Colton Destiny

by Justine Davis

  She gestured to Ruthie, who backed up so she could open the door. She slid out and closed the truck door. The moment it was shut, the girl spoke.

  “Come to dinner tonight.”

  Emma blinked. Temptation came in many unexpected forms, but she’d never expected to see it in the shape of a seven-year-old Amish girl.

  “I can’t, Ruthie,” she said, startled despite her earlier self-

  acknowledgment at how much she wished she could say yes.

  “Father said I could invite you.”

  She stared down at the determined child. She knew the child likely wouldn’t lie, and yet she’d had the feeling that, at the end of that wonderful evening, Caleb had been as glad to see her go as she had been to escape.

  “He did?” Emma asked, unable to stop herself.

  Ruthie nodded vigorously, her cap bobbing. “He said if I saw you, I could invite you.”

  Ah, she thought. It was the qualifier that no doubt had Caleb feeling safe. Although, she thought perhaps he underestimated his energetic middle child; she had a feeling once she had that okay, Ruthie would make sure she somehow saw Emma so she could extend the invitation.

  “I’m flattered,” Emma said, meaning it. “Truly. But it’s not...appropriate.”

  Ruthie frowned. “But you must eat. And it’s Saturday.”

  “I’m working,” she said. It was automatic, a reflex; she hadn’t had much to work on for two days now. Her time had been spent simply re-covering old ground. It was as if the girls had been snatched up by invisible aliens, vanishing literally without a trace.

  “English don’t work on Saturday,” Ruthie pointed out.

  Feeling a bit desperate, Emma pointed at the sack the girl held. “Your father’s working.”

  “But he always does.” The girl’s expression changed, the furrow between her brows giving her a worried look. “He says he needs to catch up. He’s worried about Aunt Hannah.”

  “I know,” Emma said softly. “And I know you are, too.”

  “No,” Ruthie said, startling her.

  “You’re not worried?”

  “You’ll find her,” Ruthie said confidently. “I know you will.”

  Emma would have appreciated the complete faith a bit more had she the slightest idea where she was going to turn next. The last time she talked to Tate, he seemed to think he had something worth checking out, and that was the closest they had to any kind of lead.

  “Come with me, at least,” Ruthie said, gesturing with the food she was to deliver. “Father is wondering when there will be news.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Emma said with an inward grimace. So am I, she added silently. If something didn’t break soon, she was going to call for help. Not that her boss in Cleveland would appreciate that; he would think she should be back there working their own cases. He’d okayed her to come see if there was a connection, not work to solve a Pennsylvania case for them. So far she’d successfully stalled him off by citing the similarities between this case and their own, but she didn’t know how long that was going to work.

  “Come,” Ruthie insisted. Then the girl took Emma’s hand and tugged. And after a moment of resistance that would have to have been stronger to be deemed even token, Emma thought sourly, she gave in. She should check in with him anyway, and better his shop than going back to that tempting, luring home.

  She reached back to grab the truck’s keys and locked the door; it was in no danger from the locals, of course, but with no snow there were still a few tourists lingering this late in the year, and where there were tourists there were opportunists.

  Emma heard the steady sound of a motor as they neared the old building Caleb had taken over as his shop. Today the generator was running. When they stepped into the shop, she smelled the sharp, heady odor of some kind of paint. Involuntarily she sniffed.

  “It’s what my father puts on the wood to protect it.”

  Emma smiled at the girl’s quick response to a question she hadn’t even asked. Apparently she’d inherited her father’s perceptiveness.

  “He finished a big desk yesterday. It’s in the drying room now. That’s why the generator’s running. There are heat lamps in there. Usually he only uses it to run the air compressor for the air tools when he needs them. The saws and sanders.”

  “You’re better than a tour guide,” Emma teased. Ruthie grinned, and once more Emma wondered how that irrepressible spirit would manage in this quiet, controlled world. Would Caleb be as wise as her own parents had been with her, seeing that she needed to run free sometimes to enable her to stay within the lines the rest of the time?

  They found him in the office area at the back of the shop, standing before a large drafting table. There was a big window in the west-facing wall the table stood against, providing a full flood of light, negating for the moment at least the need for any other source.

  Ruthie ran over to her father.

  “I brought your lunch,” she said. “And something better.”

  “So I see.”

  Caleb took the sack and set it on the table that apparently served as a desk. He seemed inordinately intent on making certain it was placed so it didn’t fall off.

  “I invited her to dinner. You said I could,” Ruthie reminded him when his gaze narrowed.

  “So I did.”

  She couldn’t read anything into his tone. Apparently neither could Ruthie, because the child chattered on easily.

  “Katie will make biscuits, and we have the beef stew Mrs. Yoder made.” She looked at Emma. “Do you like beef stew?”

  “Love it,” she answered, although the idea of declaring herself allergic and backing out as gracefully as possible occurred to her; Caleb did not look any happier than she was feeling about this.

  “Daed,” Ruthie said again, giving it the Pennsylvania Dutch pronunciation, “is making some shelves for Mrs. Yoder, for her quilting things. So she makes extra for us when she cooks her own dinner three times a week.”

