Beloved Wolf

“Hush, baby,” Joe said, carefully stroking Sophie’s hair. “Just rest, baby. All we want you to do is rest.”

Mary came into the room, and Joe stepped back from the bed to join River as the nurse took Sophie’s vital signs, checked her IV.

“She’s sleeping again?” River asked the senator.

“I think so,” Joe said, nodding. “Look, River, it’s been a long night, and I know you have to get back to the ranch. That new stallion’s coming in today, right? So you just go, and I’ll get a hotel room and stay until Sophie can come back to the ranch with us. Okay?”

A muscle ticked in River’s cheek. He wasn’t being dismissed. He knew that. Joe just wanted to be alone with his daughter. “What about Meredith? Do you think she’ll want me to fly her here, to see Sophie, be with you?”

Joe Colton pressed his fingers against his eyes and shook his head. “I’ll phone her later. Right now I just want to stay here.”

River nodded and patted Joe’s back. “I’ll call around, make a reservation for you, and then head back to the ranch. You’ll phone later? Keep me—keep us informed?”

Joe didn’t answer him. Mary brushed past them, leaving the room, and Joe headed toward the bed once more, dragging a utilitarian metal chair with him, then sat down beside Sophie, obviously dug in for the duration.

River left them alone and headed back down the hallway, toward the elevators. He was family, yes, and had been since his teenage years. He wasn’t being dismissed, pushed away. But blood was blood, and Joe and Sophie were blood. River understood that, respected that.

The elevator doors opened as he approached, and Chet Wallace stepped out, looking as fresh and unwrinkled as if he’d just come out of the shower. His hair was combed, his face had been freshly shaved, his tie was snug against his throat. He could have been on his way to a morning meeting.

“Wallace,” River bit out, taking hold of the man’s elbow as Chet walked past him without so much as a nod. “Where’ve you been? Consulting with your tailor?”

“I beg your pardon,” Chet answered, trying to shake off River’s hand, without success. “Do I know—Oh, wait. You’re one of the employees at Hacienda del Alegria, aren’t you? Sophie’s parents’ ranch? I think I remember you now. Are the senator and his wife here already? I went back to my condo, caught some sleep, showered and changed.”

“How nice for you,” River said, finally letting go of Chet’s elbow. “The senator is with Sophie now,” he continued, motioning for Wallace to follow him into a small alcove set aside as a visitors’ waiting room. “Let’s talk.”

“I’d rather speak with the senator,” Chet said, but River’s slitted-eye glare seemed to make him reconsider, and he followed River into the alcove. “Now, look—”

“No, Wallace, you look,” River shot back, knowing he was going to have to perform a minor miracle if he expected to keep his temper in check. The man had gone home? Grabbed a few winks and taken a shower? No-good son of a bitch. “My name is James. River James, one of Joe and Meredith’s foster children, not that you need to know any of that. What I need to know is why you let Sophie walk home alone last night. Or do the police have that wrong?”

Chet looked at River for a few moments, then shot his cuffs. He was a tall man, as tall as River, but that was where their similarities ended. Chet was sleek, pretty boy handsome, the kind of guy who wore designer sweats as he worked out at his designer gym. Shooting his cuffs, wordlessly pointing out that he was a successful man wearing a six-hundred-dollar suit, was an action meant to intimidate River.

Yeah, sure. River didn’t think so. He just stood there, glaring at Chet Wallace, a tic working in his cheek, his hands itching to take the stylishly dressed man apart, piece by designer-label piece.

Chet broke eye contact first, his artificially tanned cheeks flushing slightly as he actually stepped back a pace, as if it had finally hit him that River James was a wild animal searching for prey, and that he was reacting pretty much like a deer caught out in the open.

In self-defense, Chet went on the attack. “Now look—James, is it? I already spoke with the police. Yes, Sophie and I had dinner together last night, and then she decided to walk home. Four blocks, James, that’s all. As a matter of fact, I was just leaving the restaurant myself when I saw all the police cars and the ambulance. I went to check and found Sophie. I’m the one who identified her.”

“Well, bully for you. Why did she decide to walk home, Wallace?” River asked, putting his cowboy hat on, then looping his thumbs through his belt. “You two have a little spat? That is what you’d call it, right? A little spat?”

