Colton Baby Conspiracy (The Coltons 0f Mustang Valley Book 1) Read online

  It took Marlowe a moment to realize that his small trip down memory lane had been received with surprise by the others around the conference table.

  This was part of the narrative that hadn’t been previously broadcast. This was the first she’d heard that Payne and Tessa’s big, robust firstborn had been born a sickly infant whose chances of making it through the night had been regarded as slim to none.

  Despite their obvious surprise, only Selina picked up the thread that had been dropped.

  “A Christmas miracle?” she asked in a slightly mocking tone. “Really? Or did you or your first wife at the time deliberately decide to switch that sickly, frail baby with a healthy newborn?”

  Payne’s face immediately turned a vivid shade of red.

  “How dare you insinuate,” Payne screeched, “that either I or Ace’s mother could do something so reprehensible as—”

  He couldn’t even bring himself to finish his sentence, he was so incensed.

  Everyone suddenly started talking at once, their raised voices drowning one another out as each tried to make his or her point.

  Despite the turmoil going on in her head and her life, Marlowe’s inner instincts took hold. Before she even realized what she was doing, she was on her feet, her raised voice louder than anyone else’s as she attempted to calm them down.

  “People. People!” she cried even louder. “Calm down!” she ordered in a semi friendly, albeit very authoritative, voice. “Of course this is all a huge mistake. My big brother is a Colton. He always has been—in his heart as well as in his blood. You know that,” she insisted. “And, like this awful email said, one simple DNA test will prove that.”

  “You’re right,” Ainsley said, adding her voice to back up her younger half sister. She glanced at Ace. “I’ll go with Ace to make sure he gets a test fast and have that test expedited as quickly as humanly possible. It’ll cost a fortune,” she said before Selina had the opportunity to raise an objection concerning the cost of having the test results delivered so quickly, “but it will definitely be worth it. Especially when you think of it how it will prevent certain chaos if the press ever got hold of this.”

  Selina raised and lowered her shoulders in a careless, dismissive shrug. “It’s only money, right?” the woman said scornfully.

  “Yes, it is,” Marlowe replied. “And it’s not your money,” she deliberately added, knowing that was the sort of thing that would really irritate the hateful woman.

  Selina’s eyes narrowed, her pupils like two laser pointers as she glared at Marlowe. “To prevent anyone from contesting the results and saying that they were deliberately manipulated to give the results we were all after—” her tone placed quotation marks around the word we “—shouldn’t there be a disinterested third party present to act as a witness—just to keep everything honest?” she concluded sweetly.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Payne said. It was obvious that agreeing with his ex-wife was costing him. “Any suggestions?” he asked the others, deliberately ignoring Selina as he looked around the table.

  But Selina refused to be ignored. “How about—” the woman began, only to be drowned out by Ainsley, who spoke over her.

  “I can ask Chief Barco to come along and serve as a witness to the whole procedure, from the initial taking of Ace’s blood to every single step taken in order to get to the end result.” Only then did Ainsley look at Selina. “Will that satisfy you, Selina?” she asked the woman.

  “Absolutely,” Selina replied smugly. “I’m just trying to make sure that everything’s aboveboard so that no one can say the results were manipulated or doctored,” she told the rest of the board.

  Marlowe kept her expression neutral even as she glared at Selina. They all knew that the only one who would claim that the results were “doctored” was Selina. Selina was clearly the enemy in their midst, but they were going to have to deal with that if the company was going to continue to survive the way it had all along.

  Marlowe made a silent pledge that it would, if she had anything to say about it.

  For the time being, focused on fighting for the company—and her brother—all thoughts of the earthshaking test in her office were temporarily pushed into the background.

  Chapter 3

  Marlowe quickly made her way back to her office. She was a woman with a mission. The crisis surrounding Ace and whether or not he was truly a Colton—a ridiculous question at best—had, however temporarily, displaced her own personal drama. After all, it wasn’t as if that problem was going anywhere, at least not without some sort of intervention on her part.

  And besides, there was still a chance, albeit an increasingly slim one, that it was some sort of mistake, or glitch, and she really was not pregnant. But pregnant or not, she would tackle that problem later. Right now, she had to join the rest of her family and do something about this terrible, unfounded rumor before it made the rounds. It needed to be disproved and stopped at its source.

  Which meant finding out just who this so-called “anonymous” sender was who had emailed that hateful message to all six of them. Getting to the bottom of this was going to require some expert online sleuthing by someone who was far savvier than she was when it came to technology.

  And Marlowe knew just whom to turn to. The reigning expert, as far as she was concerned, was an IT specialist who was already employed by Colton Oil and was currently working right here in the company’s headquarters.

  If anyone could get to the bottom of all this and track down just where this heinous email had originated, it was Daniel Okowski. Not only was Daniel good at his job, but he was also decent and loyal. Marlowe knew that she could trust the IT director to keep the subject matter he was going to be investigating quiet, just as she was confident that once he did find out who was responsible for sending this email, he wouldn’t make that information public, either.

