The Colton Ransom (19 page)

In response, Trevor gently turned her cheek toward the handcuffed wrangler, letting him see the grazed mark. “Sure looks like it, doesn’t it?”

The news was a revelation to the chief as well. He seemed rather upset by this newest twist. “You want to come down and make a statement, Ms. Colton?” he asked Gabby.

But Gabby shook her head. “Later,” she answered. “Right now, all I’d like to do is get this little one back home and change her.” She lightly patted the baby’s rather soggy bottom. Avery was in desperate need of a fresh diaper, not to mention a clean outfit. “My guess is that, right now, she’s about twice her normal weight.”

“At your convenience, then,” the chief said politely, tipping his hat to her. His face clouded over as he turned his attention back to his prisoner. “Move, boy,” he ordered gruffly.

“Okay,” Trevor said once the other two had departed from the old apartment, “it’s time to get my girls home.”

Startled, Gabby’s head jerked up, and she looked at him closely, as if to scrutinize him. “You must really be tired,” she concluded.

He felt far too wired at the moment to be even remotely tired. “What makes you say that?”

Wasn’t it obvious to him? Or hadn’t he heard himself just now? “Because you just referred to both of us as ‘your girls.’”

Trevor looked at her, waiting. He still didn’t see what the problem was. “So?”

“Well,” she explained slowly, “Avery’s your girl because she’s your daughter....” Her voice trailed off after that, giving him space to draw his conclusion from what she’d just eluded to.

The light dawned. “And you don’t want to be.”

That wasn’t what she was saying. “No. Yes.” And then she came to a skidding halt. “Wait a minute—are you actually calling me that on purpose?”

“You don’t like it,” he guessed. Was she one of those women who took a term of endearment and only saw it as an insult?

“I didn’t say that,” she told him, trying to pin him down.

Okay, she’d just lost him, he thought. “Then what did you say?”

Gabby countered his question with one of her own. “What are
you
saying?”

Taking a deep breath, he backtracked. “You’re asking me to spell it out?”

She felt her pulse accelerating again, except that this time, there were no guns involved, no kidnappers around. This was just two people, dancing around the right words and a time-old tradition that had yet to be set in motion.

“I think you’re going to have to, otherwise, I’m just going to think one of us is hallucinating,” she answered.

He supposed, after everything she’d gone through for him, she had this coming. He took a second to pull himself together and get his thoughts right.

“I didn’t think it was possible at my age,” Trevor began, “but you’ve managed to make me see things differently, to see things in a better light than I ever have before....”

She did her best not to look amused. “So far, you’re making me sound like I was some kind of a fledgling saint.”

That was
not
his intent. “Not really. I don’t think a saint, fledgling or not, would have done the kind of things you did the other night.” This time, there was no muting his smile. It spread out all over his face.

“Now you’re making me sound like some kind of a sinner,” she pointed out.

He shook his head, vetoing the second image. “What you are, Gabby, is the total package. A saint and a sinner, all rolled up into one. What I’d like to know...”

For a moment, the sentence just hung there, unfinished, so she prodded. “Yes?”

He began again, his mouth so dry he was afraid his tongue was going to stick to the roof of his mouth if he didn’t get all this out soon. “What I’d like to know is if you’d like to be my personal saint/sinner.”

That
sounded like a requisition for a job. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He blew out an impatient breath. Why was this so hard? “I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”

“Then ask me to marry you,” she suggested. “Don’t talk in riddles.”

Trevor tried again, hoping this time it would come out right. “Gabriella Colton—”

“You usually call me Gabby,” she reminded him. Things were comfortably informal between them now. She didn’t want to lose that.

Nervous, Trevor was swiftly becoming exasperated. “Will you stop interrupting?”

“Okay.” But then she began to say something more.

Trevor put his finger to her lips to keep her from saying anything further before he got this out. “Gabby Colton, will you do me the supreme honor of becoming my wife?”

As far as proposals went, this one certainly lacked feeling, never mind passion. So she asked, “Why?”

He could only stare at her, dumbfounded. “What do you mean ‘why?’”

“Well, if you want me to marry you, there has to be a reason. Are you asking me to marry you because you like the way I cook—? Wait, you’ve never eaten anything I’ve cooked, so it’s not that. Is it the way I diaper a baby? Because you’ve seen me do that. Or is it—?”

Not knowing how else to make her stop talking, he shouted over her. “I’m asking you to marry me because I love you!”

