The Colton Ransom Read online

  At least not now, while he was kissing her.

  Chapter 10

  When he looked back on it later, Trevor honestly couldn’t have said exactly what had caused him to lower his guard, to allow the tight rein he always held around his emotions to loosen just a little—just enough to let this break in decorum happen. To allow the feelings that he had been harboring and, for the most part, successfully hiding, to suddenly emerge and dictate this uncustomary shift in his behavior.

  If Trevor had to point a finger at a catalyst, it would have been impossible for him to actually pick only one.

  The reason for the break was embedded in a combination of occurrences. There was Faye’s senseless murder, coupled as it was with his daughter’s kidnapping, and, to tie it all together, he had come face-to-face with the brutal reality that the man he was expected to give his unquestioning loyalty and allegiance to had absolutely no regard for him—or his daughter—as human beings.

  Even strangers could be moved to sympathy for another stranger if that person’s plight warranted it, and what could be a more sympathy-generating situation than realizing that a person’s child had been kidnapped and needed ransoming?

  Moreover, had circumstances been ever-so-slightly different, it would have been Jethro’s granddaughter and not his daughter who would have been abducted from her crib.

  Given the weight of all that, plus the fact that no headway had been made in either finding Faye’s killer or Avery’s kidnapper, it seemed understandable that his defenses were eroded and his exposed soul was in desperate need of some comfort.

  Whether he acknowledged it or not, Trevor craved solace and connection to another human being.

  And Gabby was available.

  The moment his lips made contact with hers, all logical thought ceased, at least for that isolated island of time.

  And, as he gave in and kissed her, Trevor was surprised to discover something almost life affirming, something that stirred a part of him that had long been relegated to the shadows. Relegated there for so long that he believed it to be either completely dead or, at the very least, no longer functioning. Trevor certainly hadn’t believed that his heart could come alive like this. This flood of emotion—of vulnerability—ached for sustenance as well as encouragement.

  She did this to him.

  The kiss and what it awoke inside of him made him acutely aware that he wanted more. He wanted to taste her, to hold her, to completely lose himself in her and forget that a world existed beyond the boundaries of this truck.

  Gabby and the simple act of kissing her made him want to cross lines, to feel things that had no practical value or basis for existence, other than existence for its own sake.

  The solemnity that had been his constant companion for so long that he couldn’t remember being any other way, for a fleeting moment, drifted away from him. For once Trevor didn’t feel weighed down to the point that it was a struggle for him to walk upright.

  Rather, it was now a struggle not to feel weightless.

  The moan that creased the night air could have belonged to either one of them.

  Trevor neither knew, nor cared which of them it did belong to. It was the unadulterated sound of pleasure, something he was basically unacquainted with and that he was now humbled to be allowed to share—whether or not he was responsible for the moan.

  He did know that his entire body was heating up and causing him to seriously entertain the idea of giving in, of losing control and being happy about it rather than horrified or annoyed with himself for being a willing participant.

  Shaken, thrilled, confused and just about breathless, Gabby felt herself responding to a kiss she’d had no part in initiating.

  To say she was surprised to have Trevor kiss her would have been the understatement of the century.

  After all that she’d been through today, a part was convinced she had to be dreaming. After all, she’d thought about what it had to be like to be kissed by this scowling, incredibly attractive man who seemed so indifferent to the sensual waves he seemed to always be generating.

  Thought about it more than once.

  Until today, Gabby had to admit that she had been equally intimidated by and attracted to the head of the ranch’s security. But today’s events had somehow managed to galvanize her, to harden her backbone and make her speak her mind rather than just quietly seeking to retreat if he scowled at her too hard.

  It was as if everything that had transpired today had put them on equal footing: her father had collapsed and fallen into a coma, his daughter had been kidnapped and a woman who had touched both their lives, who had in effect had a hand in raising both of them and whom they both loved, had been callously murdered and permanently snatched away from them.

  Sharing something like that had to change the boundaries around them, to change the rules that governed their actions.

  And sharing something like that had to leave them, in their own way, both equally vulnerable.

  That was the word for it, Gabby realized as the fire inside of her continued growing hotter and stronger: vulnerable.

  Vulnerable to the point that she wanted to throw caution to the wind and take what was unfolding between them this moment as far as it both demanded and needed to be taken.

  He’d started it, Trevor thought, so he had to be the one to stop it no matter how much he felt that he wanted her.

  It didn’t matter what was going on inside of him, what he felt, he was still just the help and she, she was the boss’s daughter, part of the hierarchy to whom he owed allegiance. Given the present post that he held, he knew that he was even expected to lay his life down to protect her.

  But anything outside of that was unacceptable, no matter what kind of feelings collided within him or how much he literally ached to possess her. To make love with her.

  That shouldn’t, that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  So, despite the fact that Trevor wanted to wrap his arms around her so tightly that they would be all but impossible to pry loose, he forced himself to slip his hands up to her shoulders, and rather than pull her even closer against him, seizing his last ounce of inner strength, he pushed her back away from him, breaking at least their physical connection.

