal guardian.”
“When do you turn twenty-five?”
“In six days.” She paused, her fingers picking at the seam of her jeans, then added in a desperate yet hopeful whisper, “Six days, and he’ll be safe.”
“How much are we talking about here?” Colton asked. Really, what was the going rate for a family murder these days? He didn’t mean it flippantly, but the entire situation was still a little hard to comprehend.
Kendra lifted her gaze. “Last statement I saw, just over five million each.”
His jaw dropped. He’d expected her to say…hell, he didn’t know what he’d expected. A couple hundred thousand, maybe, at the most. He’d known she came from money, but that was money. “That’s a hell of a motive.”
A quick, humorless smile flashed across her face.
Regrouping, he asked, “What’d the police say about that?—you did tell them about the money, right?”
Resentment filled her expression once more. “I reported my suspicions to a captain at the NYPD, but the officer who called back for my formal statement was the same one who swept the accident investigation under the rug.”
“Jeremy?”
“Yes.”
And again, the hatred. Colton got an uneasy feeling in his gut. Her next words didn’t help.
“We had a history. Anything I said would’ve been twisted until it looked like I was trying to get Robert in trouble any way I could. That’s when I knew I had to take Noah away.”
“Why didn’t you request a different officer?”
She scoffed. “Robert has a lot of friends in the department…he’s actually a very charming guy when he wants to be. Besides, it’s more…well, it’s more complicated than just that.” More quietly she added, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” he coaxed, and reached out to her once more.
Her gaze shifted from the window to where his hand covered hers. She was silent for so long he thought she’d decided to clam up. Then she took a deep breath and he felt her hand quiver. The other hand shook where it rested on her opposite thigh. Concern brought his attention to her face where a tear trembled on her bottom lashes.
“Jeremy…”
Colton squeezed her hand, giving silent encouragement.
“He…raped me four years ago.”
When her raw words registered, white-hot rage exploded in his chest. His entire body tensed, fists automatically clenched. “The police officer?”
She nodded, her gaze downcast as the tear slipped the edge and tracked down her cheek.
Colton’s fury demanded release, but violence was the last thing she needed to see right now. With effort, he managed to control his emotions and forced his fingers to release their death-grip on hers. She swallowed hard and quickly clasped her hands togeth
er in her lap. “I thought it was my fault,” she admitted in a tiny voice. “I’d flirted with him, encouraged him to ask me out, even kissed him and invited him into my apartment…”
The shame in her voice fueled his anger. She was not to blame! “Kendra—”
She suddenly shook her head, and stiffened her spine with an expression of steely determination. “When I finally found the courage to report what he’d done, there was no evidence. Long story short, it came down to my word against his, and he’s a highly decorated officer with influential friends—who do you think they believed?”
“They should’ve believed you, the bastards.” He wanted to pull her back into his arms but was suddenly afraid to touch her—afraid his touch would bring back awful memories. It didn’t even matter that she’d kissed him a few minutes ago. He took a calming breath to say, “I’m sorry, Kendra.”
Her beautiful eyes swam with tears when she raised her face, and his heart constricted. At this moment, he’d give anything to take away her pain. He started to reach out, but quickly quelled the urge.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Neither did you—you do realize that, don’t you?” He risked covering her hand with his on her leg, relieved when she didn’t pull away.
“Yes, I did finally come to that realization. But, now do you see why I ran? It was the only way I knew to keep Noah safe. We went to California, but Robert found us there, so Colorado was our last option—no one knew about Joel.”
“How did he find you in California?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Best I can guess he opened my credit card statements. I had no clue what I was doing out there on the road. When Noah spotted Robert at a store where I’d charged things a few times, I made the connection and gave my cards to a friend in exchange for cash. It was enough for a couple of bus tickets and some meals along the way.”
She dropped her attention, her eyes focused on his thumb as he rubbed it gently across her soft skin.
“The morning we…met”—her cheeks colored—“I literally had pennies left in my pocket. Noah was hungry, and we needed cab fare.”
For the first time, Colton felt a tug of humor. “So, you robbing me really was a coincidence?”
She nodded, her expression earnest. “I swear, I had every intention of returning the wallet—and that was before fate was cruel enough to toss you right back in my face only a few hours later.”
The words may have been an outright insult, but they were spoken without any malice. In fact, Colton heard a surprising note of humor at the end. He leaned back against the couch, drained and somewhat relieved to finally know the truth—even though the whole of it was a hell of a lot to take in.
Kendra shifted on the couch to face him. “I talked to Noah when I first came in before…he swore he didn’t put those snaps out there, and I believe him. He still has the sealed box you gave him.”
Relief fled right out the window. If not Noah, then who? Colton met her grim gaze and guessed her thoughts without her even saying the name out loud. He sat up with a jerk. “Notify him that you’ve changed the beneficiary of your trust.”
“It’s not that easy,” she contended. “He’s still Noah’s legal guardian.”
“And Noah’s five mil’ is motive enough.”
She gave a solemn nod. “Noah’s not safe until the legal forms are changed after my birthday.”
After a moment of silence, something unexpected occurred to him. “So, if you inherit all that money on your birthday, why are you working here at the ranch?”
She shrugged. “I left with nothing—stole money from a stranger—how else would I pay for anything?”
