Colton by Marriage

by Marie Ferrarella

  Shutting the door, she leaned against it, feeling incredibly confused. Incredibly drained.

  Jolene shut her eyes as she tried to pull herself together. When she opened them again, she wasn’t alone. Craig Warner, the man who had singlehandedly helmed the brewery into becoming a household name and the sole reason she’d become the happy woman she was, was standing beside her.

  “That was the sheriff. He came to tell me that Mark wasn’t dead before. But he is now.” Did that sound as crazy as she thought it did?

  Craig nodded. “I heard,” he said quietly.

  Jolene blew out a breath as she dragged her hand through her long, straight hair. At fifty, she didn’t have a single gray hair to her name. Astonishing, considering the trying life she’d led until Mark had been killed—or reportedly killed, she amended silently.

  Her eyes met Craig’s, searching for strength. “What do I do now?”

  Shirtless and wearing only jeans that he’d hastily thrown on when he’d heard the doorbell, Craig padded over to her. Linking his strong, tanned fingers through hers, he gave her hand a light tug toward the staircase.

  “Come back to bed,” he told her.

  She couldn’t pull her thoughts together. Was she to have a second funeral? Did she just have the body quietly buried? There were so many questions and she just couldn’t focus.

  “But, Mark—” she began in protest.

  “Is dead and not going anywhere,” Craig told her. “He’ll still be there in the morning. And he’ll still be dead. You’ve had a shock and you need time to process it, Jo.” He kissed her lightly on the temple, then looked down at her face. “Let me help you do that.”

  Jolene blew out another shaky breath, then smiled a small, hesitant smile reminiscent of the way she’d once been. Craig was right. He was always right.

  Without another word, she let him lead her up the stairs back to her bedroom and the bed that had become the center of her happiness.

  “You think he’ll stay dead this time?” Bonnie Gene asked her husband the next afternoon. The story was all over town about Mark Walsh’s second, and consequently, actual murder.

  Donald Kelley was in his favorite place, the state-of-the-art kitchen that he had installed at great cost in his restaurant. Feeling creative, he was experimenting with a new barbecue sauce, trying to find something that was at once familiar yet tantalizingly different to tease the palates of his patrons. Bonnie Gene had come along with him, whether to act as his inspiration or to make sure that he didn’t sample too much of his own cooking wasn’t clear. But he had his suspicions.

  “Who?” Donald asked, distracted. Right now, the hickory flavoring was a little too overpowering, blocking the other ingredients he wanted to come through. The pot he was standing over, stirring, was as huge as his ambitions.

  “Mark Walsh,” she said with an air of exasperation. Didn’t Donald pay attention to anything except what went into his mouth? “That man must really have enemies, to be killed twice.”

  “He wasn’t killed the first time,” Donald pointed out, proving that he was paying attention. “He had to fake that.”

  Bonnie Gene was never without an opinion. “Most likely he faked it because he knew that someone was out to get him. And apparently they finally did. Mark Walsh is really dead this time,” she told her husband with finality. “Boyd Arnold’s running around town volunteering details and basking in his fifteen minutes of fame for having found the body in the creek.” She shivered at the mere thought of seeing the ghoulish sight of Mark Walsh’s half-decomposed body submerged in the water.

  “Found whose body?” Susan asked, walking into the kitchen, order forms for future parties tucked against her chest.

  She set the forms down in her section of the room. It was an oversize kitchen, even by restaurant standards, which was just the way her father liked it. The size was not without its merit for her as well. It allowed her to run the catering end of the business without getting in her father’s way—or anyone else’s for that matter.

  Bonnie Gene swung around in her daughter’s direction, delighted by Susan’s obvious ignorance of the latest turn of events. There weren’t all that many people left to surprise with this little tidbit.

  Crossing to her, Bonnie Gene placed her arm around her daughter’s slender shoulders, paused dramatically and then said, “Mark Walsh.”

  Susan looked at her mother, confused. “What about Mark Walsh?”

