A Hasty Wedding

by Cara Colter

  * * *

  A Hasty Wedding

  Cara Colter

  * * *

  Published by Silhouette Books

  America's Publisher of Contemporary Romance

  To Jeff Shatzko

  the son of my heart

  "Come in for a sec," Holly said. "I'm not quite ready. Can I get you a drink?"

  Blake stumbled in the door behind her. Where had she been hiding this figure? Those suits she wore to the office made her look like a box.

  And where had this face come from? Her glasses had hidden the curve of that cheekbone, the pert line of her nose; they had diminished the astonishing color and depth of her hazel eyes.

  She disappeared into a room at the back. Before she closed the door he caught a glimpse of a white lace bedspread that made his mouth go dry, it was so sensual and virginal at the same time.

  What was wrong with him? Because she'd been transformed from a guppy to a goldfish to an angelfish before he had time to adjust to it?

  She came out of the bedroom. She looked as tall and willowy as a model, but with legs as long and shapely as a chorus girl's.

  His tongue was as tied as if he were a schoolboy.

  This was Holly.

  Meet the Coltons—a California dynasty with a legacy of privilege and power.

  Holly Lamb: Overnight Cinderella. She's been in love with her gorgeous, serious-minded boss since the first day she started at the Hopechest Ranch, but Blake has never treated her with anything more than friendly respect. Until he invites her to a community-sponsored dance, and this virgin transforms herself into a sexy siren….

  Blake Fallon: A hero for Holly. His undemanding assistant has loyally stood by his side throughout countless crises, but can he prove his mettle—and love—when Holly most needs his support?

  Joe Colton: Town patriarch. Though he and his long-lost wife have opened their home to the townspeople during this crisis, this selfless man has more planned for the community that saw him through his long ordeal!

  About the Author

  CARA COLTER

  Readers often tell author Cara Colter the only thing they don't like about her books is that they end too soon! Cara was delighted to be asked to write for THE COLTONS series, especially since the longer format allowed her the opportunity to satisfy reader requests and develop her characters more deeply. Holly and Blake, the hero and heroine of A Hasty Wedding, are a dynamic couple who have transformed the early challenges of their lives into their greatest strengths. This is a theme that is profoundly and personally meaningful to Cara.

  Cara lives in a remote area of British Columbia, and so the experience of working with other writers on THE COLTONS series was a delightful one for her. "I am absolutely in awe of the imagination, talent and intelligence of the women who wrote this series."

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  One

  The knife was sharp and cold, the tip of it pressed into the delicate flesh where her neck and her jawbone met.

  Her afternoon had slipped from mundane to perilous in a single tick of the second hand on the old grandfather clock that sat in the corner of her office, and Holly Lamb waited for her life to flash before her eyes.

  When it did not, she was amazed when her mind told her, with wry good humor that was totally inappropriate given the knife and the wild eyes of the young man who wielded it, that her life had really not been interesting enough first time around to take a repeat on it.

  Ordinary if not particularly happy childhood, college, secretarial career. No wild passions or great loves, no untamed moments of youthful hijinks, no great accomplishments in the arts or sciences.

  But even in light of that rather unexciting twenty-seven years, Holly could not persuade any regrets to come to mind. She did not suddenly wish she had accepted the invitation to bungee jump—naked—off the Prosperino Bridge. She had no regrets about not seeing the Sistine Chapel or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

  Of course, she might have liked to know about sex.

  Not "know" in a technical sense, as if movies and television hadn't educated everyone quite enough in that area. Maybe know wasn't quite the right word. Experience would be a better choice of words. While one part of her brain tried desperately to tell her that this was really not the time to be following this particular flow of thoughts, the other part continued blithely down the path, speculating what it would be like to feel so close to another human being, to have a man's lips claim your lips, and his hands touch your body with tenderness and mastery…

  It came to her then, where this path was leading.

  What came to her in that moment with the blade pressed sharply, in uncomfortably close proximity to her jugular, was a startling clarity of thought.

  What came to her was a stunning secret that she had kept from herself for eight months. A secret that filled her with a stunning sense of warmth, again, totally inappropriate to the situation she was in.

  But she held the thought, and in it she found a great well of courage and calm inside of herself. She dipped into it.

  "Why don't you put the knife down?" she suggested, amazed at what was in her voice. Not just calm. But a compassion born of her new self-knowledge.

  "You tell me where my sister is." Her attacker's voice was harsh, and his face was so close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath, smell his desperation.

  "I don't even know who your sister is," she said evenly. She looked into his eyes. He was just a child, despite a faint stubble that darkened his cheeks. He might have been sixteen. His eyes were dark and wild. With fear.

  Under different circumstances she might have thought he was a good-looking boy. She made herself look at him analytically. If she lived, she would have to tell the police.

  His hair was dark and curly, his eyes a dark, velvety brown that reminded her of a deer caught in headlights. He was taller than her, but lithe, and wiry. His jeans and jacket were torn and dirty.

