Exposing Colton Secrets Read online

  A P.I. on the hunt

  And enemies close to home

  After Brooks Colton refuses a disturbing assignment, he feels compelled to warn a teacher that she may have a stalker. Gwen Harrison charms him, as does her purpose in moving to Braxville—to find her missing mother. Given his skills, Brooks joins her search and finds relief in protecting her from a growing threat. But some dangers seep through even hardened defenses...and show what is worth fighting for.

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  His fate was sealed.

  As he kissed her, he could have sworn that he felt fireworks erupting and zipping right through his veins. His kiss immediately intensified, making everything that much hotter than it had been just a few moments ago.

  And then, just like that, the explosion came. Not a figurative one, but a literal one. The explosion turned into what sounded like a series of explosions, like the kind emitted by high-pitched automatic gunfire.

  Brooks only had time to react. Grabbing hold of Gwen’s shoulder, he pushed her away from her car, then down onto the ground. He flung his own body over hers, effectively covering it in its entirety.

  She didn’t even have time to be afraid.

  The unnerving noise continued, echoing in her head.

  * * *

  The Coltons of Kansas: Truth. Justice.

  And secrets they can’t hide.

  * * *

  If you’re on Twitter, tell us what you think of Harlequin Romantic Suspense! #harlequinromsuspense

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to the world of the Coltons, where intrigue abounds and nothing is what it seems. This particular branch of the family resides in Kansas.

  In this first book of the series, we meet Brooks Colton, who, as a triplet, is nestled in the middle of the family tree. Fitz Colton, his father, is the owner of a construction company that has had its share of difficulties—one of which is that none of his six children went into the family business, but chose different paths to follow.

  The hero of this book, for instance, is a private investigator. When a body is found at the demolition site of his father’s latest project, it causes repercussions in Brooks’s world, because he is currently involved in helping Gwen Harrison, a beautiful client, attempt to locate her mother. You’re going to have to do some reading in order to find out what happens—I hope you do.

  As always, I thank you for reading one of my books, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

  All the best,

  Marie Ferrarella

  EXPOSING COLTON SECRETS

  Marie Ferrarella

  USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author Marie Ferrarella has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  The Coltons of Kansas

  Exposing Colton Secrets

  The Coltons of Mustang Valley

  Colton Baby Conspiracy

  Cavanaugh Justice

  Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

  Cavanaugh on Duty

  A Widow’s Guilty Secret

  Cavanaugh’s Surrender

  Cavanaugh Rules

  Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard

  Cavanaugh Fortune

  How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

  Cavanaugh or Death

  Cavanaugh Cold Case

  Cavanaugh in the Rough

  Cavanaugh on Call

  Cavanaugh Encounter

  Cavanaugh Vanguard

  Cavanaugh Cowboy

  Cavanaugh’s Missing Person

  Visit the Author Profile page at

  Harlequin.com for more titles.

  To

  Melany Yee,

  If There Was A Catalog

  Featuring The Perfect Daughter-In-Law,

  You Would Have Been On The Cover

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from In the Rancher’s Protection by Beth Cornelison

  Excerpt from No One Saw by Beverly Long

  Prologue

  All in all, Brooks Colton felt that he was doing rather well for himself. Oh, nowhere near as well as he might have done had he gone into the family business the way his father had wanted and expected him to, but he definitely wasn’t falling on his face the way his father had predicted he would.

  As a matter of fact, he was rather successful in his chosen field and building up a solid reputation.

  Still, Brooks sensed that his father, Fitz Colton, the head of Colton Construction, which was currently doing extremely well in its third generation of existence, was waiting for him to stop “playing PI” and get serious about his life. Colton Construction was a large and generous employer, having built many of the offices and factories in Wichita as well as in Braxville, which was where the Colton family resided.

  His father, a solid workaholic, couldn’t accept that he was very serious about being a private investigator, just like he couldn’t understand why all of his six children had gone into vocations that had to do with some form of public service rather than become part of the family business.

  As far as Brooks could tell, all five of his siblings seemed rather suited to their career choices and were quite happy with their lives. And as for him, well in true detective form, he was blessed with that little voice in his head, the one that would occasionally raise points that seemed to defy logic, but nonetheless existed, nudging at his conscience and telling him that something just didn’t seem “right.”

  Sometimes it was just a small thing. Other times it seemed to involve his whole case.

  That was what he was feeling at the moment.

  Something was “off.”

  For the most part, his cases fell under three categories. He worked missing persons cases. Those, on occasion, required working with the Braxville Police Department as a consultant. Brooks also worked cases of identity theft. And, once in a while, he took on cases that involved cheating spouses.

