Kitabı oku: «The Colton Ransom»

“How can you stay so upbeat and optimistic?”

From what Gabby had just told him, her thoughts, her attitude, should be just as dark, as pessimistic, as his were.

“I have to,” she told him simply. “I have to believe that things do eventually work themselves out, that good triumphs over evil and that the sun will come up tomorrow,” she concluded, the corners of her mouth curving as she deliberately quoted a lyric from an old favorite show tune.

A lyric that, as she could see by the man’s totally unenlightened expression, was completely lost on Trevor.

But what wasn’t lost on him was that, despite the partial darkness within the cab of the truck, Gabby seemed to glow.

And there was something very compelling about that.

Before he knew it, Trevor had decreased the space between them within the truck until there wasn’t any—which was fine with him because he had no need of any.

At least not now, while he was kissing her.

The Coltons of Wyoming: Stories of true love, high stakes…and family honor.

About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA^® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name marie nicole. her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

The Colton
Ransom

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Prologue

A baby.

What the hell was he going to do with a baby? And a baby girl, to boot.

But boy or girl, one thing was a given. He didn’t know the first thing about taking care of something so helpless, so dependent. Hell, he hadn’t been taking care of anyone but himself for years. He had no idea how to start raising a kid, let alone an infant.

There had to be a way out of this. A way that, in the long run, would be better for the baby, not to mention better for him.

Almost two weeks into this so-called parenting thing and he still felt like a man who’d been pushed out of an airplane and was free-falling to earth without so much as a handkerchief to serve as a makeshift parachute.

Trevor Garth paced the floor in his bedroom as he stared at the crying infant he was holding in his arms. How could something so small make so much noise?

Or throw his entire heretofore orderly life on its ear?

At thirty-four, Trevor had assumed that his life would be winding down, settling into a predictable pattern. No more dodging bullets or chasing down armed criminals. That was one of the reasons he’d left the Cheyenne police force five years ago and taken this position as head of security here at Jethro Colton’s Dead River Ranch. In his experience, nothing much of any consequence happened here as long as you steered clear of Jethro Colton when the old man was in a mood—which was often enough. But he was good at keeping under the radar, doing what needed to be done without calling any attention to himself.

Until now.

Trevor glared at the infant he couldn’t seem to appease or soothe, despite his attempts to rock Avery to sleep.

This, he thought darkly, was what happened when he took a vacation. Ironically, it had been the first one he’d taken in years. He’d gone off to Cheyenne for a few days just to unwind, tied one on at a local saloon one night—something else he rarely did—and picked up this hot little redhead who had killer dimples when she smiled. As the evening progressed, things got a little fuzzy. He was fairly certain, though, that they’d wound up at her place for the night.

The next morning, he made sure he was gone before she woke up. Less than a week later, he couldn’t even remember what the woman’s name had been.

And then practically one year to the day, there she was, standing on the doorstep of the mansion wing that was designated for the staff, holding a baby in her arms and saying it was his.

His.

And just like that, he was supposed to take her word for it, supposed to just lie down and accept being someone’s parent?

No damn way.

He hadn’t even wanted to hold the infant, much less lay claim to it or even find out anything about it. His one-night stand—Joyce, he thought she said her name was—had other ideas, though.

For the most part, Trevor was a man of few words. And even those faded when he was caught off guard—the way he was when Joyce had just shown up out of the blue like that. He was all but speechless—other than saying the word no, as in “No, it’s not mine.” And “No, I won’t take her.”

After a pointless few minutes of one-sided arguing, Joyce left with the baby. Relieved, he thought that was the end of it. Showed just how naive he was about such things. Because when he walked out again, about twenty minutes later, there was the baby, bundled up and in something Joyce referred to as a “carrier.” Joyce herself was nowhere in sight. She’d just left the baby behind and assumed that he would take it from there.

And if that weren’t stereotypical enough, there was a note pinned to the baby’s blanket. All that had been missing from the scenario was a snowy scene.

“I’ve got nobody to help and I can’t do this alone,” the note had said. “She’s yours. You handle it.”

That was it. Just sixteen words. Sixteen words that turned his quiet world upside down.

And just like that, he was a father. An unwilling father.

“I don’t have time for this,” he said to the infant now, his deep voice rumbling ominously, like thunder over the plains. “I’ve got a job to see to and enough responsibilities without you adding to them.”

The baby—Avery—responded to his words by howling and crying even harder.

He had no idea how to get her to stop. The least the woman could have done was left some kind of how-to book along with the baby.

He’d done his best to try to locate Joyce again. But there was absolutely no sign of her in the nearby town. He’d gone back to the saloon where he’d initially met her. The bartender there had no clue who she was or where to find her.

Which meant he was stuck with this crying, damp responsibility, one who never seemed to sleep more than five minutes at a time.

“I’m too old for this,” he snapped impatiently.

Avery didn’t seem to care.

Chapter 1

“You see all this, Cheyenne?” Gabriella Colton said to the three-month-old baby girl she was holding up in her arms.

Gabby moved slowly around in a complete circle, intentionally giving her niece a complete panoramic view of the outdoor area where she was standing. There was nothing but breathtaking scenery as far as the eye could see.

While almost her entire family—as well as most of the staff who worked to keep her father’s Wyoming ranch, whimsically christened Dead River Ranch, running smoothly—were presently at the rodeo, Gabby had elected to remain behind and babysit her oldest sister’s, Amanda’s, daughter.

Staying home hadn’t been a hardship for Gabby, really. She loved children, loved caring for Cheyenne, and she had no great love for rodeos the way the rest of her family did. Attending one would only bring back bad memories that were better left buried. Her first love, Kyle, had thrown her over to join the rodeo circuit as a bronco buster. She had believed him when he’d told her he loved her, discovering that he said the word love as frequently as he said “hi.” At least he meant the latter, she thought ruefully.

But Gabby didn’t want anything bringing her down on this absolutely gorgeous July afternoon, so she’d volunteered to remain at Dead River while everyone else had gone to see wranglers pitting themselves against four-footed competitors.

“Isn’t it beautiful, darlin’? This is your grandpa’s ranch, and someday, years from now, you’ll have a part of it. It’s a little quiet now, but that’s because everyone’s gone to the rodeo. But we don’t mind the quiet, do we?” she asked the infant. Cheyenne stared up at her with huge eyes, as if her niece understood every word she said. Gabby liked to think that she did. “When it’s quiet like this, we can appreciate how really beautiful this part of the country is.”