  "You people," he said furiously, "think because I've made a few mistakes, I don't care about my sister? Don't you understand nothin'?"

  Her clarity was holding, because she felt from her moment of studying him, she understood everything, and realized it did not have a thing to do with filling out a police report. Her voice came out gentle, filled with the most amazing tenderness.

  "I understand love."

  The statement amazed her, because she spoke it with such conviction.

  And really, if there was a topic she had no understanding of, it was probably that one. The Lamb family were not the ones who had put the "fun" in the word dysfunctional. Her mother and father had divorced when she was a child, and she had harbored the secret belief it was probably her fault.

  While others had tested the waters of passion and romance in college, Holly had studied.

  And yet the words "I understand love" had come from some place so deep within her, she recognized it as her own soul, and she felt some subtle change in the boy, as the words, powerful in their authenticity, touched him.

  The pressure of the blade on her neck faltered, eased, and then was gone. She had not even realized she had been holding her breath until she began to breathe again. She touched her neck and looked at her hand. No blood.

  A deep awareness permeated her. Those words—"I understand love"—had sav
ed her life.

  The fight was gone from the boy. His thin shoulders sagged under the worn fabric of his denim jacket, and the fury of his expression melted into sad bewilderment.

  "I'm so tired," he whispered. "I'm so damned tired."

  "I know," she said. It was true. She could see the gray lines of fatigue around his eyes and his mouth, in the sag of his young body.

  "I've been trying to find her for three weeks. Me and her, we're all we got, you know?"

  She nodded, reached out tentatively and touched his arm. He stiffened, but didn't pull away.

  "I went to the foster home she was in before I got put in juvvie. She wasn't there anymore. Nobody will tell me where she is. She's just little and I promised her, I promised her I'd find her as soon as I could."

  Holly listened to his voice and watched his face. Suddenly, she recognized something in the wide, lovely set of his eyes. And his words sounded so familiar. She cast back in her mind, trying to get to a place before the children had been evacuated from the Hopechest Ranch.

  "She's got to have something to believe in," he said, broken. "She's got to be able to believe in me."

  It came to her. A little girl looking up at her, her eyes wide, her thumb pulled out of her mouth for only a moment. Has my brother come yet? He promised. Then furious sucking on that thumb, as if that pushed back the tears that she wanted to cry.

  "Lucille," Holly whispered.

  The boy's head flew up, and he looked at her with tortured eyes, eyes that were afraid to believe.

  "You're Tomas," she said with soft realization. "You're Lucille's big brother."

  He looked back down swiftly, but not swiftly enough to hide the sudden moisture in his eyes, the twitch around his lips.

  "She talks about you all the time," Holly said gently. "She told me you were coming. I've been waiting for you."

  His mouth fell open, as if no one in the world, besides his little sister, had ever waited for him before.

  Holly's mind clicked over the file. Mother drug-addicted. Father dead. No one had ever waited for him before.

  "I didn't know how to find you," she apologized softly. "Sometimes the records get mixed up. Especially the last couple months." She didn't want to think about the last couple months right now. "But Lucille told me not to worry. That you would come."

  He came to her like he was walking out of a dream, like a wounded warrior, his head hanging, his shoulders slumping, a great and pressing weariness in him. And ever so slowly he laid his cheek on her shoulder.

  It was when she gathered him to her, like the hurt child he really was, when she put one arm around his waist and stroked the beautiful dark silk of his curls with the other, that he began to cry.

  The knife clattered to the floor, and when she heard the door open behind Tomas, she nudged the fallen weapon gently under the corner of her desk with her toe.

  Over the heaving jean-clad shoulder, she met the eyes of her boss, Blake Fallon, director of the Hopechest Ranch, where she had come to work eight months ago as his secretary.

  Gray eyes, somber, deep, quiet. His eyes reminded her of a mountain lake reflecting storm clouds and rugged, soaring peaks. The strength and wisdom of those ancient peaks seemed to be at the heart of those astonishing eyes. Even the fabulous abundance of thick sooty lashes that framed those eyes, did not detract from the impression of strength.

  It was an impression that repeated itself in his features over and over again. Rugged strength proclaimed itself in the slight bump of a once-straight nose, in the uncompromising line of his mouth, in the proud angles of his chin and his cheekbones.

  The theme of strength continued in the hard line of an athletic build. Just over six feet tall, Blake Fallon was immensely broad across his shoulders, his stomach was hard and flat, his hips slim. His legs were long and tapered, the pressed jeans he was wearing clinging to the large muscle of his thigh.

  Today, he was dressed casually, as he usually did when he would be spending the day in the Hopechest Ranch office. His blue plaid shirt open at the collar, tucked neatly into belted jeans, sneakers on his feet. His brown hair was short and neat, the kind of cut that policemen and Secret Service men and those who exercised authority on a regular basis seemed to gravitate to naturally.

  Despite the casual dress, she knew after eight months as his secretary, there was not much casual about Blake Fallon. He had a mind as intimidating and as powerful as a steel trap. He ran the Hopechest Ranch with a seeming ease that didn't come from graduating with his MBA at the top of his class.

