The Missing Colton

by Loreth Anne White

  She hated Brad. He was a coward for failing to call it off before the actual day dawned, for publicly humiliating her like that. Even more, Mia hated herself for allowing his actions to have utterly devastated her self-confidence, her sense of self-worth as a sexually attractive woman. She hated the shame that came with being an abandoned bride. A shame she’d been unable to shed, that had become almost pathological.

  Her big, hotshot smokejumper, her macho alpha-dude, the man she’d once loved with all her heart despite his often-rough manner—had proven a yellow-bellied coward at heart. While she’d waited outside the chapel, and his best man had tried calling his cell phone, Brad had been boarding a plane bound for Nigeria where he’d already accepted a job with a private security firm to protect foreign mining interests. He’d gone to hide in a place where he wouldn’t have to face her, apologize or explain his actions. Where he could hide among other macho die-hards who carried guns with enough bullets to equal their egos.

  Where he’d never have to be trapped in suburbia, with a suburban wife.

  Anger flushed hot up Mia’s neck and her mouth went dry, all the old rage and embarrassment coming back.

  “How’s his temperature now?”

  Mia jumped. Levi was talking to her. She hadn’t heard a thing. Clearing her throat quickly, she said, “Excuse me?”

  He threw her a glance, frowning slightly. “What is our patient’s temperature?”

  “Uh...” She checked quickly. “It’s back within normal range now,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “You okay, Mia?” the doc said, suddenly watching her closely.

  “Fine,” she said crisply.

  He paused, still studying her. Heat reddened her cheeks. “I said I’m fine, Levi.”

  He gave a nod. “We’re good to suture.”

  Mia brought the equipment.

  As Levi stitched the wound he said, “I’ll arrange for a CT scan at Cheyenne Memorial Hospital as soon as possible. In the meantime, we’ll keep a close watch on his vitals. If anything changes we’ll need to medevac him.”

  “You think he’s military, given the tattoos?” she said, watching Levi work.

  The doc grunted, pulling the surgical thread through skin. “Hopefully he’ll come around soon and tell us himself.”

  As Levi spoke, the stranger’s hands suddenly fisted at his sides, his neck muscles going iron tight. He jerked his head sharply away from the doc and let out a scream—like a battle cry, unearthly, primal. The sound echoed around the room, shocking both Mia and Levi stone cold.

  “He’s regaining consciousness,” she whispered. “And he’s highly agitated.”

  “Agitation is normal,” Levi said brusquely, reaching for the suture needle hanging from a thread on his patient’s brow. “The longer a person has been in an unconscious state the more violently stimulated and confused they can become.”

  But as Levi grasped for the suture needle, the man jerked his head away and flung his fist at Levi again, his legs thrashing violently, throwing off the blanket. The doc jerked back, but not in time to avoid a punch to his mouth.

  Levi cursed, blood welling on his lip.

  “Hold him down!” he snapped at Mia as he reached for the needle again. The wound was bleeding profusely again.

  She leaned her body across the man’s naked torso, attempting to press down on both his arms. This time he swung his fist at her. She jumped back, adrenaline pumping though her system.

  “It’s like he’s fighting for his life,” she said.

  “We can’t sedate him now!” barked Levi. “Not until we know what’s going on with his head injury. Go get some muscle in here, Mia, to help steady him before he hurts himself—I need to stop that fresh bleeding and finish these sutures!”

  The man’s eyes suddenly flared open wide and wild.

  Levi and Mia froze for an instant. He looked terrifying.

  The stranger lay there, exposed, his naked and powerful body stock still. He stared at Mia, then Levi, then swung his gaze across the room with an unfocused and feral intensity that unnerved Mia.

  But instead of going for help, Mia leaned quickly forward and cupped the side of the stranger’s jaw gently with her palm.

  “Hey,” she whispered softly, looking right into his frantic eyes. “It’s okay, you’re safe here—you’re in the infirmary on Dead River Ranch. My name is Mia Sanders and I’m a nurse. Dr. Levi Colton here needs to finish stitching the wound on your temple, okay? Can you hold still while he does that? Dr. Colton has given you a local anesthetic, but you still need to relax, hold still. Can you do that for me?”

  He stared at her, muscles wire-tight. Then slowly his pupils began to contract as he tried to draw her into some kind of focus.

  “Cole?” she said, looking into his blue eyes. “Is that your name, Cole Colton?”

  A frown furrowed into his brow.

  Levi shot her a questioning glance.

  “I’m going to call you Cole, for now, anyway, okay?” Mia said, slipping her hand into his. His palm was rough and she laced her fingers through his.

  She felt his muscles relax, and his eyelids fluttered closed as he drifted out of consciousness again.

  “Squeeze my hand, Cole. Give me a sign that you can still hear me.”

  He squeezed his fingers so tightly around hers it almost hurt. And he didn’t relax his grip. A tear escaped from beneath his dark lashes and ran down the side of his rugged face.

