Colton Under Fire

She frowned. She hadn’t gotten around to eating because she’d been more concerned with taking care of Chloe. And earlier, she’d left The Lodge before dinner had arrived. “Lunch, I guess.”

Liam asked a nurse at the station in front of Chloe’s room to call him as soon as Chloe was brought back, and then he whisked Sloane down the hallway. “Come with me. Cafeteria’s this way. Food’s terrible, but the coffee’s outstanding.”

“How do you know that?” Sloane asked. Did he work here? The nurse had clearly known who he was and had his phone number. “Are you a doctor?” she blurted.

“Me? Never.”

“What brought you to the emergency room, then? Do you have a loved one here? I’m sorry to be so insensitive. I’m such a mess right now—”

He stopped just inside the door to a small lounge with linoleum-topped tables, plastic chairs and institutional fluorescent lights. Gently, he laid a fingertip on her lips. “I’m a police detective. We were shorthanded at the station tonight, so I volunteered to transport a prisoner who got sick in the drunk tank.”

“You’re a cop?”

He grinned and steered her over to the coffeepot.

“How was law school?” he asked over his shoulder.

How—Fox. Of course. “It was hard. But fascinating.”

She scrutinized him as he studied the self-service line. She supposed some people might call him boyishly handsome, but she sensed a quiet strength in him. Mature. Reliable.

Funny, but a few years ago, she would’ve called Liam boring. And then she went and married an exciting man who took her straight to hell. Boring was starting to look pretty darn good these days. It was amazing how time and life changed a person’s point of view.

“How do you like your coffee?” he asked.

“As black as my soul,” she replied dryly.

“Do tell,” he replied mildly. One corner of his mouth turned up sinfully, though, for just a moment. “Tuna salad okay with you?”

She picked up the cups of coffee and carried them to a table while he went to a vending machine and bought two sandwiches in triangular plastic packages, two bags of chips, a packet of baby carrots and a bag of apple slices.

He dumped his haul on the table and slid into the seat opposite her. “I haven’t seen you around Roaring Springs since you left for college. What have you been up to since then, Sloane?”

She ripped open a sandwich package and bit into the day-old bread and nearly dry tuna. Not that she cared what anything tasted like at the moment. “After I graduated from law school at Colorado State, I moved to Denver and got a job as a criminal defense attorney at Schueller, Mangowitz and Durant.”

Liam whistled under his breath. “That’s a high-powered firm.”

She rolled her eyes. “The women there call it Chauvinist, Misogynist and Douchebag.”

“Ouch. That bad?”

“Worse,” she growled.

“I sense a story.”

“Don’t be a detective tonight, okay?”

He threw up his hands. “No interrogations out of me.” He took a cautious sip of his coffee. “Am I still allowed to ask what brings you to Roaring Springs—as a friend-slash-past-tormentor? ”

She shrugged, sipping at her own coffee. “I’ve moved back home with Chloe—she’s my daughter—to give her a better life.”

“Better than what?”

Darn it. He was being all perceptive, again. “Better than a rotten father and a failed marriage.”

Liam laid his hand on top of hers briefly. Just a quick touch of his warm, calloused palm on the back of her hand. But the comfort offered was almost more than she could bear right now. She was too worried about Chloe. Her emotions—usually carefully suppressed—were too close to the surface.

She spent the next few minutes fixedly concentrating on her food and regaining her emotional equilibrium. Or trying to, at least.

As if he sensed her teetering on the edge of a breakdown, he gathered up the empty food packaging and said briskly, “Take the chips with you. Let’s go see if there’s any news on your daughter.”

As they walked back to the emergency ward, he said quietly, “The docs here are excellent. Chloe’s in good hands.”

She nodded, her throat too tight for a response.

Liam’s timing was perfect because, as they rounded the corner into the emergency area, the nurse who’d taken Chloe away for the CT scan came toward them.

“Where’s my daughter?” Sloane demanded, her inner mama bear on full alert.

“Come with me, Mrs. Durant.”

“Colton. Ms. Colton. I’m not keeping my ex-husband’s name.”

“Right. The doctor would like to admit your daughter overnight.”

