Colton's Secret Past
highlight_author
Kacy Cross
highlight_reads
15.9K
highlight_chapters
28
Is this their second chance…Or a risky mistake? Could it be true? Her ex-husband, injured in a car crash, is suffering from amnesia and needs her care. Owen was terrible to Hannah Colton, but his lack of memory of the bad old days has turned him into a kinder, gentler man. One who makes her feel things she never felt before. What Hannah doesn't know is that her charming ex is Owen's twin, Archer. He's posing as his brother to investigate the real Owen's murder. His lies are putting Hannah in unimaginable danger…because she and "Owen" are falling for each other…again.
Chapter 1
Hannah Colton had more brothers than she knew what to do with most days, but Wade had always been her favorite. That’s the only reason she took his phone call despite juggling crepe batter, a hot griddle pan and a five-year-old who had moved to step three in her campaign to convince Hannah to get her a dog. Washington at Delaware hadn’t been so determined to win as Lucy was when she wanted something.
This occasion was what God had invented speakerphones for, if there was ever a doubt.
“Someone better be dying,” she called in the direction of the phone and winced at her poor choice of words, considering Wade had been the one to call when their father had passed.
Not that any of them had mourned Robert Colton overly much. Maybe the loss of what could have been, but their father had made his choices long ago.
“Not this time.” Her brother’s voice floated from the counter as Hannah expertly flipped the crepe to let it cook on the other side for a precise one minute.
Most people only cooked crepes on one side when they were meant to be filled, but Hannah preferred the golden griddle-cooked color to be visible on both sides. It was this attention to detail that infiltrated all her cooking techniques over the years as she’d made her mark catering bigger and bigger events.
“Uncle Wade,” Lucy broke in. “Tell Mama about the puppy you saw at Aunt Ruby and Uncle Sebastian’s place.”
Great. So Wade had been discussing the Great Dog Campaign with her daughter again. “Wade. What is the one thing I asked you not to talk about with Lucy?”
“Hey, Goose,” Wade called to Lucy, ignoring Hannah’s question. “Did you draw me another picture at school?”
“Oh, I forgot! I have it,” Lucy announced and dashed from the room to presumably scare up the artwork in question.
“That was an inspired way to get her out of the room,” Hannah told her brother wryly. “I hope it wasn’t so you could start in on me about getting Lucy a dog. How much did she pay you?”
Wade laughed, and it did her heart good to hear the sound from someone who hadn’t done much laughing until recently. Harlow had done that for her brother, and it thrilled Hannah to know that they’d found love again after giving up on each other in high school.
“It wouldn’t kill you to get a dog. Betty Jane is a godsend, and you see how much Lucy has taken to her.”
“Betty Jane is your dog,” she stressed. She left out the part about why Wade had needed a therapy dog in the first place, though her brother’s PTSD didn’t seem to be nearly as touchy a subject as it had once been. “I’m up to my elbows in crepes for the Women Entrepreneurs of Wake County brunch. Did you have a reason for calling or did you just want to hear my lovely voice?”
“Uh, you called me?” he prompted. “Last night?”
Oh, dang. How could she have forgotten that already? The Great Dog Campaign was about to be renamed the Distract Mom Crusade, and she did not need any more of dog campaigns or distractions. “I did. Call you. I was just... I’ve got all these crepes. Hang on.”
As quickly as she could, she plated up the remaining fifteen so she could chill them in advance of adding the mascarpone and strawberries. She had a little bit of time before she had to leave for the brunch at the civic center in Conners, where two of her employees, Judy and Todd, would meet her to help serve. As catering jobs went, this one was on the small side, but Hannah treated them all as if each client was her only one, plus she always managed the entire affair herself, regardless of the magnitude. That’s why she had lots of repeat business and a steady stream of new customers via solid word of mouth.
Bon Appetit Catering was hers, and she’d built it from nothing. She wasn’t just serving food at the Women Entrepreneurs of Wake County meeting—she was a standing member. She’d earned it.
