Loe raamatut: «The Colton Cowboy»

Chapter 1

Anders Colton jerked awake, his heart racing and every muscle in his body tensed with fight-or-flight adrenaline. From the nearby open window a cool night breeze drifted in, and crickets and other insects clicked and whirred with their usual night songs. They were familiar sounds and wouldn’t have awakened him. So what had?

He remained perfectly still, and then he heard it...a faint shuffle of feet against wood. In one quick movement he slid out of bed and grabbed the nearby rifle that rested against the bedroom wall. He stalked out of his bedroom clad only in a pair of navy boxers.

Tonight he was going to catch the culprit who had been stealing from him for the past couple of weeks. He’d dubbed the person the “Needy Thief” because of the strange things that had come up missing.

Last night it had been fruit from the bowl on the kitchen counter and a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread from the pantry. A week before that it was a mattress from the bunk barn and an old baby cradle from the barn.

Anders didn’t mind the loss of the food, and he’d already replaced the mattress, but one of his grandmother’s quilts had also been taken and he definitely wanted that back. His heart now beat with the sweet anticipation of finally catching the culprit.

Was the person a runaway in trouble? A criminal hiding out on the property? Was it possible it was his cousin Demi, who had been on the run from the law and had a newborn baby?

Tonight he hoped to nab the thief red-handed and find out exactly who he or she was and what in the hell was going on.

The kitchen was in complete darkness except for the shaft of moonlight that danced in through the window above the sink. It was just enough illumination to see that nobody was there.

The cabin was fairly small and it took him only seconds to check in the guest bedroom and bath and realize the thief wasn’t anywhere inside. Then he heard it...retreating footsteps outside. The porch!

He threw open the front door, expecting to see a person running away. Instead he nearly stumbled over a pale yellow tote bag and the stolen wicker baby cradle. He stared at the cradle in stunned surprise. Had the thief suffered a twinge of guilt and returned it? A faint noise sounded, and he leaned over the basket and then straightened up with a new shock. Nestled in a pink blanket was a sleeping baby. What the hell?

The moonlight overhead was bright. He gazed around the area and then looked a quarter of a mile in the distance toward the main house where his parents and his kid sister, Valeria, lived. He could barely see the huge place through a thick stand of trees. There didn’t appear to be any lights shining from the mansion and there was nobody lurking around his cabin. It was just him and a baby.

Why on earth would anyone leave a baby with him? He picked up the tote bag and the cradle and carried them into the living room. He placed the cradle on his sofa and then turned on the lamp on the end table.

A tuft of strawberry blonde hair topped rosy, chubby cheeks. The baby was very small and he would guess she wasn’t more than a couple weeks old. He couldn’t tell the baby’s eye color because she was sound asleep. Then he noticed a note pinned to the pink blanket. He carefully plucked it off and opened it.

She’s a Colton.

His heart stutter-stepped. If she was a Colton, then who did she belong to? Was it possible she was his? He sank down on the sofa next to the sleeping baby.

Yes, he supposed it was possible she was his child. There had been a few women in his recent past, but nothing deep or meaningful. He didn’t do deep and meaningful since he’d been betrayed two years ago. What he had now were occasional hookups. Had one of those hookups created this baby?

He stared at her little rosebud lips and tiny features and then looked away. He couldn’t do this again. He couldn’t get emotionally involved with a baby. The last one he’d loved so desperately had been cruelly snatched away from him and his heart had never quite healed.

Still, if she really was a Colton, he also wasn’t overly eager to hand her over to social services until he knew who she was. So, what should he do with her? Should he call somebody now? In the middle of the night? Where would she be placed if he did call social services? He didn’t even know if there were any foster parents in town.

Somebody had left her here with him for a reason. But he was torn. He didn’t really know anything about taking care of a baby and she’d be better off with somebody who had more experience than he did.

He opened the tote bag to find formula, bottles, diapers, toys, clothing and several other items. There was everything he needed to take care of her. He could smell the sweetness of her, that baby-powder-fresh scent that was so achingly familiar.

