Colton by Marriage

by Marie Ferrarella

  Insanity.

  Why else, she later wondered, would she have done what she did in response to Duke’s words? Because she suddenly found herself wanting to do something that she would think in the next moment was outrageous. If she could think.

  If nothing else, it was certainly out of character for her.

  One minute, she was vacillating between being furious with the male species in general—both Linc and Duke acted as if they thought she was just some empty-headed nitwit who needed to be looked after.

  The next minute, something inside her was viewing Duke as her knight in somewhat battered, tarnished armor. A tall, dark, brooding knight to whom she very much wanted to express her gratitude.

  So she kissed him.

  Without stopping to think, without really realizing what she was about to do, she did it.

  On her toes, Susan grabbed onto his rock-hard biceps for leverage and support and then she pressed her lips against his.

  It was a kiss steeped in gratitude. But that swiftly peeled away and before she knew it, Susan was caught up in what she’d initiated, no longer the instigator but the one who’d gotten swept up in the consequences. That was her pulse that was racing, her breath that had vanished without backup. That was her head that was spinning and those were her knees that had suddenly gone missing in action.

  Had she not had the presence of mind to anchor herself to his arms the way she had, Susan realized she might have further embarrassed herself by sinking to the ground, a mindless, palpitating mass of skin, bone and completely useless parts in between.

  God, did he ever pack a wallop.

  It wasn’t often that Duke was caught by surprise. For the most part, he went through life with a grounded, somewhat jaded premonition of what was to come. Duke had been blessed with an innate intuition that allowed him to see what was coming at least a split second before it actually came.

  It wasn’t that he was a psychic; he was an observer, a student of life. And because he was a student who never forgot a single lesson he’d learned, very little out here in this small corner of the world managed to catch him by surprise.

  But this had.

  It had caught him so unprepared that he felt as if he’d just been slammed upside his head with a two-by-four. At least he felt that unsteady. Not only had Susan caught him completely off guard by kissing him, he was even more surprised by the magnitude of his reaction to that very kiss.

  Because Charlene McWilliams’ suicide over a year ago had left him reeling, he’d stepped back from having any sort of a relationship with the softer sex. Her suicide had affected him deeply, not because he’d loved her but because he felt badly that being involved with him had ultimately driven Charlene to take her own life.

  Consequently, practicing mind over matter, Duke had systematically shut down those parts of himself that reacted to a woman on a purely physical level.

  Or so he’d believed up until now.

  Obviously he hadn’t done quite as good a job shutting down as he’d thought, because this little slip of a girl—barely a card-carrying woman—had managed to arouse him to a length and breadth he hadn’t been aroused to in a very long time.

  Fully intending to separate his lips from hers, Duke took hold of Susan’s waist. But somehow, instead of creating a wedge, he wound up pulling her to him, kissing her back.

  Kissing her with feeling.

  He had to create a chasm before his head spun completely out of control, Duke silently insisted, doing his best to rally.

  With effort, his heart hammering like the refrain from “The Anvil Chorus,” Duke forced himself to actually push Susan back—even though everything within him vehemently protested the action.

  With space between them now, Duke looked at her, still stunned. And speechless.

  His mind reeling and a complete blank, Duke turned on his heel and walked away from the veranda and Susan. Quickly.

  The warm night breeze surrounding her like sticky gauze, Susan stood there, watching Duke grow smaller until he disappeared around the corner. Shaken, she couldn’t move immediately. She wasn’t completely sure if she’d just been caught up in some kind of ground-breaking hallucination or if what had just transpired—possibly the greatest kiss of all time—had been real.

  What she did know was that she was having trouble breathing and that feelings both of bereavement and absolute, unmitigated joy were square-dancing inside her.

  Confusing the hell out of her.

  Taking as deep a breath as she could manage, Susan turned around and hurried back into the house. She needed to be able to pull herself together before she ran into her mother. One look from her mother in this present shaken-up condition and she’d be answering questions from now until Christmas.

  Maybe longer.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Darius Colton wanted to know.

  Home to replenish his supply of water before heading back out to the range and his men again, Darius had seen his son’s dusty pickup truck on the horizon, on its way to Duke’s house. Like several of his other offspring, Duke lived in a house located on the Colton Ranch.

  Duke had been conspicuously absent, both this morning and now part of the afternoon. He’d been absent without clearing it with him and Darius didn’t like it.

  Darius Colton didn’t consider himself an unreasonable man, but he needed to know where everyone was and what they were doing at any given hour of the day. It was his right as patriarch of the family.

  To him it was the only way to run a ranch and it was the way he’d managed to build his ranch up to what it now was.

  Getting on the back of the horse he’d tethered to the rear of his truck, Darius rode up to meet Duke. Within range of the pickup, Darius pinned his son with the sharply voiced question.

  When he received no answer, he barked out the question again. “I said, where the hell have you been, boy?”

  Stopping the truck, Duke met his father’s heated glare without flinching. He’d learned a long time ago that any display of fear would have his father pouncing like a hungry jackal on unsuspecting prey. His father had absolutely no respect for anyone who didn’t stand up to him.