She slid onto one of the stools lined up at the kitchen island where she did much of the prep work for her catering business, taking the phone off speaker in case little ears wandered into the room unexpectedly. Though it seemed as if Lucy had abandoned the kitchen in favor of her room, likely having fallen into a game or elaborate Barbie soap opera that was far more important than the picture she’d gone in search of.
“Okay,” she said. “Hear me out.”
“I don’t like the direction this is headed,” Wade groused, his voice shifting as if he’d found a spot to perch as well.
“What? I am a paragon of virtue and good sense.” Now she was. Six years ago, no. But she’d done everything she could since then to atone for the unfortunate screw-up named Owen Mackenzie. “I would never bring up something that warrants the suspicion in your voice.”
“You’d have to actually spell it out for me to hear it, Hannah Banana,” Wade told her with a long-suffering sigh.
Fine. Yes. She needed to come out with her idea, but this was a delicate subject requiring careful wording. Especially if she hoped to convince her family, which was why she’d started with Wade. If she could sell him on it, he’d run interference with everyone else.
“Okay, so here it goes. I’m going to investigate Markus Acker.”
“No. You are not.” Wade’s voice had taken on a hard edge that she imagined had made many a marine sweat during his time in the service. “End of subject.”
“Un-end of subject,” she countered, rolling her hand to mime lifting the imaginary restriction he’d just placed on the topic. “I need to do my part. Aunt Jessie is mixed up in this church that’s really nothing more than a cult—”
“That’s why you’re not investigating him. He’s a criminal. We know that much, but the extent of his crimes... We are not finding out what he’s capable of with you as bait. Not happening.”
Hannah sighed. So Wade could talk about bringing down Markus Acker but she couldn’t? “This is my turn to help. None of the rest of you are caterers. I can easily figure out a way to cater an event for the church and use that as my foot in the door to do some additional investigation into the hold he has over Aunt Jessie.”
This was necessary. Critical. Not only did she have a no-brainer excuse to finagle her way onto the Ever After premises, she owed her family for disappointing them. First, she’d married Owen, then she’d failed by not figuring out how to keep him around, at least for Lucy’s sake. Sure, it wasn’t technically her fault that Owen had turned out to be a low-life scum—her brothers’ term, not hers, though she did find it fitting a lot of days.
Okay, maybe sometimes she thought it was partially her fault and that was her business. After all, she’d picked him. If she didn’t carry that blame, who did?
No one else blamed her. She knew that. Rationally, anyway. Still, it felt like she had some atoning to do, and this was her shot. Wade could step aside.
“I cannot repeat this enough, Hannah,” Wade said sternly. “Stay away from the church, don’t try to contact Jessie, and for crying out loud, please do not walk up and introduce yourself to Markus Acker. If not for yourself, consider Lucy. She only has you.”
“I know that,” she countered, her mouth flattening as she internalized his point.
Did she really have the luxury of taking risks? No. If she had someone to help carry the load, then maybe, but that was a daydream she had no business harboring. Single mother forever or at least until Lucy went to college. That was her vow, and she was sticking to it.
But how big of a risk was it to cater an event and keep her eyes open?
“Han, promise me,” her brother insisted.
“I promise,” she intoned and crossed her fingers. “I won’t contact Jessie and I won’t accost Markus Acker in the middle of the street next time he jogs by.”
“Mean it,” he said gruffly, and she made a face at him even though he couldn’t see her. Thankfully, Wade didn’t notice that she’d left out staying away from the church, and she wasn’t about to bring it up.
“I’m getting another call,” she lied and then nearly yelped when her phone beeped to signal another call.
Maybe she should buy a lottery ticket since she seemed to be able to predict the future.
“I’ll talk to you later, then. Tell Lucy Goosey I said to come over and play with Betty Jane.”
She hung up without honoring that subject with a reply and switched to the other call from an unrecognized number, answering automatically because she’d already committed to it after mentioning the call to Wade. Normally she’d let an unrecognized number go to voicemail since it was usually someone wanting a quote for a catering job, which required a dedicated chunk of time to get all the details. She’d just deal with it real time as her penance.
“Hello?”
“Is this Hannah Colton?” the unfamiliar female voice asked. “Formerly Hannah Mackenzie?”