Who would have left her here and why? Was it possible the Needy Thief was her mother? Now the theft of the food items and the cradle and quilt all made sense. But why hadn’t the mother just come to him and asked for his help? Damn, he wished he would have caught whomever it had been.

Why leave the baby here? He was a bachelor, a workaholic who spent hours out working on the ranch and chose to live in a small cabin rather than in the family mansion. He’d made the old foreman’s cabin his home. He’d made the decision first of all because he was the ranch foreman, and secondly because his parents drove him crazy.

Of all the places and with all the people in the entire town of Red Ridge, South Dakota, the baby could have been left with, why him?

He found it hard to believe that it had anything to do with somebody who worked for him. All his ranch hands lived in the bunk barn in small apartments. He supplied the men who lived there not only everything they needed but also some extras to keep them happy. Besides, the note said she was a Colton.

He needed to call the Red Ridge Police Department and get somebody out here. He didn’t know why the baby had been left on his doorstep, but she couldn’t stay indefinitely and in any case he needed to make some kind of a report.

Was it possible her mother would return later tonight? Maybe sometime tomorrow? He couldn’t take the chance of waiting around for her to come back to retrieve the baby. Eventually the baby would wake up and need something and he wouldn’t know what to do.

He made the call and when he finished, the baby opened her slate blue eyes and gazed at him. Her rosebud lips curled upward and she released a soft coo. He closed his eyes and steeled his heart. No matter how cute she was, he absolutely refused to care about her.

* * *

Rookie K9 Officer Elle Gage hunkered down behind the back of a pickup truck in the warehouse parking lot. Next to her was her partner, her bulldog named Merlin, who was trained in protection.

Merlin had entered her life eight months before, after going through an intense ten weeks of training at the Red Ridge K9 Training Center. He was not only her partner, but also her best friend and companion. As far as she was concerned he was the best dog in the whole entire world.

The pavement smelled of grease and oil baked under the June sun that day. Her heart beat quickly in anticipation and her blood sizzled through her veins as she stared at the warehouse in the distance.

Tonight she was hoping to finally prove herself, not only to her chief, but also to her brother and fellow officer, Carson. She also wanted to prove herself to her brother Lucas, who was a bounty hunter.

In her mind she always thought of her brothers as South Dakota’s Most Overly Protective Brothers. She was more than ready for them to trust that she could take care of herself and stop watching over her so carefully.

She stared at the warehouse that belonged to the Larson twins, suspected mobsters who were involved in everything from money laundering to drugs and gunrunning. This was where the smooth, handsome men held their meetings and it was suspected that tonight the place was packed with illegal guns and drugs.

The parking lot was filled with vehicles belonging to the twins’ known associates. She’d love to be part of the team who took them down, although she hated the fact that whenever she was assigned to any job, her brother Carson made sure he was assigned to the same job. She was twenty-six years old. Jeez, couldn’t a girl get a break?

She wanted to be the one to cuff one of the twins, not just because they were a menace to society, but because they stole a prized German shepherd named Nico from the RRK9 Training Center and got away with it, and they were also suspected of having one of their thugs steal a puppy from the center. Evan and Noel had clearly had an immoral veterinarian remove Nico’s microchip and replace it with one declaring them the dog’s owner. Nico had been a day or two from being paired with a K9 handler; that’s how highly trained he was. Now he was in the wrong hands. And the puppy had cost the center a small fortune. Elle knew the Larson twins were slimeball criminals, but stealing a dog? For that crime alone, the two should be jailed for the rest of their lives.

Crouching, she moved a couple of steps closer, still hugging the body of the pickup that was her cover. All she was waiting for was the official word to go in.

Tonight she would prove to everyone that she was a good cop and could hold her own under any circumstances. Tonight she would prove to her brother that she didn’t need them babysitting her anymore.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out, unsurprised to see her brother Carson’s number. She punched the button to answer, but before she could say anything, Merlin released a deep, loud grunt, his trained alert for danger.

Elle whirled around in time to see a big man barreling down on her. She dropped her phone and raised her hands in a defensive posture, her heart nearly beating out of her chest.

