The Colton Ransom (3 page)

The only problem was, Gabby thought, how did she go about saying that to Trevor? She knew that the man probably wouldn’t take kindly to being told how to act toward his daughter. She doubted if Trevor was the kind to be open to
any
advice at all, constructive or not.

Still, she did have his best interests at heart. His and Avery’s. All she wanted to do was just help both of them.

“Maybe he’ll feel better after you wake up all rested and happy from your nap. You think so?” she asked. The baby made a noise that sounded a little like a squeak. “No, me neither. But we can always hope for the best, can’t we?” she asked.

Leaning against the door, Gabby maneuvered the door lever with her elbow, managing to open it. She then pushed the door open with her back, angling her way into the large, airy bedroom.

The nursery was decorated in all soft pinks and whites. All in all, it did indeed look like a bedroom fit for a princess, right down to the canopied white crib with its delicate musical mobile depicting fairies floating above her.

“Well, here it is, your very own princesslike crib for the afternoon,” Gabby declared.

After laying the infant gently down on her back, Gabby began to rub the baby’s tummy in slow, concentric circles. It was meant to soothe Avery and help the little girl fall asleep.

Within a few minutes, the soothing, rhythmic motion worked wonders in calming the infant down. Just as she’d hoped.

A couple of whimpers and one near sob later, the little girl’s eyes began to flutter shut.

Gabby smiled to herself. “That’s my girl—just let it happen. Just let your eyelids get heavy and fall into place. Everything will still be waiting for you when you wake up again. I promise,” she added in a soft, melodic whisper.

Several minutes went by. Gabby was fairly sure the baby had fallen asleep.

Just to be certain, Gabby remained standing beside the crib a little longer. She didn’t want to take a chance on the infant waking up and wailing again.

Gabby didn’t know how anyone else dealt with a crying baby, but she was not partial to the school of thought that chose to ignore the infant for the first few minutes of a crying jag. She instantly picked up Cheyenne any time she heard the baby crying, feeling that it was important to make the infant feel secure and safe. To her way of thinking, picking Cheyenne up when she cried accomplished just that.

So Gabby continued to linger, humming a fragment of a lullaby and massaging Avery’s tummy until the sound of the baby’s even, steady breathing told her that she really was asleep.

Holding her breath, Gabby quietly tiptoed out of the bedroom, then eased the door closed. She paused for a moment longer, listening at the door.

Satisfied that Avery was indeed fast asleep, Gabby hurried off. She still had a niece to reclaim—not to mention a dour head of security to rescue.

Chapter 2

T
revor wasn’t where she’d left him.

Gabby blew out a breath as a sliver of frustration zipped through her.

But then, what did she expect? Dead River’s head of security wasn’t the type to stand still or be pigeonholed. And although, even after all this time, she didn’t know a great deal about him, she did know that he was unpredictable.

Her fault, Gabby told herself with a sigh. She shouldn’t have assumed that since she’d left Trevor standing outside the front of the house, holding her niece, that when she came back, he’d still be there, waiting for her with the baby in his arms.

With her hands on her hips, Gabby impatiently scanned the immediate area in hopes of spotting the man.

She didn’t.

The tall, silent ex-cop was apparently nowhere in sight.

“Okay, Mr. Head-of-Security,” Gabby said, addressing the air, “if you’re not going to be here, waiting for me to come take my niece off your hands, just where
would
you be?”

Gabby glanced over her shoulder at the house she’d just left. It wasn’t as if she could just do a quick sweep of it, looking for him. The house where she and her family lived was
huge,
with several wings stretched out across the property. The actual number of rooms within the house had never been pinned down. She could be wandering around for
hours,
especially if Trevor didn’t remain stationary himself.

Hours? She could literally be playing hide-and-seek with the man for the rest of the month and not stumble across him as long as he was moving around, too.

Gabby chewed her lower lip, frustrated. She should have asked him to stay put, but it had never occurred to her that, since he was holding her niece, he would not just eagerly wait for her to come back so he could be freed of his charge.

No good deed went unpunished, right? Gabby thought sarcastically.

Still looking around the immediate area, Gabby debated what the man’s
logical
move would be. She sincerely doubted that he would have taken Cheyenne back to his room in the employees’ wing. Somehow, she saw Trevor as wanting his room to remain off-limits to people—
any
people—unless they were specifically invited. Moreover, something told her that she definitely wouldn’t make that most likely extremely
short
list.

That left where?

His office!
The idea just suddenly occurred to her.

Gabby headed there immediately, mentally crossing her fingers that she was right. Because if Trevor wasn’t there, she really didn’t have the foggiest where he
might
be and it was getting close to feeding time for Cheyenne. She wanted to find the infant before then.