  The confusing flip side of that was that the person who opposed him incurred his wrath. There was very little winning when it came to his father. For the most part, to get on his father’s good side, a person had to display unconditional obedience and constant productivity. Anything less was not tolerated for long—if at all.

  “I went to a funeral,” Duke told his father, his voice even.

  The answer did not please Darius. He wasn’t aware of anyone of any import dying. “Well, it’s going to be your own funeral you’ll be attending if I catch you going anywhere again during working hours without asking me first.”

  “I didn’t tell you because you were busy.”

  Duke deliberately used the word tell rather than ask, knowing that his father would pick up on the difference, but it was a matter of pride. He wanted his father to know that he wasn’t just a lackey, he was a Colton and that meant he expected to be treated with respect, same as his father, even if the person on the other end of the discussion was his father.

  His horse beside the driver’s side of the truck’s cab, Darius looked closely at his son. His eyes narrowed as he stared at Duke’s face.

  “This a frisky corpse you went to pay your respects to?” he finally asked.

  There was no humor in his voice. Before Duke could ask him what he was talking about, Darius leaned in and rubbed his rough thumb over the corner of his son’s lower lip.

  And then he held it up for Duke’s perusal.

  There was a streak of pink on his father’s thumb. Pink lipstick.

  The same shade of lipstick he recalled Susan wearing.

  “That didn’t come from the corpse” was all that Duke said. And then he preemptively ran his own thumb over his lips to wipe away any further telltale signs that Susan might have left behind.

  “Well, that�
��s a relief,” Darius said sarcastically. “Wouldn’t want the neighbors talking.” He drew himself up in the saddle. “You’re way behind in your chores, boy,” he informed Duke coldly. “Nobody’s going to carry your weight for you.”

  Darius had long made it clear that he expected his offspring to work the ranch every day, putting in the long hours that were necessary. No exceptions.

  “Don’t expect anyone to,” Duke replied. “I just came home to change,” he added in case his father found fault with his coming back to his own house rather than heading directly to the range.

  “Well, then, be quick about it,” Darius barked. He was about to ride his horse back to his own truck parked before the big house, but he stopped for a second. Curiosity had temporarily gotten the better of him. “Whose funeral was it?”

  “Miranda James,” Duke answered.

  Bushy eyebrows met together over a surprisingly small, well-shaped nose. Darius scowled. “Name doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  His father’s response didn’t surprise him. Darius Colton didn’t concern himself with anyone or anything that wasn’t directly related to the range or the business of running that ranch.

  “Didn’t think it would,” Duke said more to himself than his father.

  Darius snorted, muttered something under his breath about ungrateful whelps being a waste of his time and effort, and then he rode away, leaving a cloud of dust behind in his wake.

  Duke shook his head and went into the house to change. Despite the hour, he had a full day’s work to catch up on. His father expected—and accepted—nothing less and he didn’t want to give the man another reason to go off on him. He wasn’t sure how long his own temper would last under fire.

  Chapter 6

  Admittedly, though it had been close to a year since he was elected sheriff, Wes was still rather new on the job. However, some things just seemed like common sense. According to the unofficial rules of procedure in cases where there was a dead body involved, the next of kin was the first to be notified.

  Usually.

  But in this particular troubling case, the next of kin had already been notified. Fifteen years ago. After getting confirmation from the county medical examiner that the body in the morgue really was Mark Walsh, Wes figured that he could put off notifying Jolene Walsh about her husband’s murder for an hour or so, seeing as how this was the second time she would be receiving the news.

  Since this turn of events was really disturbing—who would have thought he’d get a genuine, honest-to-God mystery so soon after being elected?—Wes wanted to turn to a sympathetic ear to run the main highlights past. Again, he didn’t go the normal route. Since this case did involve his older brother, by rights the family patriarch should be the one he would go to with this.

  Should be, but he didn’t.

  He and Darius had a prickly relationship—the same kind of relationship, when he came right down to it, that his father had with each of his children. Darius Colton, for reasons of his own that no one else was privy to, was not the easiest man to talk to or get along with. He never had been.

  But someone in his family should be told and since this was Wes’s first time notifying anyone about the death of a loved one—or, in Mark Walsh’s case, a barely tolerated one—he wanted to practice it before upending Jolene Walsh’s world a second time with what amounted to the same news.

  So he rode out to his family’s ranch and headed toward the section he knew that Duke was assigned to tending.

  Wait 'til Duke hears this, Wes thought. If this didn’t shake his older brother up, nothing would.

  Blessed with excellent vision, Duke saw Wes approaching across the range a good distance away. Just the barest hint of curiosity reared its head as he watched his brother’s Jeep grow larger.

  Today was his day to mend fences—literally—and he could do with a break, Duke thought. Putting down his hammer and the new wire he was stringing across the posts, Duke left his cracked leather gloves on as he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist.

  Once he did, that brow was practically the only part of him that wasn’t glistening with sweat. His shirt had long since been stripped off and was now tied haphazardly around his waist.

  “Slow day in town?” he called out just before Wes pulled up beside him. “If you’re tired of playing sheriff and want to do some real work, I’ve got another hammer around here somewhere.” He glanced around to see if he’d taken the second tool out of his battered truck or left it in the flatbed.