“In less than a week you’ll be worth millions…ever hear of a loan? You worked your hands raw that first week. I’ve never seen anyone put so much effort into doing a job that was so difficult for them. Why?”
He couldn’t keep the grudging admiration from his voice and she actually smiled.
“You tried to scare me away. When that didn’t work you told me point blank to go home.” Her brows rose. “Do you seriously think I would’ve given you the satisfaction?”
A reluctant grin tugged at his mouth. “Stubborn fool.”
“I don’t regret it,” she insisted, truth vibrant in her voice. “It feels good to know at the end of the day that I’ve actually done something worthwhile. And, I discovered how much I like horses.”
She was good with them, too. A natural once she’d gotten over her skittishness. Colton sat forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped together. With this new information, the past month made so much more sense. He tilted his head slightly with a sideways glance. “Now I understand why Joel let you stay after showing up out of the blue. Though, I’m surprised he never said anything to me. I need to know stuff like this in case this jerk brother of yours shows up.”
A distinct flash of guilt darkened her eyes. When she couldn’t hold his gaze, suspicion formed a hard knot in his stomach. “You told me he knows about Robert.”
She winced. “He knows he’s my half-brother.”
“And the rest of it?”
Still avoiding his eyes, she slowly shook her head no.
“Why the hell not?” He didn’t bother to hide his anger. God, he should’ve come clean to Joel from the start. He never would’ve been able to forgive himself if something had happened. To her. Noah. Britt or the boys. Yeah, he was pissed. At her and himself.
“I was scared,” she said softly.
He refused to soften. He had a right to the anger, after all. No matter her reasons.
“You have to understand,” she rushed on. “I had no idea what Joel was like, so I told him the least amount possible. I was afraid he’d make us leave, and we had nowhere else to go. And then he and Brit were so great, I couldn’t admit I’d lied all this time. And after Britt told me he used to be an investigator, I knew if I told him, he would’ve gone to the cops—it would’ve gotten back to Robert—I can’t take that chance.”
Colton stood and started for the door. “We have to tell him.”
“No—wait!” Kendra skirted the table to rush after him.
He whirled around so fast she stumbled a step back.
“Let’s assume what happened this morning was Robert,” he started. “I understand you were scared, but Joel has to know, do you understand? He has a right to protect his family, Kendra. It could’ve been any one of us walking into that paddock. Joel, Britt—who’s pregnant, remember?—or Cody and Noah for one of their riding lessons.” He grasped her shoulders tight. “Lucky’s hooves came down within inches of your head. Inches.”
The extent of his concern hit, sucking the air from his lungs. Abruptly, he released her and yanked open the door. “It’s time you stopped being so selfish and faced all your lies.”
He hated himself for the harsh words, and the wounded look in her eyes. He’d spoken before getting his emotions fully under control, but couldn’t take them back now. He could’ve justified his words with the reasoning that she needed to fully understand how serious this was, but she’d kidnapped her little brother and run across the country and halfway back. She already knew.
Colton strode across the yard, Kendra so close on his heels he kept waiting for her to trip him. Joel, Britt, Cody and Dustin were sitting at the table when he burst into the kitchen. Britt looked up with surprise, and Joel’s brow rose until he met Colton’s gaze. Then he frowned.
“Boys, why don’t you go outside and play,” Joel suggested firmly.
“No!” Colton shot a glance toward Kendra.
“Noah!” she exclaimed, her eyes huge in her pale face. She spun for the door, but Colton caught her arm.
“I’ll go get him,” he said. “You start talking.”
“What’s going on?” he heard Britt ask as he made his way out the door.
Returning with a subdued Noah moments later, Colton caught the tail end of Kendra’s explanation. His an
ger had only grown over the past few minutes. He directed Noah upstairs where he assumed the boys were and sat in Cody’s vacant chair across from her at the table.
“Did you tell them everything?” He couldn’t contain the note of suspicion in his tone, but didn’t apologize for it. Yes, he cared more than he was willing to admit, and yes, she’d confided in him, but she’d been lying to all of them since the moment she arrived.
“Colton,” Joel admonished.
His gaze swung around. “What? I want to make sure she doesn’t have any more lies and half-truths hanging out there. Did she tell you who stole my wallet?”
“Your wallet was stolen again?” Joel asked with surprise.
“No.” He sat back in his chair. “That day on the sidewalk…”
“When you were na—” Joel broke off when Colton gave him dark look, but the connection had already been made. His friend gaped at Kendra. “That was you?”
Her shoulders rose as she gave a sheepish nod.
“You could’ve called us instead of stealing,” Britt admonished gently.
Kendra laughed without humor. “Hi, I’m the sister you didn’t know you had—can you come get me because I’m fresh out of money? Oh, and by the way, you have a brother here, too.” She shook her head. “You never would’ve believed me.”
“It wasn’t much different when you showed up,” Joel pointed out. “The introduction, I mean.”
“Yeah, but at least you saw how much I looked like Mom.”
“I actually thought you were her for a second,” Joel admitted. “Until I realized that was impossible given how young you are.”
“I don’t understand,” Britt began. “If Robert has custody, why wouldn’t he come after you from that angle? I mean legally, you’ve kidnapped Noah.”
Kendra cringed. She glanced at Colton, and he wondered if she’d deny it the same as when he’d asked the question that night in her room.
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