Chet’s hand went to his Windsor knot, and he lifted his chin as he nervously shifted the tie from side to side. “We had a slight disagreement, yes,” he conceded. “Not that it’s any concern of yours.”

“I don’t care if you had the mother of all knockdown drag-outs, Wallace,” River told him tightly. “That’s none of my business. What I do care about is that you let her walk home alone.”

Chet held up one hand. “Oh, wait a minute, fella. You’re trying to say this is my fault? How does any of this become my fault? It was Sophie who went running off, you know. It was Sophie who— What? What’s your problem?”

River had bent his head, rubbed his temples with the fingers of his right hand and laughed. He’d thought, really believed, he could get through this without losing his cool. But this Wallace was too thick for words, and River wasn’t going to waste any more of his words on the jackass. He almost wanted to thank him for being so dense.

“My problem, Wallace?” River repeated, dropping his hand and looking at Sophie’s fiancé. And then, before he could remember that he was, for the most part, a highly civilized individual, he planted his right fist square in Chet Wallace’s face.

Chet went down on his backside, holding a hand to his bloody nose.

“Problem? I don’t have a problem,” River said, settling his worn cowboy hat lower over his flashing green eyes. “Not anymore.”

Then he turned on his heels and headed for the elevator. He was not a happy man, definitely. But he was feeling somewhat better. Definitely.

For the next week, Joe Colton was never far from his daughter’s bedside. His many businesses didn’t suffer, because he’d been slowly withdrawing from those businesses, from his family, withdrawing from life itself. He’d allowed life to defeat him, again. Had it taken almost losing his daughter to wake him up, shake him up, force him to look at his life, possibly begin taking steps to fix it?

And when had it all begun to go so wrong?

Michael. Joe sighed, his heart aching as he remembered Sophie’s words that first day, her garbled thoughts that, to anyone else, would have seemed as if she were talking crazy because of her concussion.

But Joe knew differently. He knew what his daughter had meant, and was devastated that, as she struggled with her attacker, her thoughts had been of Michael. Of Meredith and himself. Of the family, and of how the Colton family couldn’t take another tragedy. Couldn’t lose another child.

In a way, Michael had saved Sophie, and that was how Joe was going to look at the thing. It was the only way possible to look at it.

Still, he had to look further than that, and he knew it. As he sat in the chair beside Sophie’s hospital bed, holding her hand, watching her sleep, he had to acknowledge that Sophie had been slowly slipping away from him these past years. All his children had been slipping away, visiting the ranch less and less, avoiding the family that was no longer a family.

At least not the family it had been, the family he and Meredith had brought into the world, added to with adopted and foster children after Michael’s death, family they’d formed into a solid, unbreakable, unshakable unit.

So when had it all begun to change? With Michael’s death? Should he at least start there?

Probably.

Joe and Meredith had been raising five children. Rand, the oldest. The twins, Drake and Michael. Sophie and the baby, Amber. Life was good, better than good. Joe Colton was a rich, self-made man, with oil and gas interests, major investments in the communications industry. Meredith had even convinced him that it was time he gave something back, so that he’d run for the United States Senate and been elected to represent California.

Life was so good. So very good.

And then Michael and his twin had taken their bikes out for a ride, and Michael had been run down by a reckless driver. Dead, at the age of eleven, and while his father was away in Washington, instead of being home where he belonged. Home, keeping his children safe.

Joe pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. His body was hot, his muscles tired, his brain stuffed with memory toppling over memory, few of those memories good.

Joe had resigned from the Senate, come home and made a jackass out of himself. He didn’t see Meredith’s grief. He didn’t see Drake’s special loss, the loss all his children had suffered. All he saw was his own pain, his own guilt. And when Meredith finally suggested they have another baby—not to replace Michael, surely, but because having another child to love might help them all heal—another bomb had dropped into Joe’s shattered life.

He was sterile. How could that be? But it was true. He’d caught the mumps from a child at the nearby Hopechest Ranch, a home for orphaned children he and Meredith often visited, and now he was sterile. He could not give Meredith another child.

Was that when Meredith had begun to turn away from him?

