Книга - The Pregnant Colton Bride

The Pregnant Colton Bride
Marie Ferrarella


In the latest electrifying tale from USA Today bestselling author Marie Ferrarella, a pregnancy scandal rocks the Colton clan!Mirabella Freeman, secretary to security expert Zane Colton, thought being pregnant and alone were her biggest problems…That is, until police discover a bank account in her name, complete with mysterious payments supposedly by Zane's missing stepfather! Now, not only is Mirabella a suspect in Eldridge Colton's disappearance, but she's bombarded by rumors about the identity of her child's father. So when her gorgeous Colton cowboy boss proposes a marriage of convenience to save face–and her reputation–Mirabella is stunned, yet ready to say “I do!”. As the pregnant bride and her rancher husband fall in love, their hearts won’t be all that’s in danger…







“You could marry me.”

Mirabella’s mouth dropped open. She stared at Zane in absolute stunned silence. And then she shook her head, certain she had misheard him.

“I am really getting delusional,” she half laughed. “For a second, I thought I heard you say I could marry you.”

Zane moved in a little closer. Now that he’d said it out loud, it just seemed like it was the right solution. He didn’t know why it had taken him this long to come up with it.

“You did. I did. You can.”

She could only continue to stare at him in utter disbelief. “You’re serious,” she cried.

He didn’t see the problem. Why was she having so much trouble accepting this? Had he been wrong about the attraction he thought was between them? “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, for one thing,” she began to enumerate, “it’s insane. For another, you don’t love me.”

Too late, Mirabella realized she hadn’t phrased that properly. What she should have said was that they didn’t love each other. But she had isolated it to just him who didn’t love in this case. Had he picked up on the fact that she’d slipped, inadvertently letting him know how she felt about him?

* * *

We hope you enjoy this dramatic series:

The Coltons of Texas: Finding love and buried family secrets in the Lone Star State…




The Pregnant Colton Bride

Marie Ferrarella







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


USA TODAY bestselling and RITA


Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two-hundred-and-fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com (http://www.marieferrarella.com).


To Daddy,

Who introduced me to

All those Western series on TV And

Sparked my love of the

Old West.

I miss you.


Contents

Cover (#uec9045fc-5d5c-567a-bd80-d2f2c7769c4c)

Introduction (#u9d55c2f5-e72f-58d8-937c-6d85f24896b3)

Title Page (#u6808d91d-9b42-525e-867b-2e32cc40dbcc)

About the Author (#u7db6e2d8-d844-5884-9d03-cb2ab4168197)

Dedication (#u6a2ac14c-4a35-5b2a-97ec-a78206add146)

Prologue (#ulink_59e14b6d-55e8-5c78-97d1-96f058bddc61)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_7f93b954-e8db-520b-9faf-598e94782ad8)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_e6182f19-92f1-5ca0-8ab8-61c800b231a0)

Chapter 3 (#ulink_52c8ea53-c31b-51db-8c9b-161da956c19f)

Chapter 4 (#ulink_2338cf3f-db0c-52da-8d64-d7016bc75718)

Chapter 5 (#ulink_6ebeb1a3-366a-59e4-81fc-ca15bd3cb66f)

Chapter 6 (#ulink_dcdb42f9-e997-5ec4-8874-16497fa5381d)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


Prologue (#ulink_5c41d90b-4082-5db0-9cc9-2f013909b3d6)

He refused to believe it was true.

Eldridge Colton, the man who had adopted him, the only man he had ever really known as a father, had been kidnapped a month ago, and everyone now believed that the wealthy head of Colton Incorporated was dead.

But Zane Colton didn’t. He refused to.

This, despite the fact that there’d been no ransom note, no mysterious caller, his or her voice effectively disguised thanks to modern technology to sound like some criminal in the witness protection program testifying in closed court. No one had even attempted to bargain, demanding a king’s ransom in exchange for the wealthy, well-known Texas citizen’s safe return.

Zane held fast to the fact that up until now there had been no body found. And even though there were a dozen explanations for that, until a body was discovered, he was going to continue believing that his stepfather was still alive.

Not just believing it, but actively doing something to find out what had happened to the man and where Eldridge had been all this time since the morning that Moira, the family housekeeper of long standing, had been dispatched to the patriarch’s room because his wife, Whitney, had wanted him by her side as she attended another society breakfast.

Zane could still hear Moira’s scream ringing in his ears. Moreover, he could hear his mother as she’d first railed indignantly at the housekeeper for making a scene, then dramatically dissolved into histrionics when Whitney had seen the blood on the bedroom floor and the windowsill. It was at that moment she had realized that her husband of almost thirty years was not just missing, but could quite possibly be dead.

Well, his mother might believe that, but Zane didn’t. Oh, his stepfather was definitely missing—and had been for the past month, despite the presumably best efforts of Sheriff Troy Watkins and his two deputies. And since the blood in the bedroom had been tested and had turned out to be his stepfather’s, he knew that Eldridge Colton was definitely hurt.

But dead? No, the man wasn’t dead. Seventy-five-year-old, short, skinny Eldridge Colton was one tough SOB; he always had been. He couldn’t be killed. Zane was certain that his gut would have told him otherwise if his stepfather was no longer among the living. The way he saw it, Eldridge had to be alive because he, Zane, hadn’t really reached his own goal yet—to live up to what he felt were his stepfather’s expectations of him.

Eldridge had married his mother when she was a widow with two very young children. At the time, Eldridge was a widower with two children of his own, Fowler and Alanna. The man hadn’t had to adopt him and his sister, Marceline. He could have just as easily ignored them.

But he hadn’t.

Instead, Eldridge had incorporated them into his life and, when the time had come, into his business—or at least he’d tried when it came to Marceline. But Marceline harbored her own ill will against Eldridge and refused to have him do anything for her that would place her into further debt to the man.

Eldridge had treated Zane well. He hadn’t dictated to him like a despot whose word was law but had spoken to him like an understanding parent. When Zane had indicated to his stepfather that he was really very uncomfortable being a corporate suit in the grand scheme of things, Eldridge hadn’t expressed disappointment, hadn’t railed at him. Instead, his stepfather had made him his head of security for Colton Incorporated.

In his own way, the man had tried his best to be understanding when he really didn’t have to be.

Eldridge Colton was a good, decent man, and Zane intended to find out just what had happened to him. He owed him that much. With luck—and Eldridge had once taught him that a man made his own luck—he was going to find the kidnapped CEO, and he was going to bring him back to his family.

Alive.


Chapter 1 (#ulink_ce0f4441-8d51-50dc-ad10-17125464404e)

She wasn’t showing yet.

Despite the fact that she felt rounded and pudgy and could almost envision tiny, lightning bolt arrows coming in from 360 different directions, all conspicuously pointing at her stomach, Mirabella Freeman really wasn’t showing yet.

But she knew it was just a matter of time before she would be.

So every morning, after she had showered and got dressed, Mirabella would look herself over very carefully in her wardrobe mirror from as many angles as she could manage. She was trying to reassure herself that her initially ironing-board-flat stomach still appeared that way.

Meanwhile, she did what she could to prepare for the inevitable. Though money had never been plentiful, she’d always known how to buy just the right pieces and make the most of the limited wardrobe she had. She’d always known how to divert attention away from what she felt to be her visible flaws. When she was very young, it had been her unruly red hair, so she had found a way to tame it and make the most of its good features.

Because her curves had come early—way earlier than the rest of the girls in her class—she had worn long blouses that gathered at her hip, diverting the eye there rather than at her rounded chest.

And now she was focused on making sure no one’s attention was drawn to her waist, causing them to possibly suspect she was pregnant.

Society had evolved to the point that it really wasn’t supposed to be a big deal for a single woman to be with child. But the people who ran Colton Incorporated were on the old-fashioned side and she didn’t want to take any chances until she really had no other options but to let them know her condition.

Besides, with her hormones in an uproar the way they’d been lately, she was in no mood to be the subject of gossip and speculation even one second before she ultimately had to be.

As she craned her neck, looking over her shoulder into the wardrobe mirror from what amounted to a torturous angle, Mirabella silently lectured herself that she was being paranoid. How could she look pregnant when she’d actually lost weight in the last month? Some women suffered from morning sickness, especially with their first baby. She found herself suffering from all day sickness. No matter how hard she tried to avoid it, she was on her knees in front of the porcelain bowl several times a day, purging more often than a partying frat boy during his first year away from home. Everything, even water, seemed to make her miserably nauseous these days.

The hardest part, she thought as she slid into her shoes and picked up her purse, was trying not to let her boss, Zane Colton, find out about her frequent communing with the bathroom. Fortunately, the wickedly good-looking man still hadn’t noticed.

She hoped to keep it that way.

As head of Colton Incorporated’s security, it wasn’t as if he was chained to his desk. The man clearly liked being on his feet and active, using any excuse to leave his office and get out both on the floor and into the field. He looked the most pensive and restless when necessity had him spending time at his desk, dealing with end of the month paperwork—even if that “paper” was on the computer.

But even with all the hours he spent away from his office, it was only a matter of time before he’d begin to notice just how often she was away from her own desk. Her desk was situated directly in front of his office, so, coming and going, the man couldn’t miss seeing her—unless she wasn’t there.

As far as bosses went, she thought, locking her front door, Zane was in a class by himself. Leaving aside the fact that the man was as good-looking as they came, with over half the women in the top two floors of the twenty-five-story glass office tower madly in love with him, Zane Colton was not a demanding boss. He was easygoing and completely devoid of an ego, even though he would have been more than justified having one.

He didn’t act like a man who had anything to prove to anyone, except for possibly himself. And best of all, he didn’t throw his weight around, the way some others did. She was extremely happy to be Zane Colton’s administrative assistant and she wasn’t about to jeopardize that for the world.

