A Colton Target
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Beverly Long
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HarlequinChapter 1
Blaine Colton woke up in a strange bed. Which wasn’t that unusual, given how he’d spent the last thirteen years. But the fact that he was at Colton Manor, in one of its many guest rooms, made it not all that great.
His parents’ home was big enough that a map would be helpful. And built soundly, with well-insulated walls, making it difficult to tell if anyone else in the house was yet awake. But just in case they were, he stayed right where he was.
He’d arrived too late last night for any real conversation. Had made small talk with his mom and been relieved to learn that his dad was at a late-evening meeting. Then he’d looked in on his grandfather Earl, who had his own suite within Colton Manor, and had apologized for missing the man’s ninety-fourth birthday celebration. Although he wasn’t sure the old man had fully grasped who he was, Blaine had thought he seemed happy enough.
Perhaps happier than he was. Generally, upon waking, he had a purpose. Lives depended upon it. Now, he turned his head, stared at the wallpaper with its pale green background and tan vertical stripes, and started counting. When he got to the corner of the room, he turned his head again, and did the opposite wall.
Forty-two stripes on each side. A big room.
He had not been raised in this showplace, aka home. It had been built long after he’d moved away. Enlisted in the army. The organization where he’d served with pride.
Before he’d thrown it all away.
And had to come back, in disgrace. Well, almost. Unbeknownst to him, his father, the powerful Russ Colton, had asked a favor of his even-more powerful cousin, former president Joe Colton, and with a wave of a wand or some greasing of palms, depending on your perspective of government, his discharge paperwork had been altered.
Honorable was a much nicer word.
Blaine owed his father—never a comfortable position to be in. I want you to come home. That’s what his father had said.
It wasn’t as if he had anyplace else to go. His friend Rylan Bennet, who’d fallen hard and fast for Blaine’s cousin Bree, had offered to put a good word in for him with Rylan’s old security company. But he’d passed on that. Couldn’t really think about anything permanent until he did what he needed to do here.
He’d express his gratitude to his father. But so help him, if Russ even hinted that Blaine had made worse choices than he’d made over the course of his own lifetime, it wasn’t going to be pretty. That man was the reason he’d left Roaring Springs some thirteen years ago. The reason he’d returned only sporadically, until now.
To be a stranger in a strange house.
Who had nothing but time on his hands. Hiding in his bed, counting stripes.
He threw back the covers. The hell with that.
Forty minutes later, Blaine stood outside his brother Decker’s office, located in the far corner of the top floor of The Lodge. While he’d never been inside it before, he knew, from a photo that Decker had once shared, that his two walls of mostly windows offered magnificent views of both the Rocky Mountains and, in the distance, the town of Roaring Springs.
He opened the heavy door, and a woman sitting behind a desk, her hands on a computer keyboard, looked up. She had very short dark hair and was dressed in a black business suit. Maybe midforties. He was confident that this was Penny. Decker had mentioned his administrative assistant a few times over the years. Always favorably.
“Good morning,” she said politely. “How may I help you?”
She probably thought he was a lost guest, looking for his way to the coffee shop. He flashed a smile. “I’m here to see Decker.”
“Do you have an appointment, sir?”
He shook his head. “I’m his brother.”
He could see the wheels turning in her head. She thought she knew Decker’s family. After all, most of them worked in some way for the Colton Empire, as his father liked to call it.
“Blaine Colton,” he added for clarity. It wasn’t as if he expected that Decker had spent much time talking about him in the office. And he’d been gone for years. In places doing things he couldn’t talk about. Ever.
She picked up her phone. “Your brother Blaine is here to see you,” she said. Then she listened. “Of course,” she murmured before hanging up. Now she was eyeing him with some speculation. “He’ll be right out. And he asked me to cancel his nine o’clock.”
Decker wanted some time. Probably didn’t want him to have to hurry his explanation. Blaine owed him that. Might owe him a lot more before their meeting was over because he was here to ask a favor.
Another debt of gratitude. He was going to have a pile at the rate he was going.
Not a comfortable situation for a man who’d spent more than thirteen years never asking for or expecting any favors from anyone.
He sank down into a chair, but his brother didn’t keep him waiting long. In less than two minutes, he was striding through a connecting door, his face showing very little emotion. But the rough hug and the solid pat in the middle of his back said enough. Decker was happy to have him home. Over the years, he likely had envisioned that when this moment came, Blaine might be in a casket with a flag draped over it.
“I was going to come by the house tonight,” Decker said, pulling back.