As Gabby moved from the sprawling courtyard toward the stables, the tranquillity of the afternoon was suddenly shattered with the sound of absolutely heartwrenching, plaintive wails.

“Uh-oh, looks like I spoke too soon about it being so quiet. Want to go investigate?” she asked the baby. Pretending to receive an affirmative answer, Gabby nodded and said, “That’s what I thought. Okay, let’s go see what this is all about.”

Gabby had taken only a few more steps toward the distressed cries when the source of all that crying became all too apparent.

Trevor Garth, the tall, ruggedly handsome and incredibly silent head of her father’s security, came walking out of the small petting zoo, which was being added to the ranch’s landscape. As of yet, the zoo was still in the process of being constructed. It was something the ranch hands had begun to put together with the idea that it would be a place for Cheyenne and her little friends to play when she became older.

Trevor’s ordinarily somber face sported a pronounced scowl, and it was a toss-up who looked more unhappy, he or the squalling infant in his arms.

When his job didn’t force him to interact with someone on the ranch, the dark-haired ex-cop from Cheyenne kept mostly to himself, obviously preferring his own company to that of others. He’d been at Dead River for five years now and had, until just recently, been more or less of a stranger as far as Gabby and the others were concerned.

What had changed in this past month was his status. With one very short but eventful delivery, he’d gone from being a loner to a rather unhappy-looking, unwilling father. One glance at his pained expression right now told Gabby that the man did far better as a loner than a father.

The more the baby in his arms cried, the more at a loss and flustered Trevor seemed to grow.

Gabby had never been able to just look away if she encountered someone in obvious distress. It just wasn’t in her to stand around, idle, without trying to remedy the situation. She just wasn’t built that way.

“What do you say you and I go rescue Avery’s dad?” she asked Cheyenne. The baby gurgled in response and Gabby laughed. “My sentiments exactly. He looks just like a fish out of water,” she agreed. “But it would be cruel of us just to watch him flounder like that, wouldn’t it?” she asked Cheyenne even as she made her way over to the far-from-happy man.

As a man who made it his business to be perpetually aware of his surroundings, Trevor caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and looked in that direction. He was surprised to see his boss’s youngest daughter heading his way.

Great, he thought darkly, just what he needed. Little Miss Sunshine to add her voice to the cacophony coming out of his daughter’s rosebud mouth.

It wasn’t that he actually disliked Gabby Colton. To be honest, he didn’t know her well enough to dislike her. Granted, the vibrant redhead was more than a little attractive, but she was also naively optimistic. His opinion was based on the fact that she wholeheartedly wanted to build a center for troubled kids smack-dab in the middle of the ranch, using an empty barn as her starting point.

As if one act of kindness would somehow instantly transform hardened, cynical street kids into reformed angels.

Ain’t gonna happen, he thought sarcastically.

She was still heading toward him. Damn. The last thing he needed was to have the boss’s daughter clucking over his so-called daughter, making insipid comments and giving him worse-than-useless advice. He had a feeling that she probably knew even less than he did about child rearing. She seemed like the type that was just interested in spoiling a kid rotten, then later was shocked when that kid turned out to be a self-centered brat.

Oh, hell, what did he know? He supposed that it wasn’t quite fair for him to assume something like that. She had to know more than he did.

When she finally reached him, Trevor tipped his black Stetson at her, murmured “Ms. Gabby” politely enough and continued walking.

It took Gabby a moment to summon her courage—there was something really intimidating about the tall, muscular former law-enforcement officer. But his wailing daughter made her forget about her own discomfort, leaving her no choice.

“Trevor, wait,” Gabby called out, hurrying to catch up to him. The man had one hell of a lengthy stride, especially when he walked quickly.

It irked Trevor that because he was an employee at the ranch, he had to stop the moment he heard her calling to him. But he was mindful of his position, so he stopped, using up the last of his patience in an effort not to snap out “Yes, ma’am” at the twenty-four-year-old.

“She’s really crying up a storm, isn’t she?” Gabby said as she caught up to him.

Nothing he found more irritating than someone stating the obvious.

“Certainly sounds that way,” Trevor replied, managing to take the edge out of his voice at the last possible moment.

“Do you know why she’s crying?” she asked him.

“If I knew why, Ms. Gabby, I’d know how to get her to stop,” he answered, measuring out each word carefully and counting the seconds until the young woman left him alone.

“Most likely she’s crying because she’s cranky and needs a nap.”

Avery wasn’t the only one. “You think that’s it?” he asked out loud. Trevor felt completely wiped out. Being on all-night stakeouts had been far easier than what he’d been going through each night lately. Becoming a father literally overnight and putting up with the exhausting demands of a wailing infant these past two weeks had all but completely drained him to the point that most of the time now, he felt punchy. His last decent night’s sleep had occurred before she’d been thrust into his arms—literally and figuratively.

“I’m fairly certain,” Gabby replied. And then she grinned broadly as an idea hit her. “I tell you what, you hold Cheyenne here and I’ll take your daughter and put her down for a nap. Might perk her right up,” she predicted. “How’s that?” she asked, her grin widening to the point that he thought he was going to fall in.

He inclined his head, ready to agree to anything that would give him even a few minutes’ respite. “I’d be in your debt, ma’am.”

She rolled her eyes at the salutation he used. “Oh, please. Having you call me ‘Ms. Gabby’ is bad enough. Please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ It makes me feel absolutely ancient.”

Trevor laughed shortly at the assessment. “Well, if it’s one thing you’re not, it’s ancient,” he told her. To him, especially since he had ten years on her, Gabriella Colton was barely older than a child.

Gabby, however, took his response to be on the flirtatious side. Consequently, a slight blush crept up her cheeks. Dusting them with a pink hue.

Clearing her throat, she tried to draw attention away from the momentary infusion of color. “Okay, give me Avery, and you hold Cheyenne for a few minutes.”

The shift took a little maneuvering to accomplish since there was nowhere to put either infant down to achieve the swap smoothly.

As he handed over his daughter and took hold of Gabby’s tranquil niece, Trevor felt his knuckles brush against something soft.

By the expression on the young woman’s face—first startled, then embarrassed—he realized that he’d unwittingly brushed his knuckles against her breasts. That had not been his intention.

“Sorry,” Trevor mumbled awkwardly.