While she didn’t think he would dismiss her if he discovered she was pregnant, it wasn’t something she wanted to risk finding out, either.

Not until she absolutely had to, she decided with a huge sigh.

Besides, the man had something far more pressing and bigger to deal with than a pregnant employee who might not be able to perform her duties. As far as that went, she definitely was up to doing her job even in her present condition—but she had a feeling that what she said or didn’t say carried very little weight at the moment.

But, be that as it may, something far bigger than the tiny seed growing within her had hit the corporation. Everybody, not just Zane, was still more or less reeling from shock. Zane’s father, that nice old man who had started and owned the company, Eldridge Colton, had been kidnapped a little more than a month ago now and the sheriff still hadn’t been able to find any trace of him.

Mirabella made no effort to suppress the shiver that zipped over her body as she thought about the current situation.

Some of the people she worked with believed Eldridge Colton was dead right from the beginning. Others felt he had been killed some time in the last couple of weeks.

Some people believed that, but not everybody.

From what she had overheard when Zane had been talking to someone on the phone, her boss didn’t belong to that group. Zane was utterly certain his father was still alive.

Or rather that his stepfather was still alive, Mirabella corrected herself.

But whatever label she affixed to Zane’s relationship with the missing Mr. Colton, she knew her boss cared a great deal about the man and that he wasn’t just going to passively wait for someone else to either stumble across the man’s inert body or find him clinging to life somewhere, perhaps months from now. She knew Zane Colton intended to find the missing corporation founder now—or barring that, as close to now as he could possibly manage.

This was not a man who needed to hear his administrative assistant hesitantly ask for a moment of his time, timidly clear her throat and then nervously announce she was pregnant and throwing up her insides. Then quickly tell him not to worry, that she would find a way to incorporate her frequent dashes to the ladies’ room into her workday so the latter wasn’t adversely affected. She would then conclude by assuring him that all would work itself out for the best.

It was a phrase her grandmother used to frequently tell her when she was a little girl.

Her grandmother’s wisdom not withstanding, Mirabella really didn’t see how that was going to happen. It was hard to hold on to the little bit of optimism when her baby’s father, after being informed of his pending fatherhood, had only four angry words to throw in her direction: Get rid of it.

He had been even less happy when she’d tersely held her ground and announced, No.

Feeling about as energetic as an overworked flea, Mirabella slid behind the steering wheel of her car and buckled up. She couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before she had to adjust both her seat and her seat belt to accommodate her enlarged size.

She supposed there was a small, outside chance she wouldn’t have to. There were, after all, some cases of women who had gone their entire pregnancy hardly gaining weight at all and never looking as though they were pregnant. Those cases were very few and far between, but they did happen.

But usually, in order for that to happen, she thought in the next moment as she started up her car, her baby would have to do only a minimum of growing in her womb—and something like that might wind up having dire consequences for the baby.

Just what kind of a vain monster was she? She couldn’t wish for something like that, Mirabella upbraided herself.

No, she was a big girl who had done big girl things, Mirabella reminded herself, and now it was time to face up to the consequences. The little being inside of her wasn’t going to be made to pay for her one wild, impetuous moment of irresponsibility.

That was on her.

Just not yet, Mirabella thought as she put her vehicle in Reverse and then pulled out of the parking spot.

Coward, the little voice in her head taunted.

Mirabella ignored the little voice. Lately, she’d gotten good at that.

* * *

When he had first begun to work at Colton Incorporated, each time he walked into the building, Zane used to feel as if all eyes were on him. He was certain that all the employees there, from the lowest to the board of directors surrounding his stepfather, were waiting for him to fall flat on his face and fail.

Fail big-time.

He didn’t doubt that these other employees were convinced he was having everything handed to him—especially when Eldridge had promoted him to be the head of the company’s security division. They hadn’t known or realized, at least not at that point, that he’d had to prove himself. Prove himself to Eldridge and especially to himself. It wouldn’t have meant something to him otherwise.

Eventually, he did prove himself.

But it had taken him time. Time to prove himself, to prove he was there to work, to get the job done and to resolve things as fairly as possible, making decisions to the best of his ability after listening to both sides of a problem. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it.

In time, he’d dealt with everything from employee disputes, to embezzlement and to the ever challenging matter of internet security. He liked to feel that he did this all well. Eventually, he had his proof of that. People had begun to seek him out, to trust him to handle things fairly. To treat him with respect.

But that had all changed in the last month.

He was back to square one.

Lower than square one. Because now he couldn’t help feeling that some of the employees were looking at him and wondering if he was somehow involved in his stepfather’s disappearance.

He supposed in a way it made sense because, in reality, he was guilty of doing the very same thing each and every time he and his family gathered around the dining room table for a meal.

To the outside world, the various Colton siblings, as well as the woman who called herself their mother, did what they could to present a united front, to appear to have one another’s backs. Privately, it was another story. It seemed as if they had always been at odds with one another, breaking up into smaller factions.

While Zane was always close to his younger sister, Marceline, she and Eldridge’s oldest son, Fowler, used to go out of their way to make the three youngest Coltons, Thomas, Piper and Reid, miserable. And then there were times that the others would all gang up on Piper, a maid’s daughter, who had been adopted by Eldridge and Whitney when her mother died.

As for himself, Zane had done his best to remain out of it all, focusing instead on just proving himself to the one man who mattered.

And now he was probably included in the mix of suspects, Zane couldn’t help thinking. In these cases, the family was always the first to be suspected.

He stared at the blank screen on the computer monitor on his desk, his thoughts going in a dozen directions at once.

So far, no one had accused him of anything outright, but he had an uneasy feeling it was probably just a matter of time before that happened. Being the outsider was never something shaken off completely. The only way he could make sure he wasn’t ever accused of such a heinous crime was to find Eldridge himself.

He had a far bigger stake in this than Sheriff Watkins did. After all, for him it was personal.

It wasn’t for Watkins.

But how the hell did he go about finding his missing stepfather?

Zane felt as if he was going around in circles again, the way he had been ever since this whole thing had started.

If his father was dead, why hadn’t whoever was responsible for this just killed him on the spot? Why take him and then kill him? It didn’t make any actual sense.

And if his stepfather had been kidnapped for the usual reasons, where was the ransom note?

If he’d been taken for some other reason, as leverage or to be exchanged for something or someone, where was that call?

This whole thing wasn’t adding up, Zane thought, frustrated. It was as if Eldridge had been taken for no reason.

He got up and began pacing around his desk, exasperation and impatience growing by the moment, feeling red-hot and ready to explode.

Zane struggled to hold on to his temper.

Giving in and taking it out on the first thing handy wasn’t going to get him any closer to finding the only father he had ever known.

The best thing he could do for Eldridge—other than finding him, Zane thought ruefully—was to keep the company going in the man’s absence. The company meant everything to the patriarch. This way, when he did come back, the company would be running smoothly instead of having devolved into a state of chaos.

Zane had been doing just that for the last month—keeping his end of the company going—but it was becoming harder and harder rather than easier.

With a sigh, he planted himself back behind his desk. He needed to get something productive done.

Distracted as he reviewed which department needed his attention the most this morning, he thought he heard a noise, but discounted it—

Until it came again.

It took him a moment to realize someone was knocking on the door. Bracing his palms against the edge of his desk, Zane took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He couldn’t be seen losing his grip in front of the employees. Aside from something like that not inspiring confidence, it might very well be the thing which caused the better people around him to either look for another job—or circle his position like sharks, waiting for him to mess up.

Sorry, not about to do that. Not today, Zane promised. “Come in,” he called out.

The door opened and Mirabella took a couple of steps across the office’s threshold. One hand on the doorknob, she had her back up against the door. To Zane it looked as if she was trying to shrink or even disappear into the woodwork.

For just a split second, he found himself wondering about her, wondering what could cause a rather stunning woman like Mirabella to behave as if she was attempting to avoid the attention of the immediate world. Any other time or place, he would have taken an interest in the young woman, perhaps asked her a few detailed questions in order to get to the bottom of her unusual behavior.

But this wasn’t any other time. It was this time, a time of impending crisis if his stepfather wasn’t found. For the umpteenth time, he made a solemn promise to himself to find the man.

Failure was not an option.

“Sheriff Watkins is here to see you, Mr. Colton,” Mirabella informed him.

Instantly alert, Zane half rose behind his desk. “Send him in, Mirabella,” he instructed.

The sheriff, a well-built, imposing man in his early fifties, took his time walking in. His gray eyes scanned the room, missing nothing. Polite, soft-spoken, he was nonetheless not a person to be trifled with.

A show of respect had Troy Watkins carrying his well-worn Stetson in his hand rather than wearing it. There were surprisingly few traces of gray in his dark hair, given the nature of his work combined with his age.

The expression on his sun-wrinkled face was stern, but then he’d never been known for smiling much. This morning was apparently no exception.

“Take a seat, Sheriff,” Zane invited, gesturing toward the chair closest to his desk.

Watkins did so, but he looked as if he wasn’t comfortable about it. Nor did he look as if he was comfortable in his present surroundings. He was a man most at ease when he was moving about in wide-open spaces. In his eyes, crowded cities were just necessary evils to be endured, not something to aspire to.

“What brings you here, Sheriff?” Zane asked, then immediately attached another, far more anxious question to the first one. “Did you find my father?”

“You mean your stepdaddy,” Watkins corrected. “Gotta be accurate at all times, you know. If a man can’t be accurate when it comes to the little details, it means that man’s going to be careless when it comes to the big things.”

He really wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. What he wanted were answers. But snapping the sheriff’s head off wouldn’t get him anywhere. Zane tamped down his impatience and rephrased his question.