“Why?” Sloane croaked.

“The doctor will fill you in.”

She wanted to scream as the nurse walked at far too leisurely a pace to an elevator. Sloane was barely aware of Liam holding the elevator door for her as it opened on the third floor, or that he kept pace beside her as she charged for the doctor standing at the far end of the hall.

Please God, let Chloe be all right. She was Sloane’s entire world.

The doctor stood just outside a room with a glass window in the wall. Inside the dimly lit hospital room, Chloe was asleep in a stainless steel crib. She looked so tiny and lost among the wires and blankets.

“What’s wrong?” Sloane demanded without preamble.

“She doesn’t have appendicitis, or an intestinal blockage, or an enlarged spleen. But since her fever still hasn’t broken, I want to keep her here for observation until we can get her temperature down to a safe level. This is probably just the virus that’s been going around. But babies can get hit hard by things like this.” Fixing his gaze on hers, he asked calmly, “Has your daughter been sick recently? Under unusual stress that might have compromised her immune system?”

“Oh, God.” Guilt crashed in on her. “We moved from Denver recently as part of my divorce. It’s been hard on Chloe, and she has been reverting to baby behaviors. I had no idea I compromised her immune system. I’m a terrible mother. I should have realized something like this would happen—” She broke off on a sobbing breath.

Arms came around her, gentle and strong. She didn’t care whose they were. Her baby was seriously ill and she’d completely missed the signs until Little Bug was burning up with fever. Ivan was right. She wasn’t fit to be a mother. Chloe would be better off with him and the expensive professional nanny he would hire to raise his daughter for him.

The doctor commented from somewhere beyond the circle of Liam’s arms, “This virus comes on fast. You didn’t miss any warning signs, Ms. Colton. The fever was likely the first symptom anyone would have noticed. And you got her here before the fever became dangerous.”

Sloane lifted her head to glare at the doctor. “Don’t coddle me. I suck as a parent.”

Liam’s voice rumbled with light humor in her ear. “You couldn’t suck at anything you put your mind to.”

She would have argued with him, but the doctor commented, “If you’d like to spend the night with Chloe, there’s a daybed in her room by the window.”

Duh. Of course she was staying with Chloe. Her baby would be scared to death if she woke up in a strange place and Sloane wasn’t there for her.

Liam said briskly, “Give me your keys, Sloane, and I’ll run by your place and pick up a few things for you. Toothbrush, a change of clothes...”

For the first time since she’d arrived at the hospital, it dawned on Sloane that she was wearing her pajamas. Thank God she’d put on her practical flannel pajamas consisting of a manly shirt and pants. Liam would think she was a total weirdo if she’d been wearing her footie onesie that matched Chloe’s.

Not that she cared what Liam, or any man, thought of her, of course.

“You don’t have to. I can call my brother to run by and pick up some stuff—”

“And alert the entire Colton clan that Chloe’s sick? They’ll descend upon you like a swarm of locusts, and you won’t get a moment’s rest tonight. You need your sleep, too, you know.” He held out an expectant hand.

He was totally right. “Good point.” She dug around in the baby bag, where she’d randomly tossed her keys earlier. It took an embarrassingly long time, but she finally came up with them. “You’re sure about this?”

Liam grinned. “It’s my job, ma’am. Plus, my prisoner is passed out and likely to stay that way for several hours.”

She rolled her eyes at him. But truthfully, she was grateful for the help.

“I’ll be back in a jiffy. Go be with your daughter and get some sleep if you can. I’ll drop off your things with the nurses so I don’t wake you up.”

What was this? Consideration for her comfort? Huh. So that was what it looked like when a man was decent and caring. Who knew?

Liam turned and headed for the elevator, and she tiptoed into Chloe’s room.

She couldn’t resist brushing the hair off Chloe’s forehead and dropping a featherlight kiss on Little Bug’s hot cheek before she stretched out on the daybed, bunched up the lumpy feather pillow under her head, and pulled a blanket over her shoulders.

She stared at her daughter for a long time while sleep refused to come. The weight of being a single parent, for real now, not just in practical application, landed heavily on her shoulders. She prayed for wisdom to make the right decisions for her baby girl to keep her safe and healthy.

