The Coltons of Red Ridge

But there really was no time. Not now...

Fear pounded in her heart as she watched her friend walk away with her daughter. She’d nearly lost her just a short time ago—at the park. If Juliette hadn’t shot the man in the shoulder...

If she hadn’t wounded him, he would have killed them both. She just had to convince her boss of the same. She had no time to deal with Blake Colton. But when she moved to follow Elle and Pandora, he caught her. Wrapping his big hand around her arm, he held her back.

Her skin tingled from his touch. It had been so long. But she could still remember how it felt...how he’d touched her that night...

She jerked her arm from his grasp. Just as he’d spoken through gritted teeth, she did the same. “I. Cannot. Do. This. Now.”

“We need to talk,” he insisted.

She knew it was true and not just because Elle had been badgering her to seek him out. She knew it was the right thing to do. But at the moment she needed to be with her daughter—needed to see for herself that her child stayed safe.

“She’s mine, isn’t she?” he asked, and his voice cracked slightly with the emotions making his green eyes dark.

Her reply stuck in her throat, choking her.

“She’s the right age,” he continued as if he was trying to convince himself. “And she looks like me...”

Juliette felt like she had when she’d stared into the barrel of the killer’s gun. Trapped. Terrified. Desperate...

* * *

Frustration gripped Blake, twisting his gut into tight knots. He wanted to shake her, but when he reached for her again, she flinched as if she expected him to hurt her. He wouldn’t have, of course—despite his feelings. But he dropped his hand back to his side.

“Tell me,” he said, badgering her like she was a reluctant witness on the stand. “Tell me if she’s mine.”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, as if her patience had snapped. Or perhaps it was her conscience. “She’s yours.”

He expelled a sharp breath, like she’d punched him in the gut. All these years he’d spent thinking about her and about that night, he had never once considered that she might have gotten pregnant—that they might have made a child together. He was a father.

Anger coursed through him now, replacing the shock. “How—how could...”

Her lips curved into a slight smile. “The usual way...”

He glared at her. “How could you keep her from me?”

Her face flushed now, but she just stared at him with those damn beautiful eyes of hers.

“How could you?” he asked. “For years?”

“I—I—” she stammered. “You left Red Ridge right after...”

“You could have found me,” he insisted. His family was in Red Ridge. They’d known where he was.

She tensed now and glared back at him. “You could have found me—even without knowing.”

“I tried,” he admitted. “You slipped out in the middle of the night, and I didn’t even know your last name. Hell, right now I’m not sure you gave me your right first name, Juliette.”

She flinched.

And he wondered. Had she told him anything that was the truth?

“Juliette is my real name,” she said.

Someone from inside the police department called it now. She glanced back toward the building. “I—I need to go,” she said. But when she started forward, he caught her arm again—stopping her.

“No—” He’d spent five years wondering what had happened to her. Where she was... He wasn’t just going to let her walk away from him again.

“She needs me,” Juliette said.

And he felt once again like she’d struck him. The child needed her mother. She didn’t even know she had a father. Unless Juliette had passed off another man as the little girl’s daddy. Blake glanced down at the hand of the arm he held—her left hand. Her fingers were bare of any rings. She wasn’t married or engaged now.

But a lot could have happened over the last nearly five years. She might have had a husband. Hell, he’d thought she might have on their night together, and that was why she’d slipped away like she had, so nobody would spot them together.

She hadn’t worn a ring then either, though. So maybe, as a cop, she’d just decided not to wear one.

How had she afforded that beautiful gown—those shoes and earrings—on a cop’s salary—if she’d even been a cop back then? She looked younger now, without makeup, than she’d looked that night.

“Let me go,” she said—once again through gritted teeth. She had beautiful teeth and lips and features...

He’d started to believe that he’d romanticized her and that night over the years. That she couldn’t have been nearly as beautiful as he’d thought she was. He’d been wrong—about romanticizing it.

She was also stressed and afraid, her face pale and eyes wide with fear.