“Did you find my stepfather, Sheriff?”

“No,” Watkins answered. He ran his fingers along the inside of his hat, turning the Stetson around in a slow circle. He raised his gray eyes to meet Zane’s dark ones. “But I did find something interesting.”


Chapter 2 (#ulink_0b8a138b-c027-585e-b6dd-b4d096418f95)

Zane waited for the sheriff to continue, but obviously the man wanted to be coaxed.

Okay, Zane conceded. He was willing to play this game, just as long as it got him the answers he was after—and closer to finding out who had taken his stepfather.

“And what might that ‘something interesting’ be, Sheriff?” Zane asked.

Watkins slid a little more forward on his chair. As he did so, the man’s small, gray eyes all but burrowed into him, seemingly taking full measure of him.

Elbows leaning on the armrests, the sheriff laced his fingers together in front of him as if he was relating a story around a campfire.

“Well, seems that your stepdaddy was making regular withdrawals from one of his private bank accounts, making them monthly to some bank account located heaven knows where—we haven’t been able to track it down yet,” Watkins continued, drawing out the revelation as he carefully watched Zane’s face, apparently waiting for some telltale reaction. “Withdrawals to the tune of $9,999. That’s the biggest amount he could have made without attracting the government’s attention,” Watkins added as if he were talking to someone who wasn’t already aware of that fact. Everyone knew that little tidbit. Or at least everyone who was involved in finances and matters dealing with security, Zane thought impatiently.

Was the sheriff watching him for a reaction? Zane couldn’t help wonder.

Well, he had a reaction all right. It was barely contained outrage.

He resented having this sprung on him out of nowhere, apparently for effect. “How long have you known this?” Zane wanted to know.

“Just today,” Watkins answered mildly. The sheriff continued watching him the way a cat watched a mouse hole, breathless, waiting to pounce.

A few choice words rose to Zane’s tongue, but he deliberately refrained from voicing any of them. It served no purpose telling the sheriff what he thought of his coming here, trying to bait him rather than being out in the field, looking for Eldridge.

Most of all, Zane was really growing tired of playing cat and mouse.

“Regular payments?” Zane questioned.

Watkins nodded his head. “Like clockwork.”

Zane felt as if he was getting information out of the man by dribbles and drabs. “For how long?”

“Three months.” Again, the gray eyes seemed to be burrowing right into him. “Why? What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Same thing you are,” Zane answered vaguely.

It was a lie. He had a feeling, from the way Watkins was looking at him, that the sheriff was thinking a great many more things than just the one thing that had immediately struck him. Watkins might like presenting himself as being nothing more than a simple country sheriff, but under that easygoing exterior was a shrewd man, Zane decided. A man who didn’t take kindly to being made to look foolish—and an unsolved crime of this magnitude, involving such a well-known citizen like Eldridge Colton, did just that.

Appearing to hang on his every word, Watkins cocked his head, looking right back at him, the very picture of innocence. “Which is?”

Why was Watkins waiting for him to spell it out? Was the man setting some sort of a trap for him, or was he just using him as a sounding board?

“Somebody was blackmailing my stepfather,” he said, careful to use the sheriff-approved label for the man he considered his father. “Maybe the same person who kidnapped him.”

Watkins scratched his head, as if that simple action helped him absorb the words a little better. “Now, why would he kidnap your stepdaddy if Mr. Colton was making regular payments to him?” Watkins asked.

Zane knew that Watkins knew the answer as well as he did, but again, he played along, answering the question as he wondered just exactly what the sheriff was really up to. In a nutshell, was the man trying to prove his innocence, or his guilt?

Or was he just casting about, hoping he—or whoever else Watkins went on to question—would somehow trip themselves up and say the wrong thing?

He couldn’t get a handle on it. All he knew was Watkins’s rather clumsy method definitely made him feel uncomfortable.

Zane did his best to continue playing along, but his temper was really growing short. It had been this way ever since Eldridge had been taken.

“Maybe my stepfather got tired of paying the blackmailer. Or maybe the blackmailer had decided to up the ante and my stepfather said no. Or maybe,” he speculated, coming up with a third reason, “whoever was blackmailing him just got too angry at my stepfather and decided to take it out on him. I don’t know,” Zane snapped. “That’s your job.”

“Getting a mite testy, aren’t you, son?” Watkins asked.

The man might be a couple of decades older than he was, but Zane wasn’t about to stand being talked down to like this.

“I don’t know. Am I?” he challenged. “What would you be like if it was your father who’d been kidnapped?”

“Stepfather,” Watkins corrected, a little of his folksy cadence slipping away.

Zane had had just about enough of this. “How about we just call him Eldridge?” he proposed in an exasperated tone. “Would that suit you?”

“Doesn’t matter what suits me, Mr. Colton,” Watkins replied calmly. “I’m just a lowly elected official of the county, trying to do his job.” His eyes narrowed ever so slightly as they pinned Zane in place. “You wouldn’t happen to know who was on the receiving end of these regular payments, now, would you?” he asked, his tone halfway between being solicitous and friendly.

“I haven’t a clue,” Zane responded tersely. And then he reversed the tables. “Do you?”

“Not yet,” Watkins replied honestly. “But I aim to find out. You hear anything, Mr. Colton, I expect you to let me know,” the sheriff said in a mild voice as he rose to his feet.

Zane knew he was being put on notice but he went out of his way to maintain a friendly tone. “Can I expect the same from you?”

Watkins inclined his head as if it was a wait-and-see situation.

“If I can,” the sheriff replied.

Which translated to a big, fat No, Zane realized. The sheriff was not in the business of sharing. The only reason Watkins had come to him with this business of regular bank account withdrawals was to see his reaction to the news.

The sheriff was on a fishing expedition and he was looking to catch himself a big fish whose last name was Colton, Zane thought. He obviously believed that someone within the family had abducted Eldridge.

But why?

It wasn’t as if there was a dearth of suspects outside of the family. Eldridge Colton had made his share of enemies in his youth.

Taking great pains to make sure none of his thoughts were registering on his face, Zane rose to his feet less than a beat after the sheriff had gained his. Then, rounding his desk, he walked the man to his office door.

“Thanks for stopping by, Sheriff,” he said in the friendliest voice he could muster, “and for keeping me in the loop.”

Watkins’s eyes met his. Again, the sheriff’s were unreadable. His lips spread just a little in what passed for a smile. An exceedingly shallow smile. “Count on it.”

Zane felt as if he was once again being put on notice. This wasn’t the first conversation he’d had with the sheriff, nor was it the first time he’d had the impression that Watkins would have been more than thrilled to pin this all on him—or at least on someone in his family.

All that meant, Zane thought as he shook the sheriff’s hand and then watched the man walk away, was that he was going to have to get really serious about doing some intense investigating of his own.

His priorities converged with the sheriff’s only insofar as wanting to solve the mystery of Eldridge’s disappearance. Their paths diverged immediately after that because the sheriff suspected him while he, of course, knew he wasn’t the one responsible for his father’s disappearance.

He might have been at the house the morning of the abduction—they’d all been at the house that morning, it was everyone’s customary starting point every Monday morning—but he hadn’t gone anywhere near his father’s room until after Moira had screamed because she’d found the blood.

He’d told Watkins as much, and the sheriff might have nodded when he heard that part, but Zane strongly suspected the man wasn’t really convinced—and wouldn’t be until the real kidnapper was caught and confessed to the crime.

Until, Zane silently emphasized, not if.

Feeling momentarily overwhelmed, Zane suppressed a sigh.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Colton?”

Zane roused himself. Lost in thought, he hadn’t realized he was still standing by his open door, staring after the departing sheriff, rather than going back to his desk.

“Not yet,” he admitted, his voice a bit vague.

Looking at Mirabella, he flashed a quick smile in his administrative assistant’s direction because she had expressed an interest in his well-being.

These days, a lot of people went out of their way to avoid him rather than be faced with having to find words of comfort and encouragement.

“But it will be,” he concluded.

Mirabella pressed her lips together. Her stomach was suddenly rebelling again. Clenching one fist at her side, she struggled to exercise some sort of control over the queasy feeling. After all, she couldn’t very well just dash off to the ladies’ room in the middle of his sentence. Besides, Zane looked so lost for a moment, her heart went out to him.

“Was this about Mr. Eldridge?” she asked Zane quietly.

“Yes, it was,” he replied.

Her eyes immediately widened and he caught himself thinking, despite the quagmire he found himself in, that her pale brown eyes looked beautiful.

Not the time, he admonished himself. Besides, the woman works for you, you’re not supposed to think of her that way.

A glimmer of fear had frozen on her face. “The sheriff didn’t come to tell you...” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

She didn’t need to. He could see Mirabella was thinking the worst. Zane immediately cut his assistant short, putting her mind at ease.

“No, he didn’t,” Zane told her. “It seems that there’s just been another puzzle piece added to this mix.”

“Oh.” The single word escaped her lips, indicating she had no idea if this was good news or bad.

Mirabella wasn’t asking him any questions and normally, he would have been grateful for that and wouldn’t have volunteered anything. But today, this minute, filled to the brim with a host of tumultuous emotions, he found himself needing to talk to someone. His concern about his stepfather’s ultimate welfare was eating away at him and he didn’t know who to talk to, who to really trust.

There was something almost sweetly honest about the woman who quietly took care of all the myriad small details that went into making his job run as smoothly as it did.

In all the time they had worked together, there’d been no slipups. Mirabella was good at her job.

In the blink of an eye, she went from administrative assistant to temporary confidante.

“It’s come to the sheriff’s attention that someone might have been blackmailing my father,” Zane told her without fanfare or hemming and hawing.