  “Boyd Arnold just found his body. Well, not just,” Bonnie Gene corrected herself before her husband could. “Boyd found it several days ago.”

  That cleared up nothing. Susan stared at her mother, trying to make sense of what she was being told. She knew that in New Orleans, whenever the floods covered the various cemeteries in that city, the waters disinterred the bodies that had been laid to rest there, but there’d been no such extreme weather aberrations here.

  What was her mother talking about? “But Mr. Walsh’s been dead for the last fifteen years,” she protested. “His body’s buried in the cemetery.”

  There was nothing that Bonnie Gene liked more than being right. She smiled beatifically now at her daughter. “Obviously not.”

  Susan jumped from fact to conclusion. “Then Damien Colton is innocent.”

  Donald sneaked a sample of his new sauce, then covertly slipped the ladle back into the pot and continued stirring. “It would appear so,” he agreed.

  Susan couldn’t help thinking of all the years that Damien had lost, cooling his heels in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. The years in which a man shaped his future, made his reputation, if not his fortune. All lost because a jury had wrongly convicted him.

  She looked from her mother to her father. “My God, what kind of a grudge do you think Damien’s going to have against the people who put him away for something he didn’t do?”

  The thought had crossed Bonnie Gene’s mind as well. “There’s something I could live without finding out,” she responded.

  Susan’s mind went from Damien to Duke, his twin. They said that most twins had an uncanny bond, that they felt each other’s pain. That was probably why he’d been so solemn all these years, she thought. How would Duke take the news of his brother’s innocence?

  Or did he already know?

  If he did, Duke had to be filled with mixed feelings. She knew that he’d never believed that Damien had been the one to kill Mark Walsh and he’d turned out to be right. He had to feel good about that, she reasoned.

  But now Mr. Walsh really was dead. Who had killed the man after all this time? And had someone tried to frame Duke’s twin brother for that first murder?

  Or maybe whoever had made it look like Mr. Walsh was killed that first time had tried to frame Duke and Damien had mistakenly been accused of the crime.

  But wait a minute.

  Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt. Mark Walsh hadn’t been dead at the time and he never came forward. That meant what, that Mark Walsh had been behind all this? That he had been the one who had deliberately tried to frame Damien? Or Duke?

  Why?

  She had to see Duke, Susan thought suddenly. This was a huge deal. The man was going to need someone to talk to, to be his friend. He’d been there for her, albeit almost silently, but he’d made his presence known. Returning the favor was the least she could do for the man.

  She made up her mind. “Mother, I don’t have an event to cater today.”

  Bonnie Gene looked at her, trying to discern where Susan was going with this. “And your point is?” she prodded, waiting.

  Susan saw that one of the kitchen staff had cocked her head in her direction, listening. She moved closer to her mother, lowering her voice. “I think I’ll see if Duke Colton needs a friendly ear to talk to.”

  Bonnie Gene nodded. “Or any other body part that might come into play,” she commented with an encouraging smile.

  No, no more matchmaking, Mother. Please. “Mother, I just want to be the man’s friend if he need
s one,” Susan protested.

  “Nobody can ever have too many friends,” Bonnie Gene agreed, doing her best to keep a straight face. She failed rather badly.

  Susan rolled her eyes. “Mother, you’re incorrigible.”

  “What did I say?” Bonnie Gene asked, looking at her with the most innocent expression she could muster.

  Susan turned to her other parent. “Dad, back me up here.”

  Her father spared her a quick glance before turning his attention back to the industrial-size pot he was standing over. He chuckled under his breath, most likely happy that someone else was drawing Bonnie Gene’s fire for a change.

  “This is your mother you’re dealing with. You’re on your own, kiddo,” he told her.

  Bonnie Gene raised her hands, as if she was the one surrendering. “I have no idea what you two are inferring,” she declared. “But I have guests to mingle with,” she told them. And with that, she crossed to the swinging doors that led out into the Cookhouse’s dining room. But just as she was about to walk out, she stopped and stepped back into the kitchen.