She smiled contentedly then, like a cat that had got into a case full of cream. “There, now was that really so hard?” she asked him sweetly.

They weren’t officially engaged yet and already she had him jumping through hoops, he thought. “Damn it, woman, you’re going to make me crazy.”

She grinned up at him. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Trevor Garth.”

He caught hold of her arms and pulled her closer, despite the fact that she was still holding his daughter, who was now fast asleep. “But I’ve got a feeling I’m going to,” he replied. Then, before she could say another word, he leaned into her and kissed her.

Even with the baby between them, his kiss still rocked her world. And she had the feeling that it would continue to do so for a very long time.

Gabby couldn’t wait to be proven right.

Epilogue

G
abby’s bedroom—it was more like a suite,
in his opinion—complete with a sitting room, was more than twice the size of his
old quarters located in the staff’s wing. Even with the crib she’d kept there
initially for her niece, the crib that was now to accommodate Avery, the room
was still huge. When the crib had been put in his room, there had barely been
enough space to move around in.

From what he could see, Gabby could have had a small circus
performing here—complete with baby elephants—and there still would have been
room left over.

It had taken him a little more than two hours to gather
together all of his things, as well as Avery’s belongings, and bring them over
to Gabby’s room. She’d suggested, in light of recent events, that he move in
with her. There was more than enough room in her walk-in closet for his clothes,
the baby’s few clothes and, most likely, the clothes of some small,
fashion-minded Western European country.

Ordinarily utterly secure in his identity and in his abilities
to handle any situation, Trevor was aware of battling feelings of inadequacy.
He’d always been his own man—even before he’d actually
been
a man.

But even so, he looked around Gabby’s room uncertainly.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked. Gabby gazed at him
questioningly, obviously waiting for him to elaborate, and he obliged. “About my
moving in with you? Your father—”

Gabby saw where this was going and cut Trevor off before things
could escalate and veer off in unstable directions.

“—has bigger things on his mind right now than you moving into
my rooms,” she assured him firmly. “Besides, you’re not exactly some random
lover I happened to stumble across at a saloon one night and decided to take to
my bed. You’re a brave, well-respected former police officer he handpicked to be
head of his ranch’s security. Plus you’re my fiancé and you’ve vowed to make an
honest woman out of me, remember?” she reminded him.

Moving closer, Gabby placed her hand on his chest, her fingers
splaying out playfully along the ridges and muscles she felt beneath her
palm.

“It’s okay,” she told him with feeling as well as a sexy smile
on her lips.

He laughed and closed his arms around Gabby, drawing her closer
to him. Close enough to feel her heart beating in rhythm with his.

Such a small sound, generating such a comforting feeling, he
couldn’t help thinking.

“Honest woman,” he echoed with a small laugh. “It’s you who’s
making an honest man out of me.” He saw her brow furrow slightly in confusion,
so he explained. “Before you came into my life, I figured I was just meant to
drift through life, standing on the outside, looking in, seeing other people
enjoying themselves, having all the normal things everyone wants—a home, a
family. Love. Things I never had, thought I was never
going
to have. But you changed all that. You made all that happen,”
he told her.

He could feel his heart swelling with love as well as
gratitude—gratitude for so many things.

“And maybe I don’t show it, and maybe there’ll be times when I
won’t act it, but I’m going on the record here and now, Gabby, to say that I
know how very lucky I am and how much I appreciate you loving me.”

A teasing smile played along her lips. “Oh, you do, now, do
you?”

But he didn’t take the easy way out, didn’t resort to teasing,
abandoning the serious note the first moment he could because it embarrassed
him. This had to be said—if only once—and he wanted her to know exactly what she
meant to him.

“Yes, I do,” he told her. “You saved me, Gabby. You saved me
from becoming an unhappy, bitter man way before my time.”

“So there’s a time for you to become unhappy and bitter?” she
pretended to ask innocently.

He laughed, capturing her lips for a fleeting moment and
savoring the taste of her.

But he couldn’t allow himself to get carried away. His daughter
was in her crib, which was in the adjoining sitting room and out of sight, but
he was still aware of her being there and possibly awake.

“You know what I mean,” he said to Gabby. “I’m not very good at
words.”

“Oh, on the contrary,” she said with conviction. “You’re very
good with words, Trevor.” A wicked smile moved across her mouth as she went on
to tell him, “But you’re even better at something else.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow, as if to question her words. “And
what would that be?”

