was creating. Jolie glanced back, saw Emma was safely in the car with the door closed. Just in case, she locked the doors before she walked back to take the headband. The woman smiled as she handed it over, and waved to Emma before going back inside. Jolie stuffed the headband into her pocket, wondering if the paint was there forever, or if it might wash—
Somewhere nearby, a car backfired, and she felt a split second of satisfaction at the maternal instinct that had told her not to assume cars wouldn’t be around.
Emma screamed.
Jolie whirled, running before she was completely turned around. She could see her. Could see that she was looking out the side window, staring at something in great distress.
There was no one else around. She reached the car. Saw that Emma was apparently unhurt. But still staring. Jolie turned around.
The woman she’d seen behind the boutique was lying on the ground. Blood was pooling around her. It took a moment for Jolie to process what seemed impossible. And when she got there, her breath jammed up behind the knot in her throat.
That hadn’t been a car backfire.
It had been a gunshot.
T.C. Colton leaned back in his chair, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at Dallas. He could see the Reunion Tower to the right, past the edge of the hotel complex built around it. He smiled as he usually did when he spotted it, remembering the first time he had, when he’d asked his father why they’d built it to look like a shifter. It had taken Eldridge a moment to realize it did indeed look like the stick shift on his car, and the old man had laughed.
Because it looks out over the place where the movers and shakers work, son.
Worry over his missing father spiked through him yet again. He tamped it down. He couldn’t let chaos creep in today; there was too much to do. Right now he envied his brother Zane, who as head of security was able to keep himself busy outside this building by visiting all the various Colton holdings for spot security checks. Here, things had gotten shoved aside in the initial panic after the senior Colton had vanished, and while Colton Incorporated was built to run efficiently no matter what happened, the distraction of every Colton at the top was beginning to show.
Not, he thought ruefully, that having Fowler distracted was a bad thing. At least he hadn’t left any messes for T.C. to clean up. That he knew about, anyway. Yet. But there would be something. There always was. There were many things not in his job description as executive vice president of Ranch Operations that had become his responsibility, and cleaning up after his ethics-challenged half brother was one of them. He couldn’t seem to help himself; if there was a devious or underhanded deal to be made, or a manipulative scheme to be hatched, Fowler Colton would find it, or come up with it himself. They’d clashed about it too often to count.
“You know if you put half that energy into honest dealings, we’d be right where we are, but I wouldn’t have to run all over town placating people and paying off the ones you’ve screwed over.”
“But it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun, little brother.”
Fun.
Not something he strove for in his work. Oh, he enjoyed what he did, and truth be told he didn’t mind putting out fires. It was what intrigued him about his work, the various problems that cropped up and how to best solve them. Even Fowler had to admit his approach worked; T.C. hired good people and then trusted them, offering help if needed, but leaving it to them if they said they could handle it. Something his brother freely admitted he would never be able to do.
“I never trust anyone outside of family, T.C. And sometimes not even them. Especially not even them.”
He’d have made a hell of a politician, T.C. thought sourly. It was all like a game to Fowler, a game he was the best at. And that he took great glee in winning. He truly did have fun with all his machinations, and nothing pleased him more than triumphing over someone who was fool enough to be honest in his dealings.
Whereas T.C. hadn’t really had fun in...four years.
The memory shot through him the way it always did when his guard was down. He’d been fixated on his worry about his father and his weariness with his brother, leaving the door open for the thoughts he dreaded most.
Jolie.
And the worst—or best—of the memories, that moment when he’d given in to an urge he had never expected, to take the only-months-old baby he was still nervous about even holding, the baby who was looking up at him so solemnly, and swing her up above him so she could look down for a change. It seemed to have thrilled her, and she had broken into a peal of delighted laughter. He hadn’t been prepared for that, and certainly not for how it made him feel. Something deep and primal had sparked to life in him in that moment, an urge to protect, to nurture, to keep this beautiful bit of human life safe forever.
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