The little girl had a rather happy disposition, but if she grew hungry,
really
hungry, who knew how she might react? If her niece began fussing the way Avery had, she had a feeling that Trevor would be ready to wipe his hands of any and
all
babies for good—and that certainly wouldn’t bode well for Avery’s future here at the ranch.

Hurrying back into the house, Gabby made her way through the first floor to the man’s small, closetlike office, all the while hoping against hope that she’d find him there with her niece.

As she drew closer to the man’s office, Gabby thought she heard the sound of Trevor’s voice. It was far too low for her to make out the words, but at least the tone sounded fairly good. The important thing was that he did
not
sound as if he was at the end of his rope, the way he had earlier. And that was definitely good for her niece, and, with any luck, it might also be good for Avery as well.

Gabby approached the cluttered office and saw that Trevor was sitting at his desk, his chair pushed sufficiently back to accommodate him and the baby he still had in his arms.

From the looks of it, Cheyenne had fallen asleep in his arms.

Gabby stood there for a moment, taking in the scene and wishing she had a camera to preserve the moment. But then, she probably couldn’t take the shot anyway. The flash might wake up her niece.

“See, I knew you had it in you,” Gabby said out loud to him, although she knew to keep her voice down to a low whisper.

Only maximum control kept Trevor from starting in response to the unexpected sound of her voice.

He’d been too preoccupied, marveling at the peaceful way the infant he was temporarily in charge of had just drifted off to sleep without any encouragement at all. One minute, the baby’s incredibly blue eyes were wide open, taking in everything around her, the next minute, they had drifted shut, the long black lashes seemingly resting like soft, silky, spidery crescents on the slight swell of her small, pink cheeks.

A little bit of envy had tugged at his soul when he’d watched her. If he
had
to have a kid, why couldn’t he have one like this, he wondered, rather than the wailing banshee he’d got? It was a horrible thing for him to think, but he hadn’t asked for this situation.

Nothing ever seemed to take the easy route in his world, Trevor thought in a moment of resigned frustration. Somehow, according to some vast eternal plan, it stood to reason that the cranky kid would be the one he’d wind up with. Maybe this was appropriate.

Lost in thought like that, lamenting his current state and annoyed with himself because of it, Trevor hadn’t heard Gabby coming up behind him and, barring the control he could exercise over himself, he would have very nearly jumped.

As it was, it took the man several long seconds to gather himself together sufficiently in order to answer her.

“All I did was hold her,” he answered Gabby, turning his swivel chair around so that he faced her. “She did the rest.” He nodded at the baby he was holding.

If this Colton woman was trying to flatter him into thinking that he was up to the task of caring for this daughter who had materialized out of nowhere, it wasn’t going to work. He knew exactly what he was and wasn’t capable of and raising a kid fell into the latter category.

“You’re just being modest,” Gabby told him, dismissing his words with a careless wave of her hand. She’d never met a man who shied away from taking any credit the way this man did. “I bet you’d be a natural if you just gave yourself half a chance.”

Gabby said the words with such conviction, he could only stare at her in absolute wonder. Did she actually believe what she was saying? Or did she just think she could hypnotize him into believing her? Either way, it wasn’t happening.

When he finally had a chance to get a word in edgewise, all he could do was shake his head. And then, curious, he had to ask, “Do your horses ever come back to the stable?”

Because he’d worked the streets as a police officer, he’d come across a lot of people in his time, but he could honestly say that he had never met anyone who just radiated supreme optimism and babbled incessantly about everything eventually being right in the world. Gabriella Colton did just this. Every bit of her seemed hell-bent on brightening her surroundings. For his part, he’d seen too much of life’s underbelly to dip into that well water the boss’s youngest daughter was drinking. People were either good or bad, and given a choice between the two, people usually went with the latter.

He also believed that if anything could go wrong, it did. What that meant in this case was that most likely, Avery’s mother was
not
going to come back for her. Which, in turn, meant that he was going to be stuck with a baby unless he could figure a way out of this situation.

Right now, he was thinking about giving her up for adoption. She stood a better chance with parents who wanted her and were willing to learn what it took to take care of her. He didn’t have the time or the patience—or the financial fortune—to raise a kid.

It took Gabby a couple of moments to figure out what the man was saying to her.

Rather than take offense at his tone, she smiled and said, “Yes, actually my ‘horses’
do
come back to the stable,” she said, using his metaphor. “But then,” she continued, deliberately smiling as widely as she could, “I just take them out for another ride.”

He shook his head. “It figures,” he snorted. The woman was clearly flighty. What did she know about life—or hardship? But then, he supposed there was something almost admirable about her rabid determination to remain so upbeat in the face of everything—including the self-centered, wounded-bear of a father she had. Living in the Colton family was no easy feat.