  For a second, Gabby just looked up at him, utterly dazed.

  Trevor took the opportunity to pull himself together—or to at least try. Several seconds went by before he could even locate his voice. When he finally did, it sounded almost surreal to his ear as he uttered a two-word sentence.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gabby continued to stare at him as if he had lapsed into some strange foreign language she couldn’t begin to understand.

  And then, when she finally found her own voice, she replied, “I’m not.”

  It wasn’t the response he’d expected.

  Trevor was convinced that the woman who had unconsciously stripped his armor away, leaving him naked and exposed, would grasp at his words, acknowledge what he was trying to do and agree that he should be sorry. Not only that, but he expected her to deny even the existence of those moments that had passed between them, tucking them away in a place where shameful secrets were amassed with the hope that they would expire and quickly fade away.

  Instead, she blew that all apart with her own two words.

  I’m not.

  “You’re not?” Trevor heard himself ask her incredulously.

  Did she even realize what she was admitting to? he wondered, sincerely doubting that she did.

  But when she firmly reiterated, “No, I’m not,” it made him question his own conclusion about their possible pairing as well as everything else within his stark, all-but-monastic world.

  Clearing his throat, unable to think clearly and deal with these confused feelings properly right now, all he could say to her was, “It’s been a hell of a day. I think we both need to get some sleep.”

  There was no arguing the first part, but she differed with him on the second part. “I think we bot
h know we won’t get any,” she countered.

  Trevor had stirred things up inside her and she was fairly certain that she had done the same to him, at least to some extent. She knew that the stress they were under was partially responsible, but only partially.

  Stress had allowed each of their carefully constructed veneers to crack just enough to release their trapped feelings. And that, in turn, allowed them to act on those heretofore untapped feelings.

  It was a lot to take in.

  For now it was enough that she’d let him know that what had happened was not off-putting to her, that she had enjoyed it and that she did not regret it.

  The next step, Gabby thought, just as the first one had been, was up to him. She’d done what she could to let Trevor know that she was willing to have this thing between them go further—now the ball was back in his court.

  A ball, she had a feeling, that would remain in play while they went on to try to solve the all-consuming, confounding mysteries that were surrounding Dead River and its inhabitants.

  He started up the truck again, careful to keep his eyes on the road and only the road. “I’m going to get an early start in the morning, question the rest of the people on your list.”

  “I’ll come with you,” she promised, expecting him to give her another gruff argument, the way he had earlier today when she’d first volunteered.

  Instead, Trevor just nodded and said, “Good.” Gabby stared at him, both surprised and pleased.

  Sparing her a glance, he saw a smile work its way along her lips—it was surprising what a man could see in the dark if he set his mind to it, Trevor couldn’t help thinking.

  He was unaware that his own mouth curved in a smile in kind—but Gabby wasn’t.

  It warmed her heart the rest of the way back to the house.

  * * *

  Trevor dropped her off at the main entrance to the mansion, then drove the truck around to the wing where he and the rest of the senior staff lived. Parking the vehicle, he went in.

  Nothing had actually changed during the time they’d been gone—and yet, it had. The change within him was subtle. He realized that he was actually optimistic about the possibility of finding his daughter, something he really hadn’t been when he’d begun his own investigation into the kidnapping.

  The optimism was all Gabby’s doing.

  He hoped to God it wasn’t unwarranted.

  * * *

  “Where’ve you been?” Amanda asked, relieved and all but pouncing on her youngest sister the minute she walked in through the front door.

  Gabby realized belatedly that she had stopped calling either one of her sisters for an hourly update on their father’s condition several hours ago. But she had told them what she was doing.

  “Out trying to help Trevor track down his daughter. Remember? I told you the last time I called to check on Dad’s coma.”

  “Any luck?” Catherine asked.

  Gabby shook her head. “Not yet. We’re still questioning people, hoping someone says something that’ll point us in the right direction. So far,” she told her sisters as she sank into an oversize chair and allowed it to all but swallow her up, “everyone’s got an alibi for the time that the baby was kidnapped and Faye was murdered.” She sighed as frustration took a firm hold of her again.

  “Maybe it was some drifter,” Catherine suggested, looking from one sister to another to see how the idea struck them.

  But Gabby was skeptical—as was Amanda.

  “A drifter who knew just where the nursery was located and that Dad had the kind of money that would make kidnapping a three-month-old worthwhile?” Gabby asked, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”

  But Catherine wasn’t quite ready to let go of her theory—or to blame someone at the ranch for both heinous crimes.

  “Even drifters know where the Colton ranch is,” she protested. Her eyes shifted toward Amanda, silently asking for backup.

  The latter was holding Cheyenne in her arms, as she had been ever since the moment she returned from the hospital. It was apparent that because of what had happened, she was exceedingly reluctant to let her daughter go or have the baby out of her sight for even a few minutes.