  Picking up the telephone receiver, Marlowe was about to call Daniel when the cell phone that she’d left on the side of her desk beeped, informing her that she had a text.

  Her first inclination was to ignore it. She just didn’t have time to handle yet another new crisis. One more thing and she was in danger of having a real breakdown.

  Her deeply imbedded work ethic trumped her survival instinct, and Marlowe looked down at her phone screen, bracing herself.

  The text was from her administrative assistant, Karen. Marlowe didn’t even bother reading it. Karen was not the type to bother her unless it involved something important.

  Taking a deep breath, Marlowe pressed the number that directly connected her to Karen. The second her assistant picked up, she told the woman, “I’m kind of busy right now, Karen. Can this wait?”

  “I don’t think he wants to wait, Ms. Colton,” the assistant whispered nervously into her phone.

  “He?” Marlowe questioned. But even as she asked, her sixth sense, ever alert for the next pending disaster, caused her stomach to suddenly plummet to her knees.

  Still, she told herself that she could be wrong, which was why she asked, “Just what ‘he’ are you referring to, Karen?”

  The next second, rather than hearing Karen’s voice giving her an answer, Marlowe saw her door being slammed open. Bowie Robertson came barging into her office, loaded for bear. He had no sooner entered than the door banged shut behind him, the sound reverberating throughout the office and echoing menacingly in her head.

  “Me, Marlowe. Your assistant is referring to me,” Bowie declared angrily.

  A beat behind, Karen appeared directly behind the man who was currently behaving like a raging bull. Her normally efficient assistant looked extremely fearful and was all but quaking in her shoes.

  “Do you want me to call Security, Ms. Colton?” she asked, her eyes furtively glancing in Bowie’s direction, then looking away again.

  Yes, I want you to call Security, Marlowe silently a
nswered her assistant. But saying that out loud would make Bowie think that she was afraid of him, and she would rather die than have him believe that. She wasn’t afraid of anyone, she thought fiercely.

  So instead Marlowe tossed back her head, sending her blond hair flying over her shoulder. Her brown eyes, shooting daggers, met Bowie’s green gaze dead-on.

  “No, not yet, Karen,” she told her assistant. “You can go. But stay close to your phone,” she cautioned the young woman.

  Looking somewhat uneasy, Karen never took her eyes off the back of the intruder’s dark head as she slipped out Marlowe’s office. She eased the door closed behind her.

  The second her assistant had left, Marlowe turned her attention back to the man she regarded as a detestable, unwanted invader. She was now all but shooting bullets at him.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, barging into my office like this? Who the hell do you think you are?” Marlowe demanded hotly of the man she held responsible for the personal minidrama she was going through.

  Bowie clearly was in absolutely no mood to back away, no matter how much she yelled. “I’m a man who’s done hiding!” he shouted right back at her.

  Marlowe stared at him. That made absolutely no sense to her. Bowie was just tossing about meaningless words. Why would he be in hiding?

  “Hiding?” she repeated. “Hiding from what?” Marlowe demanded, both confused and enraged.

  Bowie’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t play dumb with me, Marlowe. It doesn’t suit you,” he said bitingly. Then, because she continued to look like she didn’t understand what he was saying, he snapped, “Hiding from your goons.” Like she didn’t know that, he thought.

  “Goons?” she repeated, still just as lost as she had been a moment ago. “What goons? Did you fall on your head, Robertson? What are you talking about?” she asked, growing angrier by the second.

  So she was going to play it dumb, was she? Okay, he’d spell it out for her, even though he was certain that she wasn’t ignorant of the reason that he had come looking for her.

  “The goons that tried to run me over and who shot at me—twice,” he emphasized. “The second time they went target shooting, they killed my bodyguard and, incidentally, just narrowly missed me. Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

  This had to be an act, Marlowe thought. Nothing more than an attempt to throw up a smoke screen for some unknown reason. The man was crazy.

  Furious, she shouted at him, “You are totally delusional!”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a body lying on a slab at the morgue who begs to differ with you,” Bowie told her in disgust. “Why don’t you have one of your minions call up the medical examiner at the morgue and ask if he just did an autopsy on a Miles Patterson?” he suggested. “I bet the answer’s going to be yes.”

  He looked absolutely serious, Marlowe realized, beginning to feel uncertain. But how in heaven’s name could he be? She hadn’t sent anyone to shoot at him or threaten him in any way.

  Marlowe glared at the impertinent man. If anyone was going to do something to this raving lunatic, it would be her, she promised herself.

  And she’d do it with her fists, Marlowe thought.

  “You are insane,” she accused.

  “No,” he contradicted, “I was insane to ever allow what happened between us to go as far as it did. But what’s done is done,” he snapped. “It’s in the past, and I’ll be regretting it for the rest of my natural life.

  “But I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to worry. I don’t know what kind of people you’re used to dealing with, but I’m not about to take something that was told to me in confidence and spill it to anyone willing to listen. You said it was a secret when you told me, and unlike you people,” he said, encompassing her entire family, “when I make a promise, I keep it. So call off your hired guns, Marlowe, and just let me go on with my life in peace.”