There was concern on Mirabella’s delicate, heart-shaped face. Not a rush to judgment, not a quick, terse correction to remind him that Eldridge Colton was his stepfather, not his flesh-and-blood father.

Zane wasn’t much of a talker, but he found Mirabella extremely easy to talk to. It was almost as if her very expression coaxed the words out of his mouth—and the weight off his shoulders.

“Blackmail?” she repeated in a small, hushed voice that almost vibrated with horrified disbelief. “Mr. Eldridge? Are you sure?”

Zane sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Right now, Belle, I’m not sure of anything. But the sheriff came to tell me that one of my father’s bank accounts was experiencing regular withdrawals once a month.”

“Where were the withdrawals going?” Mirabella wanted to know. Who could be doing such an awful thing, blackmailing that sweet old man?

“That is what I intend to find out. Belle, get me—” He stopped talking and looked at her as if he hadn’t really seen her today. “Are you feeling all right, Belle?” he asked.

No, I feel as if my stomach is being twisted inside out and it’s all going to be coming up into my throat at any second, she thought, desperately trying to hold it together.

It was her own fault, she upbraided herself. She was the one asking questions, detaining Zane. She should have just nodded and withdrawn, pretending to go back to her desk. This way she could really be hurrying off to the ladies’ room, praying it was unoccupied. The last thing she needed was to have someone overhearing her throwing up and offering to take her to the company nurse.

“I’m fine, sir,” she told him, hoping she sounded convincing.

No, she wasn’t, Zane observed. She wasn’t fine. His administrative assistant looked very pale and it made him feel guilty. She was undoubtedly concerned about his father’s well-being and reacting to what he’d just told her. Images of blackmailers and the way some might handle a situation that wasn’t to their liking didn’t exactly create calming scenarios.

He shouldn’t have said anything to her.

Feeling responsible for making her feel this way, Zane took her hand in his in a gesture of comfort.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, “he’ll be all right.”

Mirabella looked at her boss, confused even as she found herself reacting to the gentle way he was holding her hand.

There’d never been any physical contact between them before. Despite the nausea gripping her, something else was going on as well, something faint, but compelling nonetheless. She had no idea where this was coming from or why it seemed to momentarily supersede everything else.

This assault on her hormones she experienced because of the baby had literally knocked out all the rules. She quite frankly didn’t know what to expect from herself from one minute to the next.

Right now, all she could think about was telling Zane how totally attracted to him she was. It was a real struggle not to. Almost as much of a struggle as it was to keep down whatever was threatening to purge itself right this minute.

So she forced herself to smile, desperately hoping she wasn’t going to start sweating—which she knew would only lead to more questions.

Instead, she said, “I know everything will be all right because you’ll find Mr. Eldridge, I know you will.”

“First thing I’m going to find,” Zane told her, releasing her hand and turning toward his desk, “is exactly where and to whom these monthly withdrawals are going.”

Though everything within her screamed to leave right this second while she still could, before risking embarrassment, Mirabella had to ask, “The sheriff really didn’t tell you?”

“The sheriff indicated he didn’t know.” Whether or not that was the truth he didn’t know, but he was going with that assumption for now. “He said something about it going into an untraceable bank account.”

Which could very well be the truth. Despite the fact that this was the age of the hacker and people who were versed in all sorts of internet sleight of hand, not everyone was a cyber expert.

Be that as it may, Zane had the feeling the sheriff was not the country bumpkin he wanted everyone to believe him to be. That was just to throw everyone off their game and cause them to let slip things they might not have around someone they considered to be more savvy.

Whatever the case, right now he didn’t have the time to spend trying to figure the sheriff out. He needed to track down exactly where Eldridge’s withdrawals were going and just who was on the receiving end of those withdrawals.

And just as important, he needed to find out why. Just what was his father being blackmailed about?

“Will there be anything else, Mr. Colton?” Mirabella asked, really struggling not to allow her breakfast to come up.

“No, not right now,” he replied, looking away. And then he looked up again. “Wait,” he called after her.

Her back now to him, Mirabella didn’t turn around. Instead, she pressed her hand against her chest. She was going to start heaving any second.

A rather breathless “Yes?” was really all she could manage in the way of a reply.

“Get me Meyer Stanley on the phone,” he requested, addressing the words to her back.

Meyer was his recently transferred IT wizard, the man who could track down absolutely anything via the internet. If Meyer couldn’t find something, then it didn’t exist.

Mirabella remained where she was, with her back still facing him. Rather than turning around or even verbally responding to the request, Mirabella merely nodded her head and then held up one hand in the air, jiggling it as if to confirm she had heard him and she would get the man’s number immediately.

Then, before he could say anything further—or had a chance to inquire after her health again because she was behaving so oddly—Mirabella all but fled the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

Leaving Zane to stare at it in utter, albeit fleeting, bewilderment.

The next moment his mind was back on his stepfather and the mysterious monthly withdrawals. Things were becoming much more complicated.

Just what the hell was going on here?


Chapter 3 (#ulink_f46979de-d17c-572a-b3ca-63afa1f9ae1b)

His IT wizard still hadn’t gotten back to him, but then, Meyer had only been given the assignment a little more than a day ago, Zane reminded himself. Even wizardry took time.

He took comfort in the fact that nothing was ever totally untraceable. Tracking something down through cyberspace wasn’t impossible, just exceedingly time-consuming and tricky, requiring a great deal of patience, especially if they were dealing with an expert. He would be the first to admit that.

Even so, a restlessness was threatening to completely undo Zane if he didn’t get out of the office for at least a little while and hit the field himself. If, in the interim, Meyer came up with anything, the man knew enough to make sure to reach him on his cell phone. These days it felt as if his phone was another appendage, never out of reach.

As he walked out of his office, habit had Zane glancing at Mirabella’s desk.

She wasn’t there.

Lately, whenever he passed her desk, either on his way in or out of his office, he’d noticed that more than half the time, the woman wasn’t at her desk. Was she ill the way he’d suspected yesterday?

Pausing for a moment, Zane tried to remember if he’d heard anything about a bug going around the office lately, but came up empty. If he were being totally honest with himself, he was rather oblivious to common everyday occurrences lately. Everything in life as he normally knew it had taken a distant backseat to his stepfather’s disappearance.

Even so, bug or not, the next time their paths crossed, he was going to confront Mirabella about his suspicions again, and this time he wasn’t going to allow her to just shrug them off. He both appreciated and understood the woman’s dedication to her job, but he didn’t want her coming in if she was feeling ill. There was such a thing as carrying dedication too far.

Maybe he should pay attention to his own philosophy, Zane silently lectured himself. Investigations belonged in the hands of investigators, not in the hands of relatives who were too close to the situation to be impartial detectives.

That might be true, he wordlessly granted the next moment, but who had the bigger stake in finding his father, some worn-out sheriff or someone who cared whether or not Eldridge Colton lived or died? Zane knew the answer to that.

Turning down the hall, he was on his way to the elevator when he caught a glimpse of Mirabella emerging from the ladies’ room. To his recollection she was looking even paler than she had earlier this morning which was an ash-gray theme and variation on how pale she’d appeared yesterday.

As she approached, he saw his administrative assistant was wiping her forehead with the wadded up handkerchief she had in her hand.

For a split second, he thought of just giving Mirabella her privacy and merely nodding as he passed, telling her that he was planning on being out of the office for the next hour or so.

But, although Zane believed in allotting people their own space, he didn’t believe in avoiding situations—even if they were awkward—not if those situations needed to be dealt with.

And this one, in his opinion, obviously did.

So rather than keep on walking, Zane made a point of stopping directly in front of his administrative assistant, a six-foot-three-inch roadblock that was bent on keeping her from returning to her desk until he’d gotten a few answers.

Placing his hands on either side of her shoulders, Zane looked directly into her eyes and voiced his concern without beating around the bush.

“Tell me the truth, Belle. Were you just in there—” he nodded toward the ladies’ room “—being sick?”

For a second, Mirabella stopped breathing. Oh Lord, did he suspect? She’d been so careful to keep her retching as quiet as possible, afraid anyone coming into the ladies’ room might overhear her and put two and two together. From there it was only a very short leap to the status of office gossip.

Her mind raced to come up with a plausible response. Feeling weak and unsteady on her legs, not to mention feeling as if she’d thrown up the entire meager contents of her wretched stomach, going all the way back to yesterday’s breakfast, Mirabella did her best to look as if she had absolutely no idea what her boss was talking about.

She assumed a mystified expression. “What do you mean by ‘sick’?”

“Sick,” Zane repeated, as if saying the word with emphasis somehow made it clearer for her. “You know, feverish, under the weather, maybe even sweating.” He deliberately looked at the wadded-up handkerchief in her hand, then added, “And throwing up.”

Her eyes instantly widened. “I haven’t been throwing up,” she denied so quickly he could almost feel the breeze created by her words.

“Okay, I believe you,” he said in a calming voice, although, to be honest, he really didn’t believe her. “It’s just that while I really appreciate your dedication and having someone I can rely on, that someone isn’t going to do me any good if she’s going to wind up working herself into a hospital bed—or worse,” he told her. His eyes held Mirabella’s as he went on to ask, “Am I making myself understood?”

Mirabella pressed her lips together, struggling to look as if everything was all right instead of in a state of almost complete upheaval. “Yes, sir.”

She looked like the picture of innocence, but he had a feeling he really wasn’t getting through to her. He’d never met a redheaded woman yet who, politely or not, wasn’t stubborn beyond words.

Still, he pressed on. “And if you need to go home and go to bed in order to get better, I want you to go do just that.”

Going to bed was what got me into this situation to begin with, Mirabella couldn’t help thinking ruefully.