“I will let you go,” he agreed because he had no choice. Her daughter—their daughter—needed her.

Before the little girl had hidden her face in her mother’s neck, Blake had noticed her tears and, worse than that, her fear. His gut churned again—with a sense of helplessness even worse than when Patience had told him about his sister Layla’s predicament.

“But you’re going to come to my suite later,” he told her.

Her eyes narrowed as if she thought he expected a repeat of that long-ago night. Of what had happened over and over that night...

His pulse leaped at the thought, but he was too angry with her to ever want her again. So he clarified, “Just to talk.”

Someone called her name a second time, and she tugged free of him. But as she stepped through those open doors to the lobby, she turned back and nodded.

“I’m staying in the same suite as I was that night,” he told her.

Color rushed back into her pale face, and she nodded again. She would be there. Eventually. But he suspected it might be a while before she could make it.

Still reeling from what he’d just learned, he no longer wanted to talk to his cousin—the police chief. Blake didn’t want to step into that police department where she and their daughter were.

He just wanted to be alone. He wanted to think and process and deal with all the emotions gripping him. The anger, the shock, the fear...

His daughter had witnessed a crime of some sort, and from the way both she and her mother had acted, they were definitely frightened.

Could they be in danger? Could he lose his child just as he had finally discovered her existence?

* * *

“He’s back?” Fenwick Colton already knew that his son had returned to Red Ridge. The concierge at the Colton Plaza Hotel had confirmed that Blake had checked into a suite on the twenty-first floor a couple of days ago. But Fenwick hadn’t seen him. And he sure as hell hadn’t heard from him.

Patience, Fenwick’s daughter and Blake’s half sister, nodded in reply, but she had to understand what he was really asking. Why hadn’t Blake come to see him?

The boy was Fenwick’s only son. They should have been close. Fenwick had had primary custody of him, since a hyper boy had been more than his jet-setting mother had wanted to handle. But the kid had always acted like he couldn’t stand to be near him. And as if to prove it, he’d spent the past five years living in other countries. Maybe that was just because he was like his mother, though.

“Why is he back?” Fenwick asked his daughter.

Patience lowered her head slightly, and her dark bangs shielded her dark eyes. She was staring down at her desk in her office at the Red Ridge K9 training center. If he wanted to talk to his daughter, he usually had to come to the training center, where she worked as a veterinarian. It was the same with Bea; he would have had to go to the bridal shop to see her. At least Gemma visited him, but it was usually to ask for money.

He ran his hands over his tailored suit, plucking a strand of dog hair from the expensive fabric. Then he touched his hair, making sure the blond piece hadn’t slipped. As mayor of Red Ridge, he had to make sure he always looked good. “You called him,” he surmised.

“I had to,” she said, and her voice was sharp with resentment. Patience didn’t understand business like Layla did. Like Blake did...

“He’s not going to help,” Fenwick said. It wasn’t a question. He knew that with just as much certainty as he knew that Blake had returned to Red Ridge.

Patience looked up from her desk now. “He might. He will,” she persisted, but she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than she was him. “Why else did he come home?”

That was what worried Fenwick. If Blake hadn’t come back to help his family, then he probably had another reason—a personal reason—for returning to Red Ridge.

“You shouldn’t have called him,” Fenwick admonished her.

“He’s your son,” she said. “My brother. He deserved to hear what’s going on with the family from one of us.”

Fenwick suspected the media had probably beaten Patience to the punch, though. Coltons were news. And a Colton scandal was even bigger news.

Damn his reprobate cousin Rusty and his equally disreputable kids for causing such a scandal. But it went beyond a scandal. Rusty’s daughter Demi was a murderer. Evidence and witnesses proved—to him, at least—that she was the psycho killing grooms-to-be because she’d been dumped by her own one-week fiancé. Of course a Colton being a killer wasn’t news. Other Colton family members—very distant family members out of state—had committed murder, as well.