  Truth be told, Brooks didn’t like working those, but they did help to pay the bills on the few occasions when he found himself short on funds and needed to fill in the gaps.

  But right now, he was hearing something from his prospective client that wasn’t sitting right with him.

  “Let me get this straight,” Brooks said, interrupting the man on the other end of his phone who seemed enamored with the sound of his own voice. “You’re not currently married to this Gwen Harrison?”

  “No, I never was,” Daniel Shelton snapped, obviously irritated that he was being interrupted by “the help.”

  “But—”

  “And you’re not even engaged to this wom an?” Brooks asked, wanting to make sure he hadn’t accidentally missed something.

  “No, I am not engaged to Gwen,” Daniel retorted, his irritation growing by leaps and bounds. He was unaccustomed to being interrupted and having to explain himself. “Now, one more time. Gwen moved to Braxville after I expressly told her that I didn’t want her to leave.”

  The man’s high-handed tone was really beginning to irritate Brooks, but more than that, he didn’t care for his character. He was not about to help Shelton track down his former girlfriend or whatever the woman was to him.

  “And she didn’t live with you or have you paying the rent for her apartment?” At this point, Brooks was certain he was just going over what he felt was established fact.

  “What the hell difference can that possibly make to you doing your job?” Shelton demanded angrily.

  It was obvious to Brooks that the man expected to be obeyed, not get into a debate over this with someone Shelton obviously considered beneath him.

  “The difference is that if you didn’t enter into any sort of an arrangement with this woman, then you have no expectations of her obediently coming when you call,” Brooks informed the man, biting back a few choicer remarks. Most likely they would have been lost on someone like Shelton.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” the angry voice on the other end demanded.

  “It means, Mr. Shelton, that I’m not taking the case, which in turn means I won’t track down this woman for you. A woman who is within her rights to go off and live her life as she sees fit, not as you see fit,” Brooks concluded.

  “You’re turning me down?” Shelton asked, his voice rising and growing shrill. “Listen, you sanctimonious, two-bit jerk—”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Shelton. Very nice not doing business with you,” Brooks said just before he disconnected the call.

  Brooks took a deep breath as he put his phone back down on his desk. He wasn’t so well-off that he could afford to just turn down jobs at will, but he had his principles. Besides, there was just something about this particular one that told him it was all wrong.

  So much so that he did feel he needed to track down this Ms. Gwen Harrison, not for Daniel Shelton but to warn her that the man was looking for her. Brooks was certain that Shelton could very well go on to hire someone else to find her. And then, who knows? He didn’t want that on his conscience.

  From the information he had gotten from the overbearing man, Brooks was confident that he could find this woman with a minimum of effort. After all, he knew Braxville like the back of his hand. Ordinarily, since he had turned down this job, he would have walked away. But that same little voice that told him something was off about Shelton’s scenario also made him realize that if anything did happen to this Gwen Harrison, a newly transplanted elementary schoolteacher, he would wind up feeling guilty as hell because he hadn’t warned the woman.

  And considering the impatient urgency he’d heard in Daniel Shelton’s voice, Brooks figured he didn’t have that much time to lose. Daniel Shelton had struck him as an angry man who didn’t just let matters drop if they didn’t go his way. Instead, Shelton gave every indication that he focused on getting revenge.

  This Gwen Harrison needed to be warned.

  Chapter 1

  Gwen Harrison had forgotten how totally draining keeping up with a classroom full of third graders could actually be. In the last elementary school where she taught, she had only temporarily taught a class until their regular teacher returned from maternity leave. Ordinarily, she taught fifth graders who seemed, on reflection, calmer to her. But when she decided to move to Braxville, this was the only position open to her.

  Today had just been an introduction to what was ahead in the coming school year. Teachers and students had briefly mingled, getting to know one another.

  The thinking behind that was forewarned meant forearmed. Oh well, it would get better—she hoped.

  What she wanted more than anything right now was to catch a quick nap, but she needed to run a couple of errands first and after that, she needed to prepare for a teachers’ orientation session the next day.

  Not only that, but she also needed to update her grandmother, Rita. She wasn’t all that eager to do that because, although she dearly loved the woman who had raised her, she didn’t have anything to report so far and she knew that although she wouldn’t say anything, her grandmother would be very disappointed.

  That makes two of us, Grandma, she thought.

  The search she was conducting—when she had time to conduct it—was turning up nothing.