Gabby murmured a perfunctory “It’s okay,” deliberately avoiding making any eye contact. She drew his daughter against her, focusing on the infant’s wails of distress. “It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re going to take you inside and make sure you take a nice, peaceful nap. Everything’ll be all better when you wake up again. I promise.”

The instant his daughter left his arms, Trevor felt relief washing over him. Just to be rid of his wailing burden for even a few minutes felt like a much-longedfor blessing.

Trevor took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked up into Gabby’s bright green eyes. “Thanks,” he told her dutifully.

Patting the baby’s bottom and cooing to her, Gabby glanced over to Avery’s father and smiled serenely. “Don’t mention it.”

She sounded as if she meant it. Obviously crying babies didn’t seem to have any effect on her or her nerves. That put her one up on him, Trevor couldn’t help thinking.

“I’ll be right back,” Gabby promised, turning on her heel and walking toward the entrance to the main wing of the house. The wing where the Coltons—she, her two older sisters, Amanda and Catherine, and her father—all lived. There was another wing for the staff and wranglers as well as a wing at the very farthest end of the mansion where her father’s ex-wife—his third—lived with her two adult children from a previous marriage, Tawny and Trip.

It made for crowded living conditions at times, but on days like today, when everyone was gone, it felt as if she had an entire castle at her disposal.

Gabby smiled to herself as she entered the house.

Trevor gazed down warily at the infant in his arms. Part of him was waiting for the tiny female to burst into tears. But Cheyenne Colton remained quiet, staring up at him as if he were the newest wonder to come into her world.

“I guess all babies don’t cry all the time,” Trevor theorized out loud.

Gabby Colton’s niece was almost exactly the same age as his newly discovered daughter. But that was where, in his mind, the similarity ended. To his recollection, the infant he was currently holding hardly even whimpered, much less cried.

On the other hand, it seemed as if Avery had done nothing but cry in the time she’d been with him. She’d worn away just about all of his nerves—not that he’d had all that many available to begin with.

“Maybe she’s just grumpy—like her old man,” he guessed out loud.

When he realized that he was actually talking to an infant, he abruptly stopped, feeling somewhat chagrined and annoyed with himself.

Cheyenne looked up at him and gurgled as if to tell him that it was all right.

“You’re not really a crybaby, are you?” Gabby said soothingly to the infant she was taking upstairs with her. “It’s all just new and scary to you, isn’t it? Not that I can actually blame you.

“Your daddy’s a really handsome man,” Gabby went on. “And he’d look even more so if he just learned to smile once in a while. That scowl of his, though, I’ve got to admit is pretty scary,” she said, as if agreeing with something the infant in her arms had just told her. “Don’t worry. He’ll come around,” Gabby promised the baby with certainty. “He’ll see what a sweet little thing you can really be once you get used to everything, and his heart can’t help but melt then.”

Coming to the landing, Gabby made an impulsive decision. “Tell you what, since Cheyenne’s already had her nap for the afternoon, why don’t we put you in her room so you can have a nice roomy crib to sleep in?”

She shifted the infant so that she could look down into the small, round face, as if she were actually gauging the baby’s reaction.

“Would you like that, sugar? Sure you would,” she told the child. “She’s got a room—and a crib—that are really pretty. They’re both fit for a little princess. I don’t mind telling you that her aunt Catherine and I had a hand in that,” Gabby went on proudly, sharing a confidence. “Catherine and I decided that her mommy needed something to cheer her up and get her mind off Cheyenne’s daddy taking off before she was even born. He didn’t even wait to find out if she was okay,” Gabby added sadly. She couldn’t understand someone behaving that way and felt that both Amanda and Cheyenne were better off without that man in their lives.

“So we went all out and decorated the nursery as if Cheyenne were really a little princess. Today, you get to be that little princess for the afternoon,” she told Avery in a purposely breathless voice. The baby’s eyes were widening, as if she were literally digesting every word. “How about that, baby girl?” she asked, her smile now spreading from ear to ear.

Gabby’s smile grew even wider since the baby had stopped crying and actually seemed to be listening to the sound of her soothing, upbeat cadence.

That was what the baby needed, Gabby decided. To have someone talk to her as if she were a person, not just this—this thing to be saddled with, she concluded for lack of a better description.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 2

Trevor wasn’t where she’d left him.

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

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

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

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

She didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That left where?

His office! The idea just suddenly occurred to her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, right,” he all but jeered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her grin only grew wider, as if she were harboring a secret and he didn’t have the first clue what it was. “You come on all mean and tough,” she told him, “but deep down inside, there’s this other layer—”

“—that’s just as mean and just as tough,” he concluded with finality. Placing a wide palm on each armrest, he pushed himself out of his chair and to his feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got rounds to make. With the ranch this empty, it would be a perfect time for some yahoos to come barging in and try to steal something or do something they shouldn’t.”

Holding the sleeping infant to her cheast, Gabby put a protective hand around Cheyenne and looked at him, a little of her smile fading. Up until now, she’d felt incredibly safe here at home. Now he was giving her cause if not for alarm, then at least for concern.

“You really think there’s something to worry about?” she asked.

He shrugged, his wide shoulders rising and falling in an asymmetrical movement. “Better safe than sorry, I always say. The guy next door isn’t looking to ‘love his neighbor.’ He’s looking to take advantage of his neighbor, maybe steal from him if that neighbor happens to be rich—like you and your family,” he added pointedly.

The expression on his face left no room for argument.

She did anyway. It had never been in her nature to accept pessimism at face value. “That’s a horrible way to look at life,” she protested.

“Horrible?” He pretended to consider the word, then dismissed it with a “Maybe.” Trevor said the word for her sake. He didn’t consider it horrible at all. To him, it was just the way life was. “But realistic?” he continued. “You bet. The sooner you wrap your head around that, Miss Colton, the sooner you’ll be able to come face-to-face with reality.”

Gabby raised her chin. “I don’t like your reality, Mr. Garth.”

He surprised her by saying, “Me neither. But that doesn’t change the facts as I see them,” he told her.

“If that’s what you think, then it’s no wonder you’re always scowling,” she told him.

“Wasn’t aware that I was,” he lied. “Now, you got anything else you want to tell me, or can I go on my rounds?”

“Only that it wouldn’t hurt you to try to change your attitude a little, look on the bright side once in a while.”

“I will when they get a little brighter,” he answered, picking up his Stetson from his desk.

“They?” she questioned.

