by Addison Fox
Or had never understood before.
Yet try as he might to pull away, the meeting of lips and the even more tantalizing mingling of tongues had him rooted to the spot. The hand she’d initially placed on his shoulder drifted up toward his head and he heard the softest moan as her fingers ran through his hair.
Somewhere in the steady blaze, they’d reached his floor and the elevator doors gave a light ding as they swung open. Nikolas lifted his head, that ding seeming to punctuate the moment.
What was he doing?
He shouldn’t be kissing her. And she shouldn’t be kissing him back. And they shouldn’t...
Nikolas took her hand and stepped off the elevator, effectively shutting down the quick rush to judgment that had sprung up in his mind.
He’d worry about this course of events later.
Right now, they needed to call Marlowe and get a plan together.
Nikolas opened his door and gestured Nova through. She still hadn’t said anything on the walk to his door from the elevator and neither had he. What was there to say?
I’m sorry.
That was great.
It won’t happen again.
No, no and hell no.
It was better to stay quiet and let the reality of kissing Nova Ellis live on in his mind. Besides, why would he jinx the opportunity to possibly do it again?
“I need to go get a few things from my desk. I’ll be right back.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but headed down the hall to his home office to grab a notepad and pen. They had discussed so much that he wanted to write it all down and see if anything jumped out at him.
It was only as he reached for a legal pad on his desk that he saw the notes he had left himself the night before.
Call hospital to check status on Payne Colton.
Update call to Selina Barnes Colton.
Consider man named Ferdy.
In the light of a new day, he was glad he hadn’t done a search for Nova’s ex. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d held back last night, but he was very glad he’d left well enough alone. Nova needed someone she could trust with her secrets. He might not have demonstrated his trustworthiness earlier, but he was determined that would be a one-time slip.
She could trust him. And they would figure out what to do about this Ferdy fellow.
Together.
It was the one thing he could give her. That he could truly promise her. He’d keep his word.
Legal pad in hand, he headed back out to the kitchen. She offered up a wry little smile as she waved at him with an apple in her hand. “Sorry. I was hungry.” He thought he heard her add in a muttered voice, “I knew I should have had the fries.”
Holding back any suggestion he’d heard that last bit, he said, “Nothing to be sorry about. Anything in the house is yours. Please know that.”
“I do know that. Thank you.”
Nikolas looked at her for another minute and realized she had effectively removed any lingering awkwardness between them over the kiss. Their ongoing discussion about food, and her consistent hunger, had given them a chance to refocus. And once again, she awed him with her ability to read people and to understand a situation.
To understand how to shift things just enough so they could move forward.
Normally he’d take something like that as the gift it was and back off. They’d shared an impulsive moment—one not meant to be repeated. And yet...
Unwilling to fully let the subject of the kiss drop, he moved up in front of her, closing the space between them to barely nothing. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Know that you can have whatever you want?” He bent down and, holding her hand still, took a bite of her apple, smiling as he did. “But you might need to share a little bit.”
Chapter 11
Sierra Madden sized up her opponent and considered what she knew. It was a favorite game—one that she’d honed after a lifetime of boxing—and she enjoyed playing it against prospective clients.
The aim of her little game was to see just how much she could find out with the fewest questions.
Take the woman opposite her, here in the booth at the heavily used diner about twenty miles outside of Mustang Valley.
Selina Barnes Colton.
The woman had reached out to have a meeting, intimating on her call that she wanted to hire Sierra to find someone. The who, of course, was the interesting part.
Selina’s former stepson, Asa “Ace” Colton, who was wanted by the cops.
The man had been the subject of endless news stories and quite a bit of gossipy speculation over the past few months. Ever since his father, Payne Colton, was found shot in his office and Ace had gone to the top of the suspect list for the crime.
A crime whose victim hadn’t woken up to name his killer. An attempted killer who may or may not be a man who had recently discovered he wasn’t his biological son.
For her money, Sierra didn’t get a guilty vibe from Ace, but it ultimately wasn’t up to her to decide. That was the funny thing about being a bounty hunter. The only thing she had to decide was whether or not to take the job. Once she made her choice, the rest was up to someone else.
Sierra had read all the news stories, of course. There weren’t many in Arizona who hadn’t. But for some reason, she’d found herself lingering overly long on the incredibly attractive heir to the Colton Oil fortune—even one who was accused of murder. There likely hadn’t been a filed photo of him at this point that hadn’t made its way into news stories and she was convinced she’d seen damn near every one of them.
Sierra didn’t believe in fate, nor was she superstitious, but it still struck her as odd that Selina Barnes Colton had somehow come looking for her. It was a question she planned on asking when the time was right.
For now, she held off while she considered the other pieces she did know.