Blaine had suspected as much. But this wasn’t the kind of conversation one had over cocktails. Or in front of an administrative assistant, regardless of how loyal she might be. “Can we talk?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Decker’s office was big but not fancy. Polished wood floor and a nice rug that he suspected his brother had had some help picking out. There was a big desk, maybe cherry, and a black leather chair, placed so that Decker could work and enjoy the view the windows offered. Two comfortable-looking tan leather chairs sat in front of the desk. But Decker didn’t lead him there. Instead, he headed for a round table in the corner. Four more leather chairs. They took seats across from one another. Blaine glanced over his shoulder at one of the ski pictures that hung on the wall. “Nice,” he said.
“Taken on Wicked.”
“I love that run.”
“All the daredevils do.”
“Speaking of daredevils, congrats on the wedding,” Blaine said.
Decker flashed a wide smile. “Nothing daring about it. Most rock-solid decision I ever made. Kendall is great. Can’t wait for you to meet her.”
“Looking forward to it. I was sorry to hear that she’d been injured.” He’d heard there had been some doubt that they might save her eye.
“Yeah. Bad days. But she’s rallied like a champ,” Decker said. “And doing well.”
There was an awkward silence. Neither of the brothers excelled at small talk. Finally, Decker leaned forward. “What happened?” he asked quietly.
“I got stupid.” That was the simple explanation. But his brother deserved more. “I met a woman. Honor Shayne. Very bright, hardworking, fun.”
“Doesn’t sound all bad,” Decker said.
“We were both officers. Normally, a consensual relationship would have flown under the radar. Unfortunately, my commanding officer was old-school and, given that I was leading a team that Honor was assigned to, he’d made it very clear that he wouldn’t view dalliances—” he emphasized the word because in the last several weeks, after hearing it over and over again, he’d begun to hate it “—favorably.”
“You didn’t listen, and he tossed you to the curb.”
“Kicked. Tossed is too nice of a word.”
“Did you love her? Do you?” Decker said, amending his question for present tense.
“Didn’t and don’t. I liked her. I respected her. I’m sorry that she got caught up in this mess. But she’s moving on. Has already landed on her feet, teaching at West Point.”
He’d never been in love. Had maybe come close before he’d left Roaring Springs at age eighteen. That is, if a kid that age could know what love was. He’d known that he cared for Matilda Deeds. Cared enough that for the last thirteen years he’d been carrying around a picture of them at prom. Him in his dark suit. Her in her pretty red dress that had accented her dark hair and unusual, dark gray eyes. Her sexy, curvy shape had seemed to be poured into her dress that night, likely making every teenage boy that saw her unable to think of much else.
He’d been mostly thinking about how to get his hand under the slit that ended midthigh. And, later that night, had figured out how.
Yeah, he’d cared. Enough that he would have married her if she hadn’t lost the baby that they’d conceived that prom night on the couch in her parents’ basement.
“You’ll land on your feet, too,” Decker said confidently, bringing Blaine back to the present.
“Dad called in a favor with Uncle Joe. Got my dishonorable discharge changed to honorable.”
The other man shrugged. “You were a Green Beret and served with distinction for more than a decade. You earned a chest full of medals. You made a mistake, one that shouldn’t have cost you everything. I think our uncle simply gave the army a chance to get it right.”
For the first time since he’d opened his eyes that morning, Blaine felt his chest relax. The Coltons were a complex bunch, but when push came to shove, they were family, and he could count on them.
“What’s Dad saying now?” Decker asked.
“We haven’t talked yet. Not looking forward to that,” Blaine added. “I was hoping you could help me with that.”
“What can I do?”
“I need a job. I’ll do anything.”
Decker turned his head, looked out the window. “We’ve had late snow this year. Great for business. But the director of my Extreme Sports division broke his leg a week ago. It—”
“I’ll do it,” Blaine said, sitting forward in his chair.
“I was going to say it’s going to require you to strap on the equipment. We’re also short on instructors, and the demand for skiing and snowboarding lessons has never been higher.”
The Colton property was a popular winter destination for many reasons. But for the true sports aficionado, it had always been because of the diversity of runs that were offered. Everything from the bunny hill to the super challenging, including two terrain parks, filled to the brim with opportunities for snowboarders to strut their stuff. Serious winter-sports fanatics came from all over to test themselves. “Sure. I can do that.”
“Okay,” Decker said. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
Nice of Decker to frame it that way.
“You’ll need to swing by Curtis Shruggs’s office to fill out some paper work,” his brother continued. “He’s our director of personnel.”
He thought he’d met Shruggs once before, on one of his brief trips back to Roaring Springs. His parents had been hosting a party for managers at Colton Manor. Blaine had been hiding out in one of the libraries, and the man had wandered in. “The guy with the blue eyes?”
“Yeah.”