Fenwick didn’t know what he might be forced to do if Layla wasn’t able to carry out their plan of marrying to save the company. This damn Groom Killer nonsense was threatening their livelihood. But now that might not be all that was threatened.

“You shouldn’t have called him,” Fenwick repeated, “because you might have put him in danger.”

Patience’s dark eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“This maniac,” Fenwick said, “is killing grooms. Men.” He was a little scared for himself—not that he had any intention of getting married again. Three times was more than enough. And he had more fun dating than he’d ever had being married.

“Blake isn’t engaged,” Patience said. “He’s not marrying anyone. He didn’t even have a serious girlfriend when he did live at home. So I doubt there’s anyone in Red Ridge he would be tempted to propose to.”

Fenwick wished he could trust that. “Couples are afraid to go public. Engagements have been canceled. Everyone is afraid of the Groom Killer. But that hasn’t stopped anyone from coupling up in private.”

He could think of at least six new couples in Red Ridge—some damn unlikely couples.

“And you know your brother,” Fenwick continued. “If anyone tells that stubborn kid not to do something, he’s twice as determined to do it.”

Like build his own damn company. Fenwick had told the boy not to do it, that he didn’t have what it took. Hell, he’d been fresh out of graduate school with his MBA and had no real business experience when he’d begun his “start-up.” But Blake had had to go out and prove him wrong.

He was so damn stubborn it would be just like him to try to prove Fenwick wrong now about getting engaged. But then he wouldn’t be risking just some money.

He would be risking his life.

Chapter 3

Juliette sat on one of the chairs in the row outside the chief’s office. She’d given her report and she had helped Pandora give hers as well as a description of the shooter to Detective Carson Gage who would be working the murder case.

The last thing the Red Ridge Police Department could handle right now was another murder investigation. They were already spread so thin with the Groom Killer murders and the suspected criminal activities of the Larson twins. Did the RRPD have enough resources left to protect Pandora? That was what Juliette wanted to know, what she waited outside the chief’s office to discuss with him.

But of course, Finn Colton was busy. So busy that she had to wait. The receptionist was busy, as well, taking one call after another. Usually they would have had time to talk while Juliette waited to see the chief. She would have asked Lorelei about her teenage kids, and Lorelei would have asked about Pandora.

Elle was with Pandora, coloring pictures in the conference room and trying to get her to eat the pizza she’d ordered for them. Elle was a good friend.

The only person Juliette had told about that night nearly five years ago. The night she’d felt like Cinderella being invited to the ball.

The invitation she’d received had come in the form of a tip from a hotel guest. Juliette had been cleaning the woman’s room all week. She’d sought Juliette out a couple of times for more towels, to restock the minibar, and she’d talked to her like Juliette was a person and not just a maid. The woman had compelled Juliette to confide in her about working two jobs to pay off her late mother’s medical bills and tuition for community college.

So later that week Juliette was disappointed that the woman had checked out before her business conference ended. She was even more surprised that instead of finding money as a tip, she found a note lying atop a glittering mound of a gown and some sky-high heels and long, dangling glittery earrings. The note read:

No cash for a tip, but take these as thanks. Had my heart broken in them and will never wear again.

Juliette wasn’t so sure that was the case. The woman she’d met had seemed too strong and self-reliant to care much if her heart had been broken. She’d probably left her the items instead of cash because she’d known the cash would have just gone toward those medical bills. The shoes and earrings and that glittery gown were something Juliette never would have bought for herself. One, she couldn’t have afforded them. And two, she wouldn’t have needed them since she had no place to wear them. But lying beneath the note was a ticket granting her entry to the conference awards black tie dinner.

Because of her mom’s long illness, Juliette had skipped her high school prom a couple of years ago. It hadn’t mattered much to her then—not as much as it had meant to her mother, who’d felt so bad that Juliette hadn’t attended it. But it wasn’t as if Juliette had had a date anyway. And even if she had, she wouldn’t have wanted to miss a minute left of her mother’s limited time.

Juliette had already forgotten her father because he had died when she was very young. At least now her parents, who’d been high school sweethearts, were together again.