Everyone had told her she had this. That she was a great mom. That she would be better off without her spouse. How hard could it be to raise just one child by herself?

But suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she had this at all.

Chapter 2

Sonofagun. Sloane Colton was back in town. And single, to boot. His boyhood prayers had finally been answered—just a decade and a half too late. The universe had one hell of a sense of humor.

If only Liam had known back then what he knew now about life and about women now. He would’ve gone after her with both barrels back in high school if he’d had the confidence to tell her how he’d felt about her. Instead, he’d kept his feelings hidden. But he’d learned since then to rip the lids off boxes and expose the truth, be it in solving a crime or in personal relationships. Life was too short to waste time being shy.

Sloane had only gotten more beautiful with age, which anyone could have seen coming if they bothered to take a good look at her back in high school. What he hadn’t predicted, though, was the sadness lurking in her big, expressive hazel eyes. Like she’d given up on herself. What had done that to her? She’d been braver than just about anyone he knew.

A need to understand her, to find out what had happened to her, surged through him. She looked as if she could use someone to protect her. Which was quite a change from the girl he’d once known.

Ever since he’d met her at the ripe old age of seven or so, Sloan had been a firecracker, fully able to take care of herself. She raced through life like a runaway train, flattening every obstacle that dared step into her path.

Not that her fierce independence had prevented her older brother, Fox, from looking out for her just as fiercely. Of course, as Fox’s best friend, it had fallen to Liam to help defend Sloane over the years. A task he’d taken on with secret relish—

Let it go, buddy.

His fantasies of Sloane Colton were just that. Fantasies. She would never see anything in a plain, ordinary, hometown guy like him. If only he could show her who he was now—

Nope. Not even then. He was a small-town cop living a small-town life. The girl he remembered wouldn’t ever see any appeal in that.

Sloane had run off to the bright lights of the big city as soon as she could after high school and college. Married a rich, high-powered lawyer, and became a renowned defense attorney herself. She obviously wanted excitement out of life. Challenge. She didn’t want anything to do with sleepy Roaring Springs or the people in it.

He swore under his breath. Who knew that, after all this time, he could still carry a hotly lit torch for a girl he’d grown up with? He had to find a way to douse it and get on with his life.

Liam checked in on the prisoner on the second floor, still sleeping off his alcohol binge, before heading out to his truck. It dawned on him he didn’t know where Sloane lived. He could call Fox—Strike that. No Coltons. He called the police station to run her address.

Her house was only a few blocks from where he’d grown up. And where he lived now. He’d renovated and then moved into the apartment over the garage of his parents’ home last year after his father died.

It was hell on his social life to be that guy who, in his early thirties, lived at home with his mom. But her health was frail and she needed help. He’d been a late-in-life only child, and there was no one else for his mother to lean on.

Sloane’s street was quiet. Bucolic. Lined with trees and upscale craftsman bungalows vying to be the most authentically restored. It was well after midnight, and only sporadic imitation gas porch lights cast any glow into the dark shadows wreathing the street.

Huh. He wouldn’t have pegged her for the type to live in a cozy neighborhood like this. What was up with that?

He pulled his truck into Sloane’s driveway and was just reaching for the door handle when he spied something slipping around the back corner of her house.

Whatever it was looked too big for a dog or a coyote. Frowning, he climbed out of his truck and crunched up the gravel drive. He moved cautiously toward the bushes, giving a wild animal plenty of time to get away. No sense startling a bear or cougar. He turned on the flashlight function of his smartphone and shone it at the holly bush. No eyes glowed back at him. But jumbled shoe prints leaped into view in the snow. What the—?

He raced around the corner of the house, following the boot prints through the ankle-deep snow in Sloane’s backyard and into the green belt behind her house. The prints led down a hill to an asphalt bike path that the snow had melted off of in the past few days. The asphalt was dry and gray and gave no clue as to which direction the person had gone. He listened carefully and heard no running footsteps.

His money was on the guy having had a bicycle parked back here. Jerk was long gone by now.

