Colton Baby Conspiracy (The Coltons 0f Mustang Valley Book 1)

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Hey, I’m just trying to be accommodating.” Finished buttoning her coat, he picked up her briefcase again.

  “Speaking of being accommodating,” she said, thinking of what she had spent her afternoon working on. “Guess what my father agreed to do this morning?”

  They began to head toward the elevator. “That was not where I thought this conversation was going to go,” Bowie admitted playfully. There was no doubt about it. She brought out the lighter side of him. “Okay, I’ll bite—what did your father agree to do this morning?”

  Marlowe announced the news proudly. “To open up a day care center here for the employees who have very young children.”

  He saw the pleasure in her eyes. Bowie caught himself thinking that Marlowe could even make work seem adorable. “Let me guess—your idea?” he asked her. He held his hand up between the elevator doors to keep them from closing before they got on.

  “Yes, but that doesn’t matter,” she said, waving that part away. “He actually agreed to it. He wouldn’t have a few months ago.”

  Bowie pressed for the ground floor. “A few months ago, he didn’t have a daughter who was going to make him a grandfather,” he pointed out.

  “Be that as it may,” she continued, “it doesn’t change the fact that he’s becoming more human, more sensitive to what people need.”

  Heralding Payne Colton didn’t sit quite well with him. “Maybe he doesn’t like falling behind and realizes that he needs to keep up with the times,” Bowie told her. The elevator stopped and its door yawned open. He waited half a beat to allow her to get a step ahead of him.

  “My father doesn’t keep up with the times, he blazes trails,” Marlowe informed him.

  Leading her back to where he had parked his vehicle, Bowie took her words in stride. And then he smiled at her. “Maybe he should consider having you doing his PR for him.”

  About to say something curt, Marlowe realized that she was becoming unduly defensive. She curbed that. “I guess maybe I did come on strong,” she admitted.

  Reaching his car, Bowie opened the passenger door for her and waited for Marlowe to get in.

  “Just a tad,” he agreed. “But your loyalty is one of your more admirable qualities,” he told her.

  Closing the door again, he rounded the hood and got in on the driver’s side. Buckling up, he asked, “So, have you decided?” Then, when Marlowe gave him a puzzled look, Bowie prompted. “You know, have you made your choice? Where you want me to drive you tonight?” he added.

  “To your place,” she answered.

  “Good choice,” Bowie said with approval. Starting up his car, he waited until he pulled out before asking, “So, how was your day?”

  “I just told you the highlight,” Marlowe said. “Otherwise, my day was filled with everyone stopping by, asking me how I was doing and if they could get me something.” She shrugged, not comfortable about having everyone being so solicitous toward her. “But I suppose that is only to be expected, since I am the boss’s daughter—and the new CEO—and this just might be their way of trying to butter me up.”

  “You’re forgetting the most important part,” Bowie told her. He could feel her looking at him, waiting for him to continue, so he explained, “You’re a terrific person.”

  “Now who’s doing the buttering up?” she asked, trying her best to suppress a grin.

  “I can’t give you a compliment without an ulterior motive?” he asked Marlowe innocently.

  A smile played on her lips. “I don’t know, can you?”

  “Absolutely,” Bowie told her.

  Marlowe suppressed a sigh. He was making her feel things, want things.

  Want him.

  She knew she needed to change the subject before she went with her impulse and asked him to pull over to the side of the road so she could give in to those feelings. The overwhelming warmth she was experiencing was liable to make her do things she didn’t want to be caught doing out in the open.

  But it was getting harder and harder to bank down those feelings.

  “How’s Wallace doing?” she asked Bowie without any preamble.

  That caught him by surprise. “Wallace?”

  “Yes, you know, the man whose head was used as a football while he was doing his best to guard me?” she reminded Bowie.

  “I know who Wallace is,” he told her, “although I tend to think of him by his last name. I was just surprised that you’re asking me about him out of the blue like this.”

  “Not out of the blue,” she protested. “I’ve been thinking about him all day.”

  He slanted a glance in her direction. “Should I be jealous?”

  “No, you idiot,” she retorted, curbing the strong impulse to hit him, “you should be relieved that I’m not this self-centered woman whose only focus in life is herself.”

  He hadn’t seen her in that light for weeks now. “I realized you weren’t like that when we slept together at the conference.”

  His response surprised her. “I thought you said that you didn’t remember anything about that night,” Marlowe told him.

  “Oh, but how could I have possibly forgotten you?” Bowie asked teasingly.

  He pulled his car into a driveway and then turned off the engine.

  For a moment, she thought he was reading her mind, then she realized that they were in front of a condominium. He had arrived at his home.

  “Wallace is doing fine,” he answered. “He’s not here,” he continued, anticipating her next question, “because I told him to take some more time. I thought with your stalker safely locked up in jail and out of the way, you didn’t need a full-time bodyguard anymore. Just maybe a part-time one,” he added, then flashed a smile at her. “I could fill that position,” he told her. “Actually, I’d like to fill that position.” He turned toward her. “Ready to come in?”