And Juliette was alone. Should she dress up and give herself the prom she’d missed? But instead of goofing around with high school kids who didn’t understand how precious life was, she would be socializing with adults, with accomplished businesspeople.

The idea thrilled her too much for her to resist. The guest had been like a fairy godmother leaving behind that dress and heels and earrings. All that was missing were the carriage and the horses. But Juliette didn’t need a pumpkin and some mice. She had her own vehicle.

When her shift ended, she left the hotel in her maid’s drab uniform with her tips tucked inside her backpack. Her friend, who was going to cosmetology school, was thrilled to do her hair and makeup, so just a few short hours later, Juliette returned to the hotel where she worked. But not even her coworkers recognized her as she swept into the ballroom wearing those impossibly high and dainty heels as well as the long, nude-colored glittery gown. Her hair was half up and half down in some complicated style that defied gravity. And when she moved, the long dangling earrings brushed against her neck. For the first time in her life, Juliette felt like a princess. Even then she’d suspected it would be the last time she would ever feel like this.

So she’d vowed then and there to make the most of this magical evening. To experience everything that she could—because she knew very well how short life could be. Her ball wasn’t exactly what she’d expected, though. Her fairy godmother must not have been the only one who’d cut the conference short, because the ballroom was not crowded, which made him impossible to miss.

He was younger than most of the other men in the room, and by far the most handsome in his black tuxedo. He was lean and muscular and just the right height that with these heels on, she would be able to stare into his eyes. Eyes that she knew were green and sharp with his keen intelligence. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he already had his MBA.

Blake Colton. The only male heir of the wealthy branch of the Colton family. He was the prince of Red Ridge. And Juliette was...

For the night, Cinderella.

She felt the moment he noticed her—because her pulse quickened, and her skin began to tingle. She didn’t even need to look up to know that he was coming toward her. Her heart beat faster and faster as he drew nearer to her.

“Hello,” a deep voice murmured.

She turned and stared right into his eyes. And she knew in that moment, she never wanted to look away. She didn’t just see him; she saw herself in his eyes—the way she wanted to be: beautiful, interesting, happy.

He sucked in a breath, and she knew that he felt it, too—that instant and intense attraction between them. He extended a hand to her, and it shook slightly. “I—I’m Blake Colton.”

She knew who he was. Hell, everybody in Red Ridge knew who he was. But he didn’t know that she was from Red Ridge. She could have been from anywhere—could have been anyone. And for tonight, she could pretend that she was.

But her first instinct was to be honest, so she murmured, “I’m Juliette...” And she put her hand in his.

He cocked his head, and a lock of dark blond hair tumbled across his forehead. He was obviously waiting for her last name.

But instead of giving it to him, she just smiled.

He chuckled. “You’re going to be mysterious,” he said.

Her smile widened. “I’m going to be smart.”

Just in case she got caught crashing the event, she didn’t want to get fired from her job. Technically, since he was a Colton, and she worked for the Colton Plaza Hotel, he was her boss. He could even fire her.

“You don’t trust me,” he said.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

He uttered a sigh, as if that was a relief—that she didn’t know him. But then he said, “Let’s change that. Let’s get to know each other.” He entwined their fingers and tugged her along with him as he headed out of the ballroom.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

He stopped near the bank of elevators and pressed the up button. While he didn’t live in the hotel, he had a suite reserved on the twenty-first floor. Was this why? Because he could pick up women as easily as he’d picked up her?

He turned back to her. “I want to see you under the stars,” he said. “There’s a bar on the roof, and a band. A better one than the conference has. I suspect that’s where everyone has gone.”

So he hadn’t just assumed she’d go to his room. That was good. But she had to acknowledge a flash of disappointment. She wouldn’t have been upset at being invited to see his suite. The night wasn’t over yet. She’d just left the ball, and she didn’t mind since she was leaving with the prince. The elevator doors swooshed open to a full car of rowdy-sounding guests. They must have been abandoning the quieter bar in the lobby for the rooftop lounge.

