Marie Ferrarella - The Coltons - Nick, Clay & Jericho

The image. She noted that he didn’t refer to the person in question as her. Georgie supposed that it was a start. “Okay.”

He was going to need a padded envelope and postage. “This place have a post office?” He tossed out the question to both Collins and Georgie.

“A post office, two banks, a city hall and a sheriff’s department. Some people even think we’re close to civilized,” Georgie answered with a trace of resentment at the way he’d dismissed Esperanza. It was all right for her to feel hemmed in by the town once in a while because she lived here and for the most part, she loved it. But he had no right to look down his nose at it. Or her.

About to comment on her quip, he decided to keep it to himself. He hadn’t actually meant what he’d said as an insult, just that Esperanza felt so damn rural to him. He was accustomed to places like Los Angeles and New York where you could find whatever it was you needed within a very small radius.

“Show me” was all he said.

“Fine, I will.” Still numb and shaken, Georgie turned on her heel to lead the way out of the bank.

“ We will, Mama. I know where the post office is, too,” Emmie reminded her.

The one bright spot in her life, Georgie thought, taking Emmie’s hand in hers. “Sorry,” she apologized. “ We will,” she said, correcting herself. Emmie’s smile was positively beatific.

“Can we do anything else for you?” Collins called out after Nick.

“I’ll let you know,” Nick tossed over his shoulder without slowing his pace.

“Who are you calling?” he asked Georgie some twenty-five minutes later.

They’d gone to the post office and he’d gotten the tape off, sending it by overnight express. Once it was on its way, he’d called his tech to alert him to its arrival. Georgie had been unusually quiet through it all and he’d begun to think that maybe the events of the last day had her in a state of shock.

But now, sitting in the passenger seat in the dark sedan he’d rented, Georgie pressed a single button on her cell phone before placing it against her ear. Instead of answering him, she held up her finger, indicating that he’d have to wait his turn. It didn’t exactly make him very happy.

“Hi, it’s me,” she said as someone on the other end apparently picked up. Nick listened, trying to put things together from only half a conversation. “Last night. Look, can you come on up to the house? Something’s happened. No, not to Emmie, she’s fine.” He saw her turn and look over her shoulder at the little girl in the car seat as if to reassure herself. “No, I’m not hurt. Why do you always have to think the worst? Okay, okay, maybe I was a trifle melodramatic, but I really do need to see you.” She paused to listen to the person on the other end, then said, “Good.’ Bye.” She closed her phone again and slipped it into her front pocket.

“Who were you talking to?” Nick asked again.

Had she called for reinforcements? Was he making a mistake after all, giving her the benefit of the doubt about this? At the very least, he didn’t relish the fact that someone else would be nosing around at her house while he was there.

“My brother. One of my brothers,” Georgie amended.

These days, she tended to forget about Ryder. She didn’t like to dwell on her other brother because then she’d have to think about how Ryder was faring in prison and she didn’t like doing that. It made her worry about him despite the fact that he’d been found guilty by a jury of his peers and he had committed the offense that had landed him there. She couldn’t help it. He was still, after all, her brother and she could remember him in better days. Remember him with a great deal of affection. Ryder wasn’t bad, just misguided. Like her, he missed their mother. And, unlike her, he’d resented their older brother when Clay had taken over as the head of the family.

Nick spared her a look. “You’ve got more than one?”

He was going to make another call to Steve when he got the chance. He wanted to find out as much as he could about this woman.

“Two,” she told him. “Clay and Ryder. Both older.” And they both had the tendency to treat her like a child. At times, Clay still did, but then, he was the oldest and saw himself as more of a patriarch than a brother. “I was talking to Clay.”

“Where’s Ryder?”

She shrugged, deliberately looking out the window. “He’s not around right now.”

Nick picked up on the odd note in her voice. “Where is he?”

“Not here” was all she said.

It was bad enough that the people in town knew that her brother was in prison. She didn’t want Sheffield knowing it as well. He’d probably think of them as being white trash or something equally demeaning. For that matter, she didn’t want him to know anything about her family. Someone like Sheffield, with his black suit and his dark aviator sunglasses, would look down on the fact that her mother, a former rodeo star herself, had had an affair with a married man. And that he was a Colton.

In an act of self-defense, she leaned forward and turned up the radio a shade. He’d fiddled with the dials on the way over until he’d located an oldies station. She had nothing against old rock and roll songs, but when she was tense—and she was now and would remain so until everything was squared away again—nothing calmed her down like the familiar. In this case, that meant country and western songs.

She switched the dial over to one of several country and western stations broadcasted in the area. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sheffield’s shoulders stiffen. Georgie smiled to herself.

Deal with it, she ordered him silently.

Because the woman apparently didn’t seem to want to talk about her other brother, he let the subject drop. If he needed to know the whereabouts of this Ryder, he would. For now, he blocked out the tale of a brokenhearted cowboy, singing his tale of woe to the only dependable force in his life, his horse.

Nick sighed. Damn but he hated country music.

A tall, dark-haired, rangy-looking man sat on the front steps of the ranch house. The moment they pulled up in the yard, the man stood up, dusting off his jeans. Nick judged him to be in his mid-twenties. The set-in tan testified to his earning a living by working outdoors.

There was something self-assured about the cowboy. This was a man who led, not followed. Nick was on his guard instantly.

“Uncle Clay,” Emmie cried, squirming out of the car seat and leaping from the car. She sailed gleefully into the man’s arms as the latter squatted down, arms spread, just as she reached him.

“Man but I’ve missed you. You must’ve grown a foot since I last saw you. How’s my favorite girl?” he asked, rising and swinging her around.

“I’m fine,” Emmie declared. “But Mama’s got troubles,” she added solemnly.

Holding his niece to him, Clay turned to look at the stranger with his sister as they both got out of Nick’s sedan.

The man wasn’t her type, Clay judged. Georgie didn’t like men in suits and sunglasses. Too soft. As for him, he didn’t trust a man whose eyes he couldn’t see when he was talking to him.

“Is that the trouble right there?” he asked Emmie, nodded his head toward the stranger.

Emmie twisted around to see who her uncle was referring to. She giggled and shook her head. It was obvious to Georgie, who came to reclaim her, that her daughter had changed her mind about the man. “No, that’s Nick.”

Clay looked at the stranger grimly, his deep espresso-colored eyes growing hard. “What’s a Nick?” he asked.

Chapter 8

For the space of one moment, Georgie struggled with the very strong desire to just fling herself into Clay’s arms and tell him what had happened, starting with Sheffield tackling her in the front yard. Clay would take care of everything for her, the way he used to. The way he had when their mother died.