The Coltons of Mustang Valley

Deadly enemies undermine her life and business

When a mysterious email threatens her family’s corporation, executive Marlowe Colton puts all her energy into protecting Colton Oil. But a more shocking scandal comes in the form of her archrival—and one-night lover—Bowie Robertson, who uncovers the consequence of their passion. As danger encroaches, Bowie and Marlowe must put aside any bitterness to safeguard the family neither ever expected.

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than 250 books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com

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Colton Baby Conspiracy

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90484-5

COLTON BABY CONSPIRACY

© 2020 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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This 300th book is dedicated with love

To my wonderful readers,

Without whom I would still be working as

a health insurance claims adjuster,

Dreaming of becoming a writer;

To

My fabulous editors, especially Patience Bloom,

Whose fear of being buried alive in stacks of

Proposals had them finally deciding to take a

chance on me;

And

To

Charlie,

Who was, and is, my inspiration for every single hero

I have ever written about.

I couldn’t have done it without you, honey.

From the bottom of my heart,

Thank you!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Prologue

They enjoyed being in control; they always had. Even back in the early days, alone and struggling to make ends meet, a day-to-day world nothing if not hopeless and bleak, they’d dreamed of being in a position when they would finally be in control.

Slowly but surely, they had worked relentlessly toward reaching that goal, moving from stepping-stone to small stepping-stone until finally, finally arriving at a place of authority. When they finally controlled people who didn’t even realize they were being controlled.

I am that good, they thought with a self-congratulating smile.

And this, this, they thought, looking at the email draft on their laptop, was going to be the ultimate achievement, the crowning glory. Because when this email went out and at long last set this greatest plan in motion, they were going to be in control of not just a person or a small group of people but of a large, thriving company.

An entire, billion-dollar company.

It would be, they thought with a smug, self-satisfied smile, like going from presiding over a tiny cottage in the forest to ruling over a giant kingdom.

My giant kingdom.

Oh, there would be a figurehead to front the company, but they would be the one who told that figurehead what to do, what to think. They would be the one in charge of everything.

As it should be. After all, who better to control all those employees? Who was more deserving to reap all those rewards?

They laughed to themselves.

“Why, me of course. I’m the most deserving person I know,” they announced to the surrounding darkness of the small office where they presently oversaw the organization they had created and molded out of nothing.

Taking a deep breath, they pulled back their shoulders and focused on the task at hand. The shadowy figure reread the words that had been typed and then retyped so many times since this idea had begun to take its final shape.

This had to be perfect.

The email had to sound coherent. To read as if it was written by an intelligent person—but not by someone who was overly intellectual. Or that some delusional, misguided person had written it.

Above all, it could not come across as if it was a hoax. It had to read as if every word was nothing but the absolute truth.

They wanted the message to read as if the person who wrote it was cool, calm and just a touch superior. Because I am, they thought. Superior to the lot of them. And more than just by a touch. Because once they acted on this knowledge, it would be the beginning of their downfall.

It might take a week, or a month or even a year—although they doubted it would take that long—but they would definitely fall.

A smug smile curved their lips as they relished the thought and looked forward to the day all of this would come together.

For what felt like the hundredth time, they scanned the words on the computer screen. Words they had been tweaking and tinkering with for what felt like an eternity now.

They would really love to sign a name to the email, but in order for this to work, to avoid intense scrutiny and questioning, the source generating this had to be thought of as anonymous.

One last time, they read each word very slowly.

To: Colton Oil Board Members Listserv

From: Classified

Subject: Colton Oil CEO Ace Colton is NOT a real Colton

Ace Colton, born 40 years ago on Christmas Day in Mustang Valley General Hospital, was switched at birth with another newborn baby boy in the nursery. This shocking truth can be confirmed with a simple DNA test that will prove Ace is not a Colton by blood. Since the Colton Oil bylaws state the CEO must be a biological Colton, Ace must be ousted. I will provide you with no further information, but rest assured this bombshell is the tip of the iceberg.

Good Day

As their eyes rested on the last word, they felt their smile widen, even more smug and far more self-satisfied than it had ever been.

“Perfect.”

Now there was nothing left to do but send this email to all six members of the Colton Oil board—and then sit back, calmly waiting for the fireworks to start going off.

With a mixed surge that was composed of equal parts excitement and confidence, they handed the computer over to their tech expert. This trusted employee had organized the logistics of this mission and would continue to monitor it. They pressed Send.

“And now it begins!”

Chapter 1

Marlowe Colton had always thought that one of the perks of being the president of Colton Oil was having her very own private, luxurious en suite bathroom installed within her rather cavernous office.

An en suite bathroom where she was currently having her very own private nervous breakdown as she stared at a small white stick that had the audacity to mock her with a glaring pink plus sign.

Her breathing grew shorter and more erratic as she continued to stare at the awful, incriminating stick. Her stomach kept tightening until it had twisted itself into a hard, painful knot.