  Marlowe looked at him uneasily, responding to his tone. “You make it sound like I should be bracing myself for something.”

  “Maybe,” he allowed. And then, with what she could only term as an impish grin, he said, “I’ll tell you a secret.”

  “A secret?” she echoed, a little bewildered. What kind of a secret could he possibly be sharing?

  “Yes. I’m not exactly the world’s neatest housekeeper,” he told her, then confessed, “Actually, I’m pretty bad at it.”

  She laughed, relieved. From the nature of his tone, she had been expecting him to say something so much worse. “Nice to know you’re not perfect. And that so-called vice of yours, well, it can easily be rectified with a cleaning crew coming in maybe once a month. Or maybe less,” she added.

  Bowie unlocked his front door, and she walked in ahead of him. She looked around at the opened room. “Or, maybe more,” she amended.

  It wasn’t the last word in cluttered, she thought, but it was definitely close to it.

  Bowie had never liked the idea of a stranger pawing through his things.

  “I’ll think about it,” he told her. “But right now,” he continued, closing the door behind them and then locking it. “But right now,” he repeated with renewed energy, “I’ve got something more important than a cleaning crew on my mind.”

  Marlowe’s breath caught in her throat as she looked up into his eyes.

  “Funny, me, too,” she told him just before she turned her mouth up to his and melted into his kiss.

  The moment she did, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again.

  And again.

  In absolutely no time at all, he had her blood rushing and her heart pounding, going faster than a hummingbird’s wings.

  In less time than it took to think about it, Bowie was carrying her up the stairs and into his bedroom. Once there, they made slow, languid love the first time around. Then, catching their collective breath, they did it all over again, but fast
er and more intensely the second time.

  Finally, when it was over, Bowie pulled himself up onto his elbow and looked at Marlowe. “You know, I think you could get to be very habit-forming.”

  He said the word think, but in reality, he already knew that she was. Deep down, his cautious nature wouldn’t allow him to state the fact flatly because, more than anything, he didn’t want to set himself up for rejection just in case she didn’t feel the same way he did—or didn’t want to feel the same way that he did.

  “Could get to be, huh?” Marlowe said, repeating the words he had just used.

  It just proved to her what she had feared all along. That Bowie was not the type of man to commit, even though he had promised to provide for their child. She didn’t need him to provide for this baby; she could do that on her own and do it well. She didn’t need his money, and she didn’t need him, not if she had to twist his arm like this.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want you to get any bad habits on my account,” she told him, her voice rising as she threw off the sheet and started to get up.

  Seeing the way Marlowe had just thrown off the covers, he stared at her. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m getting dressed, and then I’m going home. To my home,” she emphasized.

  But Bowie caught hold of her wrist, anchoring her in place. “Hold it—did I just say something to make you do a U-turn like this?”

  “No, of course not,” she answered sarcastically. “You didn’t say anything. Anything,” she emphasized with feeling.

  Still holding her in place, his eyes looked into hers. “I’m sensing hostility,” he told her.

  “Very perceptive of you,” she replied bitingly. “Now if you’ll just let go of my wrist, I can get dressed and leave you to whatever it is you want to be left to.”

  “Marlowe, calm down,” he told her sternly. “We need to talk.”

  “No, what I need to do is have my head examined for actually thinking that we—” Her phone rang just then, distracting her. “I need to have my head examined,” she repeated, upbraiding herself for being so naive and stupid.

  She got no further because her phone rang again. Exasperated, Marlowe looked down at the screen. It was her mother.

  Talk about bad timing, she thought.

  “I have to take this,” she snapped. “It’s my mother, probably calling to make sure I haven’t been abducted again.” Blowing out a breath, she swiped her phone on and declared, “I’m fine, Mom,” before her mother could say a word.

  And then she realized that her mother wasn’t able to say anything. Her usually composed parent was sobbing almost hysterically.

  Feeling guilty, she said, “Mom, please, calm down. I’m fine, really. There’s no reason for you to cry like that.”

  But Genevieve Colton didn’t seem to be able to take any comfort from her daughter’s assurance. For a moment, she couldn’t speak at all. And then, still sobbing, her mother managed to get out a few words.

  “Mar...lowe. You...you have...to...come...”

  At a loss as how to deal with her mother’s very obvious distress, Marlowe tried to figure out what her mother was trying to tell her.

  “All right, Mother, if it means that much to you, I’ll come home to the ranch.”

  “No...”

  The words her mother was trying to say seemed to get caught in her throat.

  That didn’t make any sense to Marlowe. “Wait, you don’t want me to come home?”

  “Your father...” Genevieve gasped, trying desperately to catch her breath and be coherent.

  Marlowe tried hard to fill in the blanks and guess what her mother was trying to tell her. “My father’s worried about me, too?”

  “No!” her mother sobbed, frustrated.

  “He’s not worried about me?” Marlowe asked.

  None of this made any sense to her. If her mother was this hysterical, she suspected that her father had to be involved in this somehow. Maybe her father had fed her mother details that the chief had given him and that was what had made her mother so beside herself like this.