  “Sounds like an equitable bargain,” Emma said, keeping her gaze on the voluble child and away from her taciturn

  father.

  “Equi— What does that mean?”

  “What does it sound like?” Caleb asked before Emma could answer.

  Ruthie frowned, apparently working it out. Emma guessed this was a frequent happening, not giving the easy answer but making her think it through. She remembered her own father doing the same to her.

  “It sounds sort of like equal,” Ruthie said.

  “Yes,” Caleb said with an encouraging nod.

  “So does it mean a bargain where both sides are equal? A fair bargain?”

  Caleb smiled. “That’s my clever girl.”

  Ruthie beamed. The girl practically glowed. Emma remembered the feeling, when a smile and unstinting approval from her father made her world warm and right.

  “May I go look at the desk?” she asked.

  “Only through the window.”

  “I know. Dust.”

  The girl scampered off. Emma watched her go with a smile she couldn’t help.

  “She amuses you?”

  “Yes.” She gave him a sideways glance. “And she still reminds me of me at that age.”

  “Then she will grow out of...the more trying aspects?”

  Emma analyzed that for a moment, wondering if it was compliment or accusation.

  “Some,” she finally said. “As long as you don’t try to crush them out of her.”

  “I have no wish to crush her spirit, though some say I should. It’s a parent’s job to channel it.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. And winced at the idea of trying to break Ruthie’s energetic spirit. “She’ll learn to restrain it when required. But when she finds her passion, she’ll be hard to stop,” Emma said, wondering what would happen if that passion turned out to be something not acceptable in their world.

  Caleb sighed. “She is much like Hannah,” he said.

  In that unguarded moment Emma saw the
deep, gnawing concern he kept so well masked the rest of the time, for the girls’ sake, she supposed. He was worried about his sister. Very worried. Just because he was not of her world didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of the dangers. The opposite, in fact; the dangers were part of the reason he was apart from it.

  “There is no news?” he asked, his voice tight.

  “I would have told you immediately,” she said, regretful that she had nothing hopeful to share.

  He merely nodded, absorbing the blow with the stoicism and acceptance of his kind. Yet she could see the pain in his face, see the shadow haunting his eyes, those amazing eyes. She wanted to go to him, to reassure him, hold him until that look left his eyes.

  But she could do none of that. Not that it wasn’t part of her job, reassuring stressed-out relatives, but she didn’t dare get so close to this man.

  And oddly, as if he somehow knew what she was thinking, he took a step back, away from her. But something else flashed in his eyes for an instant, and she dared to wonder if these tangled feelings were not one-sided.

  It should have soothed her restlessness, to know he was feeling it, too, and would be as on guard as she was.

  Instead, it made her heart leap with a joy she couldn’t quite quash.

  And that scared her more than anything.

  Chapter 17

  It had to stop, Emma thought.

  She couldn’t risk this again. She couldn’t give in again to the temptations of another pleasant evening with Caleb and his girls.

  Pleasant. What a weak-sounding word for what she’d felt tonight. Too weak for the enjoyment she’d had watching the interaction between the girls, even little Grace, who was overcoming her awe of “Gen Emma” and joining in the chatter in her sometimes nonsensical way or in Pennsylvania Dutch too fast for Emma to follow. Too weak for the too-long-

  unaccustomed joy of laughing until she nearly wept.

  Too weak for the heady feeling she got every time she caught Caleb’s gaze on her.

  And far, far too weak for the sensation that rippled through her when she thought—for surely she must have imagined it—she saw a heat in his eyes that echoed what he seemed able to trigger in her with the slightest glance.

  It was impossible, of course. She knew that. Likely her imagination. And even if it wasn’t, it was still impossible. Her world, his world...no matter how appealing she might find the idea of his simpler, plainer life, the two couldn’t mix. It had to be one or the other.

  And that she was even allowing the possibility of such a choice to enter her mind rattled her to her core.

  She watched the now-familiar bedtime preparations for the girls, marveling at how obedient they were, even the fiery Ruthie going with minimal protest. Her world could learn much from this one, she thought. And there it was again.

  She spent the moments while Caleb tended to his daughters, with a gentle care that made her ache somewhere deep inside, steeling herself, reinforcing barriers she’d never had to worry so much about before. It wasn’t that she didn’t always feel a personal connection to the people of her cases; she did, she felt their pain and distress, and developing a rapport with people was as much a part of her job as anything else.

  But rapport was not what she was feeling with Caleb Troyer.

  But it had to be. And that’s all it could be. And it was time—past time—for her to get back to business. And only business.

  By the time he came back, she had the walls back up and reinforced. It wasn’t that the sight of him, the easy way he moved, the lovely gray of his eyes, the power and strength of his hands and the gentle way he used them, didn’t still send her senses careening; it was that she’d determined, with a fierce, Colton stubbornness, that she wasn’t going to give in to it.

  And more importantly, that she wasn’t going to let it show.