  What if the kidnapper hadn’t acted alone? Or had inspired someone else at the ranch to try their hand at running off with Cheyenne?

  “I think Gabby might be right,” Amanda told Catherine. “The few hands who were left on the ranch would have noticed a drifter and said something to the chief about it,” she pointed out.

  Catherine shrugged, surrendering. She sat down beside Gabby.

  “How’s Dad?” Gabby asked, changing the subject for now. She didn’t want to get into a long, drawn-out discussion about nonexistent drifters. “Has he regained consciousness?”

  Rocking her sleeping baby against her, Amanda shook her head. “No, and I don’t know if he ever will.” She frowned as she told Gabby, “The way he was talking before he lost consciousness again, it seemed like he’d just given up on everything.”

  Gabby refused to accept that. “Not Dad. If he had,” she argued, “then he wouldn’t have made such a big deal about not ransoming Avery. Even Dad knows you can’t take it with you,” she pointed out.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Amanda acknowledged. “But all I know was that when we were talking about the kidnapping, there was this terrible look of sorrow that came into his eyes—”

  “Maybe all this talk about kidnapping made him remember losing Cole,” Catherine suddenly suggested to her sisters.

  Cole was the name of the half brother they had never met. Born to their father’s first wife, the boy had been abducted as a baby shortly after his mother had died. Their father had been hit with a double tragedy, which some people felt explained his present angry attitude.

  Cole was never found. To this day, they didn’t know if he was alive somewhere or if he had died at the hands of his kidnapper.

  At the mention of the first kidnapped child, Amanda shivered and looked grimly at her youngest sister. “Certainly makes you think that maybe this branch of the family is cursed, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t believe in curses,” Gabby said with feeling, although she was willing to concede that they certainly had had more than their share of bad luck.

  “Neither do I,” Amanda went on to agree, adding, “But there certainly is something about our family that attracts the crazies.”

  That Gabby couldn’t really argue with. “Whatever happened with the investigation into Cole’s kidnapping?” she asked, looking from one older sister to the other. She had been too young to remember how the story had gone.

  Amanda shook her head as she gave a slight shrug, careful not to wake her daughter. “As far as I know, it went nowhere,” she replied. “Dad certainly never mentioned it again.”

  “I bet it still eats at him, though,” Catherine speculated. “How could it not?”

  Amanda took it a step further. “Maybe that’s why he’s given up hope the way he has. Maybe he feels he doesn’t deserve to live, not after losing his firstborn years ago and now almost losing his granddaughter.”

  What Amanda said made sense to Gabby. It started her thinking. Desperate for something positive to do, she came up with an idea. “Maybe we should try to find Cole again.”

  The suggestion was good in theory, Amanda agreed. But not in practice. “The trail’s got to be at least thirty years cold.”

  “If he’s even alive,” Catherine interjected. She hated to think about it, but the odds of that were rather slim.

  But Gabby wasn’t about to be talked out of it. Her father was a gruff, exceedingly difficult old man to get along with, but she loved him, and if finding out what had happened to his firstborn made leaving this earth a little easier for him, she wasn’t about to be dissuaded from this new quest.

  “We’ve got to give it a try. There are more sophisticated ways of picking up and following cold trails these days than there were thirty years ago.”

 
; Since neither sister was shooting her down, she went on, her voice building momentum as she grew more excited about what she was proposing. “We could hire a private investigator, someone who specializes in finding missing relatives. If the investigation turns up anything, it would give Dad some closure. And we’d know we’d done all we could to find this missing brother of ours.” She looked from one sister to the other, eager to have them sign on with her. “C’mon, what do you say?”

  “Sure, why not?” Catherine said.

  And Amanda shrugged, compliant. “It’s fine with me, Gabby.”

  If they did find Cole after all this time, if their father saw that his son was alive, it might just be what he needed to rally him. Excited, Gabby almost clapped her hands together, but stopped herself just in time. She didn’t want to accidentally wake up her niece.

  “Great,” she said, trying to rein in her enthusiasm. “I’ll look into it tomorrow.”

  “Before or after you go off with Trevor?” Catherine wanted to know.

  “During,” she responded with a toss of her head.

  Catherine laughed. “Got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  Gabby’s smile was wide and pleased. Despite the tense atmosphere surrounding all of them, for a moment, they all relaxed. “I try, Catherine,” Gabby said. “I most certainly do try.”

  Chapter 11

  Gabby couldn’t sleep.

  She knew sleep was eluding her not because of her hopes to find her missing half brother or even because she was so positive that she and Trevor could get to the bottom of who had killed Faye and kidnapped Avery. What was keeping her from falling asleep, even though she did her very best to talk herself down, was the memory of that unexpected, red-hot kiss in the cab of the truck a few short hours ago. Every time she started to drift off to sleep, she’d suddenly find herself reliving the whole breath-stopping scenario and she’d be wide-awake again.

  It wasn’t as if she’d never been kissed by anyone before. She had. And while there had never been an endless parade of men in her life, the ones she’d gone out with were all decent, good men.