Selina was the ex-wife of Ace’s father. For reasons no one seemed to understand, despite their divorce and his moving on to a third marriage, Payne had kept the woman on and given her a rather high-ranking position at Colton Oil. Selina was in charge of all public relations for the behemoth company.
She also seemed to have a rather sizable ax to grind with her former stepson.
Oh, she’d said all the right things on their initial call when Selina had reached out to set up the meeting. She’d talked of her “deep desire to bring Ace back to his loving family, keeping him safe at home while they hire the best criminal defense attorneys.” Words that, while kind and caring on the surface, had carried a twisted sort of manipulation when she’d actually spoken.
That inconsistency alone had Sierra on high alert. But it was something more—some strange, undefined air of malice about Selina—that had kept her in her seat and unwilling to look away from the woman claiming she’d pay big for Sierra’s services.
Sierra had discovered boxing in her teens and had used the sport to hone both body and mind. You learned a lot about yourself when you took a punch and you learned even more when you figured out how to throw the right ones in return. She knew when an opponent was going to feint a move, when they were getting tired and breathing through their mouth and when they were looking somewhere over your shoulder, eyeing their next move.
Selina had been doing that last one since they’d sat down. A move that made Sierra’s survival instinct kick in.
Every. Damn. Time.
“And you want me to find your stepson?”
Selina’s lips tightened as if she’d just tasted the lemon that sat beside her cup of tea. “Ace and I don’t refer to one another in those familial terms.”
“Oh? What do you use, then?”
“Our first names suffice.”
Fine, Sierra thought. She’d take the bait and play along. “What if Ace doesn’t want to be found?”
“That’s a silly thing to say. He should want the love and support of his family.”
You keep selling that word, “family,” but I’m not buying it.
Only Sierra didn’t say that. And with the rigid smile she kept in place, she knew her body language hadn’t suggested it either.
“He’s a grown man.” Sierra considered the photos she’d seen of Ace Colton through the years. Grown was an understatement for the attractive, vibrant man he’d become. “A successful one by all accounts, too. Surely he can keep his own counsel.”
“Ace needs to come home to his family.” Selina took a sip of her tea, the delicate move at odds with the calculation in her eyes. “I was told you’re the best and that you always get your man.”
“I do.”
“Then why all these unnecessary questions?”
Sierra had to give the woman credit for landing a strong, sure jab on that one. She needed this job, no matter how skeptical she wanted to be about the Colton woman’s motives. She hadn’t believed her personal life could get more challenging after her father passed away, but she’d been wrong.
So wrong.
And she did need the money Selina was prepared to pay. Twenty-five thousand paid off a lot of debts.
“I like to know what I’m up against.”
As an answer, it seemed to placate the woman in front of her. But as their conversation spun out, Sierra hammering out the expectations of her work, she wondered what she was getting into.
Would this fix her problems?
Or create a whole set of new ones?
* * *
Nova hung up with Marlowe, once again surprised by how easy the other woman was to talk to. Not that she’d call her “Aunt Marlowe,” but it was still so novel to think of her that way. A part of her still questioned if there was a falseness to it until she took a DNA test, but she pushed it down.
She still thought of Paul Ellis as her father, after all. The man had raised her and loved her, and that meant more than biology when she thought of the man she’d called Dad for nearly two decades. They’d had a wonderful relationship and she’d spent a lot of time since hearing her mother’s news about Ace considering how she could—or should—think of Paul. He might not be her biological father, but she’d never dismiss her wonderful memories of him.
Or the subtle guilt that she was somehow erasing him by looking for her biological father.
Marlowe’s attitude and continued insistence on the definition of family had given her some clue, though, on how to move forward. Family was what you made. And Paul would always be the wonderful man who raised her.
Always.
Taking heart from that truth, Nova focused on moving forward.
Marlowe had stressed once again on their call her personal conviction that Nova’s DNA test would come back as a match with Ace and that, despite the recent discovery of Ace’s own parentage, the Coltons were Nova’s family.
And they were all there for her.
As an additional sign of that solidarity, Marlowe had invited her and Nikolas over to the Triple R that night for dinner with her and Bowie as well as Ainsley and her fiancé, Santiago Morales. The rest of the Colton siblings were off at other functions and Nova was strangely glad of that. It was all still so new and she wasn’t sure she could handle an evening with all of Ace’s siblings and associated significant others.
Nikolas looked up from the laptop he sat with at the kitchen table. “How’d the call go?”
“Good. We’re going to the Triple R for dinner.”
“That’s a great idea. You can see the family home and get a feel for where everyone spends so much of their time.”
Nova thought about her mother and the way Allegra had spoken of the Triple R. She’d be so excited for Nova to go there and to meet more of the family. Nova could practically hear her mother’s voice, chattering away as they discussed outfits and hairstyles.
It looks like you got your wish, Mom.
Nova fought back the lump of tears that clogged her throat and focused on Nikolas instead. “I think she’s still a little mad at you.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
He might have expected it but Nova hadn’t. “Really?”