He was about to make full-body contact with her. She had no time to think but could only react. She quickly sidestepped and when he brushed by her body, she used her elbow to chop him on the back. Obviously surprised by her quick action, he went down hard on his hands and knees.

She gave him no time to recover. She kicked his midsection as hard as she could once, twice, and a third time. He groaned and attempted to regain his footing, but before he could get to his feet, she had drawn her gun.

“Raise up slowly and turn around,” she commanded. “Ignore my instructions and I’ll shoot you,” she warned. He turned and she quickly snapped cuffs on his wrists. It was only then that she leaned over, breathing hard, but not as hard as her prisoner who, even though he was winded, managed to gasp out some ugly language directed at her.

“Shut up,” she said as she picked up her phone from the pavement. “All I have to do is say one word and my partner here will tear out your throat.”

He’d obviously thought she’d be an easy takedown because she was a woman. The joke was on him for underestimating her skill and clear focus. She’d had the same training as the men and she was as good as any one of them...including her brother.

Footsteps slapped pavement, coming toward her. She held her gun tight, unsure if it was more danger approaching. She relaxed as she saw her brother and his partner running toward her.

“Elle, are you okay?” Carson asked, his eyes blazing with concern. He stopped abruptly at the sight of her prisoner.

“Elle, why didn’t you yell for help? I was on the phone with you,” he said angrily. “All you had to do was say that you were in trouble.”

“Cool your jets, Carson. I didn’t need any help from you. He attacked me and I handled the situation.” A sense of pride swept through her as she watched his panic turn to grudging respect.

“Good job,” he replied. “I heard the commotion on the phone and knew you were in trouble.”

“Like I said, I handled it. This is one bad guy—a thug associate of the Larson twins—who will be off the streets for a while,” she replied. At that moment her phone vibrated again. Carson took control of the prisoner while she answered her phone.

It was Chief Finn Colton. “I want you to get over to the foreman’s cabin on the Double C Ranch. A baby has been abandoned there with Anders Colton. Your brother can handle the surveillance without you.”

An abandoned baby. It was a nonthreatening job and if she didn’t know better she’d swear that her brother had talked to the chief and told him to pull her off this more dangerous case.

She hated to leave the surveillance at the warehouse. She really wanted to catch one of the Larson twins red-handed and put at least one—if not both—away.

At least her sense of pride stayed with her as she and Merlin got into her car and headed for the Double C Ranch. She’d taken care of the thug all by herself, without the help of one of her Overly Protective Brothers. She hadn’t even had to set Merlin into motion.

She wasn’t particularly happy to be going to interact with any Colton other than the police chief and her fellow officers. The feud between the Coltons and the Gages was legendary. It began a century ago when the Gage family lost a good plot of land to the Coltons in a poker game. There had been cheating accusations, and the bad blood between the two families remained today.

Most recently she had a wealth of rage directed toward one particular Colton...Demetria “Demi” Colton, the woman she believed had murdered her brother, Bo.

On the night before his wedding he’d been found shot through the heart and with a black cummerbund stuffed in his mouth. It was supposed to be a bachelor party at the Pour House, a dive bar in a sketchy area of Red Ridge, but there had been no party, only the murder of her brother.

Bo. Bo. His name blew through her on a wind of pain and terrible regret. The last time she’d seen him they’d had a terrible fight...and then he was dead. How she wished she could take back some of the things she’d said to him. How she wished he were still alive instead of the first victim of someone the police and press were now calling the Groom Killer.

She cast all of these things out of her mind as she pulled into the entrance of the Double C Ranch. She drove slowly past the huge mansion where Judson and Joanelle lived. The lights in the house were all dark, so apparently Anders hadn’t disturbed anyone there.

Anders Colton. The only thing she really knew about him was that he was a wealthy cowboy and definitely a piece of eye candy. He was a tall, muscular man with dark hair and bright blue eyes.

Elle was immune to all men right now. At twenty-six years old, her entire focus was on her work and the need to prove herself to everyone in her family and on the police force.