Out loud, she told Zane, “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Colton, but I’m fine.”

“Belle,” Zane began, hesitating for a moment before finally continuing, “forgive me for being blunt here, but you really don’t look fine.”

She looked away and shrugged. “Bad hair day,” she murmured.

“Your hair is beautiful as always,” Zane said like a man who had no idea he was paying a woman a compliment instead of just simply stating what to him was an obvious fact. “Your face, however looks really pale.”

She became a tad defensive when she heard that. “I’m a redhead, it comes with the territory,” she said, wishing he would stop being so nice and just walk away like any normal, self-absorbed boss.

But he wasn’t a normal, self-absorbed boss, which was why, despite her best efforts not to, she found herself being so strongly attracted to him.

“I’m aware of that,” Zane replied patiently. “But you’re looking paler than usual.”

Mirabella blinked, totally surprised. “You’ve noticed how pale I am?” she asked, not knowing whether to be pleased because what Zane had just said meant he was paying attention to her, or insulted because his assessment was less than flattering—even if it was undoubtedly true.

Maybe he hadn’t worded that quite right, Zane realized. Still, it was out and he needed to do a little damage control.

“You’re a difficult person to ignore, Belle,” he told her, sounding as formal as he could. “Now if you’re feeling sick, say so and go home. There’s nothing here that can’t wait for a few days.”

This isn’t going to go away in a few days. It’s not going to go away for another six months, she told him silently.

Stubbornly, Mirabella shook her head in response to his instructions. “I don’t need to go home. It’s just something I ate,” she assured him with as much feeling as she could feign. “I’m over the worst of it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to my desk. I have those notes of yours to input.”

He looked at her dubiously. He knew she was lying about feeling better, but short of throwing her over his shoulder, carrying her to his car and driving her home, there wasn’t anything he could do. If he tried to force her to do what he’d just instructed her to do, it might even be viewed as harassment by some and the last thing he needed at a time like this was to get embroiled in a case involving acts of harassment.

With no other option opened to him, Zane merely nodded and told her, “I’ll see you in about an hour.” He turned away, intent on heading toward the elevator banks.

He took exactly three steps in that direction when he saw the elevator door on the far end opening and the sheriff emerging with one of his deputies, Charlie Kidwell, right behind him. Both men appeared to look rather grim—and they were both looking at him.

Zane froze in place.

The sheriff was paying him two visits in the space of two days. This couldn’t be good, he couldn’t help thinking.

How did a man brace himself to hear news he didn’t want to hear?

Zane had no answer for that. All he could do was fervently hope he was wrong about the sheriff’s reason for this second visit.

“You’re back, Sheriff,” Zane said by way of a greeting to the older man. His voice sounded stilted to his own ears, but it was all he could come up with at the spur of the moment.

“Looks like it,” Watkins acknowledged, his face devoid of any expression.

Zane’s mouth felt like cotton.

He was really trying to prolong this process, as though the message the sheriff was bringing would somehow change if he stalled long enough. “You were just here yesterday. Mind if I ask what you’re doing back here so soon?”

“I don’t mind,” Watkins assured him.

Zane had the distinct impression he was being toyed with and it helped him to rally. If the sheriff was toying with him, then the news couldn’t be bad, right? Or could it?

“As a matter of fact,” the sheriff drawled, “I’m going to tell you right now what made me come back so soon. You see, while going over the outside of the crime scene earlier today, I found this here little thing in the bushes that the other fellas from the crime scene unit must have missed the first time around.”

Zane had a strange, sinking feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer, but he had to ask. “What little thing?”

Watkins smiled broadly. It was a humorless smile that still seemed to smack of satisfaction.

“Glad you asked. It was a cuff link. Now, I don’t have any myself. I’m just a regular old-buttons-on-my-shirts kind of guy. But you rich fellas, you like all that pretty extra stuff,” Watkins said, glancing at his deputy as if waiting for the other man to agree. But before Kidwell could say anything, Watkins continued. “Problem with cuff links and things of that nature, is that sometimes, you lose ’em and don’t even know it. Which must be how you lost yours,” Watkins concluded, holding up the cuff link, which was in a see-through evidence bag—as if it was exhibit A.

Zane frowned. Was this where the sheriff’s dance finally led? His eyes narrowed as he glared at the older man. “Are you saying you found my cuff link near the crime scene?”

Watkins smiled again. “That’s what I’m saying. Can’t put nothing over on you, can I?” the sheriff asked sarcastically. Dropping at least part of his warm, friendly act, Watkins told him, “I’d like you to come with me so we can have a little conversation about that cuff link and how it happened to be where it was found.”

Zane stared at the sheriff, stunned. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mirabella was having the exact same reaction as he was to what the sheriff was implying.

“Are you arresting me, Sheriff?” he asked in disbelief.

“No, not yet anyway,” he said mildly. And then, in a far less innocent tone of voice he asked, “Should I be?”

“No, you shouldn’t be,” Zane said with feeling. “I didn’t kidnap my fa— Eldridge,” he corrected himself, not wanting to have to listen to the sheriff do it. “You know that.”

“Right now, Mr. Colton, I don’t know very much of anything,” Watkins told him. “Except that Eldridge Colton is missing and nobody’s found hide nor hair of him. Which just has me scratching my head and trying my damndest to put all the little pieces together.” His eyes shifted to Zane’s face, assuming a sterner expression. “What I’d appreciate is having you come down to the station with me so we can have ourselves a little conversation about how that cuff link of yours just happened to find itself in the bushes outside your stepdaddy’s window.” The fake smile was back as he added, “It couldn’t have just walked there all by itself.”

“There’s a simple explanation for that,” Zane began. He definitely didn’t like what the sheriff was all but flatly stating.

With exaggerated politeness, the sheriff cut him off. “And I am looking forward to hearing that simple explanation—right after I get you to the station. Now, you can either come peacefully, or I can slap the cuffs on you and take you into custody in front of all those nice people in this building. It don’t make no matter to me one way or the other, but I suspect it does to you, Mr. Colton. So I leave it all up to you. The choice is yours.”

“I’ll come peacefully,” Zane answered through clenched teeth, feeling as far from peaceful as humanly possible.

Watkins pushed his Stetson back with the tip of his thumb. “Good choice,” he agreed with exaggerated approval.

Mirabella had been standing by silently all this time. But seeing the sheriff put his hand on Zane’s elbow just now, as if he was about to usher him into the elevator, she suddenly snapped to life.

Moving as quickly as she could, she placed herself in front of the elevator door, barring entrance into the elevator car once it arrived.

“You’d best step out of the way if you know what’s good for you, little lady,” Watkins advised. His tone might have seemed exceedingly friendly, but the look in his eyes held a warning.

Mirabella took no notice. Her attention was entirely focused on Zane. “Do you want me to call the corporate lawyers, Mr. Colton?” she asked, deliberately ignoring the sheriff and his deputy. “Or your personal lawyer?” she suggested in the next breath. She thought that might be the best thing to do, given the way the sheriff was behaving toward Zane.

“No, not yet, Belle,” Zane answered. “I don’t need a lawyer.”

Mirabella tended to disagree. She looked at Zane, worried in addition to feeling sick to her stomach. She knew in her heart that Zane couldn’t have harmed Eldridge in any way, which was more than she could say about some members of the Colton family, who would do anything to advance themselves. But what she thought didn’t matter. And to an outsider, it appeared that Zane really could use some legal counsel.

Especially when the sheriff asked in a voice that bespoke of impending doom. “You sure about that, Mr. Colton? Having your lawyer there might prove to be very...handy,” Watkins finally concluded.

“I’ve got nothing to prove and nothing to hide,” Zane stated flatly. “So, no, I don’t need to have a lawyer present.” His eyes shifted to Watkins. “But thank you for your concern, Sheriff,” he added coldly.

Watkins merely shrugged indifferently. “Suit yourself, Mr. Colton, but I’m going on record as saying I think you’re making a big mistake not having this little lady get you that lawyer of yours.” His gray eyes shifted toward Mirabella. “And you’re my witness, little lady,” he said, emphasizing this fact.

Mirabella clenched her hands into fists, but kept them firmly against her sides. She knew she was expected to keep silent, to just be part of the decor, but she couldn’t in all good conscience say nothing.

“What I’m a witness to, Sheriff Watkins, is one of your bigger mistakes. Mr. Colton didn’t kidnap or harm Mr. Eldridge,” she told him fiercely. “He wouldn’t do something so awful.”

Ordinarily, Watkins would have just ignored her the way he ignored mosquitoes unless they had the misfortune of landing on him. However, he was amused by her bravado. So, the sheriff paused and looked at her.

“And you know this because...”

Mirabella drew herself up to her full height. “Because I have—and use—the common sense the good Lord gave me. Something that you, Sheriff, are apparently lacking.”

Zane had no idea exactly what the sheriff might be capable of if pushed too far. And, in any event, he didn’t want Mirabella drawn into this. There was just something about her that brought out the protector in him.

“Belle, don’t,” he instructed firmly. “It’s going to be all right. You just hold down the fort until I get back.”

She squared her shoulders, resigned, but not defeated. “All right, but I still think you should let me call the lawyer.”

A faint bell dinged, announcing the elevator had arrived.

“Smart girl. You should listen to her,” Watkins advised as he ushered Zane into the elevator car. The deputy got on behind them.

“Maybe later,” Zane retorted.

“Suit yourself. But later might be too late,” the sheriff predicted.

Mirabella’s heart sank as she watched the elevator doors close, cutting off her view of Zane.

She had a bad feeling about this.