  She looked at him as if he were babbling in some foreign language she couldn’t begin to identify.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, growing steadily angrier and more frustrated with every second that went by.

  Bowie stared at her, incredulous. How far did she intend to carry this charade?

  “So what?” he asked. “You’re telling me that you’re going to continue playing dumb?”

  “I am telling you that I don’t have the faintest idea what you are carrying on about,” Marlowe informed him, exasperated. She was not buying into this act of his, and she was insulted that Bowie would even think that she would.

  His eyes pinned her where she sat. “You mean to tell me that you don’t know that someone’s been trying to kill me ever since I left your hotel room at the Dales Inn six weeks ago?” Bowie questioned angrily.

  Marlowe looked at him, stunned and momentarily speechless that Bowie could actually believe she was some sort of black widow, femme fatale capable of “mating” and then killing the man she’d just had sex with.

  That was totally bizarre.

  Of all the images she’d ever had of herself, that wasn’t one she’d even remotely ever entertained. She’d never thought herself capable of doing something like that. She knew she wasn’t glamorous enough to pull it off.

  Nor would she want to. Behavior like that was vapid and empty, and completely devoid of any sort of moral scruples. None of that would ever come even close to describing her.

  Pulling herself together, Marlowe found her tongue. “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about. None,” she emphasized. “I don’t even remember what this ‘secret’ was that I was supposed to have told you.”

  The second the words were out of her mouth, Marlowe’s eyes grew large as it occurred to her that she had another problem on top of the one she was already aware of. Oh God, what was this secret she’d told him, and how was this going to blow up in her face?

  The suspense and anticipation threatened to eat away at her stomach lining in record time.

  “You don’t remember telling me anything,” Bowie said in a mocking tone. “You honestly expect me to believe that?”

  “I can’t help what you believe or don’t believe, but that’s the truth,” she insisted angrily.

  “No, you’re lying,” he accused, standing firm. “It’s too much of a coincidence that right after you told me your precious secret, people started aiming their cars at me and shooting at me.” His eyes darkened. “Our families have been rivals practically since the beginning of time, and I should have had my head examined for going against everything that made sense and thinking that I could have misjudged you. I should have kept my distance from a viper like you the way I always have.”

  Marlowe glared at him, furious at what Bowie was insinuating. Furious with herself for ever letting her own guard down and allowing him to get close enough to really complicate her world.

  Furious with herself for ever thinking that he could be capable of being a decent human being...even though he was the father of her child.

  Staring at the ruggedly good-looking man now, Marlowe couldn’t help wondering if he—or maybe someone in his family, if not the entire lot of them—could be behind that awful email that had thrown her own family into such turmoil.

  “Well, you didn’t keep your damn distance, did you?” she all but spat out. “And pretty soon everyone’s going to know that.”

  He stared at her, completely at a loss as to what she was saying to him. The woman certainly spent a lot of time babbling, he thought, irritated.

  “Now what are you talking about?” he demanded. “I don’t speak gibberish.”

  Marlowe glared at him. “Neither do I,” she shot back at this interloper.

  “Then what the hell are you saying?” he asked.

  He wanted it spelled out? All right, she’d spell it out for him. She was through being patient. “I’m saying that our
families are going to have to find a way to tolerate one another.”

  “And why, pray tell, would they want to do that?” he asked, really wishing that in the middle of all these hot words that were flying back and forth between them he didn’t find this woman so damn attractive that his toes all but curled.

  Why couldn’t he find her the least little bit repulsive, or ugly or even off-putting? Hell, he’d really settle for off-putting.

  Instead, while shouting at this woman he was convinced was trying to have him killed, all he could think of was the way her mouth had tasted that fateful night. How soft her skin had felt beneath his hands and how much he still wanted to make love with her.

  He had to be out of his mind, Bowie thought. That was the only explanation he could come up with. Maybe she had slipped him something that night, something that was now making him behave like a mindless, lovesick loon.

  At least he was managing to cover that part up, he thought thankfully.

  His question rang in Marlowe’s ears. If she had an iota of sense, she would have just let the subject drop, or answered him with some mindless bit of trivia that said nothing. She could just accuse his family for being underhanded and causing all this havoc in her own family.

  She could say anything but what she knew she’d wind up saying in response to his question.

  “Our families are going to have to figure things out, because in seven and a half months there’s going to be a little human being with both Colton and Robertson blood running through his or her veins,” she said from between gritted teeth.

  Dumbstruck, Bowie stared at Marlowe. When he finally recovered the use of his tongue, he could only inanely echo, “What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying, Einstein,” she answered sarcastically, “is that our temporary truce that night resulted in a permanent baby. I’m pregnant, you idiot!” she shouted at him.

  She felt angry that she was trapped in this situation. Angry that it had ever happened. And most of all, angry that out of all the men in the world who could have been the father of her child, it had to be this Neanderthal.