  He took the chair opposite her. He studied her for a moment, and Emma steadfastly quashed the leap of her pulse.

  “You had something you wished to say or ask?”

  How did he do that? she wondered. She’d said nothing about needing to talk to him or question him, yet he had obviously sensed it.

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself. She was through with speculation of that kind. It was time to get this investigation back on a professional footing. And if that meant constant vigilance over her own foolish reactions anytime she was in this man’s presence, then so be it.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice sounding a little abrupt. She didn’t apologize—better to seem abrupt than a quivering puddle.

  Quickly, she brought him up-to-date. Not that there was much to tell, and she didn’t bother to try and hide her growing frustration.

  “Is there anyone you can think of that I should talk to that I haven’t?”

  He considered a moment, then shook his head. “From what I have heard, you’ve missed no one.”

  Now, there’s a reminder, she thought; a community didn’t need phones to have an effective and rapid grapevine.

  “You’re still sure there’s no one in the outside community who could possibly have a grudge or who paid inordinate attention to Hannah or the others?”

  “Is this what you do? Ask the same questions of the same people?”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d heard the accusation, although Caleb veiled it better than most; he’d sounded merely curious. It was, however, the first time in a long time that it had stung.

  “Yes,” she said, working to keep her tone even as she gave him a much longer explanation than she usually did. “Often, the first time you ask, people answer without thinking. But you’ve planted the idea, and their conscious and subconscious mind go to work on it. They’re thinking about it, even if they’re not aware of it. Going back and asking again sometimes gets us answers the person would have sworn they didn’t know the first time we asked.”

  He nodded, unruffled, as if he had indeed been merely curious when he’d asked. Perhaps he had been, she thought, and it was her own unsettled mental state around him that had made her read more into it.

  “We are honest in our dealings, so there are few disputes that would lead to that kind of anger,” he said. “As for the other...Hannah in particular is a beautiful young woman. Beautiful enough that the elders have always been concerned, lest she become too proud of that beauty.”

  He paused, giving her a look that seemed almost hesitant.

  “That must seem strange to you. Your world seems to prize beauty above all.”

  “My world, maybe. My family? Not a chance.”

  He blinked, drew back slightly. “Oh?”

  “My father always hammered it into us that a less-than-

  perfect woman with a good brain was infinitely more attractive than a perfect beauty with nothing but air behind her eyes.”

  A slow smile curved his mouth. That wonderful, tempting mouth.

  “I believe I would have liked your father.”

  “And he you.”

  “And his worries were clearly unnecessary.”

  It was her turn to blink. “What?”

  “You became both.”

  It was the most subtly delivered yet obviously sincere compliment she’d ever gotten. And it was so unexpected she very much feared she was gaping at him like a landed fish. She felt the sudden urge to run, to dash away to somewhere quiet where she could think. Where she could turn it over and around in her mind and figure out if it meant that perhaps she hadn’t been completely fanciful in thinking there had, more than once, been an answering heat in his eyes, an echoing of the churning that began in her every time she was in the presence of this man.

  But she had made a vow to herself, and she was going to keep it. She was going to focus on the case and nothing else. She had to.

  “Thank you,” she managed, not letting herself think about how long she’d likely been staring at him. And trying to sound as if she got compliments all the time. Which, when she took the time and trouble to pull herself together, she often did. But
she found she appreciated the extra time minimum attention to her appearance gave her, so rare was the occasion that bestirred her to get out the face paint and lipstick, as Piper called it.

  “This is also a repeat question,” she began, knowing she sounded abrupt this time, but continuing without apology. “You are absolutely certain there is no one within the community who would—”

  “Yes. No one.”

  “No spurned suitors, or—”

  “No.”

  Emma wondered what it was like to have such utter faith in your fellow man. But she needed him to think, to truly think, of things he might find impossible to fathom. She hated that she had to do it, but there was no avoiding it.

  “Your sister’s life could depend on you being brutally honest.”

  This time it was he who explained. “Were it only Hannah, there might be. She had boys enough after her. But if it was that, why the other girls?”

  He’d put his finger on it, the detail she’d come back to repeatedly herself, one that had pointed her in the direction she was now heading. But first she had to make sure she’d eliminated every other possibility.

  “Boys enough?” she asked.

  He nodded. “But she was interested in none of them, so there was no one who could take offense over another. It was understood that she simply wasn’t ready to settle down.”

  Others had told her much the same thing, that Hannah Troyer had been in no hurry to select a mate and begin life in the community she’d grown up in. As appealing as she herself was finding the simplicity of this life, she doubted it would be drawing her as it was if she hadn’t spent the rest of her life out in the wider world. Was that Hannah’s problem? Was she drawn to what Emma herself had grown up with, and now found herself wishing she could escape?

  It was yet another effort to rechannel her thoughts yet again. Focus, she ordered herself.

  “All right, Caleb,” she said, by now forgoing the formal “Mr. Troyer” without even thinking. “Say we accept it’s not someone in the community, nor anyone on the edges, that you deal with. And if it’s not a stranger—”