  That was nothing new, except that she’d really hoped being in the town where her mother had disappeared all those years ago might lead her to eventually pick up her mother’s trail. Gwen was fairly certain that something had to have happened to her mother. Something fatal, because otherwise Olivia Harrison would not have completely abandoned her only daughter and her mother for more than two whole decades.

  Her grandmother was certain of that, as well. That was the main reason Gwen had picked up and moved to Braxville after living her entire life in Kansas City.

  When Gwen had packed up her life and moved here, she was so sure she had done the right thing. Now she wasn’t all that sure about it.

  She knew what she was doing, Gwen thought. She was stalling.

  “Might as well get this over with,” she murmured, planting herself on her sofa and taking her cell phone out of her pocket.

  She just hated hearing the disappointment in her grandmother’s voice. Rita Harrison had raised her from the time she had been an infant, taking care of her while her mother was at work. The woman had taken over completely when Olivia had decided to come to Braxville on some secret mission, although Rita confided that she believed Olivia had gone to talk to the man who was her father to find out why he’d stopped sending her child support payments.

  At least, she thought that was why her mother had gone to Braxville, but she wasn’t sure. Her grandmother hadn’t been very clear about that. The only thing that Rita Harrison was sure of was that her daughter wouldn’t have just up and left both her daughter and her without a single word of explanation.

  Olivia wasn’t the type.

  Gwen had just turned on her phone and tapped in two of the numeric keys that would eventually connect her to her grandmother when she heard the front doorbell ring. She stared at the door for a second, at a loss as to who it could be. She hardly knew anyone in town yet, certainly not anyone who would take it upon themselves to just come over at this time of day.

  “Only one way to find out,” the redhead murmured as she slipped her cell phone back into her pocket and rose to her feet.

  Walking up to the front door, Gwen looked through the peephole.

  She was no more enlightened now than she had been a minute ago.

  Standing on the other side of her door was a tall, ruggedly built man who had to be at least six feet tall, possibly even a little taller. He had close-cropped, dark brown hair and had what appeared to be only a very casual relationship with his razor. He had a five-o’clock shadow that appeared to be quickly approaching its sixth hour. He was also well-dressed.

  Another teacher? she wondered.

  The bottom line was that she had never seen him before in her life and that was definitely not a man who was easily forgotten, Gwen thought.

  “Yes?” she asked, thinking that maybe the man, who looked as if he was about her age, might have rung the wrong doorbell.

  “Are you Miss Gwen Harrison?” the man on the other side of her door asked.

  The fact that he knew her name and seemed to be looking for her took Gwen by surprise. For now, until he gave her more to go on, Gwen left her door just where it was—locked.

  “Yes, I am,” Gwen answered, then decided to take the lead and ask a couple of questions of her own. “Who are you—and why are you loo king for me?”

  Brooks cast about for a way to answer her questions without scaring her or putting her immediately on the defensive. The private investigator dug into his pocket for his wallet. After finding it, he took his ID out and held it up close to the peephole for the woman’s perusal before putting it away again.

  “I’m Brooks Colton and I’m a private investigator,” he told her, reinforcing what he knew she had already determined from the license he had just shown her.

  The moment she heard his last name, Gwen was instantly intrigued. Her grandmother had told her that her mother had been involved with a married man who worked for Colton Construction.

  Could this good-looking man standing on the other side of her door somehow be related to that man who her mother had known?

  Don’t get ahead of yourself, Gwen, she silently warned. Things didn’t just come together this easily or this quickly.

  Maybe this was a risk, but then, so was moving to Braxville. Gwen decided to unlock her door. She swung it wide-open, a silent invitation to the man who had just rung her doorbell.

  “Come in,” Gwen told him, stepping back.

  He looked even taller without the door in the way, she couldn’t help thinking, looking up at the private investigator as he crossed her threshold. He had to be at least six foot one, maybe even six foot two, she decided.

  The woman’s apartment had all the signs of someone who had just moved in within the last month, possibly even within the last couple of weeks, Brooks noted, doing a quick survey of the area.

  There were unopened boxes scattered about and a pervading feeling that her possessions were still looking for their final resting place.

  Accustomed to speaking her mind at all times, Gwen spoke up now. “If you don’t mind my asking you, Mr. Colton, why are you looking for me?”

  Brooks decided that maybe now wasn’t the time to ease the young woman into this or try to sugarcoat the situation for her. He had come here thinking that time was of the essence. The woman needed to be warned.

  “Strictly speaking, I’m not the one who’s looking for you,” he told the young schoolteacher. Believing that the man who had called to hire him could very well be a stalker, Brooks asked, “Ms. Harrison, do you know a Daniel Shelton?”