“The bad guys,” he clarified, then added, “The ones I’m providing your family security against. Your rosy world would be real to me if these guys went away.” He brought the irony full circle.

Gabby sighed and tried one more time, feeling as if there were more at stake here than just winning a philosophical argument. She had the distinct impression that the state of his soul was in play here.

Trevor just couldn’t be satisfied being this disgruntled, this dark in his outlook, in his take on life, she thought. Could he?

There had to be a way to get through to him, to get him to come around, even if only a little, to her mindset. There just had to be.

To that end, Gabby began racking her brain to find it.

“Maybe there aren’t as many bad guys as you think,” she told him, adding that she needed just a little more time to get this right and convince him, bring him around to her way of thinking—or at the very least, a little closer to her way of thinking.

“And maybe there are a lot more of them than you think,” he countered. His eyes seemed to pin her in place for a moment, leaving her nowhere to turn away. “Did you ever consider that?”

Rather than cave, she answered firmly, “No,” as she tossed her head for emphasis.

“Didn’t think so,” he muttered under his breath as he tipped the brim of his hat to her. With that, he left the room.

“There goes one unhappy man, Cheyenne,” she murmured softly to the baby in her arms.

Cheyenne just continued sleeping. The baby didn’t know how lucky she was.

Chapter 3

He supposed, in an odd sort of way, he had to admire the youngest Colton woman, Trevor thought approximately an hour later as he started to head back to his office once again.

Dumb though the subject of her focus seemed to him, Gabriella Colton did appear to know what she wanted, what she believed in.

And, more impressively, she’d actually stood up to him rather than cave in the face of his disapproving judgment of those beliefs she held so dear.

Not all that many people actually stood up to him when push came down to shove. He had a way of making people back off without his having to resort to physical action. Just his attitude—coupled with a dark, contemptuous scowl—usually did the trick.

Despite her soft, attractive appearance, Gabby Colton was one hell of a feisty female; he’d have to give her that.

Now, as far as being smart, well, that was a whole different story, Trevor mused as he made his way back across the grounds.

How the hell she could believe in goodness and light when she was surrounded by all sorts of wheelers and dealers, not to mention people like her old man, a blackhearted, womanizing devil if ever he’d come across one, was just beyond him.

Granted, there were good people here on the ranch, like Faye, who’d raised him when there was nothing in it for her beyond being guilty of a good deed, and like her sister Amanda, the baby’s mother, whose only sin was letting herself be sweet-talked by the wrong guy.

But then there were people around like her father’s third ex-wife, Darla, and Darla’s two adult kids from some previous marriage, Tawny and Trip. All three were worthless parasites, one worse than the other, in his opinion.

He still couldn’t figure out why the old man allowed those three to stay on. Ordinarily, he would have expected Jethro to send all three of them packing the second the ink had dried on the divorce papers—ending a marriage that had barely managed to pass the one-year anniversary. Instead, the old man had set the trio up to live in one of the extended wings.

Trevor laughed shortly. That kind of thing clearly smelled of blackmail to him. Which meant one of the three—most likely Darla—had something to hold over the boss’s head—which in turn meant that the old man had done something pretty damn bad.

Not that that surprised him.

The lot of them, Darla, Tawny and Trip, weren’t worth even a plugged nickel. They just didn’t fit in with the rest of them. All three of them looked as if they’d been transplanted from some bad, made-in-one-afternoon movie about grifters. They reminded him of vultures, circling carrion and just waiting for it to die so they could swoop down and tear off its flesh. He didn’t trust any of them any farther than he could throw them. Less. And yet there was starry-eyed Gabby, not just talking about starting up a center for troubled teens but actually working toward that goal and trying to convince the old man to have the center built right here, converting an old barn he had on his property.

That kind of drive either took an absolute fool—which he didn’t think Gabby was—or it took someone who saw only the good in people.

He figured it had to be the latter.

That made her too good to deal with the likes of the majority of the people living on or around the Dead River Ranch.

Frowning, Trevor shrugged away the thought. This was way too complicated for him to sort through, and it was pointless to waste his time that way. It was what it was, and besides, he had his own dilemma to untangle and come to grips with, namely what to do with the kid he was suddenly saddled with.

If he experienced any parental stirrings toward her—she was rather cute when she wasn’t crying—he banked them down. He—and more importantly, she—couldn’t afford to have them. It just wasn’t in the little girl’s best interest to remain here, so there was no sense in allowing himself to feel anything at all for her.

There was no doubt in his mind that he would make a really poor father, and a kid needed a father—and a mother, too, something else he couldn’t give Avery. As far as he saw, the only logical conclusion to be reached was that Avery needed to be adopted and raised by someone other than him—preferably two “someones.”

In the interim, maybe he should get over his pride, stop trying to handle this on his own and ask Faye for help, Trevor thought. She’d always been the sensible one, stable even when everything else looked as if it was just going to hell in the proverbial hand basket. She’d stepped right in not just in his case, but also when the Colton girls’ mother, Mandy, decided to take off, leaving the ranch—and them—ten years ago. It was Faye who made sure they didn’t lack for attention, didn’t feel abandoned. Faye would know what he needed to do to ensure that Avery was not just looked after, but well taken care of, too.

After all, he didn’t just want to dump the kid. None of this was her fault. She hadn’t asked to be born, right? Trevor reflected silently. Just like he hadn’t asked to become a father.

Life had a way of making things happen, but he didn’t have to just stand there and take it. There had to be options, decent options, he reasoned, in order to make things right.

He and Faye would find Avery a good home and that would be the end of it.

With his game plan roughly in place, Trevor went into his office. There was some paperwork he still needed to catch up on. It was his least favorite thing to do, but he decided that he might as well utilize the peace and quiet he found himself in while it lasted. He’d be listening to Avery howl soon enough.

Trevor glanced at his watch and realized that at this point he’d had over two hours of sweet silence and freedom from the daunting burden of fatherhood. He wasn’t exactly eager to get caught up in it again, but on the other hand, he’d never been one to shirk his responsibilities, no matter how oppressive or annoying they might be.

Maybe he’d be lucky and Avery would still be sleeping, although he sincerely doubted it. In the short time he’d had the infant, he couldn’t remember a single instance when Avery had slept more than ninety minutes at a clip, much less over two hours. To expect that it could go on indefinitely was just plain wishful thinking on his part and completely unrealistic.

Trevor sighed as he pushed himself away from his desk and squared his shoulders. Time to face the music.

Literally.