  “What is it?” Marlowe asked, desperately trying to unscramble what her mother was trying to tell her.

  “Marlowe...your father... He’s...he’s been...shot,” her mother finally managed to get out.

  Marlowe was on her feet instantly, reaching for her scattered clothing, her outstretched hand trembling.

  “How?” she demanded. “When? Is he... Is Dad...?” She couldn’t get herself to ask the question, fearing the answer she would hear.

  Listening to her end of the conversation, Bowie was already getting into his own clothes, throwing them on while never taking his eyes off Marlowe.

  Ace was now on the phone, having taken it from his mother. “Marlowe, it’s Ace. Dad’s at Mustang Valley General Hospital. The police brought him here. The whole family’s here, and we’re not sure if he’s going to pull through,” Ace told her. He sounded totally shaken. “You need to get here as fast as you can.”

  “But what happened?” Marlowe cried urgently. “And where were you? When did you—”

  Her questions went unanswered. Ace had ended the call.

  Chapter 24

  Marlowe was trying very hard to keep from being overwhelmed by the shock that vibrated through her. Still, the phone slipped from her fingers.

  She looked in Bowie’s direction, hardly seeing him. “My father’s been shot,” she cried, dazed.

  Bowie bent down to pick up her phone and handed it back to her.

  “I heard,” he said gently. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through right now. “Do they know who did it?”

  Numbness all but saturated her, stealing away her very breath. Marlowe shook her head in response to his question. “I don’t know.”

  More than anything, he wished he could take her pain away. “But he’s still alive, right?”

  He saw Marlowe’s eyes fill up with tears. “For now,” she whispered. Looking around the room, trying to focus, she said, “I’ve got to get to the hospital.”

  “Get dressed,” Bowie told her. “I’ll drive you over there.”

  That was when Marlowe looked down and realized that she still hadn’t put anything on. She was still nude.

  “Oh. Right,” she mumbled. Her brain felt as if it was stuck in first gear.

  Moving quickly, Bowie picked up her scattered clothes and laid them out for her on the bed. His heart ached for Marlowe. She looked so stricken, so lost, it was as if she was moving through a fog, searching for her footing.

  “Do you need any help getting dressed?” There was nothing sexual or seductive implied in his offer. All he wanted to do right now was somehow help her get through this.

  “I can manage,” Marlowe told him. She could barely squeeze the words out. They felt like shards scraping against her throat.

  Bowie’s eyes, full of sympathy, met hers. “I know you can,” he said, doing his best to sound encouraging.

  She was dressed in seconds.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready,” she blurted out.

  They were back in his car and on the road to the hospital in less than two minutes.

  * * *

  In response to the attempted homicide, the hospital corridor directly outside the OR was crowded with people, drawn there by concern. They were all keeping vigil.

  A quick scan of the immediate area told Marlowe that, just as Ace had said, her whole family was already there, even Ace, who had been conspicuously missing ever since the flare-up had happened between him and their father.

  Marlowe’s siblings—even her older half brother Grayson, who didn’t work at Colton Oil and was not close to their father—were all surrounding Genevieve Colton. Another brother, Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch foreman Asher, stood next to their mother, who looked frightened and
terrifyingly frail and brittle. She gave every indication of a woman who was on the verge of falling apart.

  Even Selina was there, hovering around along the perimeter. She gave Marlowe the impression of a vulture ready to pick the anticipated carcass clean the moment the last breath was drawn.

  Deliberately ignoring her father’s ex-wife, Marlowe crossed to her mother and threw her arms around Genevieve, hugging her.

  “Oh, Mother, how is he? Does anyone know what happened?” she asked, embracing the woman.

  A little more composed now than when she had called Marlowe, Payne’s distraught wife gave their daughter what details she could, the same details that she had finally managed to give to the chief.

  “The cleaning lady called me from your father’s office,” she said in a shaken voice. “She was the one who heard the shot.”

  “So someone did shoot him?” Marlowe questioned, wanting to get straight as many details as she could. But just saying that sounded so incredible to her. Someone had shot her father.

  Her mother pressed her lips together to keep from sobbing again. She wanted to get through this once and for all for Marlowe’s sake without breaking down.

  “Payne was working late again,” she told her daughter. “The cleaning lady said she heard what she thought was a gunshot, followed by the sound of someone running away, and then a stairwell door being shoved open, then banging shut again. After that, she said there was nothing but silence. The brave woman ran toward the sound of the gunshot.

  “Thank goodness she did,” her mother continued with feeling. “because she found your father lying on the floor, bleeding profusely from the wound in his chest. She immediately called the police. If she hadn’t done that, your father could have died without the proper medical attention.” Her voice hitched, and she pressed her fisted hand to her mouth, stifling another sob. “He still might,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “Shh, don’t think that way, Mom,” Marlowe chided. “He’s going to pull through. Dad’s tough. He’s going to be all right,” she insisted.

  Genevieve Colton was crying again. Marlowe could feel her mother’s muffled sobs against her shoulder, seeping into her clothing.