  Though no one would ever call him laid-back, Duke was considerably more at ease around his siblings, and even his nephew, his sister Maisie’s son, than he was around most people. And that included his father, who he viewed as a less-than-benevolent tyrant.

  When Wes made no response in return, Duke narrowed his eyes and looked at his brother more closely.

  Now that he thought about it, he’d seen Wes look a lot less serious in his time.

  “Who died?” he said only half in jest.

  Pulling up the hand brake, Wes turned off the ignition and got out. He pulled his hat down a little lower. Out here, on the open range, the sun seemed to beat down almost mercilessly. He’d forgotten how grueling it could be out in the open like this.

  “Mark Walsh,” Wes answered his brother.

  Duke frowned. What kind of game was this? “We already know that, Wes. Damien’s in state prison doing time for it.”

  Wes looked up the two inches that separated him from his brother. “Damien didn’t do it.”

  “Also not a newsflash,” Duke countered. He picked up his hammer again. If Wes was out here to play games, he might as well get back to work. “Although the old man hardly lifted a finger to advance that theory.” It wasn’t easy, keeping a note of bitterness out of his voice. He’d always felt his father could have gotten Damien a better lawyer, brought someone in from the outside to defend his twin instead of keeping out of it the way he had. “But the rest of us know that Damien didn’t do it.” Bright-green eyes met blue. “Right?”

  “Absolutely right,” Wes said with feeling. He took a breath, then launched into his narrative. “Boyd Arnold found a body the other day in the creek.”

  Duke waved his hand in dismissal. He paid little attention to what went on around Honey Creek these days—even less if it involved people like Boyd Arnold.

  “Did it have one head or two?” he asked sarcastically. “That lamebrain’s always claiming to find these weird things—”

  Wes stopped him from going on. “What he found was Mark Walsh’s body.”

  That managed to bring Duke up short. He stared at Wes, trying to make sense out of what his brother had just told him. “Somebody dug Walsh up and then tossed him in the creek?” Nobody had ever really liked the man, but that seemed a little excessive.

  Wes shook his head. “No. Whoever’s in Mark Walsh’s grave isn’t Walsh.”

  Duke went from surprised to completely stunned. He waited for a punch line. There wasn’t any. “You’re serious.”

  “Like the plague,” Wes responded. “County coroner just confirmed it from Walsh’s dental records. Nobody else knows yet,” he cautioned, then added, “except for the coroner and Boyd, of course. Boyd’s sworn to secrecy,” he explained when he saw the skeptical look that came into Duke’s eyes.

  “That’ll last ten minutes,” Duke estimated with a snort. And then he realized something. “You haven’t told Jolene yet?” he asked, surprised.

  Wes shook his head. “Not yet. I planned to do that next. I wanted to tell you first.”

  Duke didn’t follow his brother’s reasoning. They got along all right, but he wasn’t any closer to Wes than he was to some of the others. “Why me first?” Duke wanted to know.

  Wes gave him an honest answer. “Because telling you is almost like telling Damien.” The two weren’t identical, but it was close enough. Wes sighed deeply. The guilt he bore for not being able to find something to free his brother earlier weighed
heavily on his soul. “I’m going up to the county courthouse after I tell Jolene, get the wheels in motion for Damien’s release.”

  “Why don’t you go there first?” Duke suggested. He saw he’d caught Wes’s attention. “Seeing how ‘fast’ those wheels turn, you need to get the process started as soon as possible.” He gave Wes an excuse he could use to assuage his conscience. “You won’t be telling Jolene anything she hasn’t heard before. The only thing that’s different is the timeline. She’s still going to be a widow when you finish talking to her. There’s no hurry to deliver the news.”

  Wes gave the matter a cursory thought, then nodded, won over. Duke’s plan made sense. “I guess you’re right.”

  “’Course I’m right.” A small, thin smile curved Duke’s lips. “I’m your big brother.” And then he rolled the news over in his head as the impact of what this all meant hit. “Hell, Mark Walsh…dead again after all this time.” He shook his head. “Don’t that beat all? You got any idea who did it?”

  Wes didn’t have a clue. What he did know was the identity of the one person who didn’t do it. “Not Damien.”

  The thin smile was replaced with a small grin on Duke’s lips. “Yeah, not Damien.” And that, he thought, a wave of what he assumed had to be elation washing over him, said quite a lot.

  Wes checked his watch. “See you,” he said, beginning to get back into his vehicle. And then, shading his eyes a little more, he stopped to squint in the direction he’d come from. “Looks like you’ve got company coming, Duke. This place isn’t as desolate as I remember,” he commented with a short laugh, getting behind the wheel of his Jeep.

  Still stunned by the news Wes had delivered, even though he didn’t show it, Duke looked down the road in the direction Wes had pointed.

  His green eyes narrowed in slight confusion as he made out the figure behind the wheel of the silver-blue sedan.

  Hell, if this kept up, they were going to need a traffic light all the way out here, Duke thought darkly, watching Susan Kelley’s little vehicle approach.