Since Gabby was so good with kids and didn’t seem to mind being around them, maybe he’d see if he could get her to volunteer her services again—soon. Oh, he wouldn’t come out and actually ask her to mind Avery for him, but if he happened to show up somewhere in her vicinity and Avery was howling like last time, he had a pretty good hunch that Gabby would take it upon herself to put the kid—and him—out of their misery and just take over. She wasn’t the type to leave well enough alone or ignore a situation that needed remedying. He figured she had what they called a type A personality and just couldn’t help herself when it came to taking over.

Trevor smiled to himself as he left his office and went toward the main wing of the house.

Who knew, maybe some kind of a satisfactory arrangement could even be reached between him, Gabby and Faye regarding Avery. Then he wouldn’t have to give her up for adoption.

Have to?

The phrase he’d just used came echoing back to him in his head.

Since when did he have to give the kid up for adoption? He wanted to give her up for adoption, he reminded himself.

At least, that was what he thought he wanted.

Damn it, the situation he was facing was getting him all jumbled up inside, he thought, annoyed with himself as well as the situation. He’d been spun around so many times, he didn’t know which way was up, which way was down anymore.

That had to change.

The kid was going up for adoption and that was that, he concluded. He couldn’t be a dad—who did he think he was kidding to even consider that? He never undertook anything unless he thought he had a chance of getting it right. There was no chance like that in this case. He had no example to follow, no fond memories to tap into. He certainly wasn’t about to emulate the father who’d dumped him on the Colton doorstep.

Annoyed, Trevor blew out a breath as he came closer to the nursery. This whole thing was getting damn confusing and really way out of hand. He had to stop overthinking it. He was going to put Avery up for adoption and that was that.

As Trevor drew closer to the closed door, nothing but a wall of silence greeted him. The corners of his mouth curved slightly.

He assumed the kid was still asleep after all.

That had to be a good sign. Maybe keeping her around wouldn’t be all that ba—

His thoughts were abruptly shut down as a scream suddenly tore through the silence.

The scream, followed by another, louder one, was coming from the nursery.

Instantly, Trevor broke into a run before the full import of the scream and what it could mean had a chance to sink in.

The door was unlocked and he yanked it open. The first thing he saw was Gabby on her knees in the middle of the nursery.

Obviously struggling to regain control over herself, Gabby was staring at the body she was kneeling over. Blood pooled around the body’s upper torso and it was steadily leaching into Gabby’s jeans where she was kneeling.

She didn’t seem to realize it.

Drawing closer, Trevor looked at the victim’s face. His lunch swiftly rose in his throat, threatening to come out, and he felt as if someone had stuck a hot poker into his gut and was twisting it.

The body on the floor was Faye. The short black hair she always kept so neatly was in complete disarray, a casualty of the physical struggle that had obviously taken place. Small-boned and slender, it was apparent that she had still fought like a tiger.

And lost.

There was no pulse when he felt for it in the woman’s neck. The expression on her lifeless face was a combination of anger and horror.

The exact same emotions he was now feeling, multiplied by ten.

Trevor realized that Gabby was desperately trying to stop the flow of blood from the woman’s chest with her hands. Both were covered with Faye’s blood. It was a futile undertaking.

“She’s dead,” he told her, his tone harsher than it should have been in order to mask his own pain.

“No, she’s not,” Gabby insisted frantically through her tears. “She’s alive.” Her tears fell, mingling with the dead woman’s blood. “We can keep her alive! Maybe if we—”

Trevor didn’t let her finish. Instead, grasping the back of her collar, he physically pulled Gabby away from the lifeless body.

“She’s dead,” he repeated a bit more gently this time, stepping back from his own grief and seeing the pain and tears that were in Gabby’s eyes. “There’s nothing you can do for her now,” he told her, drawing Gabby up to her feet.

Gabby’s knees suddenly buckled, giving way. Reacting, Trevor caught her and pulled her against him without thinking. For an instant, Gabby broke down, sobbing and clutching on to him for support.

“Who could have done this to her?” she asked between sobs. “Why would anyone want to hurt Faye? She was always so good to everyone.”

“I don’t know,” he answered, seething. There was now an entire myriad of emotions rushing and flashing through him like so many fireworks on a collision course.

As he stroked Gabby’s hair in an awkward attempt to comfort the sobbing woman, he looked around the rest of the room.

And suddenly froze.

This isn’t right.

“Where’s the kid?” he asked Gabby sharply.

Pulling herself together, Gabby drew her head back, blinked several times to clear her vision and then turned in the direction of the crib.

Her brain muddled by grief and confusion, she wasn’t sure she’d heard his question correctly.

“What?” she asked thickly.

“The kid. My kid,” Trevor bit off with harsh emphasis. Dropping his arms from around Gabby as if he hadn’t just paused to give her comfort, he strode quickly over to the fancy, canopied crib. “Where’s my kid?” he demanded hotly.

The crib was empty.

Trevor swung around to glare at Gabby, waiting for her to offer some sort of an answer.

“I thought you said that you put Avery down in this crib.” It came out sounding like an accusation, not a question.

“I did,” she cried.

Everything inside of her was shaking. Seeing Faye on the floor, bloodied and motionless, had blocked out everything else. She hadn’t even realized that the crib was empty or that the baby was missing.

Oh, God, how could she have missed that?

“I just came in to check on her when I saw Faye—when I saw Faye—”

Gabby couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. A sob threatened to break free in her throat and it took everything she had to get herself under control and push it back down.

Like a man trapped in a nightmare not of his own making, Trevor moved back to the crib again. This time he realized that although there was no baby in it, the crib wasn’t completely empty. One of the knitting needles he recognized as belonging to Faye was stabbed into an embroidered pillow.

The knitting needle was anchoring down a note.

His first impulse was to rip the note away from the pillow, but he forced himself to refrain. He knew that the chief of police would need the note untouched, the better to dust the surface for any fingerprints, partial or otherwise. The slightest piece of evidence could eventually lead them to Faye’s killer.

And he wanted to slowly fillet whoever that turned out to be.

Very carefully, making sure not to touch anything and consequently add to the fingerprints he knew had to already be on the paper, Trevor leaned in over the crib and read what was written in block letters on the note: WAIT FOR RANSOM INSTRUCTIONS. ONE MISSTEP, THE KID’S DEAD.

It wasn’t until he stepped back that he realized Gabby was right behind him. He wound up backing right into her. The imprint of her body against his back registered without warning.