Marlowe realized that she was sweating even as she felt a cold chill shooting down her spine and passing over every part of her body.

And the nausea was back. In spades. Any second now, she was going to throw up.

Again.

“No, you’re a Colton,” she told the unusually pale blonde looking back at her in the mirror. “You’re not going to throw up. You’re not!” she insisted.

Marlowe blinked back tears. They weren’t tears of joy, or tears of sorrow. What she felt stinging her eyes were angry tears. Angry tears that were aimed at no one but herself.

How could she have let this happen? One stupid moment of intoxicated but entirely willing weakness and longing and now here she was, in the throes of morning sickness.

It wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t.

And yet the stick in her hand told her it was all too possible.

It was a reality.

The white stick had come out of the discarded white box that was now haphazardly sitting on the edge of the sink. The pharmacist had assured her that this product was supposed to be the best, the most accurate pregnancy test on the market. She truly doubted that it had made a mistake.

Besides, if she was being completely honest with herself, the thought that she was pregnant had been in the back of her mind for the last six weeks. Ever since she had lost her head and her iron grip on her emotions by succumbing to the sexy, dark good looks and charms that she had been all but bred to hate. Because the man on the other side of that bed six weeks ago had a father who hated her father, and that feeling was very, very mutual.

What in the name of all that was good and proper had she been thinking? Marlowe silently demanded of her reflection.

That was just it—she hadn’t been thinking. For once in her career-driven life, she hadn’t been thinking at all, just feeling. Or at least telling herself that she’d been feeling. Feeling an overwhelming attraction to a man she had viewed as the enemy for as far back as she could remember.

This was what came of trying to behave civilly toward someone who she had been taught did not deserve to be treated with any sort of respect.

All of her life, Marlowe had done exactly what was expected of her—and then some. She was a Colton, and Coltons were supposed to behave a certain way. At least Payne Colton’s daughter was supposed to behave in a certain way.

She closed her eyes, fighting another strong, rising wave of stomach-lining-destroying nausea as it tried to claw its way up her throat.

If only she hadn’t gone to that stupid energy conference...

Or, at the very least, if she hadn’t spent so much time arguing with Bowie Robertson, president of Robertson Renewable Energy Company, over proposed pipelines and the environmental consequences they could have. The argument went on and on relentlessly until everyone else at the conference had withdrawn for the night. That left just the two of them to continue the argument on their own.

How heated words had somehow given way to splitting a bottle of champagne—or had that been two bottles?—she still really wasn’t clear about. But somewhere along the line, their different philosophies and the eternal ongoing rivalries that defined their lives had just somehow managed to melt away, leaving nothing to get in the way of a very real and exceedingly strong attraction that had mysteriously taken root and been growing between them for who knew how long.

Marlowe could remember only bits and pieces of their night together after that. One of those bits and pieces had included a very strong desire to be, for once in her life, swept away, for the space of at least that one isolated evening.

An evening that became free of thoughts about rivalries, corporate profits and even the ever-increasing concerns about green energy being a threat to her family’s oil company.

Just one carefree evening, that was all she had wanted, Marlowe thought.

And now this stick and its menacing, mocking pink cross were exacting a price for those frivolous few hours of passion she had spent.

A price she had never, even in her wildest dreams, been prepared to face up to and pay.

That wasn’t to say that she didn’t want children. She did, Marlowe thought. She did want children. But just not now.

And definitely not with him.

They hadn’t even spoken a single word to each other since that fateful night, as if silence was actually an acceptable way of denying that those few hours of unabashed passionate consorting—of wild, consensual lovemaking—had ever happened.

But not talking about it, not acknowledging that it took place, was not a way of wiping that night’s existence out of the annals of time. The pregnancy test clearly testified that it had happened, she thought ruefully, frowning at the offending mark on the white stick. And that, in turn, had most definitely produced a consequence. A very big consequence.

Marlowe felt her throat closing up. What the hell was she going to do now?

The question throbbed insistently over and over again in her brain. But no matter how many times she asked herself, she came up with the same answer.

She didn’t know.

She had absolutely not even a glimmer of an idea what she was going to do about this.

The only thing that she did know was that her father was going to see this pregnancy—and how it came about—as nothing short of a personal betrayal of him of the first order.

“I wasn’t thinking of you at the time, Dad,” Marlowe whispered to the man who wasn’t there in person but was somehow always around Colton Oil headquarters in spirit. Payne Colton was the reason behind everything she did.

The truth of the matter was that her father had always been a very strong presence in her life, influencing, in one way or another, her every move, practically her every thought.

But not that night.

That night the intrusive spirit of Payne Colton had been utterly absent. At least, he had been by the time she and Bowie Robertson, drunk on champagne and each other, had gone up to her suite at the Dales Inn.