No, that wasn’t it, and Joe knew it. Meredith had stuck with him day and night, even when he was being a selfish, self-pitying jackass.

And it had been Meredith who had finally convinced him that there were many, many children who needed loving homes, many children they could help, who could help them, for Joe and Meredith still had so much love to give.

Joe smiled slightly as he remembered how Meredith had jumped in with both feet, taking on the most troubled children at the Hopechest Ranch, opening their house and her loving arms to Chance, to Tripp, to Rebecca, to Wyatt. To Blake, to River, and to Emily. To Joe Junior, the infant who had been literally left on their doorstep.

Emily. Joe’s thoughts, which had begun to ease, now plunged him back into despair. Because the life he and Meredith had lost when Michael died, the one they’d rebuilt together—not a better life, surely, but a different one, a fulfilling one—had shattered again nine years ago, not six months after Joe Junior had come into their lives, on the day Meredith had driven the then eleven-year-old Emily into town for a visit with her natural grandmother.

Yes. That had been the day the light had forever gone out of Joe’s life, out of the Colton family.

It was a small accident with the car, although there were never any small accidents. Each took its own toll. This particular one had taken Meredith from him, his beloved Meredith. Not in death, but in a head injury that had changed her in some way.

Emily had said her “good mommy” had been replaced by an “evil mommy.” That was, of course, too simplistic, although even the doctors who had treated Meredith were at a loss as to why her personality had undergone such a dramatic change after the accident.

Change? No, that was too mundane a word to explain what had happened to Meredith. His sweet, loving wife, the concerned mother, had been taken from them, to be replaced by a woman who cared only for Joe Junior, a woman who ignored her other children, a woman who positively despised and shunned Emily. A woman who had turned hard, and selfish, and grasping. A woman who had dared to present him with her pregnancy a year after the accident and insist he was the father.

They’d separated then, for long months, but Joe had finally relented, let her come home, even claimed the child, Teddy, as his own.

But nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same again.

“Dad?”

Joe leaned closer to Sophie, who was looking up at him with Meredith’s beautiful brown eyes. “Yes, baby?” Now that she was recovering, she didn’t call him Daddy anymore. But she was still his baby.

“Did Mom call you back yet? Is she coming?”

Joe felt a stab straight to his heart. “No, baby, your mom couldn’t be here. She’s at home, taking care of Joe Junior and Teddy.”

“Oh,” Sophie said, disappointment dimming her eyes. “But she is coming soon, isn’t she? It’s been a week, Dad.”

“Shhh, baby, don’t talk too much,” Joe said, stroking Sophie’s hair. “You need to rest now. You rest and get strong, and soon we’ll be able to go to the ranch and see everybody. All right?”

“She’s not coming, is she?” Sophie looked up at her father, willing him to answer. “Is she, Dad?”

“You know how she doesn’t like to leave Teddy—”

Sophie held up a hand, wordlessly begging her father not to make excuses for her mother. “Teddy’s eight years old, Dad. Surely she could leave him for two or three days to visit me. There are plenty of people on the ranch who would take care of him. Oh, never mind. Why should I think things would be any different now than they have been for almost the last decade? You know, Dad, there are times when I feel this overwhelming urge to call my mother and ask for her help, because something’s terribly wrong with my mother.”

Joe was rescued from having to find some way to respond to Sophie’s heartbreaking remark by the entrance of Dr. Hardy, who had come to remove the stitches in Sophie’s face.

“Good morning, Sophie, Senator,” the cosmetic surgeon said, handsome and imposing in his green scrubs. “Final unveiling today, Sophie. Are you ready?”

Sophie’s hand tightened around Joe’s. “I guess so,” she said quietly.

“Good,” Dr. Hardy said, nodding as a nurse entered and handed him a paper package containing a pair of sterile gloves. “Now remember, Sophie, this isn’t the completed look. You’re sort of a work in progress. You’ll be swollen, bruised, and the cut is still going to look red, angry. That’s to be expected. Later, in, oh, about six months, we’ll go back to the operating room for a little of my magic. Isn’t that right, Alice?” he asked the nurse. “Tell Sophie. I’m a magician.”

The nurse rolled her eyes, then grinned at the doctor, obviously the object of some substantial hero worship. “I don’t know about the magic part, Doctor, but I do know that Miss Colton has nothing to worry about. That scar is as good as gone.”