Swallowing a curse, he turned to glare at her. “Be careful,” he snapped. “I could have knocked you down or at the very least, crushed your foot.”

Gabby waved away his words. Neither occurrence would have been of any consequence to her. She’d just read the note left in the crib and her heart had all but turned to lead at the implication.

It made no sense to her. But then, evil never really did.

“Why would they want to kidnap your daughter?” she asked, bewildered.

“They wouldn’t,” he bit off, his tone emotionless. “They think they’ve got your niece.”

The shock his words created almost undid her. Gabby covered her mouth to keep back another distressed cry. Her eyes widened with horror. “Oh, my God. They made a mistake.”

“Yeah,” he agreed grimly.

And the consequences of that mistake echoed through his head, loud and clear. The moment the kidnappers realized that they’d made that mistake, Avery became worthless to them.

Trevor refused to follow that train of thought to the end. It was far too awful to contemplate, even for a fleeting second.

He needed to get Avery back.

Suddenly, the child he hadn’t wanted less than an hour ago became very precious to him.

Beside him, Gabby was struggling not to break down again. Hysteria wouldn’t help get Avery back. She drew in a long breath and then let it out slowly, repeating the process one more time.

Somewhat more in control, she turned to Trevor. When she thought about it, she could see why the mistake had been made. “They’re the same age, the same coloring—”

Was she making a case for the kidnapper’s mistake, or was she trying to convince him that the mistake wouldn’t come to light and then his daughter would stay safe indefinitely?

“But not the same kid,” he all but ground out, pointing out the obvious.

Not the same kid.

And that was her fault. While she was grateful that Cheyenne was safely lying in the crib she had put into her own bedroom, Gabby felt beyond guilty that Trevor’s daughter had been mistakenly kidnapped in Cheyenne’s place.

“What are we going to do?” she asked him breathlessly.

We.

As if they were in this thing together, Trevor thought with contempt. But they weren’t in this together. That was his daughter who had been kidnapped and the woman who had raised him who had been killed. It was in no way the same thing.

Yes, Faye had taken care of Gabby and her sisters, but she’d been paid to do that. No one had paid her to take care of him. She’d done that out of the goodness of her heart, without expecting any sort of compensation from anyone—and getting none.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d thanked Faye for anything—her, the woman to whom he’d owed so much.

Anger—at the world and at himself—all but choked off his windpipe.

It took Trevor a few moments to get himself under control again. When he did, he pulled his cell phone out of his rear pocket.

“We’re going to call the police chief,” he told her, deliberately emphasizing the word we in a mocking tone—bravado and anger were all he had left right now, “and tell him what happened. He can take it from there once he gets here.”

Gabby didn’t know which way to turn, what to do with herself.

She didn’t want to just do nothing, didn’t want to just stand back and let someone else take over. This was her fault. She was the one who had left Avery in this room. It was all on her. There had to be something—some small contribution to the whole—that she could be doing right now.

To do absolutely nothing felt as if she were just compounding her sin, making her feel more guilty for what had happened.

She couldn’t handle it.

Gabby looked at him, her expression bordering on frantic. “Isn’t there anything we—?”

“No!” he snapped before she could finish. “There isn’t anything we can do right now except what I’m doing.” He punched the chief’s number on his keyboard.

Nodding, numbed and at a loss, Gabby fell silent and backed off.

Chapter 4

Police chief Hank Drucker made the fifteen-mile trip from the town of Dead—located approximately forty miles northwest of Cheyenne—to the ranch in record time.

He had moved quickly because the call had come from the Colton ranch—no one ever ignored the Coltons—and because there’d been a kidnapping. An infant was currently missing.

Drucker liked kids, even though he and his wife, Harriet, had never had any of their own. Whatever other failings and flaws he might have had, Drucker believed that children—especially babies—should be protected at all cost.

The chief, a big man whose out-of-shape body was a clear testimonial that his prime had long since past, looked as if he were born on the job. After thirty-two years on the Dead Police Department—working his way from the ground up, he might as well have been. Being a policeman was all he’d ever known, all he’d ever been. The life suited him.

This was going to be messy, he thought as he came in. He knew he was going to have to tread very cautiously—for reasons that wouldn’t be apparent to anyone else but him and one other person.

Walking into the nursery, Drucker didn’t stop to confer with either Trevor or Gabby. Instead, he went directly to Faye’s body. The chief crouched down as best he could, given that his knees were acting up and his expanding girth showed them no mercy.

“Damn shame,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head. He’d known the fifty-year-old governess for over two decades.

With a barely suppressed groan, he got back up to his feet. “Looks like she must’ve surprised whoever it was in the act and tried to stop them from making off with the baby—and got killed for her trouble,” he concluded grimly. “My guess is that we’re dealing with one or more hotheaded kidnappers—always a bad combination.”

Turning away for a second, the chief barked out a few orders to the two officers he’d brought with him, Karen Locke and Pierce DeLuca, and they began to secure the crime scene—as they had come to understand the term. Neither one looked as if he or she were capable of an independent thought.

Drucker, meanwhile, decided that now was the time to ask a few preliminary questions. “You hear anything?” he asked Trevor.

Trevor shook his head, silently cursing himself for allowing this to have happened on his watch. Aside from the victim being his daughter, this was his territory. He was responsible for everything that came or went at Dead River. Responsible for everything on it as well. There were no excuses for dropping the ball the way that he had.

“I was in my office before I came up here. Before that, I took a turn around the property. And no, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary,” Trevor answered, anticipating the chief’s next question.

Drucker laughed shortly, although there was no humor in the sound. “I keep forgetting you were a bigcity cop once upon a time.” There was a trace of mocking in the chief’s voice. His tone was definitely not warm and friendly. “Place seems pretty empty,” he noted. “Where is everybody? At the rodeo?” he asked and answered his own question.

“Yes,” Gabby answered in a shaky voice. “I thought Faye was supposed to be there, too.” At least, that was what the woman had told her. Her son, Dylan, was working with some of the animals at the rodeo, and predominantly, she had gone to see him in action. It was no secret that Faye was very proud of her son.

Gabby was still struggling to come to grips with what had happened. Finding Faye the way she had and the staggering weight of her guilt at accidentally having placed Avery in harm’s way were almost too much for her to bear.