In any case Anders Colton would be the last man she’d have any interest in. First of all, he was a Colton and that was enough to make her keep her distance. But, secondly and more important, it was possible he was aiding and abetting his cousin Demi, who was still on the run from authorities. Had Demi killed Bo? Was she the Groom Killer? Evidence said she was. Witnesses said so, too. And the fact that she’d fled town before she could be arrested and had been on the run ever since made a lot of people, her own relatives on the force included, think she was guilty. But the FBI had caught sightings of her far from Red Ridge on the night of subsequent murders with the same MO. Some said Demi had been framed. Others said she was smart and setting it all up herself.

All Elle wanted was for the murders to stop. And justice for her brother.

Although she didn’t know specifically where the foreman’s cabin was on the property, she followed the dirt road that took her past a huge barn and a wooded area.

Then she spied the cozy cabin with the porch light on. Seated on the porch was Anders Colton, rocking the baby in his arms. He didn’t move as she parked her car and then got out with Merlin at her heels.

As she got closer, her heart flipped just a bit at the sight of a hot, handsome cowboy holding a bundle of pink. It didn’t help that he was clad in a pair of worn jeans and a blue shirt that was unbuttoned, putting on display his firmly muscled chest.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself a baby,” she said in greeting.

He smiled. “Looks like you’ve got yourself an ugly, fat baby of your own.” He looked pointedly at Merlin.

Oh no, he didn’t, she thought with irritation. “My baby can protect me from getting killed. What can yours do?” she asked coolly.

“Touché,” he replied, and stood. His arms still rocked the baby with a gentle motion. “I’m not quite sure what to do with her. She’s awakened twice and started to cry, but if I rock her she goes back to sleep. Come on inside.”

She followed him into a homey living room with a beautiful natural stone fireplace and casual brown leather furniture. He placed the baby into a wicker cradle. He straightened and then motioned for her to have a seat in a recliner. “Even though my sister and your brother are together and I’ve seen you around, we haven’t ever officially introduced ourselves. I’m Anders Colton.”

She sat on the edge of the chair and tried to avoid looking at his broad chest. “I’m Officer Elle Gage and this is my partner, Merlin. Now, tell me about what’s going on.”

She listened as he told her about the thefts that had been occurring and then stepping outside to find the baby on his porch. While he spoke he buttoned up the blue shirt that mirrored the beautiful blue of his eyes. Thank goodness, she thought. She didn’t need to be distracted by the sight of his bare chest.

“These thefts...were they break-ins? Do you know how the person is getting inside the cabin?” she asked.

“I never lock my doors. I’m pretty far off the beaten path and I’ve never had a reason to lock up,” he replied.

“Even after the first theft you didn’t start locking your doors?” she asked in surprise.

He shook his head. “It was obvious the thief wasn’t after anything valuable. I figured if somebody was stealing food then they must need it. He or she only came in at night so I intentionally left the doors unlocked hoping I’d catch them. I just want to know who it is and if they’re in some kind of trouble.”

“And you have no idea who left the baby here?”

“Not a clue, but she had a note pinned to the blanket.” He pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket and then walked over and handed it to her.

She’s a Colton.

Elle’s heart nearly stopped as her brain worked overtime. Demi Colton had been pregnant when she’d gone on the run to avoid being charged in Bo’s murder.

Was it possible? She stared at the sleeping baby. Suddenly the baby’s eyes opened and she began to fuss. Elle jumped to her feet and picked her up.

She held the baby close to her heart and breathed in the sweet baby scent. If this little girl was a Colton, then it was possible she was Bo’s baby. Bo and Demi had been engaged to be married for a week, and then he had dumped her for Hayley Patton, a K9 trainer.

Bo’s baby. For a moment she believed she felt his spirit swirling in the room, surrounding her with warmth and love. She stared down at the baby who couldn’t be older than a couple of weeks. A part of Bo...a gift from heaven. She looked up at Anders, wondering if he’d put it all together in his head.

“She may be a Colton but that means she’s also probably a Gage,” she said. “And if I find out that you’re helping Demi stay hidden on this property, I promise I’ll have you arrested so fast your head will spin.”