He could still remember a couple of his female cousins, and maybe even one of his sisters, going on about the man’s eyes. So gorgeous. For his part, he’d thought the guy was nice enough and his eyes were fine. The brief encounter had left him thinking that there was something about the man that hadn’t seemed quite right. He’d not said anything to his family, realizing that in all likelihood, it hadn’t been Shruggs who was off-kilter that night, but rather, it had been him. Coming back to Roaring Springs had always been difficult for him.
But now, if Shruggs could get Blaine set up with a job, Blaine was only too happy to go see him. “One more favor?” he said, smiling at his brother.
“What?” Decker asked.
“I want to move into staff housing.”
Decker rocked back in his chair. “Wow. You must really want to avoid Dad.”
Two days later, Blaine had his hands full, corralling a group of six middle-school boys who’d signed up for the intermediate snowboarding class. They were in the larger park, the sky was a brilliant blue, with the temperature hovering around twenty-eight degrees, and there was two inches of fresh powder from the night before.
“Let’s go,” a blond kid yelled. Blaine thought his name was Isaac. “I am ready to shred the gnar,” the boy added, invoking some favorite snowboarding lingo.
“Yeah, well, before any of you conquer this mountain, you’re going to show me that you know the basics.” He suspected they did. Kids in this area of the country were snowboarding in preschool. But he also understood boys and young men—having been one and having led a fair number of brand-new recruits over the years. Sometimes skills were exaggerated to keep up with the rest of the group. “Let’s quickly run through a few things.” He wanted to make sure they all knew how to stop and turn, both sharp and wide, gracefully fall and get up by themselves, and walk their boards back up the hill.
He ignored the moaning and groaning, and when he was confident that they were all more or less ready, he motioned for them to follow him.
“Where are the jumps?” a smaller kid named Tommy asked.
“Just over that hill,” he said. That’s where they would also find a pristine bowl. Its shape, with its steep sides and narrow gut—similar to the cement structures that skateboarders salivated over—would keep them busy for hours. “I’ll demonstrate, and then you’ll all get your chance. You don’t have to feel pressured to do anything you’re not comfortable with, okay?”
“Sounds like sex ed class.” This again from Isaac.
That cracked the group up. A good-looking kid in the front named Josh looked at Blaine rather sheepishly. “Just ignore Isaac.”
“You ready for this?” Blaine asked him.
“I’m going to do them all,” Josh answered, his voice cracking at the end.
Blaine appreciated his attitude. He’d been like that as a kid. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Matilda Deeds glanced at her watch. She’d arrived too early to pick Josh up from his lesson. But it had given her a chance to grab a latte at the coffee shop.
She’d been at The Lodge a few times over the years. One could hardly live in Roaring Springs and not have been. Every time, she’d carefully checked her surroundings, anxious about running into Russ Colton, but thankfully she had never encountered him. In recent years, she’d heard that Decker was taking on a bigger role in the day-to-day operation of The Lodge, which made it even less likely that she’d see the elder Colton, but she remained vigilant.
There was no sign of either Russ or Decker Colton today. This part of The Lodge was crazy busy with skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts trying to take advantage of the late-season snow. She took her coffee and settled at a small table in the corner of the room where the students would return following their class. About half of the other twenty tables were occupied, and conversation hummed in the air. A fire burned in the big stone fireplace at the far end of the room, and there was a tray of freshly baked cinnamon donuts on a table.
She resisted, not wanting the extra ten pounds that she carried to turn into fifteen or twenty. Sighing, she leaned forward, resting her elbow on the table and her chin in the palm of her hand.
Tilda supposed it was natural that she would think of Blaine Colton in this place. Not that she’d ever been here with him. The year they’d started dating, just weeks before prom night, there had been no late-season snow. And by the next fall, when the slopes were once again covered, Blaine had been long gone. Already done with basic training by that time. Happy to already go off to some dangerous, far off place, to serve his country.
And she’d been dealing with her own issues. Alone.
She’d done okay by most anyone’s standards. Her parents had helped, of course, once they’d come to terms with her situation. Both unskilled workers, they’d clung on to the dream of having their daughter become the first college graduate in the family. They hadn’t let her give up or give in. And Dorian Stoll had been a true friend.
She checked her watch again and looked out the big window, searching the slopes. There he was. Her son, her pride and joy, all long legs and gangly arms. He was taller than many of the kids in his class but thin enough that he looked as if a good, strong wind might blow him away. He was with five other kids. They’d taken off their helmets and goggles and were carrying their snowboards under their arms. She recognized his best friend, Isaac.
And there was a man, much taller, much broader, his head thrown back, as if he was laughing at something one of the kids had said. There was something so familiar about that motion, so unconsciously sexy, that she could feel her body heat up.
Jeez. What the heck?
She stood up but stayed where she was. At thirteen, Josh didn’t want his mother running up to him. When the door opened, in came a whiff of cold air, laughter and young excited voices. Another voice. Deeper.