Chapter 4 (#ulink_49509e34-34db-5b8e-9496-3067f44ef1a7)

Watkins silently walked into the small area that doubled as an interrogation room when it wasn’t being used as a break room by his deputies. Zane had been sitting there for the better part of an hour, waiting for the sheriff to return after he had placed him there, telling him to wait and that he would be back soon.

Obviously they had different definitions of the word soon, Zane thought. But then, he was aware Watkins was toying with him.

Entering from behind Zane, the sheriff dropped a sealed evidence bag on the table right in front of him. The contents of the bag made a small “ping” noise as it made contact with the metal tabletop.

“Now, then,” Watkins declared, “I believe that there is your cuff link, Mr. Colton. You’re not going to waste your breath and my time denying it, are you?” he challenged, sitting down opposite Zane. “What with those pretty initials on it and all, saying Z.C., I figure that cuff link’s gotta be yours.”

Zane looked at the item in question. Even contained in the see-through evidence bag the way it was, the cuff link managed to catch the room’s overhead light. It gleamed almost defiantly as it lay there in the center of the small metal table.

Zane raised his eyes to look at the smug expression on the sheriff’s face. He could see Watkins was just itching for him to deny ownership. The sheriff was a man who relished fighting—and enjoyed winning.

He was not about to give Watkins that satisfaction.

“It’s mine,” Zane replied.

He’d only noticed that the cuff link was missing sometime toward the latter part of the day that his father had been presumably kidnapped. With bigger things to deal with than a missing cuff link, he hadn’t even tried to find it.

Apparently Watkins had.

“Well, I’m glad we got that out of the way,” Watkins said, referring to his suspect’s admission. “Now, just what was it doing in the bushes right outside your stepdaddy’s window?” Watkins asked in a faux friendly voice, his eyes once again all but pinning Zane to his seat.

Watkins was the kind of man he could easily lose his temper with, but Zane knew he only stood to lose if he did so. Exercising total restraint, he managed to control his temper. He only sounded mildly sarcastic as he answered the sheriff’s question.

“I don’t know, I must have lost it while I was out there, looking for Eldridge after we discovered he wasn’t in his room and we found his blood all over the floor.”

Watkins’s expression remained skeptical. “Or maybe you lost it while dragging your stepfather’s body out through his bedroom window. If you ask me, that seems more logical,” Watkins deliberately concluded.

Aggravated, Zane bit back a few choice retorts. Instead, he said evenly, “I was in an entirely different section of the house when my stepfather was taken.”

Watkins asked dubiously, “Can anyone verify that?”

Zane met the man’s eyes without any hesitation. “I was with my mother.”

“Your mother,” Watkins repeated with a smirk. “Sure you want to go with that?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Zane fired back. “It is the truth.”

Watkins’s short laugh told him what the sheriff thought of his alibi. “Well, throughout history, a lot of mamas have been known to lie for their sons. For instance, the mamas who were the wives of rich, powerful men. They often just looked the other way when their sons rid them of those men.” Watkins leaned closer over the table as if he were sharing some sort of deep, dark confidence. “You take that Emperor Nero’s mama as an example. Did you know Nero’s mama poisoned her husband so her boy Nero could become emperor?” Watkins asked, chuckling as he spoke.

For two cents, Zane would have been more than willing to tell the sheriff exactly what he thought of the man, but he knew it would do him no good, only harm. Zane was determined not to allow the man to goad him into losing his temper.

“Fascinating as that is, Sheriff,” Zane told him, “I do have another witness.”

The hell you do, boy.

Watkins clearly didn’t believe him as he asked, “And this witness just happened to conveniently pop up in your memory now?”

Zane ignored the sheriff’s mocking tone and continued telling him his alibi. “The family housekeeper, Moira, was there at the time, as well. You might recall the name, Sheriff. Moira was the first one to discover my father was missing after my mother had sent her to the master suite to wake him up. It was Moira’s screams that alerted everyone else to the crime.” And then Zane restated his location. “I was nowhere near that side of the house when my father was taken.”

Unfazed, the sheriff continued with his accusation. “You could have taken him earlier.”

Watkins wasn’t letting up. Zane was now convinced the sheriff was just trying to bait him and get him rattled. Rattled people said all sorts of incriminating things.

Zane continued to maintain his innocence.

“There was evidence that my stepfather fought his kidnapper. The room looked like a hurricane had hit it.” And then he homed in on the main thing that would back up his claim. “One of the things knocked over in the struggle was an heirloom clock. Its face was smashed and the time on it stopped at 7:30.” He remembered his sister pointing that out at the time. “At 7:30 I was sitting in the dining room, having coffee with my mother.”

Watkins made a dismissive noise. “That’s a nice little story.”

All right, he’d been polite. He’d been patient. But enough was enough, Zane thought. He wasn’t about to be bullied or browbeaten by Watkins any longer. The sheriff had fixated on him long enough. The man needed to turn his attention to catching the real kidnapper, not sit around, spinning fairy tales because it suited his purposes.

“Do you have any real evidence linking me to my stepfather’s disappearance, other than a cuff link I could have easily lost at any time?” Zane demanded. When Watkins made no response, other than to glare at him begrudgingly, Zane nodded his head in satisfaction. “I didn’t think so.”

Rising from his chair, he declared, “We’re done here. Sheriff.”

“For now,” Watkins allowed as he got up, as well. “But I’ll be in touch.”

“I’m sure you will,” Zane snorted.

“Charlie,” Watkins called out to his deputy. “Take Mr. Colton back to his office.”

Zane was quick to cancel the order. He just wanted to leave all three officers of the law behind him. “Don’t bother, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll find my own way back.”

He didn’t like being countermanded, but to save face Watkins shrugged indifferently. “Suit yourself, Mr. Colton. Have a nice day,” he called after Zane.

Zane didn’t bother turning around or even acknowledging he had heard the sheriff’s sarcastic parting words.

Zane suppressed a sigh. He was in the clear for now, but he knew it would be just a matter of time before the sheriff came up with something else that would help him point a finger at one of the Coltons again.

Although theirs was the most prominent family living in the area, that didn’t keep some people from viewing his family in a vindictive, jealous light. Those were the people who would be willing to do anything to tear the Coltons down in the public’s eyes.

Watkins either belonged to that group, or to the group determined to show everyone that they were not influenced by the Coltons and would do whatever it took to bring one of them to so-called justice. Apparently the little matter of first being found guilty by a jury of their peers had mysteriously fallen by the wayside.

Zane blew out a breath. There was no point in making himself crazy over this. There was another way to deal with it.

Once outside the sheriff’s station, Zane took out his cell phone and put in a call to his office. It rang a total of five times before the receiver was finally picked up.

“Mr. Zane Colton’s office. How may I help you?”

Zane unconsciously smiled to himself. There was no mistaking that voice.

Mirabella tried not to sound breathless. She’d just gotten back from the ladies’ room and had nearly been too late to pick up the line. She’d run to her phone. After five rings, the call would have gone to voice mail.

“You can pick me up and get me the hell out of here.”

Relief did a quick sashay through her before Mirabella could think to block it. “Zane?” she cried happily. Belatedly, she realized she’d addressed him far too personally, given her position. She quickly cleared her throat and said, “I mean, Mr. Colton, is that you?”

“Yes, Belle, it’s me.” Zane looked over his shoulder, half expecting the sheriff to emerge from the office and ask him to come back under some new pretext. “And I need you to bring my car down here and pick me up.”

All sorts of things were going through her head, more than half of them having to do with fugitives fleeing the law. Her breathing grew more rapid as her concern escalated.

“Where are you, sir?”

“Right now, I’m standing in front of the sheriff’s office,” he told her. “And I’d really rather not spend any more time doing that than I absolutely have to. The man is out for blood. It doesn’t matter whose.”

But Mirabella was still focused on the first part of his statement.

“They let you go?” she cried.

“They had nothing to hold me on,” Zane informed her, surprisingly touched by the concern he heard in her voice. “I told you not to worry,” he reminded her. “I didn’t need our lawyer, after all.”

Her sigh of relief was audible over the phone. “I should have realized you’d make them see reason, Mr. Colton.”

He didn’t need to be flattered. What he needed was to be picked up.

“How soon do you think you can get here?” He wanted to know.

“I’m already on my way to the elevator,” she answered, which was stretching the truth since she’d taken the call on the office phone and was thus forced to stand there until she terminated the call. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Don’t commit any traffic violations,” he warned. “I don’t want you arrested for speeding or going through a red light.” He warily glanced toward the sheriff’s office again. No one was coming out. “I’m not exactly friends with the sheriff around here.”

“Understood. Speed limit all the way,” she promised. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Can’t be soon enough for me,” Zane commented as he hung up.

Mirabella’s heart jumped as she hurried out of the office and toward the elevator. She knew Zane was referring to the fact that he wanted to get away from the sheriff, the man’s department and his office, but just for the space of a moment, she isolated Zane’s last sentence and pretended the words had a completely different meaning, a different intent behind them. Specifically, that he was eager to see her, not just eager to be taken away from the sheriff’s presence.

If only...

* * *

True to her word, Mirabella got there as quickly as humanly possible while still abiding by—for the most part—the speed limit. The way his face lit up when she turned the corner and first came into his view would have been well worth any amount of traffic tickets in exchange.

She came to a full stop at the curb. Her relief over Zane not being arrested was so huge, it was all she could do to restrain herself from jumping out and giving Zane a heartfelt hug.

Knowing she couldn’t overstep her boundaries, Mirabella did her best to appear calm and collected. She waited until he opened the passenger door before asking, “Then everything’s all right?”

“Oh, it’s far from all right,” Zane responded as he dropped into the passenger seat. Then, before she could ask any further questions, he explained. “My father’s still missing and presumed dead by some. And even though Watkins was forced to let me go right now for lack of evidence, it’s just a matter of time before the good sheriff is back at it, not carrying on a proper investigation and trying to pin my father’s kidnapping on either me or someone else in the family.”