“Thank you, Alice, and there’ll be a little something extra in your paycheck this week,” Dr. Hardy said, winking at Sophie, then advancing toward the bed even as Sophie began to cringe against the pillows. “No, no, Sophie. We’re going to make this as quick and painless as possible, I promise. Alice is going to remove the bandages and then we’ll get those stitches out of there before they start to do more harm than good. And then, young lady, you, your crutches and your leg brace get to go home—at least that’s the word on the street. Okay? Is that a deal?”

“Dad?” Sophie said, squeezing Joe’s hand until his circulation was all but cut off. “You’ll get me a mirror. You promised.”

Joe nodded, his throat clogged with tears, with fear for how the scar would look, how its appearance would impact his daughter. She’d only allowed Chet to visit her a single time, and had kept her head averted during the visit, so that she hadn’t even asked him about the bandage over his nose. And then she’d made him promise not to try to see her again until she contacted him.

Joe wasn’t sure if she was angry with her fiancé, if she blamed him for her attack or if she was afraid that her appearance had been ruined, so that Chet would be disgusted with her, repelled by her scar.

No matter what Sophie felt, however, Joe had already made up his mind that any man who would stay away from the bedside of his injured fiancée because she told him to…well, he wasn’t the man for his Sophie!

Joe blinked, surprised to see that the bandage was already gone, and that Dr. Hardy was in the process of removing the stitches, his green-clad frame blocking Joe’s view of his daughter’s face.

And then it was done, and Sophie was nervously asking for the mirror.

“Maybe later, baby,” Joe said, only to be cut off by Dr. Hardy, who took a mirror from Alice and handed it to Sophie.

“Just don’t get used to how you look, Sophie, because that’s going to change—not that it’s looking so bad right now, in my opinion. You’re young, your health is excellent, and I expect the final scar to be almost invisible.”

Sophie held the mirror in front of her, slowly lifted her hand to tentatively touch the livid red wound that stretched from just below her ear, up and over her jawbone, then back down, so that it ran under her chin.

“He—he didn’t make a very clean cut, did he?” she asked at last, putting down the mirror. “I could be marked with a big S, for Sophie. Or for Scarred,” she ended, biting her bottom lip between her teeth.

Joe reached for her hand, but Dr. Hardy had already taken both of Sophie’s hands in his. “Look at me, Sophie,” he said, all traces of humor gone. “Look at me, sweetheart, and listen to me. It’s a scar. That’s all it is. And it will be gone soon, or as close to gone that you’ll forget it’s even there. But that scar, visible or not, isn’t you. Do you understand that? If that’s an S on your jaw right now, it stands for Survivor. Don’t forget that.”

Sophie nodded, and Dr. Hardy and his nurse left the room.

“Sophie? He’s right, you know,” Joe said. “You are a survivor. And you’re going to be fine. Five more weeks at your apartment with the nurse I’ve hired, until the orthopods take that brace off your leg, and then you’ll be with us, at the ranch. Six months from now, once Dr. Hardy is done with his magic, it will be as if this never happened.”

“But it did happen, Dad,” Sophie told him, a huge tear slipping down her cheek. “Every night when I close my eyes I remember that it happened. Every day, now that the bandage is off, I won’t be able to forget that it happened.”

She tugged her hand free of Joe’s and pulled the large diamond ring from her third finger, left hand. “Here,” she said, handing the ring to Joe. “Tell Chet I’ll see him in six months, not before then.”

“Oh, honey, don’t do this,” Joe begged her, while inwardly he relaxed, with at least one problem being solved for him. “I’m sure Chet will be banging down the door to see you, to change your mind.”

“Like he’s been banging down the door all week?” Sophie asked, her smile wry. “No, Dad. I just want to go home to my apartment, wait for this thing to come off my leg, and then come to the ranch. If you want me there?”

“If I— Ah, baby,” Joe said, folding his daughter into his strong arms. “All I want out of life right now is to have you home with us again.”

Three

H ome. It had never looked so good.

Sophie sat in the passenger seat as her father drove the car along the private roadway, past various ranch buildings, heading toward the huge, circular drive that fronted Hacienda del Alegria—the House of Joy.