An intruder, maybe? Burglar? Peeping Tom? Or maybe he was thinking too much like a cop. It could’ve just been some neighborhood kid sneaking home through her yard.

Except it was too cold and too late on a school night for kids to be out fooling around. In full detective mode, he snapped photos of the footprints and called in the incident, putting it into the official police record. It was going to cause some extra paperwork for him, but whatever. Sloane might be in danger.

Before he unlocked her front door, he inspected the lock and jamb for signs of any attempt at forced entry. Nope, no scratches. Although that was a pitiful excuse for a lock. Just the original brass knob’s lock protected her house. She needed a decent dead bolt at a minimum. Even an amateur thief could pick the existing lock in a matter of seconds.

Frowning, he opened the door and stepped in.

The living room was thin on furniture with only some bean bag chairs, a big recliner and a flat screen TV hanging on the wall.

The place had clearly undergone one of those open concept remodels recently that knocked out most of the walls. The living room flowed into a dining room taken up with toddler toys and no furniture and on back into a gourmet kitchen.

He headed down the hallway, and the first room he came upon was Chloe’s, a princess paradise. A low bed was tucked inside a fairy castle, and a night-light cast firework patterns on the ceiling. He backed out of the room, feeling oversize and alien surrounded by so much...sparkle.

A hallway bathroom was unremarkable and he left that quickly. A utility closet held a furnace, and the door at the end of the hall revealed a bedroom much more his speed. Four-poster bed. No-frills navy comforter. A handmade-looking oak dresser and chest of drawers were crowded with framed pictures of Chloe, but other than those, the room was devoid of decoration—or any personality.

Odd. Was Sloane still unpacking, or was she that shut down emotionally?

He opened the first of two interior doors in Sloane’s bedroom and found an elegant, but sterile, bathroom. It was pretty but didn’t feel lived in.

Where was the real Sloane Colton hiding in this house? He hadn’t found her yet.

The second door revealed a spacious walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom. A riot of color and texture assaulted his eyes as he turned on the light. Ahh. Here she was. The fiery Sloane he remembered so clearly.

He looked for something to put her clothes in and spied a duffel bag stuffed on a high shelf. He reached up, needing his full six-foot height to grab it. He turned his head to the side as he reached for the back of the shelf and happened to glance out into her bedroom. Which was probably why he spotted the tiny hole in the wall, hidden high in a shadowed corner of the room, tucked beneath the beautiful, dark oak crown molding.

Maybe if he hadn’t already been suspicious of an intruder, he would’ve ignored the hole. But as it was, he took the duffel and moved over to the chest of drawers underneath the hole, and then took a quick peek. A tiny glass circle filled the small opening.

Alarm exploded in his gut and fury threatened to overcome reason.

For all the world, that looked like a surveillance camera.

Stop. Breathe. Think. It wasn’t necessarily what it looked like.

Maybe Sloane had some sort of high-tech security system installed in her house.

Or was that camera something more sinister?

Surely, he was being paranoid. After all, he was bored to death being a police detective in a quiet little town where the occasional bicycle theft was about as exciting as police work got.

Until that murder last month out at the Crooked C ranch, of course. A high-end call girl who’d been seen up at the resort had been killed by a client. Initially, there were two possible suspects—Wyatt Colton as well as European millionaire George Stratton, who’d brought the girl in from Vegas. But upon further investigation, the sheriff’s department figured out that a disturbed man who’d later killed himself had done the deed.

Liam forced himself not to look up at the camera lens as he randomly opened drawers in search of clothes for Sloane. His mind raced as he found socks, T-shirts and sweaters.

Why would anybody covertly surveil a young mother in Roaring Springs? Who had Sloane made an enemy of? A criminal she’d been involved with in her work? The ex-husband? Either way, a random stranger going to all the trouble to set up surveillance on her was not likely.

He retreated to the closet, where he spied jeans and sweatshirts folded on shelves and grabbed one of each.

He moved to the shoe rack and was bemused to discover that it rotated. How many pairs of shoes did one woman need, anyway?