Mirabella knew all that was required of her was silence. That and a ride back to the office. But she just couldn’t keep quiet, not when she looked at him and saw what he was going through.

“What are you going to do?” she finally asked him, watching a cavalcade of emotions parade across Zane’s rugged face.

“Same thing I was going to do before the sheriff decided to accuse me of kidnapping and whisked me off to that poor excuse of an interrogation room. I’m going to find out exactly what happened to my father and who’s responsible for it.” He thought about the assignment he’d given to his IT expert. “I’ve got a lead Meyer Stanley is following up on. Hopefully, he’s made some headway and will get back to me soon.”

Taking in every syllable as if it was golden, Mirabella nodded. “And until then?”

Zane sighed, resigned to playing a waiting game for the time being.

“And until then, we’ll keep my father’s company running as smoothly as we can, getting things done that need doing. When he comes back, I don’t want my father returning to a corporation that’s falling apart or on the verge of bankruptcy, or a takeover. Or some kind of trumped-up investigation.”

At this point, until he knew who he was dealing with, he wouldn’t think of anything as unapproachable or safe. “I want him coming back to a business that’s doing even better than it was when he suddenly disappeared.”

Mirabella smiled at him as she came to a stop at a red light. “I hope you know Mr. Eldridge is very lucky to have you.”

“It works both ways, Belle,” Zane told her. “My sister and I are lucky to have him. A lot of men in Eldridge Colton’s position would have kicked their wives’ first kids to the curb, or exiled them to a year-round program at some boarding school the second they were old enough. But he didn’t. Eldridge did right by Marceline and me. The least I can do is to repay that kindness and do right by him—that means, in part, keeping his department running smoothly—and it also means not sitting back while the sheriff and his people stumble along, trampling on clues. It means taking an active part in finding him,” Zane concluded.

She was moved by his passion and his dedication. “What can I do to help, Mr. Colton?”

He smiled at her offer. The woman really was very sweet, he thought.

“I’ll let you know,” he promised, although he really doubted there was anything she could do to help him find his father, which was his top priority at this moment and would continue to be until Eldridge was finally found.

* * *

They got back to the office building rather quickly. Mirabella returned his car back to its designated parking space, and then they rode up to the twenty-third floor together. Despite the fact that he was understandably preoccupied, Zane still couldn’t help noticing the queasy look on Mirabella’s face. It seemed to get more pronounced as the elevator bypassed all the lower floors and went straight up to their floor in what felt like record time.

The swift ascent had all but drained the little color from her face, bringing in its stead an exceedingly pained, pale hue.

The moment the elevator door slid open, Mirabella vacated the silver enclosure. In his estimation, she seemed rather unsteady on her feet.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said, making a beeline for the ladies’ room.

The woman definitely belonged home. He watched as she disappeared into the bathroom farther down the hall.

He was debating following her and placing himself next to the ladies’ room door. If he heard her being sick, he was going to insist she get herself checked out by her own physician. He didn’t want to be responsible for her ruining her health.

However, right at that moment, he felt his cell phone vibrating in his jacket pocket.

Now what? he couldn’t help wondering, exasperated. Swiping his finger along the bottom of the screen, he braced himself as he said, “Zane Colton.”

“Mr. Colton,” the voice on the other end of the line said, “it’s Meyer.”

Zane instantly snapped to attention. “Have you got a name for me, Meyer?”

“Not yet, sir,” the man said apologetically. “Unfortunately, there’s a great deal of decryption to wade through. It’s taking longer than I thought, but I’m getting closer. I did find out the payments stopped a couple of days before your stepfather was kidnapped. That might have been motive enough for someone to kidnap him.”

Hopefully it wasn’t motive enough for someone to kill him, Zane thought.


Chapter 5 (#ulink_e2502280-6d0f-55b5-9fd7-2d49d7133df4)

Zane was just putting his cell phone back into his jacket pocket when he saw Mirabella coming out of the restroom. Rather than pale, his administrative assistant’s face was now a shade closer to pea green.

Deeply concerned, he momentarily forgot about the call he’d just received. Instead, Zane turned his attention to his assistant’s welfare. Crossing to her, he touched her forearm. Her skin felt almost clammy to his fingertips.

Since she’d been ignoring his advice, he raised his voice when he spoke to her. “Belle, I insist you go see a doctor and get checked out. You can’t continue like this.”

Mirabella offered him a weak smile, unable to do anything more than that. She felt as if all of her strength had been sapped. Although she did feel worse than she had previously, she knew she just had to tough it out. This would fade soon enough, just the way it had been doing for the last couple of months.

“I’m fine, Mr. Colton. Really. It’s just a little upset stomach I can’t... I can’t...seem to...shake.”

The last word was uttered in a whisper, if that loud. The hallway had begun to spin and then her surroundings, usually so well lit, began to darken as well as shrink, until everything went completely black around her.

* * *

One moment he was speaking with Mirabella, trying in vain to talk some sense into her, the next moment her eyes were rolling back in her head and he saw her literally begin to sink right in front of him. Stunned, Zane barely had time to react.

Moving quickly, he caught Mirabella in his arms and kept her body from crumpling down to the floor.

Panicked, he tried to rouse her. “Belle? Belle, are you all right? No, damn it, of course you’re not,” he snapped angrily, a helpless feeling sweeping right through him.

“Need help, Mr. Colton?” Nancy, one of the newest employees who’d been hired when the security section had expanded, asked as she ran up.

The fewer people involved, the better, he couldn’t help thinking. He knew Mirabella wouldn’t appreciate people staring.

“No, I’ll handle it,” he told the other woman. The next moment, he picked the unconscious assistant up into his arms.

“Are you sure?” Nancy called after him.

“I’m sure. Thanks,” he answered without looking back. With that, he carried Mirabella into his office.

He missed the knowing looks exchanged between Nancy and another woman who had just come out to see what the commotion was all about.

Closing the door to his office with his elbow, Zane gently lay the woman down on his sofa.

She was still unconscious.

At a loss as to what to do, he briefly contemplated loosening Mirabella’s clothing, but quickly vetoed that idea. She wasn’t having any trouble getting air in. Mirabella had apparently fainted for an entirely different reason.

A state-of-the-art bathroom, complete with a sink and shower, was part of his office suite. Zane went to get a wet towel.

Returning quickly, he laid it across Mirabella’s forehead, hoping that might help rouse her.

If it didn’t work, his next step was to call for an ambulance, something he had a feeling Mirabella wouldn’t want.

Adjusting the compress on her forehead, he stepped back and unconsciously held his breath as he watched her intently.

A few seconds later, he saw Mirabella’s eyes begin to flutter open.

Thank God.

She began to struggle, trying to get into a sitting position. Zane gently pushed her back down.

“Don’t try to get up just yet,” he warned.

Disoriented, it took Mirabella a moment to get her bearings and a few more to focus in on her surroundings. The last thing she remembered was being in the hallway, talking to Zane.

“Where am I?” Her brain felt as if it was wrapped in heavy gauze.

“I brought you into my office. You fainted.”

As familiarity dawned on her, followed closely by embarrassment, Mirabella tried to bolt upright. “No, I didn’t,” she protested.

He wasn’t about to argue with her. “Have it your way. You took a short nap and would have wound up at my feet if I hadn’t caught you.”

Her head felt as if it was emerging out of a tailspin. Even so, she couldn’t just lie here. That would be totally unprofessional. This was Zane’s office.

Clutching the side of the sofa, she swung her legs down until she could feel the floor beneath her feet. Taking a deep breath, she began to rise, only to feel her legs growing wobbly.

She had no choice but to sink down into the sofa again as she struggled to pull herself together.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

Zane made no reply. Watching her, it suddenly hit him what was going on. Putting his hand on her shoulder to press her down again as she tried for a second time to gain her footing, he sat down next to her.

He shook his head. How could he have not seen this before?

“You know,” he told her, “I can be pretty dense sometimes.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she heard herself saying.

Her voice sounded distant and tinny to her ear. Mirabella was still having a great deal of difficulty focusing on the room. She clenched her hands in her lap, unaware she was clutching the towel he’d placed on her forehead. Her mind scrambled for a way to explain herself out of this. She didn’t want him or anyone else knowing the truth, at least not yet.

“What I mean,” he replied patiently, “is I don’t always pick up on all the clues that are right there in front of me.”

Her breath caught in her throat as her heart seemed to stand still for a moment.

Had Zane guessed the crush she had harbored for him all this time had turned into something that was now a great deal more? Did he know his every kindness had warmed her heart and that she had begun to see him as something other than just her boss? Did he suspect that lately he’d begun to enter her dreams on almost a nightly basis?

Mirabella racked her brain, trying to come up with something to deflect his suspicions, if it wasn’t already too late.

But before she could come up with any sort of a reply, Zane rendered her entirely speechless by asking, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

Her mouth dropped open and she could only stare at him in total silence. Her mind went blank and words completely failed her.

“I take that as a yes,” he commented in response to her total silence.

What he didn’t comment on, either to her or to himself, was how the realization of Mirabella’s apparent delicate condition suddenly created wide, stinging holes through his entire being.

He found himself feeling vastly disappointed and he couldn’t even begin to explain, to himself and certainly not to her, why. After all, he wasn’t one of those supermoralists who professed to know what was best not just for himself but for everyone else around him.

As far as he was concerned, he’d always espoused a philosophy of live and let live. What that meant was he believed everyone had a perfect right to live their lives the way they wanted to, as long as no one else was hurt in the process.

But that was just it, he realized. This did hurt. It hurt a great deal.