Raising her head, she ever-so-faintly brushed her lips against
his in what felt like almost a phantom kiss. And then she drew back, her eyes
dancing.

“Guess.”

“Okay,” he answered gamely.

Pulling her in even closer, Trevor sealed his lips to hers.
Just as he began to do so, he heard her sigh with anticipated contentment.
“Right as usual.”

He could feel her smile beneath his lips as they found hers. He
didn’t know about “usual,” but he was damn glad he was right.

* * * * *

Don’t miss the next story in
THE COLTONS
OF WYOMING
miniseries:
COLTON BY BLOOD
by Melissa Cutler,
available August 2013 from
Harlequin Romantic Suspense.
For a
sneak peek, turn the page
....

Chapter One

Y
ou can’t make peace with a ghost. Kate McCord knew this as fact.

It was one of those secrets of life that no one would tell you and you had to uncover for yourself, like discovering Santa Claus wasn’t real. It stuck in Kate’s craw, all the truths that nobody saw fit to share. She’d found out the hard way, and not until it was too late, that bankruptcy would not solve your problems, no matter how enthusiastically a lawyer told you it would, not all men cared if a woman orgasmed and croissants—the real kind, not the ones sold in supermarkets—were nearly a third butter.

And the memories of the people you loved and lost? Well, all they did was haunt.

It was dark in the servant stairwell. A sprawling, fluid darkness that seeped into cracks and corners and right into Kate’s skin. A dessert tray balanced on her right hand, heavy and ungainly. Her left hand pressed to the wall, holding her steady as she stood rooted on a stair somewhere between the first and second floors, at least ten steps in either direction to the nearest door. Too great a distance for a woman who was afraid of the dark.

She had no idea how long she’d been waiting for the power to be restored, but it had to have been well over five minutes, perhaps ten if the rising heat and stuffiness were any indication. The watch she wore had a light, but activating it would require her to set the tray down. Not only was the tray too large to balance on a step, but she wasn’t sure she could convince her body to move.

Her pulse pounded all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes. Any second now, Horace or Jared or one of the other ranch hands would get the generator fired up and she’d be safe.

Any second now.

Every so often, distant voices cut through the unbearable silence that had replaced the hum of the air-conditioning system. Footsteps clomped away, fading off. Nobody ventured onto the stairs. All that mattered to the waitstaff was restoring the Colton family to the level of comfort to which they were accustomed. Locating a stranded cook’s assistant probably didn’t cross anyone’s mind.

It would’ve crossed Faye’s mind. She’d been Kate’s closest friend at Dead River Ranch. In all of Wyoming, really. But Faye was gone, and now the kind old woman was yet another person Kate loved who’d died before their time only to haunt the shadows of her mind. Another ethereal face in the darkness.

She shivered.

The note she’d stuffed in her pocket in haste crackled. On the tray, the glass dish of bread pudding quivered.

Steady, Kate. It’s only a power outage.

Maybe if she kept her focus on the pudding, she would survive this ordeal with her sanity intact. She’d spent hours on that dessert, baking the challah loaves, preparing the custard and whiskey sauce. It was a sumptuous creation topped by a pillow of fresh whipped cream. Mr. Colton’s favorite sweet, if his frequent requests were any indication.

A boom of great force sounded from nearby. A door slamming or something hitting a wall. A tree falling, perhaps. Fierce wind storms were most likely to blame for the power outage. They’d plagued Western Wyoming for more than a week, beating on the ranch house and surrounding wilderness, unrelenting. Sinister.

Another hard truth Kate had discovered for herself was that Mother Nature was the greatest devil of all, an unremorseful murderer. Every time the weather turned nasty, the faces of William and baby Olive—and now Faye—hovered in the front of her mind.

She’d felt so safe at Dead River Ranch, where busy servants and the lazy, entitled family left the lights burning all day and night. The kitchen was her cocoon. A warm, bright, safe place to call home. Until last month.

Poor Faye.

Murdered by the devil’s lackey, a hired gun who’d been caught and locked away, though the mastermind behind the murder was still at large. The writer of the note in Kate’s pocket. Someone who, she dreaded, remained on the ranch. Maybe someone she spoke to every day or whom she’d helped prepare meals for. Without money or anywhere else to go, her only two choices were to carry on with her job, hoping that law enforcement levied justice onto the devil behind Faye’s death before more harm was done, or take matters into her own hands and do what she could to help the investigation.

