Justine Davis - Colton Family Rescue

And then he’d looked at Jolie. Standing there, watching them. There were tears streaking down her face, but the glow in her beautiful gray eyes was pure joy. He’d known in that moment that it was right, righter than anything had ever been in his life. They were his, and they would build a life that would be rock-solid and Texas strong.

A month later, they were both gone.

She’d thrown them away and, as his mother so coldly put it, taken the money and run. Just as she’d predicted when she first realized her son had taken an interest in the lowly cook’s assistant.

“She’s a gold digger, Thomas. All she wants is Colton money,” Whitney Colton had said, after storming into his rooms on the second floor of the ranch house. Which he’d always thought was a singularly inaccurate name for a place that looked more like a mansion of the antebellum South.

“You know people said the same thing about you, don’t you?” he’d snapped back at her. He’d scored with that one; he knew it by the color that rose in her cheeks and the anger that flared in green eyes so like his own.

“And I’ve proven them wrong for twenty-five years now,” she retorted sharply.

Yes, he’d scored, but in the end he’d lost, because she’d been proven right. Jolie had jumped at the first chance at a chunk of cash. A big Colton payday must have been her goal all along. He’d fought the knowledge, right up until his mother had shown him the cashed check, with Jolie’s signature unmistakably on the back.

It had been the most painful learning moment of his life. He never, ever wanted to go through something like that again. And it only got worse when he started to wonder if it had been only the money, or if it had been him, too—if he had somehow failed her. So he kept things light, dating occasionally but never seriously, throwing himself into his work with a new energy, and in the process helping create the smooth-running machine that was now Colton Inc.

Which was a damned good thing, he told himself now, since everything else was in chaos. And the last thing he should have been doing was sitting here dwelling on useless, painful memories. And it irritated him that they were still painful, after all this time. He’d assumed he’d be well past it now. Maybe you never forgot the first time you really crashed and burned.

With ruthless determination, he shoved it all back into the compartment it had escaped. His father was missing, his nasty half sister Marceline wanted him declared dead so she could get her grubby hands on her inheritance. That had been a family fight he didn’t ever want to revisit, ending with Marceline putting forth the question he reluctantly had to admit had merit; if their father had been kidnapped and was still alive, why wasn’t there a ransom demand?

And then there was the very real possibility that not only might Eldridge be dead, but someone in the family had killed him.

A tap on the door spun him away from the view he’d no longer been focused on. His assistant, Hannah Alcott, stepped into the office when he called out an okay. Holding a sheaf of papers in her hand, she strode briskly toward him, her energetic stride belying her age, which T.C. knew to be nearly sixty. Once his father’s executive assistant—and, T.C. suspected, at least partly responsible for his father’s steering away from his more unethical turns—she had nearly quit when Fowler took over the reins of Colton Inc., saying bluntly that she wouldn’t deal with his methods. T.C. had tried to intercede, and been unexpectedly flattered when Hannah said, “You’re the only one in this place now that I could work for.”

And so she was here, and his life had instantly become easier. She was efficient, smart and utterly trustworthy.

“Are you happy over here?” he asked as he took the papers she held out. His office was—purposely—on the other side of the building from his brother’s, and smaller, and the adjacent office for his assistant was also smaller.

“Yes, Mr. Colton.” Her tone was formal, but there was a note of respect that had been lacking when she spoke to Fowler. His brother would have been surprised at how much that meant to him. Respect of underlings, as Fowler put it, didn’t matter as long as they followed orders.

“Thank you for accepting the offer. You’ve made my life easier.”

“Thank you for making it. I didn’t really want to leave.”

They were still feeling their way, and although it felt odd to T.C. that he was referred to deferentially as Mr. Colton by a woman a generation his senior, she seemed to prefer it that way. And what Hannah Alcott wanted, she also seemed to generally get.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said that I admire you for standing up to Fowler the way you did.”

She looked at him for a moment, quietly, steadily. “Someone needs to. And I’m here because you are the only other one who has.”

T.C. supposed Fowler would say he was ridiculous for being so pleased at words from a “mere executive assistant,” but nevertheless, he was.

“May I ask you something?” she said when he smiled.

“Only if you promise to stop asking if you can ask.”

She returned his smile. “Why didn’t you have an assistant before?”

He gave a half shrug. “I figured I needed to know how to do it all before I asked somebody else to do it.”

“And that, Mr. Colton, is another reason I’m here.” Briskly turning back to business, she gestured at the papers she’d handed him. “The Wainwright papers are on top, and the analysis you asked for is in the folder.”

“Already? You are a gem, Mrs. Alcott.”

“I am.”

He couldn’t help smiling again, rare enough in these days of worry and mystery that he appreciated it. “I should give you a raise.”

“You already did. I’m quite sufficiently compensated, Mr. Colton.” But she was smiling as she left the office.

He realized after she’d left that one of the reasons he liked her was that she imposed a sense of order on things, and amid the current chaos, that was no small accomplishment. She—

The door opened once more, and Hannah leaned in. “Hurricane Fowler headed this way,” she said.

He grimaced. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Five minutes?”

He gave her a grateful look. “Ten. I’m feeling strong today.”

She nodded and backed out once more.

His brother at full force was not how he’d wanted to spend this afternoon. He needed a back door, T.C. thought, not for the first time. He even considered a dive into the adjoining bathroom, but knowing Fowler he’d barge in anyway. He smothered a sigh and braced himself. It was easier, knowing that in ten minutes Hannah would remind him of some urgent piece of business that had to be attended to immediately. It felt cowardly to him, but sometimes it was the only way to deal with the steamroller that was his half brother.

There was a thud as the door was shoved open; the formality of a knock was usually absent when Fowler was involved. He felt—and acted—as if he owned not only the entire building but everyone in it.

“I know who killed Dad!”

T.C. stood up; he’d expected some business-related demand, or another lecture on his lack of bloodthirstiness on the Wainwright deal. T.C. believed in healthy competition, and the occasional solid partnership; Fowler believed in wiping the competition off the field.

“We don’t know,” T.C. reminded his brother, “that Dad’s dead.”

“Never mind that. I know who did it.”

T.C. groaned inwardly. Great, he thought. Here we go again. It’s not enough that Mother accused Alanna of all people. Now Fowler’s got some other crackbrained theory?

“I presume your glee means you’ve found another suspect for them to chase after besides yourself and Tiffany?”