“Of course. And since I’m still a little mad at me, too, I can hardly blame Marlowe for feeling that way.”
“I told you earlier that it’s fine,” Nova said. “That I’m fine.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Why aren’t you okay with that?”
Nikolas let out a hard sigh and ran a hand through his hair, ruffling those curls she now knew were baby soft. “Because I’m not used to second-guessing my instincts. It bothers me that I did. More than that, it bothers me that I questioned them with you.”
Nova wasn’t particularly used to apologies. As an only child, she hadn’t had siblings to fight with and then apologize to when things got out of hand. And she and her parents had always gotten along quite well, the occasional fight notwithstanding. But this... This was something different.
“Thank you for telling me that.”
Nikolas had been jotting notes intermittently on the legal pad beside his computer, but he laid his pen down and gave her his full focus. “You’re welcome. And you should know I’ll try very hard not to do it again.”
“I believe you.”
She took the seat beside him and looked at the notes he had scribbled down. “Your handwriting is atrocious.”
“Why, thank you.”
“I’m serious. This is like serial killer scrawl if I’ve ever seen it.”
“And the compliments keep on coming.” His hazel eyes crinkled as he smiled and Nova fought the urge to reach out and touch the line of his jaw. That perpetual five o’clock shadow was so tempting.
She might be able to control herself around his temptingly strong jawline, but she couldn’t hide her laughter. And just like that, the tension at the prospect of meeting another of her father’s sisters faded.
“What exactly did you write down?” She turned the pad toward her but could make little sense of what was there. “Because yeah, I see what looks like words but I’m not taking anything away.”
“I’ve searched all articles about Ace, Payne or the Colton family since Payne’s shooting.”
“And what did you find?”
“Not much that’s all that substantive, despite the amount of coverage. The speculation about Ace’s parentage has been covered, but not in any real depth. Colton Oil had evidently done a good job of keeping the information on lockdown. Where it is mentioned, it’s referenced by anonymous sources, which makes me say that the mercurial Selina Barnes Colton has been doing her job.”
“And doing it well.” Nova scanned the list once more now that she knew what she was looking for. “How often is that angle of the non-heir referenced?”
“A few times. It’s kind of set up to leave a question in the mind of the reader, before every reporter goes on to say that no one has been accused of any crime against Payne. Or had until the recent arrest attempt after the gun was found in Ace’s home.”
“Do the articles say there are any other suspects?”
“No, and that’s the strange part. I know the MVPD has been working this case. They haven’t simply assumed that Ace is responsible for the shooting.”
“But the news doesn’t seem to think so.”
“Apparently not.” Nikolas tapped his pen on the notepad. “You have to admit, the family aspect is what makes the story juicy.”
Was that how people would look at her? As a juicy story, fueling local gossip and speculation. The long-lost daughter, arriving back in town and pregnant, as well.
“You look sad all of a sudden.”
Nova traced a circle on the edge of the notepad with her fingertip. “I was just wondering
if that was how people would look at me. As a story to gossip about.”
“Some will. That’s human nature. And when you have a family as prominent as the Coltons, people do look. And watch. It comes with the territory.”
“Now who’s being honest?”
Although he’d kept his physical distance since their kiss, Nikolas reached out to her now. “I told you I can’t be anything but honest with you. And you should be prepared for the ways that your life is going to change.”
“I thought being a mother was going to be the big change in my life.”
“That will be, too. The biggest of the big. And it’s going to happen along with your new family dynamic. It’s a lot all at once.”
Nova shifted the hand resting on her lap to her belly. She increasingly didn’t have a lap to speak of, the baby’s growth and development continuing to change her body in the most obvious of ways. Up to now, Nova had considered all of it a mental preparation for motherhood. The day-by-day changes in her body that would prepare her for the major changes in her life.
But the reality was that in a few short months, she would have a child and she’d never go back to her old life. She’d never be just Nova Ellis. Or Colton. Or whoever she ended up being.
“Nova?” Nikolas’s voice was gentle. “Was that a bit too honest?”
“No.” Nova pulled herself from the lingering thoughts. “You’re only saying what I already know. My life is changing. It has been, really, since my mother’s diagnosis. And each step that’s come since keeps making that more and more clear.”
“You don’t just mean the baby, now, do you?”
“No. Like you said, the baby’s the biggest of the big, but everything for the past year has been sort of big.”
Nikolas had grown quiet, his expression taking on a faraway look before he reached out and closed the lid of his laptop. She sensed that he was working up to something and gave him the space he needed.
“I lost my mother five years ago.”
Nova mentally did the math and realized Nikolas had lost his mom at the same age she’d been when she’d lost hers. Much too young, as far as she was concerned, even as she knew you were never old enough for that terrible event to take place.