The note was a testament to her efforts, not that anything had come of the stolen evidence. She’d nearly been caught red-handed tonight in the pantry by Fiona, and she could well imagine the repercussions of being caught with evidence she had no business possessing.

On one of the two floors above her, the stairwell door opened with a bang that made Kate gasp. The tray tilted perilously. She felt the shift of weight as the dish of pudding slid, the teacup, too.

Her gasp turned into a cry of panic as she bent her knees and crooked her elbows, willing the tray to level. No, no, no. Not the pudding.

But her correction was too severe, overcompensating for her first error. The tray lightened as the entirety of the contents crashed to the stairs in an explosion of shattering glass and clanging silver.

She squeezed her eyes closed and hugged the tray flat against her chest.

Agnes was going to be furious. Delivering dessert to Mr. Colton’s sickbed was supposed to be the final task of her sixteen-hour workday. Fiona had asked the favor of her on the sly since they hadn’t secured Agnes’s permission. Kate wouldn’t put it past the bitter-tempered head chef to demand Kate’s dismissal, as she’d threatened to do almost daily since Kate took the assistant-cook job four years earlier.

The flicker of a moving flashlight accompanied hushed footsteps on the stairs above. Someone was moving through the dark in her direction. Wordlessly.

A savior or the devil?

Surrounded as she was by broken glass, she wouldn’t have been able to move even if she could’ve convinced her feet to unstick from the ground. Even if she was able to decide if she should climb toward the person whose footsteps were getting louder and closer or if she should run away.

“Hello?” she whispered.

No answer.

She shuffled her feet backward, unintentionally kicking glass shards with her heels. With a tinkling sound, they tumbled down a step.

Light, either from a candle or flashlight, came into view on the stairs above her. Another door opened, this time from the ground floor, and with the new arrival, more glowing light. The descending footsteps grew louder, the wobbling light brighter.

Kate held her breath, too terrified to move. Damn the darkness and damn her crippling fear.

With a crack of surging electricity, the lights came on. Kate’s relief was tempered by the sight on the landing above her of Mathilda holding a flashlight, her expression as severe as her black, high-collared dress. She held her lips in a pucker that drew attention to the numerous little wrinkles on her upper lip. “What on earth,” she said with slow precision.

Strict but fair on the staff under her command, Mathilda had earned her position in the household through decades of devoted service. She ranked above every other member of the staff, yet the glass ceiling between her and the family was ever-present. Kate didn’t envy her the loneliness of the position.

A rattle of dishes behind Kate preceded Agnes’s grating voice. “Oh, Kate. What in the name of all things holy did you do, child?”

Kate bit her tongue against a retort. A child, she was not. A penniless widow, grieving mother and pastry chef, yes, but not a child. Not for a long time.

Twisting on the spot, she glanced at the dessert tray in Agnes’s hands before fixing her gaze on the round woman’s spiky, persimmon-red hair. “When the power went out, I slipped and the tray fell. There was nothing I could do.”

A lie, but a necessary one. She had never dared confess her fear of the dark to anyone but dear, sweet Faye, and she certainly wasn’t going to spill her soul for the Dragon Lady—the whispered nickname some of the staff used for Agnes. Kate didn’t have much to call her own anymore but she still had her pride.

Without a word, Kate knelt and loaded the wreckage onto her tray.

“Look what you’ve done,” Agnes clucked. “What a disaster.” With every word, Agnes’s voice climbed in both decibel and register. “Careless, is what you are. And where is Fiona?”

Kate opened her mouth, but spotted the note near Mathilda’s shoe. It must have fallen out of her pocket when the tray tipped. She reached for it but Mathilda was quicker.

Her heart dropped to her stomach at the sight of Mathilda unfolding the paper.

“Is this what I think it is?” Mathilda asked. Her eyes darted as she read. “How did you...?”

On pure instinct, Kate reached for the paper, but Mathilda lifted it out of arm’s reach.

“She looks guilty. What is it?” Agnes asked.

Mathilda looked over Kate’s head at Agnes. “It appears to be a copy of the kidnapping-for-hire note.” Returning her focus to Kate, she added, “Where did you get this?”

There was no good answer that excused her misconduct, or at least Kate wasn’t clever enough to come up with one on the spot.

The real answer was that she’d brought a tray of sticky buns to the Dead Police Department under the ruse that it was a thank-you from the Colton family. While the officers indulged, Kate pilfered through the police file. Then while they washed the sticky syrup from their hands, she’d made a copy. She had no intention of revealing the truth, however. “I can’t tell you that, but I swear I didn’t mean any harm with it. I thought maybe I’d see something in the note to help the police. Faye deserves justice for what happened to her.”