  When she turned to look at Susan, there was a very pleased smile on her lips. “Looks like you won’t have to drive out of town to play good Samaritan, honey.”

  As was the case half the time, Susan had no idea what her mother was talking about. “What do you mean?” she asked, crossing to her.

  Bonnie Gene held one of the swinging doors partially open so that Susan could get a good look into the dining area.

  “Well, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, Duke Colton just took a seat at one of the tables in the main dining room.” She let the door slip back into place. “Why don’t you go see what he wants?”

  That was being a bit too pushy, Susan thought, suddenly feeling nervous. “I can’t just go out and play waitress.”

  “You can if I tell you to,” Bonnie Gene countered, then turned toward the lone waitress in the kitchen. The girl was about to go on duty. “Allison here is feeling sick, aren’t you, Allison?”

  Confusion washed over the woman’s broad face. “I’m fine, Mrs. Kelley,” Allison protested with feeling.

  Bonnie Gene was not about to be deterred. “See how sick she is? She’s delirious.” Placing both hands to Susan’s back, Bonnie Gene gave her a little push out through the swinging doors. “Go, take his order. And follow it to the letter,” she added, raising her voice slightly as the doors swung closed again.

  “You’re shameless, Bonnie Gene,” Donald commented with a chuckle, never looking away from the sauce, which now was making small, bubbling noises and projecting tiny arcs of hot red liquid in the air.

  “As long as I get to be a grandmother, I don’t care what you call me,” she told him.

  With that, she went to the swinging doors to open them a crack and observe Susan and Duke—and she hoped that she would have something to observe.

  Chapter 8

  Duke looked up just as Susan reached the two-person booth where he had parked his lean, long frame.

  “Duke, I just heard.”

  She was breathless, although she wasn’t certain exactly why. It wasn’t as if she’d rushed over to his table and she hadn’t been doing anything previous to this that would have stolen the air out of her lungs, but she was definitely breathless.

  Subtly, Susan drew in a deep breath to sustain herself and sound more normal.

  Duke continued to look at her, arching a brow, as if he was waiting for her to finish her sentence.

  So she added, “About Wes finding Mark Walsh’s body. I don’t know whether to congratulate you or to offer my condolences.”

  “Why would you feel you had to do either?” Duke asked her in that slow, rich voice of his that seemed to get under her skin so quickly.

  She shifted uncomfortably. Why did he need her to explain? “Well, because this means that Damien didn’t do it.”

  “I already knew that,” he told her, his voice deadly calm.

  She had no idea how to respond to that, especially since Duke was definitely in the minority when it came to that opinion. Most of the town had thought that Damien was guilty and were quick to point out that there’d been no love lost between Damien and Mark Walsh. Matters had grown worse when Walsh had discovered that Damien was in love with his daughter, Lucy.

  Never in danger of being elected Father of the Year, Walsh still wanted to control the lives of all of his offspring. None of his plans included having his oldest daughter marry a Colton and he made that perfectly clear to Damien. He was the one who had broken things up between Lucy and Damien. When Walsh was discovered beaten to death in the apartment he kept expressly for romantic trysts in Bozeman shortly afterward, everyone assumed that Damien had killed Walsh.

  “Why condolences?” Duke finally asked when Susan said nothing further but still remained standing there.

  She took his question as an invitation to join him. Sliding into the other seat, she faced him and knotted her fingers together before responding. “Because your brother had to spend so much time in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed.”

  Duke lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Yeah, well, that’s life.”

  Susan stared at him, stunned. How could he sit there so calmly? Did the man have ice water in his veins? Or didn’t he care? She felt excited about this turn of events and she wasn’t even remotely related to Damien. As a matter of fact, she hardly remembered him. She’d been barely ten years old when Damien Colton had been sent off to prison.

  “Don’t you have any feelings about this?” she questioned.