And she knew. Her knees felt weak.
Josh turned to search the room. She managed to wave at him.
The man turned. Followed Josh’s gaze. Settled on her.
Blaine Colton. Still as handsome as ever. With that bold, confident look on his face, like he could take on the world. His dark brown hair was short, certainly shorter than he’d worn it in high school. It showed off his lean, strong features.
His smile faded as he followed Josh across the room.
“Tilda?” he said. His light brown eyes were very serious.
She nodded. Wet her lips with her tongue. “I hadn’t heard that you were back.” If she had, there’d been no way that she’d have brought Josh to The Lodge.
“Been in town just days,” he told her. He stood very still, very straight, his impossibly broad shoulders filling the space.
She said nothing. Every word was potentially filled with peril.
“Hey, you know my mom?” Josh asked, looking at Blaine. He sounded as if he thought that was cool.
“Your mom,” Blaine repeated.
She put her hand on Josh’s arm. “We need to get going.” She looked briefly at Blaine before turning to leave. “Good...uh...good to see you again.”
“But—” Josh protested.
She pulled him along with her, away from Blaine. “Don’t argue, Josh,” she said under her breath. “Just keep walking.”
Blaine made sure all the other kids got picked up, but he was moving on automatic. Tilda Deeds. What were the chances that he’d run into her here?
He guessed it wasn’t all that odd. Had heard on one of his rare visits back to Roaring Springs over the past years that she’d married and had a child. He hadn’t asked for details. At the time, he’d told himself that it was because he didn’t care. But the news had unsettled him, and he’d never asked about her again. The idea of Tilda in bed with someone else, loving someone else, wasn’t a comfortable one.
Was she still married? Somebody in his family would know.
Her kid was cool. He’d said he was going to try everything, and he’d been true to his word. Funny, too. Once they were on the slope, he’d sparred back and forth with his friend Isaac and landed a couple zingers.
In those few seconds that he’d seen mom and son side by side, he’d noticed the resemblance. Still thinking about Tilda, he walked to his brother’s office. Penny, now used to him, waved him in. He knocked sharply on Decker’s door.
“Come in,” Decker said, still staring at his computer screen. But when he saw it was Blaine, he pushed his chair back and took a breath. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good. Just did a snowboarding class. Middle schoolers. All terrific kids and pretty darn good on their boards.” Blaine took a breath. “And crazy as it sounds, one of them was Tilda Deeds’s boy.”
“That’s not so crazy. She’s a teacher at Roaring Springs High. English, I think.”
They’d been in the same English class when they were seniors. She’d been smart. Always had a book with her, too. “What’s her husband do?”
“He’s dead,” Decker said. “It’s been years. Shame. Dorian Stoll was a nice guy. He didn’t grow up in Roaring Springs but he always seemed to fit in.”
“She’s a widow,” Blaine breathed, trying to get his head around that. She was so young. But then again, being in the military, he’d quickly learned that young people died, too.
Decker stared at him, considering. “As I recall, you had a thing for her in high school. You wanted to marry her.”
He’d told Decker but no one else. Had sworn his brother to secrecy. And had only given Decker half the story, leaving out the part that Tilda was pregnant because the two of them had agreed that was their secret for the time being. As he recalled, Decker had initially laughed at him for mentioning marriage but, once he’d realized Blaine was serious, had switched tactics, telling him he was a fool, that he needed to go to college and prepare himself to someday take his rightful place in the Colton Empire.
Blaine had known even then that was an okay path for Decker but not for him.
And when Tilda had lost the baby, and he’d been at loose ends, wanting only to leave Roaring Springs and the dysfunctional relationship between his parents and the incessant pressure from his father to join the family business, the army had offered endless possibilities. He’d left quickly, before anyone could stop him. And almost from the very beginning had realized that it had been a very good decision.
“How old is her son?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” Decker said.
There was no reason for Decker to know. And no real reason for Blaine to care. But the question nagged at him. How soon after he’d left had she jumped into another relationship? Had they dated for a long time before getting married?
Had she been happy?
Had she ever thought about Blaine and that, if things had gone differently, she’d have married him?
He shook his head. Water. Over the bridge.
“How’s staff housing?” Decker asked. “Missing Mom’s thousand-thread sheets?”
Blaine smiled. “I’m just happy to have a bed, bro. Didn’t always have one of those, these last thirteen years.”
“It’s good to have you back,” Decker said. “I worried...”
His voice trailed off. Blaine knew what he’d fretted about. It was always harder on the ones left behind. That’s one of the reasons he’d been right to leave Tilda and to never look back. It had given her the freedom she deserved.
And apparently, she’d run with it.