He grabbed a pair of gym shoes made of a knit fabric that looked comfortable and headed for her bathroom. There had better not be a camera in there, or there would be hell to pay. He took a surreptitious look at each of the corners and spied nothing but paint. Then he did a thorough search of the walls as well to assure himself there were no hidden surveillance devices in the vicinity.

Not a sicko Peeping Tom, then. Which left something—or someone—more sinister behind that camera in her bedroom. He swore under his breath and grabbed a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste out of the cup by her sink.

Taking a moment to look at the duffel bag, he forced himself to think about what he’d forgotten to pack for her.

Goop. Fox always used to complain that Sloane was a world-class goop collector and hogged the bathroom they’d shared to smear it all over herself.

Liam warily eyed the neat rows of bottles and tubes on the counter.

Did Sloane even wear makeup? He honestly didn’t remember. He’d been so shocked by the girl he’d had a giant crush on all through high school slamming into him out of the blue at the hospital that he hadn’t registered any of the details he usually would as an observant detective.

What was he missing?

Of course. Underwear.

His gut jumped a little at the idea of handling Sloane Colton’s unmentionables. Which was absurd. He was a decent-looking man in his thirties and had been around plenty of lingerie, and the women in it. But his very first fantasies of a skimpily clad female, all the way back in junior high, had involved Sloane Colton. He’d never admitted it to Fox and had pretended to have a crush on another girl. But it had been Sloane he’d dreamed of and woke up in hot sweats over.

He went to the dresser in her bedroom and opened a long, shallow drawer.

He inhaled sharply as a spill of brightly colored lace assaulted his eyes. Prim and proper Sloane Colton wore this sexy stuff? Wow. Uh, good to know. Of course, he was never going to look at her again without imagining which jewel-toned ensemble of silk and lace she had on under her clothes.

Swearing under his breath, he grabbed the first pair of skimpy bikinis and bra that matched—a scarlet ensemble with pert little bows strategically placed. Dammit, that was not sweat breaking out on his forehead.

He left the bedroom light on and headed back to the living area. Under the guise of poking around in the toy box for a stuffed animal to take to Chloe, he inspected the walls.

There. Over the front door. Tucked high in the corner under the crown molding. Another tiny, circular hole. From that vantage point, a surveillance camera would have a view of the entire living-dining-kitchen area.

Sonofa—

He ducked into Chloe’s bedroom and grabbed the well-worn stuffed elephant off her bed. A telltale circular shadow lurked in the far corner of Chloe’s bedroom as well. Now, why would a bad guy watch a toddler? The ex-husband climbed to the top of Liam’s suspect list for being the creepo stalker.

He forced himself to keep his rampant cop suspicions in check. After all, he still wasn’t positive Sloane was being watched nefariously. She could have hired a security company to monitor her, or perhaps there was some other legitimate reason for the cameras being there. But his gut was dead certain the explanation wasn’t so innocent. Which was weird. He was usually the soul of logic, relying completely on facts and careful analysis. Intuitions were for amateurs. Real detectives used their minds to uncover the truth.

Assuming Sloane herself wasn’t the source of the cameras, she faced a choice. Rip the cameras out of her walls and have a security firm sweep her house for any more surveillance devices. Or, she could let the cameras ride, pretend she didn’t know they existed, and let him investigate who was behind the surveillance without tipping off the perpetrator.

Fury bubbled up in his gut. When he caught whoever was behind the surveillance, he was going to—

Slow down, there, buddy. He was going to hand the bastard over to the district attorney with an ironclad file of evidence so the perpetrator got put away for a good long time. He was a law enforcement professional and didn’t indulge in gratuitous violence, no matter how angry he might be.

Still. This case was personal. Sloane was his best friend’s little sister. They’d grown up together, for crying out loud.

On his way out, Liam left on lights and turned on the TV. He doubted whoever had been lurking behind her house would come back tonight, but on the off chance that the guy was a burglar, Liam might as well make the house look occupied.

He didn’t recall seeing Sloane carry a coat in the hospital, so he stopped at the cast iron coat tree just inside the front door. He grabbed a neon-pink ski jacket, pink mittens and a matching hat with a jaunty pompom. There. That should keep her warm.