  Something sharp caught in Mia’s throat. She shot a worried glance at Levi—leaking from the eyes could be a sign of brain trauma.

  “I think it’s tears,” she whispered. She could feel need in his grip—he needed her touch and that made emotion burn behind her own eyes.

  Levi quickly resumed stitching. After a while the stranger’s grasp on Mia’s fingers relaxed and his breathing turned soft, calm and rhythmic. “I think he’s sleeping,” she whispered.

  “You’ve got some kind of magic, Nurse Sanders,” Levi murmured.

  Yeah, and it always works on the wrong kind of men.

  Mia freed her hand carefully, unnerved by the strange intimacy she’d felt with this mysterious man’s hand in hers. She stepped away from the cot and gathered up the blanket. Re-covering him, she turned her back on both him and Levi and began to aggressively fold the man’s damp clothes, setting them into a pile on the chair that she’d later take down to Mrs. Black for laundering. But the main reason she’d turned her back was to hide the emotion burning in her eyes from Levi. She’d been blindsided by something, and it was so unexpected. Why now?

  Why this man?

  But Mia knew why. It was because he reminded her of Brad, had the same dark and kinetic intensity that did her in sexually. And she sensed that, like Brad, this man was damaged inside—he’d been through something close to hell. She’d heard it in his scream, and his pain called to the healer in her.

  She could virtually hear her mother’s voice as she folded the damp jeans.

  Men like him are not cut out to be husbands, Mia, or fathers who stay home and mow lawns. You can’t fix, or tame, men like Brad. Don’t take on another project that’s going to hurt you....

  A project. That’s what her mother had called Brad.

  She hadn’t bought it. Until it was too late. Until she’d been driven into therapy where she’d been asked about prior relationships and then told she had a subliminal and destructive attraction to this type of adrenaline-hungry and flawed
alpha male. She was drawn like a moth to the white-hot alpha flame. She repeatedly bashed her stupid heart against the jagged rocks of men who’d ultimately crush her.

  The therapist went so far as to suggest her father was the reason, and further, that she was trying to subconsciously emulate the relationship that had nearly destroyed her mother.

  That’s when she’d quit therapy and moved to Wyoming to heal herself. To the Laramie Mountains with their ice-cold trout streams full of rainbow-flanked fish. To the wide open prairies, big sky country, where things didn’t hide in drippy shadows. Mia had wanted escape the dense, lushness of the Pacific Northwest, the cloying reminders of everything that had gone wrong.

  So she’d cut everyone out of her life who knew of her humiliation, who reminded her of her shame. And she’d liked it here, where people didn’t know. Where she could start fresh.

  But it also had left her walled up, unable to trust, with a sense of time and life passing her by.

  Levi finished suturing and covered his neat line of dark stitches with a light gauze bandage. He went over to the sink where he removed his gloves and washed his hands. Grabbing a tissue, he held it against his split lip.

  “I’ll call the hospital in Cheyenne, arrange for a CAT scan and an appointment with a neurological specialist as soon as they can get him in,” he said, dabbing the tissue. “I know it’s your weekend, Mia—but I need you to watch him 24/7, rouse him at regular intervals, check his memory.”

  “No problem.”

  “You sure?”

  She gave a light laugh. “It’s my job—the emergency calls never come when you want them.”

  He tossed the bloody tissue in the trash, grabbed a fresh one. “I’ll get Trevor Garth, ranch security, to notify the Dead P.D. about our stranger.” From the counter, he scooped up the strip of blanket and the photo Mia had found in the man’s pockets. “I’ll take these up to show Jethro and let him know what’s happened.”

  “You think it could really be him—Cole Colton?”

  Levi glanced at the stranger, lying peacefully now. He fingered the piece of baby blanket, thoughtful. Then he looked up, met her eyes.

  “Wouldn’t that be something.”

  She gave him a smile. “Your half brother.”

  An odd look flitted across Levi’s face, and Mia wondered suddenly what Cole Colton’s arrival might mean to the young doc. Levi, the illegitimate son, had given up a lot to come to Dead River and finally reconcile with his father. And now, to suddenly find a long-lost half brother. A first-born heir.

  And what would it mean to the Colton sisters?

  “Maybe I should keep his clothes for the cops,” she said. “Instead of sending them down to Mrs. Black. They might need them for evidence or something. Especially if he was mugged.”

  “Right, yes, good idea. I’ll let Trevor know everything’s here.” He hesitated. “And Mia, call me, stat, if there’s any change in him. Any change at all.”

  She nodded.

  The door swung slowly shut behind him and Mia was left alone with their John Doe. Trevor Garth, the ranch’s head of security, had had his hands full of late. Not only that, he was now engaged to marry Gabby, the youngest Colton sister. A Christmas wedding had been planned.

  Mia moved the blanket higher up over her patient and readjusted the thermostat, thinking that she didn’t really want to be around come Christmas. She wasn’t sure she could face someone else’s wedding yet. She didn’t want to go home for Christmas, either. She lowered the hospital-style bed so that it was at normal bed height and she set the alarm on her watch to wake her patient.