  Her best friend, Jennifer, had given her the low-down on Blake Fallon. He could have done anything. When he'd finished college the Fortune 500 companies had been knocking down his door. Flying him to interviews. Wining and dining him.

  He'd turned his back on all that, for this.

  To run a ranch for kids in trouble.

  She saw him appraising the atmosphere in the room now, alert to the tension and emotion, ready, like a big jungle cat, to spring in whatever direction was needed.

  "Hi, Holly. What's going on?" His voice betrayed none of that alertness. It was deep and pleasant, relaxed. The kind of voice a cowboy used to tame a wild horse, the kind of voice that encouraged frightened things to trust, and lonely things to believe—

  She stopped her mind from going there, much too close to the place of the secret that beat with delicate new life in her breast.

  Besides, at the sound of Blake's voice the boy reared back from her and pivoted on his heel. His eyes skittered around desperately for the knife, even as he wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket.

  "This is Lucille Watkins's brother, Tomas," she said smoothly. "Remember Lucille told us if we couldn't find him, he'd find us?"

  Blake smiled, but she saw he was gauging the boy, and that his muscles were coiled tight, ready to deal with all the anger and fear rolling off the boy.

  "She said it about a hundred times a day," Blake agreed, meeting the boy's defiant gaze steadily. "Tomas, I'm Blake Fallon, director of the Hopechest Ranch."

  "I don't care if you're the director of Sing-Sing. Where's my sister? I found out she was here, but this place is like a ghost town. All these empty buildings. It's creepy."

  "We've had an incident here," Blake said, and cast Holly a look.

  It amazed her how often they did this. Communicated over kids' heads with just a look. And how accurate they had become at reading each other.

  His look asked what she had told the boy. Her look answered nothing. Handle with care. He's fragile.

  "What kind of incident?" Tomas asked, panicky.

  "Lucille is fine. Our water was contaminated."

  The boy's face went a deathly shade of pale. "Is she sick? Is she okay? If you're lying to me—"

  "I have no reason to lie to you." The tone of Blake's voice never altered from that calm, steady voice that Holly had come to hear in her dreams. "She was in the hospital for a few days back a couple of months ago. As you can see, we've moved the kids off the ranch. Though the water seems free of contamination now, we're a little reluctant to bring them back just yet."

  Holly knew he didn't want to tell the boy, who was upset enough already, the ugly truth. The ranch's water had been poisoned—on purpose—by a toxic substance, DMBE.

  Blake had been out this morning meeting with two old friends who were working on the investigation, Rafe James, a private investigator, and Rory Sinclair, a forensic scientist from the FBI. Rory wasn't officially on the case anymore, but since he was now living in Prosperino and working out of the San Francisco FBI lab, he was keeping tabs on the case, and helping out when he could. Sergeant Kade Lummus of the Prosperino Police Department had also been at the meeting. Blake suspected they were narrowing in on a suspect, and had been doing so for some weeks.

  Holly desperately wanted to know if there were any new developments. Ever since it had been discovered the water was contaminated with a substance that did not occur naturally, she was haunted by the
horrid truth that someone had deliberately hurt these children—who had so rapidly become her children. It even worked its way into her dreams.

  Terrible dreams, where a thing, a monster, poured a substance into the wellhead. The monster kept shifting shapes in her dreams, and so did the substance.

  Then she would hear Blake's voice calling her, soothing her, and she would wake, trembling, the sweat beading on her body, knowing the monster was real.

  There was a monster in their midst. Someone who would poison the children she had come to love so much. Children who dropped by her office with trust held out to her in the palms of their fragile hands.

  They came with small excuses. Could she mail this letter? Could she find that phone number? Could she check where a brother or sister was? But they stayed because she kept a jar of butterscotch hard candies on her desk, and a warm inviting fire going in the fireplace, and a stack of Archie comic books on the coffee table in front of the worn blue sofa.

  They stayed because she never, ever pressured them to talk, but when they did, she always stopped whatever she was doing, joined them on the sofa and took the time to listen.

  That was not in her job description, and neither was dispensing hugs to those who could handle them. And smiles to those who were not there yet.

  Maybe it was the time with these children that had made that phrase come so confidently to her lips.

  I understand love.

  Her bond with them filled her in ways her life had not been filled before, and so she was eager to know what new developments Blake had managed to unearth in the ongoing investigation about the poisoning of their water system. She needed to know.

  But if there was one thing her eight months on the job here had taught her, it was that the kids came first here.

  Kids who had come last everywhere else came first here.

  Blake had taught her that. And he had done it without saying a single word to her. He had done it by hanging up the phone on a powerful corporate sponsor when a tough-looking towheaded boy had burst into the office moaning over a scratch on his arm. He had done it by clearing his schedule of appointments to go shoot some one-on-one hoops with a boy who was getting ready for a court date or a girl who was getting ready to go home.