Kasey Michaels - The Hopechest Bride

“Oh, really? I’ve got examples, Emily, and I’m more than willing to share. Like the day Mom came into the living room and asked who had broken the glass in a picture frame in the library, and forgotten to take away the baseball that had done the job. That time Dad asked for volunteers to muck out the stalls because half the hands were down with food poisoning. The day the phone rang and it was Mrs. Hatcher, your second grade teacher, calling to talk to Mom. And it wasn’t to say that Emily Colton was her prize student.”

“Mrs. Hatcher. Ugh! The woman accused me of eating paste. Double ugh! And I’d only taken a small bite.”

“Ah, so you do remember. But the point I’m trying to make is that the moment you felt the slightest bit in danger, you found a way to pull your hair over your face, like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand. It was always a dead giveaway. Trouble comes, and Emily hides behind her hair. It’s as dependable as Inez’s success with peanut butter cookies.”

Emily felt her cheeks flushing, and raised one hand toward her hair before quickly clasping her hands together in her lap. Was her hair always destined to betray her? “I hate my hair,” she said quietly, but with a wealth of feeling. “I should shave it all off.”

“Don’t you dare, Emily Colton! You’re a beautiful woman, but that hair of yours is absolutely extraordinary. Why, I could pick you out in a crowd of thousands, just from one glimpse of that head of hair. You have enough for five people, all on your one head. And the color! You can’t get that out of a bottle, Emily. I know, because I tried one time, in college. I ended up looking like a circus clown.”

“Lots of people could pick me out of a crowd because of this hair of mine,” Emily said, blinking back sudden tears. “Oh, damn. Sophie, what am I going to do? Toby Atkins is dead because of me, and his killer told the police that one of the ways he could track me was because of my hair. People remembered it, remembered me, and Silas Pike was able to find me because of it. Toby Atkins died because Silas Pike was able to find me.”

Sophie was silent for some moments. “Oh, wow,” she breathed at last. “So you’re blaming yourself for Toby Atkins’s death? Because of your hair?”

Emily shook her head, sniffed back tears. “No, not really. Not just the hair. But I should have disguised myself, Sophie, or at least cut my hair, hidden my hair. I’m not stupid, I know my hair is distinctive. I’m guilty because I was arrogant, Sophie. I thought I was so smart. I thought I’d hidden myself brilliantly. And then I didn’t tell Toby the truth. He was a sheriff, Sophie. I should have trusted him, told him, and then he would have been prepared when trouble came.”

“You said all this to Dr. Wilkes?” Sophie leaned forward when Emily remained silent. “Emily? You did tell her, didn’t you?”

Emily shook her head. “I didn’t have to. She knows it was all my fault. Everyone knows,” she said, a sudden mental picture of Josh Atkins’s hard, condemning eyes making her shiver. She banished that image quickly, knowing it would be back, to haunt her dreams, cloud her days. “That’s why she’s here, to help me work through my guilt. Like that’s going to happen. Like she can somehow change what happened.”

Sophie stood up, walked around the coffee table, sat down on the arm of Emily’s chair and put her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “You do know, Emily, that you’re doing again what you said you did about your hair. You’re assuming that Dr. Wilkes believes you’re guilty. I doubt she’s as harsh a jury as you’ve been to yourself. Because I see it another way, sis. I see a young woman running scared from a murderer, running for her life, and yet trying to hang on to as much of her former life as she can. I see a young woman who knew Toby Atkins was falling in love with her, and was too honest to lead him on, make him her protector, put him in danger. You nearly died that night, Emily, and Toby Atkins saved your life. He’s a hero, Em. Don’t demean his sacrifice. Don’t make him into a victim, into your victim. He deserves better than that.”

Emily looked up at her sister, then buried her head against Sophie’s side, sobbing.

Josh Atkins felt like a stalker. Probably because that was what he was doing—stalking Emily Blair Colton. His every free hour was spent with his horse tied to a tree as he crouched behind scrub and looked down on the Hacienda de Alegria. He watched the comings and goings at the ranch, waited for Emily Blair Colton to put up her head, sniff the wind and then leave the safety of her well-guarded sanctuary.

Go somewhere where he could get at her, get to her, remind her that he was here, that he wasn’t going away.

He’d picked up the Rollins Ranch mare two days ago, and hung around the Hacienda de Alegria until his presence began drawing questioning looks, then had to leave before Emily showed up at the stables. Since then, there’d been no reason, no good excuse, to bring him back to the Colton ranch.

So he’d propped himself against a lamp post on Prosperino’s main street, hoping to see Emily Colton come to town to go shopping, to have her hair done, to eat lunch with some friends. That hadn’t worked, either. Prosperino wasn’t that small a town, but the Coltons were pretty obvious by their absence. Not a single Colton had walked or driven down Prosperino’s main street, and Josh could be sure of that, as he had memorized the photographs he’d cut out of newspapers covering the story about Patsy Portman.

Which had brought him back to this hill, this well-concealed vantage point. Another couple of weeks at this, and he’d earn his Stalker merit badge, while losing what was left of his mind.

He might have had no luck in meeting up with Emily, but he had learned a lot about the Coltons, starting with everything he’d read in the newspapers, and added to during his research at the Prosperino Public Library. He might be a cowboy, but he was a community-college-educated cowboy, and he knew how to use the microfiche machine, knew how to go through old newspaper files and find what he wanted.

The Coltons were a good family. He didn’t want to admit that, even to himself, but by all accounts they were a good, fine, upstanding family, from Joseph Colton right down to the youngest member.

Hopechest Ranch thrived because of the early interest shown by the Coltons, and all of the family was still heavily involved in the financing of the haven for troubled children, some of them even in the day-today running of the facility.

The Coltons had raised their own children even as they’d taken on any number of foster children, even adopted some of them, like Emily Blair Colton. It was one thing for a wealthy, successful man to throw money at a charity, but it was another thing entirely for that man to become so involved, so much a part of the solution.

And it wasn’t as if the Coltons always had it easy, been born with silver spoons in their mouths and immune from trouble. Joe Colton had served in the armed forces, then built his empire with his own hands. He’d served his country again as a United States Senator. Joe and Meredith Colton had lost a son to a traffic accident. One of their daughters had almost been killed by a mugger in San Francisco. Joe Colton himself had nearly been murdered by a disgruntled employee.

Not to mention the entire family being duped for ten long years by Meredith Colton’s mentally unbalanced twin sister. That had to be the topper.

So maybe the Colton life wasn’t a fairy tale complete with the rich and benevolent king and queen and populated by happy, carefree princes and princesses.

But did that excuse Emily Colton from guilt in the death of his only brother? Josh didn’t think so. Emily Colton could have run to a dozen different places, put herself under the protection of one of her brothers, or even turned to Joe Colton, who would have surrounded her with armed guards.