She gave a small, lopsided smile as she remembered the day River had told her about another House of Joy, somewhere in Nevada, that had been a topnotch “pleasure palace” in its heyday, years earlier. Sophie had been highly affronted, saying that wasn’t what her parents had in mind when they’d named the ranch, and then minutes later had retold the story to her oldest brother, Rand, giggling as he looked shocked that his little sister would even know about such things.

River had gotten into big trouble over that one—which served him right, because Sophie had also been subjected to quite a lecture from Rand on what a lady isn’t supposed to let anyone know she knows, even if she knows it.

Sophie held up a hand and squinted into the setting sun as the car entered the huge circular drive. Nothing had changed since her last visit. Nothing altered the physical beauty that was Hacienda del Alegria.

There was still the central area of the house, a two-story, sand-color adobe structure sporting California’s version of a pillared porch, and a terra-cotta roof.

The sun still rose against the front windows, and set behind the house, over the wonderfully blue Pacific Ocean that lay below a series of cliffs.

Single-story wings wrapped back from either side of the house, affording every room a view of the ocean, of the marvelous gardens, of the courtyard, pool, and gardens that played such a large role in the everyday life of everyone who lived in the house.

And so many, many people had lived in Hacienda del Alegria over the years. Her parents occupied a large suite in the south wing, Sophie’s and Amber’s bedrooms were also located there, with the north wing housing their brothers and foster siblings.

A full house. A lovely house. Once a happy house.

But not anymore.

“Luckily you’ll have no stairs to navigate,” Joe Colton told his daughter as he stopped the car and turned off the ignition. “Even with the brace off, I think you’re going to have to get used to being called Gimpy for a while, at least by your brothers. Just remember, Sophie, it’s a measure of their affection. Everyone’s been worried sick about you. Boys just often don’t know how to say what’s really in their hearts.”

Sophie smiled, shook her head at her father. “Senator, you know, you never cease to amaze me. How can you still be giving us all lessons? Did it ever occur to you that we might be grown up now?”

“Never. Not in my wildest dreams,” Joe answered, reaching over to flick a fingertip against Sophie’s nose. She flinched at the near contact and turned her head, raising a hand to the scar on her left cheek.

“Baby—”

“Not now, Dad,” Sophie said tightly. She’d been nervous ever since they’d gotten within twenty miles of the ranch. Nervous about her welcome, who would be there to welcome her home, what they’d think when they saw her. “Let’s just get inside, okay?”

Leaving the baggage in the trunk, Joe quickly came around and opened the car door for Sophie, then walked with her to the front door that stood open in welcome. Their housekeeper, Inez Ramirez, waited there, a broad smile on her wide, pleasant face. “Welcome home, Miss Sophie,” Inez said, holding out her arms, and Sophie gratefully walked into them, allowing the hug, needing the hug.

Then it was time to pass into the large great room that made up the nerve center of the house, a huge room furnished well, but casually.

The empty room.

“Dad?” Sophie asked, turning to her father, who then pointed toward the wall of glass doors leading out to the courtyard. Following his gesture, Sophie could see Meredith Colton lounging on a chaise beside the pool, clad in a bra-like swim top and a long, filmy, patterned skirt, dark glasses shading her eyes.

“I’ll go get her,” Joe offered, but Sophie shook her head and started for the doors. “Sophie, she couldn’t know the exact time we’d arrive,” he called after her, then swore under his breath and quickly turned his back on a scene he didn’t have the strength to witness.

Sophie limped out onto the patio, slowly made her way down the steps and past the fountain. The beauty of the courtyard was lost to her, its sights, its sounds, its glorious smells. All she could see was her mother, the woman who had spoken to her on the telephone only a single time in the past six weeks, the woman who hadn’t had the time or the inclination to visit her in San Francisco.

Sophie stood beside the chaise and looked down at the woman who had taught her how to tie her shoes, who had giggled with her when Sophie had tried on her very first training bra, who had put up her hair for her the night of the senior prom. The woman who had kissed her cuts and scrapes, hand sewn her Princess Leia Halloween costume, held her when she cried because River James was just the most awful, miserable, nasty boy in the whole entire world.