  “Whether I have feelings or don’t have feelings about a particular subject is not up for public debate or display,” he informed her in the same stony voice.

  Well, that certainly put her in her place, Susan thought, stung.

  Angry tears rose to her eyes and she silently upbraided herself for it. Tears, to Duke, she was certain, were undoubtedly a sign of weakness. But ever since she was a little girl, tears had always popped up when she was angry, undercutting anything she might have to say in rebuttal.

  The tears always spoke louder than her words.

  So rather than say anything, Susan abruptly rose and walked away.

  Duke opened his mouth to call out after her. He’d caught sight of the tears and felt badly about making her cry, although for the life of him he saw no reason for that kind of a reaction on her part. But then he’d long since decided that not only were women different than men, they were completely unfathomable, their brains operating in what struck him as having to be some kind of an alternate universe.

  Still, he did want to apologize if he’d somehow hurt her feelings. That hadn’t been his intent. However, Bertha Aldean was sitting with her husband at the table over in the corner. A natural-born gossip, the woman was staring at him with wide, curious eyes. She was obviously hungry for something further to gossip about.

  There was no way he was going to give the woman or the town more to talk about.

  So he went back to scanning the menu and waited for a waitress to come and take his order. Susan Kelley was just going to have to work out what was going on in her head by herself.

  “He’s been alive all this time?” Damien’s hand tightened on the black telephone receiver he was required to use in order to hear what his brother, Duke, was saying to him.

  They were seated at a long, scarred table, soundproof glass running the length of it, separating them the way it did all the prisoners from their visitors. He was surprised at the middle-of-the-week visit from Duke. Weekdays were for doing chores on the ranch according to his father’s rigid work ethic.

  And he was utterly stunned by the news that Duke had brought. With a minimum of words, his twin had told him about the body that Wes had discovered.

  Damien had received the news with fury.

  “Yeah,” Duke replied to his twin’s rhetorical question. “Until the other day. Now, according to Wes, Walsh is as dead as a doornail.”

  Duke saw
the anger in his brother’s eyes and hoped that no one else noticed. He didn’t want Damien doing anything to jeopardize his release.

  Damien fairly choked on his anger. “That bastard could have come forward any time in the last fifteen years and gotten me released.”

  “Not likely, since he hated your guts,” Duke reminded him in a calm, collected voice. “And more than that,” Duke pointed out, “he was afraid.”

  Dark-brown eyebrows narrowed over darkening green eyes. “Afraid of what? Me?”

  “You, maybe,” Duke acknowledged. His twin was a formidable man, especially now. He’d used all his free time to work out and build up his already considerable physique. There’s always the possibility that Mark framed Damien himself, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to. The victim was wearing Mark’s clothing and watch. “More likely, he was afraid of whoever killed that guy they found in his apartment fifteen years ago and mistook for him. He probably figured that the killer thought the same thing, that he’d killed him—Walsh,” Duke clarified. “As long as people thought he was dead, Walsh thought he was safe. If that meant that you had to stay in prison, well, Walsh probably saw that as being a bonus.”

  “Bonus?” Damien echoed incredulously. “What do you mean bonus?”

  Duke would have thought that was self-evident. “If you were in prison, you weren’t making babies with his daughter.”

  Damien snorted. “Small chance of that. Lucy hates my guts.” She’d made that perfectly clear the last time he’d seen her. But before then…before then it had been another matter. He’d thought they really had something special, something that was meant to last.

  “Because she thinks you killed her father,” Duke emphasized. “That’s the reason she hates you. Since you didn’t, there’s nothing for her to hate any more.”

  “It’s too late,” Damien said quietly. Too late. Too much time had been lost.

  Damien scrubbed his hand over his face. Joy filtered in to mix with the rage. Impotent rage because there wasn’t anyone to direct that rage toward, now that Walsh was dead. Holding the jury—and his father who should have stood up for him—accountable for his being here all these years seemed pointless.