“You put the kid to bed in my room?” he asked.

Faye Frick, the Colton’s head nanny for the past couple of decades, had unearthed an extra crib for Avery and had it brought to his room.

Faye had a way of looking out for all of them, he recalled fondly, though his expression never changed. He cared about Faye a great deal.

Years ago, the widow had taken it upon herself to raise him when his own father, a former wrangler at Dead River, had dumped him and taken off for parts unknown. He’d been all of fourteen at the time and determined to live on his own, although the state had other ideas about the way he would spend his next four years. He would have been swallowed up by the system if it hadn’t been for Faye.

Consequently, he had always had a soft spot in his heart for the older woman, but it still didn’t mellow his rather abrupt way of interacting with all the other people around him.

“Actually, no, I didn’t put her in your room,” Gabby replied.

His dark brows narrowed as his eyes bored into her. “Where
did
you put her to bed?” he asked, even as he told himself it really didn’t matter where the kid was sleeping, as long as she wasn’t here, hollering in his ear.

Gabby couldn’t help looking rather pleased with herself for having thought of this. “I thought I’d treat your daughter to a nap in Cheyenne’s crib—in her nursery,” she specified, just in case Trevor didn’t make the connection right away.

The man might be head of security, but she suspected that incidental details like cribs with canopies and specially decked-out nurseries were completely under his radar.

“You didn’t think the one she has was good enough?” he asked.

Trevor’s sharply worded question caught her completely by surprise. He was unnerving her again, she realized, and she’d almost stepped back, away from the scowl she saw looming over his brow.

She had to stop that. Stop avoiding confrontation. She was a Colton and she would be running that center for troubled teens soon enough. They weren’t all going to tiptoe around her just because she was trying to do something decent and charitable for them. They would come on angry and resentful at times—just as this man was doing right now.

If she didn’t learn how to stand up to him and stand up for herself, then she might as well pack it in right now, Gabby reasoned. She had to learn not to come across as a spineless wimp.

Her voice quavered at first, but it took on strength as she continued to speak. “I meant no disrespect, Trevor. But Cheyenne’s nursery looks like something a princess would sleep in, and I thought it would be an uplifting change of scenery for Avery to take her nap in that room.”

“And you really think she’s supposed to notice the difference?” he asked incredulously. “At three months?” Trevor pressed, emphasizing the ludicrousness of her thought process.

Gabby refused to back down. “Maybe,” she countered, adding, “Subconsciously.”

“Yeah, right,” he all but jeered.

And then Trevor stopped abruptly, taking stock of what he was saying. He supposed, in her own way, the Colton woman meant no harm and probably thought she was doing a good deed. From what he knew of her—and had heard—it wasn’t in the youngest of the Colton women to thumb her nose at the difference in their stations in life.

Handing over her niece, he murmured, “I didn’t mean to go off on you like that. I grew up not having much. There were those who liked to rub my nose in it. I guess that made me kind of thin-skinned when it comes to certain things.”

Her heart instantly ached for the boy he had once been.

“Well, I was
not
trying to rub your nose in anything,” she told him in a voice that all but throbbed with compassion, even as Gabby stated her case assertively.

“Yeah, I know,” he told her in a low voice that was utterly devoid of any indications of emotion. “And if the kid
could
notice her surroundings, she’d probably not want to come back to the room she has,” he acknowledged. “Most likely it definitely isn’t anywhere
near
as fancy as your niece’s.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Gabby said in a firm voice he couldn’t remember ever hearing come out of her mouth. “There are a lot more important things in life than pretty bedrooms and fancy cribs. They certainly don’t make up for the lack of a parent’s love,” she maintained.

Gabby was admittedly thinking of her own situation. Her mother had just taken off one day, abandoning her and her sisters without so much as a backward glance while her father, whom she stubbornly loved even though at times the man definitely did
not
deserve it, had a very hard time showing any of them so much as a thin sliver of affection.

And while she, Catherine and Amanda didn’t lack for anything material, emotional connection with a parent was a whole different story. There were times when she felt almost
starved
for a display, no matter how small, of parental approval. It was, she felt, what a lot of kids strove for—and what they grew up missing. It was what made her so eager to help underprivileged kids.

Belatedly, Gabby read between the lines. “Does this mean you’ve made up your mind to keep her?” she wondered out loud, asking the question with a degree of excitement that unsettled him.

There she went, off on another tangent, he thought in barely restrained annoyance. Why couldn’t the woman just take things at face value instead of making mountains out of molehills?

“It doesn’t mean anything at all,” he told her in a flat, distant voice. “I was trying to be polite and apologize. Don’t look for any hidden meanings in that—because there aren’t any. Why are you grinning?” he asked. Was she laughing at him?