Finding out Mirabella was pregnant, that there was a man in her life, someone she’d cared enough about to sleep with—because he knew she wasn’t the type to have careless, meaningless sex with just anyone—somehow felt as if it crushed his very soul.

Damn it, Colton, get over it. She’s your administrative assistant, not your long lost soul mate, a small voice in his head insisted.

Usually, that small voice had a great deal of wisdom going for it. But this time around, Zane just wasn’t so sure.

Still feeling shaky, Mirabella told herself that she couldn’t just continue sitting there, saying nothing while Zane made assumptions. Dead-on assumptions, unfortunately, but still, she had to say something to defend herself. To not say anything made her seem either stupid, or indifferent to her situation.

Or just plain brazen.

She was none of those. She never had been. What she was, Mirabella thought, was completely overwhelmed. Never in her wildest dreams did she believe she would ever be in this sort of a situation. She’d thought if she ever did find herself pregnant, it would be because it had been a conscious choice on her part.

Hers and her husband’s.

Instead, things had just happened around her without her actual consent. This was not how she’d envisioned her life.

Mirabella clenched her hands into fists on either side of her. She absolutely refused to allow herself to behave like a victim. And in order to not be a victim, she had to get out in front of this situation, had to take charge of it as well as of the rest of her life. Her pride would allow for nothing less.

“Yes,” she replied in a quiet voice.

“Yes?” he repeated, uncertain exactly what she was saying yes to.

The time lapse between when he’d stopped talking and she had just spoken up had been large enough to leave a great deal of room for confusion. And right now he was confused as well as disappointed.

“Yes, you’re right,” she told him stoically. “I am pregnant.”

Again, he felt as if he’d just been sucker punched. Upbraiding himself that there was no reason for him to feel this way didn’t seem to change anything.

“Are congratulations in order?” he asked in a subdued voice.

He assumed, since Mirabella was making this admission, she intended to keep the baby, but he wasn’t about to take anything for granted, just in case. He waited to be told her intentions.

“Right now,” she replied honestly, “I’m not sure just what’s in order. I’ll let you know when—and if—I ever stop being so damn sick.”

Zane remained sitting on the sofa, shifting slightly so he was now on the far edge. He didn’t want to appear to be crowding her.

“Have you been to see a doctor?” he asked her. Her welfare was still his main concern.

“Oh, yes,” she told him with exaggerated feeling. It was the doctor who had indifferently informed her of her condition.

Zane picked up on her tone of voice. “The doctor wasn’t reassuring?”

“If by that you mean did he tell me about my options, yes, he did. To quote him, I could either ‘have it, or not have it.’ And,” she continued, trying not to allow her emotions to break through, “if I went with door number one, I still didn’t have to keep it once the ‘residency’ period was up. I could always give it up for adoption,” she said, quoting the doctor.

The conversation she’d had with the doctor had left her so cold and numb, she’d spent the rest of the day and part of the next crying.

“What are you going to do?” Zane asked her, forgetting for the moment that as her boss, he had no right to ask her questions of such a personal, probing nature.

She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. “I’ll let you know the second I stop throwing up everything but the kitchen sink so I can think clearly.”

Mirabella felt another wave coming over her and fought to keep it from overwhelming her. She pressed her hand against her stomach as if that could somehow contain and subdue the pending waves of nausea and keep them from coming up.

“If this is what it feels like, why would any woman in her right mind ever want to be pregnant?” she asked miserably.

He was doing his best to maintain a professional distance, but he just couldn’t help feeling sympathetic about what she was going through.

“I’m definitely no expert, but I don’t think it feels like that for every woman,” he told her. “And from what I’ve heard, a lot of women think it’s all really worth it—once they get to hold their baby in their arms.”

Zane paused for a moment, debating whether or not to ask her the next question. It turned out to be a very short debate.

“How does the baby’s father feel about all this?”

Mirabella stiffened, inadvertently recalling the man’s parting words to her. Words she had no desire to repeat. Nor did she want to remember anything about him, because he had turned out to be so very different from the man he had pretended to be.

But that was on her, Mirabella thought the next moment. How naive could she have been not to realize some men would say anything just to get what they were after? It wasn’t as if she’d lived a sheltered life, she knew these things happened, that there were men—a lot of men—who lied.

The problem was, she didn’t realize this could happen to her, that someone would knowingly and deliberately lie to her. The very fact that this had happened to her made her feel violated.

But she was determined it wouldn’t destroy her.

She turned her head to look at Zane. “I’d rather not talk about that if you don’t mind,” she replied a little formally.

It was his cue to pull back, to drop the subject that wasn’t any of his business to begin with.

But because Mirabella was his administrative assistant, because he interacted with her every day and relied on her being as efficient as she had been up until now, for this as well as so many other reasons, her well-being was his concern.

In his view, the term well-being encompassed a great deal of territory.

“But he does know, right?” he prodded, watching Mirabella’s face for a telltale clue. “The baby’s father does know about its existence? You did tell him, right?” He wanted to know.

Mirabella shifted uncomfortably. It felt decidedly strange to her to be thinking about Kyle in the present tense now that he was dead. But the fact that he was dead really didn’t change anything. She didn’t want to admit to having slept with him, which, in turn, was to admit to being used by him.

In her eyes it made her seem like a little fool—and worse. But since Zane was obviously not letting go of this, she made the nebulous admission and hoped that would be enough for him.

“Yes, I told him. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to drop the subject.” She began to get up. “I’d—”

She stopped abruptly as another wave of nausea, this one far more intense than its immediate predecessor, suddenly caught her up in its grip. She dug the fingernails of her left hand into the arm of the sofa as if that could somehow channel the sensation she was feeling out of her body and into the inanimate object.

It couldn’t.

Caught up in all this, Zane saw that horrid color—pea green—reemerge and all but paint her complexion from the throat up.

He could see by the sudden panicked look in her eyes that she felt she wasn’t going to be able to make it down the hall in time.

He wasn’t about to allow her to embarrass herself in front of the other people on the floor. They were, in general, good people. But a lot of good people still loved to gossip. Some actually thrived on it, he recalled.

With that in mind, Zane quickly got to his feet and out of her way.

“Use my bathroom,” he volunteered. He saw she was about to demur and he quickly cut her off. “You’re not going to make it down the hall. Now stop being so damn stubborn about everything and use the blasted bathroom,” he ordered, pushing open the door to the pristine restroom.

She wanted to protest and tell him that she was going to use the ladies’ room since it was available to everyone. But she never got the chance.

Her words were blocked by the sensation of something ominous about to reappear at any second and it was going to be right here, on his rug, if she didn’t hustle and take advantage of the generous offer he’d just made to her.

She felt there was a time for pride and a time for practicality and this definitely fell into the latter category.

Wanting to murmur “thank you” but afraid if she so much as opened her mouth, they would both deeply regret it, she could only nod at him as she dashed past Zane and straight into the bathroom.

Knowing she would welcome privacy as much as he would welcome not having to hear anything he’d prefer not to, Zane pulled the door closed behind her.

Just in time.

The next moment, he heard a knock on his outer door.


Chapter 6 (#ulink_b170dd45-da39-52a9-a283-997aee7d6244)

Zane’s first thought was he needed to get rid of whoever was on the other side of his office door before Mirabella emerged from his bathroom. That seemingly innocent event could very easily start rumors and rumors of any sort were the last thing he needed to deal with right now. He’d learned from personal experience that people were capable of taking a tidbit of what they perceived to be information and somehow wound up spinning the complete works of William Shakespeare out of it.

Crossing quickly toward the door, Zane pulled it open.

Any thought of sending the person off instantly vanished when he saw who it was.

In his midthirties and balding, Meyer Stanley had a slight build. He obsessively maintained ramrod straight posture in an effort to appear at least a little taller than his five-foot-five-inch stature. He succeeded only in making himself look like a determined swizzle stick when he walked.

His most outstanding feature, despite the black framed glasses he wore—or perhaps because of them—was his eyes. As he walked into Zane’s office, Meyer’s eyes appeared so huge, they were almost startling.

To say Zane was surprised to see the IT expert was putting it mildly.

“I just talked to you a few minutes ago,” Zane said. Had Meyer forgotten to add something?

Meyer bobbed his head up and down. His glasses slid down his nose, and he pushed them back up with a jerky motion of his index finger.

“Yes, I know.” The three words came out sounding almost breathless.

Zane took a guess as to why the man had felt compelled to suddenly rush over. “Did you find out where my father’s money was being wired?”

Again Meyer nodded vigorously in response. When he spoke, his voice had dropped several octaves from its usual high-pitched tone. But before he spoke, he looked furtively around, as if he wanted to make sure there was no one else in the room who would overhear what he was about to say.

“I thought it was best if I came to tell you this in person.”

Zane had worked with Meyer for a couple of years now, albeit in a different division, and knew the man had a flair for the dramatic. But this was a level he’d never witnessed before. Zane had absolutely no idea what to expect.

An uneasiness began to work its way through his system, although he continued to maintain a perfect poker face.

“Go ahead.”

“The regular transfers from one of your father’s bank accounts—when they were being made,” Meyer qualified, trying to be painstakingly accurate, “were going into an encrypted bank account belonging to—”

Meyer paused, not for any sort of dramatic effect, but because he was obviously nervous about the disclosure he was about to make.

Zane couldn’t remember ever seeing the IT expert behave this way. Just how damning was this discovery Meyer had made?

“Go ahead, out with it, Meyer,” Zane ordered. “Who did the account belong to?”

Meyer swallowed. “It belonged to—”

A noise from the side of the office caught his attention. Meyer looked around Zane’s arm and he saw the bathroom door being opened. Someone was coming out.





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