Justine Davis - Colton Family Rescue

He knew the instant he said it, it was a mistake. And Fowler proved him right by practically crowing. “Ha! I knew it, you fool. I knew you’d never gotten over that little slut!”

T.C. spun around to stare at his brother. When he spoke, his voice was as cold as a rare Texas snow. “It’s going to take you longer to get over the bones I’m going to break if you don’t get your ass out of here.”

They were nearly the same height, but T.C. was younger, stronger, and tougher—those parties Fowler tended toward, not to mention the overindulgences, softened a man—and they both knew it. They’d been involved in enough brawls growing up, and a few after that, that there was little doubt who would be left standing. Besides, Fowler no longer got his own hands dirty. He paid others to do his dirty work for him.

Like someone to kidnap, or even kill, his own father?

T.C. tried to quash the thought, but at this point he had few illusions about his family, in particular his ruthless brother.

“Really?” Fowler said in that superior tone he adopted when someone called him on his obnoxiousness. “Resorting to physical abuse now?”

“It’s more honest than your kind of abuse,” T.C. said, knowing he’d won the instant he heard the shift in attitude. In a moment Fowler would raise his nose and sniff, as if of course he was far above such tactics. When it happened, T.C. nearly laughed aloud. His brother was nothing if not predictable.

Fowler left without another word. T.C. sat back down, and the sound of the desk chair shifting seemed abnormally loud in the quiet after their outburst.

In typical Fowler fashion, he left the office door standing open. T.C. stared at it, thinking he should get up and close it, but in that moment even that simple action was beyond him. And then Hannah was there at the doorway, glancing in only long enough to roll her eyes expressively before pulling it shut for him. A thought jabbed at him; given Fowler’s penchant for revenge, the passive-aggressive kind, he wondered how he was treating Hannah. He’d have to ask, because he doubted the assistant would complain. He was going to give her that raise, whether or not she wanted or needed it, T.C. thought.

He turned back to the windows, to the view he’d been contemplating before his brother burst in. It looked no different. There had been no change in the buildings, the reflections of the Texas sun on the glass edifices, the orb on the tower was still there.

And yet it felt entirely different.

How could the knowledge of the presence of one person among the million-plus that populated Dallas proper change everything? How could the thought that Jolie was here now make even the bright Texas sun seem different?

Why was she here? Had she ever even left at all? Could she have been within reach, even, as he went about his life, went about Colton business? Fowler said he’d seen her, and he rarely left the Central Business District unless it was for some party or function, and T.C. would have known about that. No, his brother liked to stay where he could tell himself he was an uncrowned prince of industry, with frequent jaunts to Austin to walk the halls of power, as if he needed to prove to himself just how much weight the Colton name carried. But he hadn’t made one of those trips for a couple of weeks, and he’d obviously seen Jolie recently.

Maybe even today.

Damn, he should have asked him where. But that would have given Fowler more satisfaction than he was willing to provide.

Besides, what did it matter where he’d seen her? It wasn’t like suddenly finding out she was still here changed anything. Fowler might as well have seen her in Antarctica. She’d still taken money to abandon him and what they’d built together. She’d destroyed their future. In the end, to take the money and run had been her choice. She hadn’t even loved him enough to tell him face-to-face.

And she’d taken sweet, precious little Emma with her.

Emma.

She’d be...four years old now. Halfway to five. He tried to picture the sunny little girl who had so captured his heart. What was she like? He had little contact with small children, so his only measure was trying to remember what his little sister Piper had been like then, when he was seven and she four. She had chattered, made wild leaps of imagination and pestered him with the question “why?” about seemingly everything, but that was about all he remembered.

“The old man turned her down when she came at him for more money, and she killed him.”

No. Not Jolie. Not the woman whose laugh could light up an entire room. Sure, she’d had a rough start in life and had gotten tangled up with some unsavory people, but she’d changed all that. For Emma, she’d remade her life. She would never intentionally hurt anyone. She just wouldn’t.

Would she? Could he really say this when she’d done just that, and for the most venal of reasons—money?

He spun the chair around, turning his back on the city that held the one woman he’d never been able to let go of.

* * *

“Don’t wanna go sleepy time.”

Emma mumbled it against Jolie’s side as she sat on the wide window seat in the study alcove that served as the girl’s bedroom in the small apartment. The nearly full moon shone in through the large window, something the girl normally enjoyed, but not tonight.

“I know,” Jolie said. She could only imagine what kind of nightmares the girl might be afraid of, and rightfully so. She’d thought of keeping Emma with her, but had had second thoughts that that might plant the idea of her having bad dreams, or worse, not being safe in her own bed.

“What if I see her?”

“Then I’ll be right here.”

“You won’t let her get me?”

“Never ever.”

That seemed to comfort the girl. She snuggled closer. “I don’t like her. She looked at me mean.”

“It’s all right,” Jolie began, automatically soothing before the sense of the child’s words sank in. Until now, it had always been the woman was mean-looking. But this...

“She looked at you?”

“When she saw me. In the car.”

The killer had seen Emma? Knew Emma had seen her? Jolie had to steady herself. “Did she come toward you? Toward the car?”

Emma nodded. “But I wasn’t scared, Mommy. ’Cuz you locked the door. She couldn’t get me. She ran away and you came.”

Jolie hugged the girl even closer, her mind racing but her heart outpacing it.

“Did she ever actually touch the car?” she asked, some vague idea of fingerprints stirring in the tiny portion of her brain that wasn’t flooded with panic.

Emma shook her head. “She ran away,” the girl repeated.

She could have killed my baby! She had a gun...why didn’t she just shoot...thank God, but why didn’t she... Emma is small. Maybe she couldn’t see her...that’s why she came toward the car...if I hadn’t come back when I did...why on earth did I leave her alone, even for seconds...? Never, ever again...

The horror was building rapidly inside her, and mixed with a healthy dose of self-condemnation, she knew the child would sense it at any moment. She already seemed to be waking up rather than winding down for sleep. Jolie fought down the roiling emotions. “Put your head on the pillow, sweetie.”

Reluctantly the child did so. “Sing me the song,” she said.

Jolie’s breath caught. She hadn’t asked for it in a while. How odd—or perhaps not—that she asked for it today, the same day her own foolish brain had been so full of the man who had first sung it to her, surprising Jolie with his deep, beautiful voice gone soft and sweet as he sang—wonderfully, she thought—the song of all the pretty little horses to the babe in his arms.

She often wondered if Emma remembered, too. If she remembered him. Or if somehow the song had just lodged in her memory and she didn’t associate it with anyone in particular; she just liked it.