The Dales Inn was the only hotel in town, and coincidentally it was also where the green energy conference was being held.

To someone viewing this from the outside, with everything that was going against them—feuding fathers, rival companies—that night she and Bowie might have come across as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Except, once the dust had settled again, they were much more like the Hatfields and the McCoys, but with the Coltons focusing on drilling oil wells and the Robertsons worrying about environmental impact.

She sighed, holding her head with one hand. There was no happy ending in sight here.

But then, she remembered, there hadn’t been one for Romeo and Juliet, either.

Her head was really beginning to hurt, Marlowe thought. And it didn’t exactly help her condition any to have both her desk phone and the cell phone she had left next to it when she’d walked into the bathroom ringing like crazy now. The phones sounded as if they were jointly heralding the end of the world and doing so just slightly out of sync.

Maybe they were, she thought darkly, still staring at the offending stick.

“Why don’t they shut up?” she cried, helplessly putting her hands over her ears.

As if that would stop the noise, Marlowe thought angrily.

She rose to her feet—her legs felt oddly shaky, she realized, holding on to the wall for a moment to get her balance—and opened the bathroom door and glared accusingly at the offending phones.

If they were both ringing like that, something had to be very, very wrong, she thought.

Something other than an offending white stick with its glaring pink cross.

Taking a deep breath, Marlowe made her way over to her wide custom-built desk. Part of her was hoping that the ringing would abruptly stop by the time she reached the phones.

No such luck.

Braced for almost anything—after all, the worst possible thing had already happened, she reasoned—Marlowe picked up her multiline desk phone. Thinking it was one of the company’s many administrative assistants on the other end, she said tersely, “Okay, this had better be good.”

“On the contrary,” she heard her father’s deep voice rumbling against her ear, “this is very bad. And where the hell have you been? Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Payne Colton, chairman of the board of Colton Oil, demanded angrily. “Your damn phone’s been ringing off the hook. Why were you just ignoring it?”

“Dad?” Marlowe said shakily, still looking at the stick she was clutching in her hand.

Payne snorted. “Well, at least you still know who I am,” he retorted in disgust. “Did you forget your way to the boardroom?”

“What?” What was he talking about? It was after five o’clock. There was no meeting scheduled this late, at least none that she recalled. “No,” she responded after a beat.

“Well, that’s good, because that’s where the rest of us are, sitting around that big old table and twiddling our thumbs, waiting for you to make an appearance.” His voice hardened. “I sent you a text,” he snapped, the fury he was feeling now more than evident in his voice. “Didn’t you see your email?”

No, Dad, I didn’t see my email. All I see is this big, ugly white stick that’s about to topple my whole world, Marlowe thought numbly.

“Well, Your Highness, we’re still all waiting for you to deign to put in an appearance,” her father was saying while she was having her crisis. “So read that email I forwarded to you and get that skinny behind of yours in here. Pronto! Do you hear me?”

Hovering over her laptop, Marlowe hit a key. The screen that was currently there gave way to another one that contained her corporate email. She scrolled up the page to the latest message to see what had set her father off like this.

Her mouth dropped open when she got to the subject line.

She reread the words twice.

“Oh my Lord!”

Her father took her shocked response to mean she had looked at the email. Or at least she had seen enough of the email to shake her up, which was good enough for his purpose.

“All right, get in here now, Marlowe!” Payne screeched. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

Marlowe’s knees were shaking so badly, she had to sink down into her chair. This had happened to her twice in the last fifteen minutes, she thought, feeling as if she was completely losing her grip on the immediate world.

Despite her father’s voice reverberating in her ear with his loudly shouted demands, Marlowe opened her email, hoping that maybe the contents weren’t as bad as it initially seemed.

It was worse. Marlowe’s head was suddenly filled with a swirling kaleidoscope of memories, all grounded in her childhood. Adventures and events that she and Asa, whom everyone called Ace, had shared as children. Ace was her big brother. He was a big brother to all of them, even to her adopted brother, Rafe. Ace didn’t care. He treated Rafe just like he was a real brother.

That was just the way that Ace was.

Marlowe looked back down at the email’s subject line.

That was absolutely absurd, she thought. Who would say such a crazy thing? Who would even come up with such an idiotic idea, she silently demanded, stunned beyond words. Maybe this was the work of some competitor in an attempt to disrupt the company.

“Marlowe? Marlowe, are you there?” Payne Colton’s deep voice thundered, bringing her back to the moment and her suddenly cold and incredibly inhospitable-feeling office.

It took her a second to focus and come around. Thinking took another second. “Yes,” she said, breathing heavily, “I’m here, Dad.”

“No,” her father corrected her sharply, “you’re there. I need you to come here. Now!” he declared. “Can you do that for me?” he asked his daughter sarcastically. “Can you hightail it out of your overdecorated office and get yourself to the boardroom five minutes ago?” Payne shouted.