In the fifteen minutes that they had waited for Drucker to arrive, she had dashed to her room to reassure herself that Cheyenne was still there and still all right. Unwilling to leave the infant alone for a moment after all this had happened, she’d picked up her niece and brought her back to the scene of Avery’s abduction. She took painstaking care to keep Cheyenne from even so much as glancing in the direction of the gruesomely murdered governess.

“Heard the rodeo was pretty good this year. Why didn’t you go, Ms. Colton?” Drucker asked mildly, as if he were just shooting the breeze with her.

Gabby knew the chief well enough to know that he was not as entirely laid-back as he attempted to appear. He was taking in and measuring her every word. It made her feel like a suspect.

The absurdity of that was beyond any words she had at her disposal.

“I don’t much like rodeos,” she told the chief as calmly as possible.

Drucker met her comment with a careless shrug, then glanced over toward Trevor. “Guess they’re not for everyone. How about you, Garth?” he asked abruptly, craning his neck to look at the ranch’s head of security. “Why didn’t you go to the rodeo? Or don’t you like them, either?”

They were making small talk—he didn’t care how much Drucker thought he could use this useless line of questioning to lead them to the truth; it wasn’t anywhere near fast enough.

“Don’t think much about them one way or another,” he said, answering the chief’s previous question. “I was here—at the ranch—because I had a brand-new kid on my hands and I had to take care of her.”

Drucker listened quietly, and when Trevor paused, the chief asked rhetorically, “And she was the one who was kidnapped, right?”

“Right,” Trevor ground out between clenched teeth. It was hard suppressing the desire to say a few choice words to the smaller man. He didn’t need the chief rubbing his nose in the fact that his daughter had been abducted under his watch.

“Doesn’t seem like you had much luck taking care of her, does it?” The rhetorical question had the corners of Drucker’s mouth curving. “Anybody have it in for you, Garth? Some employee you fired or an unhappy maid you might have paid a little too much or too little attention to?” Drucker pressed.

Gabby spoke up, interrupting the chief’s questions. “The kidnappers didn’t know they were taking his daughter.”

Interest heightened in the chief’s dark-circled eyes. “Oh? And why’s that?”

This was the hard part. It took everything she had not to just break down, or melt down, or whatever the current correct term for this sick feeling she presently had going on in the pit of her stomach.

“Because I put Avery down for a nap in Cheyenne’s crib.”

Drucker turned to look at her, a spark of fresh interest in the man’s tired eyes. “And why would you do something like that?” he asked.

Another wave of frustration and helplessness washed over Gabby. If only she hadn’t done this, if only she’d put the baby in the crib Faye had found for her, Avery would still be safe, and Faye wouldn’t have had to sacrifice her life trying to save the infant.

If only…

She was making herself crazy. Just answer the question, Gabby silently ordered.

“I thought I was doing something nice for her. I would have never dreamed I was putting her in any sort of danger. If I’d had the slightest inkling, then I wouldn’t have—”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” the chief acknowledged kindly, politely cutting her off. “Nobody ever expects these kinds of things to happen to them. Just like those kidnappers didn’t expect to take the wrong baby,” he emphasized. “Hell of a surprise for them when they realize they did.”

The panic Gabby was trying so hard to bank down began to flare up again, threatening to consume her.

“Do you think they will realize it?” With each word she uttered, she talked faster, as if she were trying to outrun the idea, the suggestion that the kidnappers would suddenly be struck by the difference in the two infants, which was minimal at best. “The babies do look alike and they’re the same age—maybe the kidnappers won’t even notice.”

There was an expression of pity on Drucker’s face, as if he couldn’t see how she could believe the charade would continue indefinitely. There was a very real fly in the ointment. “They’ll notice when your daddy refuses to pay the ransom, saying his grandbaby is all nice and snug at Dead River.”

The horror of the scenario he’d just tossed out so cavalierly appalled Gabby.

“My father won’t refuse to pay to get Avery back,” she insisted. The idea was too terrible for her to entertain even for a moment.

The look of pity briefly intensified in the chief’s gray eyes. “We talking about the same Jethro Colton?” he asked with a barely suppressed smirk. “’Cause the one I know would have trouble parting with money to rescue his own kin. There’s no way he’d do it to bring back someone else’s,” Drucker stated flatly.

Gabby raised her chin, something within her temporarily galvanizing. She refused to accept what Drucker was saying. That would make her father a monster. “You’re wrong.”

The chief shook his head, as if he thought she was being delusional, but for now he kept that to himself. Instead, he looked at Trevor.

“For your daughter’s sake, I sure hope so.” But his very tone said that he sincerely doubted that he was wrong.

It was at that moment, while the chief was predicting Jethro Colton’s far-from-stellar reaction to the situation, that Trevor suddenly realized the truth of his feelings.

He wasn’t resentful of the burden Avery represented or indifferent to her existence. The thought of possibly permanently losing Avery made him come to grips with the fact that he actually loved the little girl. What he’d been struggling with these past two weeks was not that he didn’t want her but that he realized this tiny little human being was going to wind up changing the whole world as he knew it.

But now, if the chief’s prediction was right, Avery might never get that chance to change his whole world. Never get the chance to grow up, to experience her first kiss, her first love. Never be any of the things that she was meant to be.

Not unless he found a way to rescue her.

“You’re wrong,” Gabby repeated with feeling, catching Trevor’s eye. “My father won’t withhold the ransom money.”

Right then, they heard the sound of cars—a large number of cars—approaching the house.

The chief went to the window and looked out. “Looks like we’re about to find out which one of us is right about your daddy, little lady,” he said to Gabby. “You two keep on taking pictures of anything that looks out of order—and don’t touch the body,” he emphasized, instructing the two officers to continue with their work. “That’s for the medical examiner to do.”

With that, he left the room, moving at a slightly faster pace than he normally assumed. Watching the man brought the term slow but steady to mind.

Drucker got down to the bottom of the stairs just as the front door opened and the various members of the Colton family, as well as their staff, began to fill up the vast foyer.

Seeing the police chief among them created confusion, and a cacophony of voices mingled together, each asking questions.

It was Mathilda Perkins, the head housekeeper, who had been the first to notice Drucker. Mathilda had been running the main house as well as the staff for as long as anyone could remember, and her sharp eyes took possession of any room she entered.

She missed nothing.

“What are you doing here, Chief?” she asked, suspicion entering her voice. “Thought you might have been at the rodeo. Riders were in top form—” She stopped abruptly at the sight of the chief’s grim expression. “Is something wrong?” The last vestiges of cheerfulness had left her voice, and she sounded far more somber—and somewhat apprehensive as she waited for a response to her question.