“Of course she does, dear. She was a darling woman and we all miss her terribly. I’m sure the police are doing all they can. The Coltons are working closely with them, as am I. There is no need to put yourself at risk unnecessarily.” She returned the letter to Kate. “My advice—destroy this before it gets you into trouble.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She folded the paper and returned it to her pocket.

“Why do you also have a tray, Agnes?” Mathilda’s tone was placating.

“Mr. Colton buzzed. He hadn’t received his dessert yet and was in quite a state. That Fiona is a lazy one. Makes us all look bad. She probably would’ve stolen away to eat the sweets herself. Takes advantage, that girl. And you—” She leveled a sneer at Kate. “I have half a mind to fire you both.”

Kate set the last manageable shard on the tray and straightened. The remaining debris would require the use of a broom. There was no use defending herself during one of Agnes’s tirades. The best course of action was to wait it out in stoic silence.

Mathilda’s expression cracked into a smile that didn’t quite reach the vibrant blue eyes. “Now, Agnes. It’s not the poor girl’s fault that the wind knocked a tree onto the power lines.”

So she was a poor
girl now, as though she was twelve instead of twenty-seven. Kate kicked a tiny shard of teacup with a bit too much oomph.

Glancing at the disturbance, Mathilda continued. “I’m certain there is a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Kate is doing the task you specifically assigned to Fiona. Isn’t that right, Kate?”

“Yes, ma’am. Fiona isn’t feeling well tonight, with the new baby on the way, and I offered to help so she could get off her feet.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“Oh, now, Mathilda, you’re being too easy on her,” Agnes butted in. She wagged a finger at Kate. “You know good and well that we can’t have the likes of you parading in front of the family in your stained chef smock and—” she flicked a grimace at Kate’s neck, where Kate could feel the wisps of hair at her nape sticking to her perspiring skin “—common sweat.”

There would be no use in pointing out that she was wearing a jacket, not a smock—and a pristine one at that—or that the air-conditioning unit had shut off along with the lights and Kate was perspiring because she’d been standing in an unventilated shaft for nearly ten minutes.

“And you decided, all on your own,” Agnes continued, “that you’re good enough to serve not just any Colton, but the head of the household?” She hunched her arms around the fresh tray she’d brought with her, hugging it as if Kate’s lowly station might taint the precious dish of bread pudding sitting atop it.

This new pudding was from the same batch as the ruined one, but without the whipped cream and whiskey sauce. Agnes had forgotten to add them. Kate squelched a sniff of shock.

From everything Kate knew about Jethro Colton’s long list of sins, it was he who wasn’t fit to lick her chef clogs, not the other way around. And anyhow, Agnes might think Kate too beneath Mr. Colton’s station to serve him like a proper maid, but she would never,
ever,
present him with an incomplete dessert.

She summoned the remnants of her composure. “I thought, with it being so late and with the ranch short on staff, it wouldn’t be so bad for me to step in.”

Agnes threw an arm up in dramatic disgust. “Wouldn’t be so bad? In the name of all things holy, she’ll get us all canned.”

“Agnes,” Mathilda soothed, “of course Kate’s face is flushed from working in the heat of the kitchen.” She set a supportive hand on Kate’s shoulder. “But am I noticing correctly that you changed into a clean smock, dear?”

“A clean jacket, yes, ma’am.” Kate’s face heated. She loathed being talked down to day in and day out by these women who controlled the flow of life and information at Dead River Ranch. But with no money or family she could turn to, this job was all she had. At least it came with a well-stocked kitchen to work in and a house of people hungry for sweets.

“As you so astutely pointed out, there’s no time to waste,” Mathilda continued to Agnes. “If Mr. Colton doesn’t get his dessert in short order, we’ll all pay the price for the delay. There’s no sense in you traipsing up two flights of stairs to Mr. Colton’s quarters, not after the scrumptious meals you slaved all day to prepare.” Agnes swelled up like a toad at the saccharine compliment. “Allow Kate to do the work.”

Well, gee. Thanks.
She mashed her lips together and thought about cheesecake. Plain, with a single fresh strawberry sliced on top.

“It would serve you right, Miss High and Mighty. You might as well take over serving Mr. Colton all his meals. If anyone can teach you a lesson about keeping to your rightful place in this house, it would be Jethro Colton.”