She stepped back, willing to wait for the next elevator. But Blake pulled her inside with him. As crowded as it was, they had to stand very close to each other—so close that they touched everywhere. Arm, hip, thigh...

A guest jostled Juliette, and her heel twisted, nearly twisting her ankle, as well, but Blake’s arm slid around her waist, pulling her more tightly against him. Even after the doors opened and they exited onto the roof, Blake kept his arm around her.

He led her onto the dance floor and pulled her closer yet as he held her in his arms. They danced slowly—slower even than the beat of the music. It was as if Blake, too, wanted to savor every minute of the evening like Juliette did.

He stared at her so intently that she lifted a hand to her face and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Had her makeup run down her face? She usually didn’t wear this much, but her friend had applied it heavily, to make Juliette look older—like the accomplished businesswoman her fairy godmother had been.

Blake lifted her hand from her face and replaced it with his, sliding his thumb along her jaw. “You are so beautiful—” he uttered a wistful sigh “—more beautiful than the stars themselves...”

She smiled. Her prince was definitely charming. Not that he was hers...except maybe for this night. A night she intended to make the most of—while it lasted.

They danced until the band stopped for a break. Then Blake, his arm still around her, began to steer her toward the rooftop bar.

But Juliette saw who the bartender was, a young man she’d turned down for a date several times. If he recognized her and—given how he always stared at her—he probably would, she knew he would blow her cover and destroy her evening. So she dug in her heels and propelled them to a stop.

“Don’t you want a drink after all that dancing?” Blake asked.

“Uh, yes...” Despite the cool autumn air blowing around the roof top, she was hot and flushed, but that was more from his closeness than from the dancing. “But not here...”

Blake glanced down at her. “Then where?”

She knew what he would think, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want her ball to end at midnight. She was greedier than Cinderella. She wanted longer than a few hours and more than a few dances. She wanted Blake. “Your room.”

He stared into her eyes, and as he did, his pupils dilated, swallowing the green. Then, his arm around her, he led her back to the elevators. But a line had already formed for them. So he pushed open the door to the stairs. “It’s just one flight down,” he assured her.

But when her heel slipped on one of the steps, he swung her up in his arms. “We can’t have you breaking an ankle,” he murmured.

“I can take off the shoes,” she offered. She didn’t want to break an ankle, either, because when this evening was over, she would have to go back to her real life and her two jobs and mountain of bills.

“I have you,” he assured her.

A wistful sigh slipped through her lips. She wished he had her, but he didn’t even know her. If he did, he wouldn’t be carrying her; he would be asking her for extra towels. But she wasn’t going to worry about that now. She was just going to enjoy being treated like a princess. So she linked her arms around his neck and snuggled against him, brushing her lips over his throat.

His pulse leaped beneath her mouth, and he tensed. “Now I might slip,” he murmured. But he was already on the landing, pushing open the door with his shoulder. A few strides down the hall and he stopped outside a door. “You’ll need to take the key card from my pocket,” he said, and his voice sounded strange, strangled.

She smiled and slid one hand over his ass.

He nearly jumped and cleared his throat. “Not that pocket. Inside jacket pocket.”

So she moved her hand between them, pushing aside his jacket to run her fingers down his dress shirt and over the rippling muscles beneath the silk.

“You need to find that key,” he said through gritted teeth, “quickly.”

“Why?”

He showed her why—with his mouth. He lowered his head and brushed his lips across hers before deepening the kiss.

Passion coursed through Juliette, and she kissed him back with all the desire she felt for him. Her hands moved through his short, spiky dark gold hair as she held his head to hers.

His arms tightened around her, and he shuddered slightly. Lifting his mouth from hers, he panted for breath and murmured, “The key card...”

She fumbled inside his jacket until she found it. When she pulled it out, the card nearly slipped from her fingers. Blake caught it and swiped it through the lock. Then he pushed open the door and carried her over the threshold.