“’Fraid so,” the chief began.

Jethro Colton pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “Well, out with it, man,” he ordered gruffly. “Don’t play out the suspense, trying to make yourself look like some sort of metropolitan supersleuth. You’re a small-town, plodding tin star. Now, what the hell is going on?” he demanded coldly. “Some of us are tired and not interested in cheap drama.”

It was Trevor, rather than the chief, who answered Jethro’s insensitive question. During his law-enforcement career, both in Cheyenne and on the ranch, he had never learned how to deftly soften a blow or say something other than just shooting straight from the hip. He followed his instincts now.

“It’s Faye, Mr. Colton.”

Jethro’s eyes squinted, all but boring into his security head’s very countenance. “Faye? What about her?” He looked around. “Where is she, anyway? I told her she could ride in my car to and from the rodeo, but right in the middle, she starts to worry about ‘her babies,’” he jeered, the term referring to both his granddaughter and to Trevor’s daughter. “Next thing I know, she’s taking off. So she did come back,” he concluded, appearing somewhat disgruntled. He wasn’t a man who took being disregarded lightly.

“Yes, sir, she did come back,” Trevor replied, so much emotion warring within him that he sounded all but paralyzed inside a monotone prison as he answered, “She’s been murdered.”

“She’s been what?” Jethro shouted angrily, as if someone on his staff had acted independently, indifferent to his edicts. His voice grew in volume as he demanded, “What the hell are you talking about?”

At the same time Mathilda shrieked, “Oh, my God, no!” Her knees apparently buckled and she fell to the floor, sobbing and rocking to and fro.

Cries of horror and disbelief echoed throughout the foyer as the rest of the people who had just come in tried to assimilate the information that one of their own had been killed.

A flood of questions all but bounced off the very walls as well as the people within them.

“Who did it?”

“Why would anyone kill Faye?”

“Are you sure?”

“Dead? Really dead?”

“Oh, God. Are we all in danger?”

Others, severely numbed by the news, said nothing, only listened, waiting either to be convinced or given details. Or, better yet, for someone to tell them they were dreaming.

No one could believe that she was really dead. They had just seen her early this morning, talking and as full of life as ever.

“Why would someone kill her?” Catherine, one of Gabby’s two older sisters, asked, her voice shaky as she asked the question.

“Apparently she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the chief said, speaking up. His authoritative tone indicated that he had the floor now. “Looks like she tried to stop the kidnapping.”

“What kidnapping?” someone from the staff cried.

“There’s been a kidnapping?” Jethro’s question sounded more like an accusation that the chief had been withholding information from him.

Amanda all but went into shock. She covered her mouth with her hands to hold back the guttural cry that was clawing at her throat, seeking release.

“Oh, my God, my baby,” she cried, her eyes darting toward Gabby. She’d gone to the rodeo only because she trusted Gabby implicitly and Gabby was supposed to be babysitting.

But then she realized that her sister was holding a baby. That was her baby. Then what was the chief talking about?

Rushing over to take her baby from Gabby, Amanda scooped the infant into her arms, holding on to her as tightly as she dared. The sudden, terrified ache in her heart abated.

“No,” the chief said. “As you can see, your little lady wasn’t the victim. She stayed nice and safe and sound.” For emphasis he needlessly gestured toward Gabby just as Amanda took hold of her little girl.

It took Amanda more than a few seconds to reconcile the alternative waves of terror and exhilaration going through her, neutralizing the effects. All that mattered, she told herself, taking a deep breath and drawing in the baby’s sweet all-but-newborn scent, was that Cheyenne was safe.

“If these murderers didn’t get Cheyenne, who were they after?” Catherine asked.

“Oh, don’t fool yourselves—they were after your baby, all right, Ms. Amanda. But what they got was Avery Garth—his baby,” the chief concluded, pointing a finger at Trevor.

Amanda, who was still holding her daughter as if she never intended on letting the little girl go, struggled to establish a sense of peace.

Though for the most part it was still eluding her, she looked toward Trevor. “They kidnapped your baby girl?” she asked, utterly stunned.

Before he could acknowledge her question or tell her that, with all due respect, it was none of her business how anything involving his personal life went down, Gabby took the initiative—and the blame.

“I put Avery down for her nap in Cheyenne’s crib in the nursery.” Because both Mathilda—still sobbing—and Amanda looked at her as if she’d just turned feebleminded, she felt compelled to explain herself. “Cheyenne had already taken her nap, and I thought the surroundings in the nursery might be nicer for Avery.”

“Well, that was a damn fool thought,” Jethro said sharply to his youngest.

“It’s an infant.” Darla Colton, Jethro’s ex-wife, felt compelled to add her two cents. Every time there was some sort of an argument Darla and/or one of her two less-than-savory adult children could be found at the heart of it, fanning the flames. “It can’t tell the difference between an embroidered pillow and a pile of hay,” the woman insisted as she looked at Gabby. “They barely know which end is up at that age. Now I—”

“You certainly know which end is up, don’t you, Mom?” Tawny interjected her two cents’ worth with a less-than-pleasant laugh. “You always made sure to keep that end up, too, didn’t you, Mom?” the young woman asked, taunting her.

A malevolent look slipped into Darla’s eyes. “That’s enough,” Darla snapped at her daughter. She clearly needed more information in order to figure out which side to successfully play.

Rather than answer her mother, Tawny merely inclined her head.

Dislike glowed in Gabby’s eyes. Why did her father insist on keeping this woman with her annoying offspring on the premises? Any promise he’d made to the gold digger was long since nullified by time. Someone needed to do a little housecleaning and get rid of annoyingly insidious people.

“It was a mistake,” Gabby spoke up, owning her error. “And I’m the one who made it. Because of me, Trevor’s daughter was kidnapped.”

“I know, I know, but we’ll get her back once the kidnappers realize they got the wrong baby. They just couldn’t be heartless enough to hurt her. In the meantime,” Amanda added, lowering her voice, “you did inadvertently save Cheyenne,” she said with gratitude shining in her eyes. She leaned over and kissed her sister’s cheek.

Gabby tried valiantly to muster a smile in response, but deep down, all she could think of was that, although she’d inadvertently kept Cheyenne out of harm’s way, by the same token, she had placed Avery in its direct path.

The one did not blot out or balance the other. There was still an infant out there in serious danger because of her.