  Taking a chair under the window, Mia leaned her head back, suddenly drained. She closed her eyes, listening to the mounting wind outside. A bare branch ticked against the infirmary window. The storm front that had been forecast was blowing in earlier than anticipated—she could have been caught out there, alone in the mountains, had it not been for her John Doe. Mia drifted into a light sleep. She dreamed of her wedding, standing alone outside the church....

  * * *

  A sharp knocking startled Mia awake. Her eyes flared open and panic rushed momentarily through her—but it was just a branch rapping harder against the pane as the wind increased. Outside the sky was turning purple with clouds. She must have drifted off.

  As she stared out the window, Mia felt a prickling awareness down the back of her neck. She spun round. He was watching her from the bed, eyes intense. Unblinking.

  She got up, went to his bedside, sat carefully on the side of his bed.

  “Hey,” she said softly, touching his arm. “I’m Mia Sanders. I found you in the back fields of Dead River Ranch this morning. You’re in the infirmary in the Colton household. I’m the nurse on the ranch. You received a gash on your head and were unconscious for a while.”

  His gaze moved slowly left, then right, settling back on her. The darkness in his eyes was disconcerting, the same hue as the brewing storm outside.

  With his eyes open he had even more presence. He seemed more...everything. More male, untamed. More sexually dangerous to her. Mia felt an odd little clutch in her stomach as the infirmary walls seemed to press in on her. The space felt suddenly too small, too hot. Too closed.

  He watched her face, eyes unmoving.

  The wind outside tossed a sudden clatter of dead leaves against the window and his body tensed. Fear raced across his features.

  “It’s okay,” she said, watching his pupils carefully. “Just a storm brewing. Can you tell me your name?”

  Confusion washed through his eyes. He glanced slowly around the infirmary as if something in the decor might yield an answer. His hand went to the bandage on his head and that whisper of fear ran through his features again.

  “I don’t know,” he said, very quietly. His voice was a low baritone, gravel cloaked in velvet. Wind gusted outside again, clacking the leafless branch hard against infirmary window.

  “Do you know what day it is?”

  His gaze dropped to his wrist, as if in search for a watch that wasn’t there. Mia wondered if that, too, had been stolen.

  “No,” he said.

  “Wednesday morning, September eighth. Now remember that,” she said with a smile, “because I’m going to ask you again soon what day it is—to check your short-term memory.” She hesitated, then said, “Could your name be Cole Colton?”

  His eyes narrowed sharply and a deep V furrowed his brow as he struggled to remember. Then he looked away in defeat.

  She leaned forward. “You had a photograph in your pocket of a woman named Brittany Beal Colton who died thirty years ago. Brittany was Jethro Colton’s first wife. In the photo she’s holding their infant son, Cole, who was kidnapped not long after his mother’s funeral.” Mia paused. “You also had a piece of baby blanket with the name Cole embroidered on it—just like the blanket he was wrapped in when he was abducted.”

  “Blanket?”

  Mia nodded.

  His eyes darted frantically around the infirmary again and he swallowed, fisting and unfisting his hands. Mia’s gaze was drawn to his eagle tattoo, the way his muscle motion made the talons flex on his skin, as if the claws were reaching out. She thought about his tears, the way his fingers had clutched hers so tightly, so desperately.

  “You’re in Jethro Colton’s house now,” she said softly. “The closest town is Dead River, fifteen miles away. We’re about forty miles northwest of Cheyenne, Wyoming’s capital. Does any of this ring
any bells?”

  * * *

  He stared up at the blonde. Mia Sanders, she’d said. A nurse. For a moment, when he’d first opened his eyes, he’d seen another face peering down at him—the face of a blonde woman holding a door open, her features crumpling at the sight of him as her hand went to her heavily pregnant belly. Nausea washed through his stomach as he struggled to pull the memory into better focus, to identify the pregnant woman. But it scuttled into the recesses of his mind even as he grasped for it.

  His head began to buzz. He felt dizzy.

  He focused on Mia instead. Her buttery-colored hair was shiny and it was caught back in a braid. Soft wisps had come loose around her heart-shaped face. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips bow shaped. Pretty. Real pretty.

  She reminded him of sunshine. Apples. Health. Her skin was flawless, her eyes soft blue. The light in her eyes made him think of summer days when the sun was high and warm. Of lemonade, watermelon wedges and water spouting from red fire hydrants. Sparkling drops like jewels against the sky.

  Chase, come out the water now and get your watermelon before Jimmy eats it all!

  God, where was that voice coming from—Chase? Jimmy?

  His heart began to thump.

  Another woman’s voice, different, called from somewhere deep in his memory. Jagger! Jagger, get down from the tree—you’ll kill yourself!

  The voice morphed into another woman’s.... Cole, can you hear me...are you Cole Colton?