Something flashed across the back of her neck, heating it. She hadn’t gone by that name in over four years. Not since Owen had hightailed it out of Owl Creek and probably Idaho as a whole, not that he’d bothered to tell her a blessed thing about his plans or final destination.
“Can I help you?” she countered instead of confirming the answer to the woman’s question, because after all, Mackenzie was still Lucy’s last name and until she knew exactly what the nature of this inquiry was, she would wait to share any information.
“I’m looking for Hannah Colton who was married to Owen Mackenzie. He’s been in a terrible accident.”
Hannah drove toward Conners, but not wearing her caterer’s uniform, the smart white coat with the entwined B and A of her logo embroidered on the left breast. Instead, she’d scrambled to get Marcia to cover for her at the last minute at the brunch, dropped Lucy at her mother’s house—which fortunately had always been in the cards due to the impending job—and then wandered around in a daze trying to remember how to breathe, let alone the four hundred things she still needed to get done. Because thanks to Owen, she was still a single mom.
Owen Mackenzie. A name from the past that she wished a lot of days would stay there. But she saw him every time she looked at Lucy. Lucy’s features favored her mother’s, but she had light brown hair, halfway in between Hannah’s blond and Owen’s dark brown. And she definitely had her father’s eyes with her mother’s green irises.
What she couldn’t figure out was why the hospital had called her.
She and Owen hadn’t spoken in years. If he had her phone number, it was news to her because he’d certainly never hit the call button even one time. Had he asked the hospital to contact her?
Okay, there were two things she couldn’t figure out—why they’d called her and why she’d agreed to go see him in the hospital. She should have hung up and not thought a moment more about him. That’s what he’d done to them.
But the lady who’d called indicated that there were complications from the accident and that it would be very beneficial for Owen to see her in person. In Conners. A stone’s throw from Owl Creek, where Hannah and Lucy had been living the whole time without one single iota of contact from her ex-husband.
Curiosity, maybe, could be the driving factor here. Was he sorry he’d left them? It would be sweet to hear that. In fact, she had a serious fantasy about that exact thing. The second he saw her standing there, he’d fall to his knees, apologies pouring from his mouth profusely.
Of course, he had apparently been hurt in the accident. There wouldn’t be a lot of falling to his knees, unless he rolled out of the hospital bed inadvertently. Which she would take. She wasn’t picky.
Hannah laughed at herself. Yes, she was picky. She wanted a full-bore apology, first to her, then to Lucy second. Then she wanted to spit in his face and turn on her heel to walk out the door so he could see what it felt like to have someone he’d depended on show him their back.
She drove as slowly as possible, telling herself it was due to the heavy snowdrifts on the sides of the plowed highway, but it was really to give herself time to settle. It worked, to a degree.
But when she got to the hospital, nerves took over. It would be a miracle if she didn’t throw up at his feet, assuming he was ambulatory. She didn’t actually know what condition she’d find Owen in. The lady on the phone had been so vague, continually repeating that the doctor wanted to talk to her in person.
After parking and finding her way to the correct floor, she crept down the hall to the room the receptionist had indicated, feeling like she’d stumbled into another world. One with a hushed sense of doom and urgency. She didn’t care for the atmosphere at all.
A plate with number 147 next to a whiteboard was affixed to the wall. Someone had scribbled Owen Mackenzie on the white part with a marker.
The door was open. She forced herself to walk through it, her gaze automatically drawn to the figure in the bed.
Owen. Her fingers flew to her mouth.
His eyes were closed and he had a square bandage near his temple. There was so much white—his gown, the sheet, the bed, the walls. And machines. With beeping. She scarcely recognized the way her heart was beating, this erratic thump that couldn’t find a rhythm.
And then he opened his eyes and fixed them on her. She smiled automatically because oh my God, it was Owen. Ashen-faced and obviously in pain, but she had never forgotten that particular shade of brown framed by his lashes, like an espresso with just the right amount of milk to turn it a molten chocolate color.
His hair was longer, spread along his neck, and he should have shaved two weeks ago, but the scruff along his jaw had just enough edge to it to be slightly sexy. No. Not sexy. She slammed her eyes shut and drew in a shaky breath.
“Hello?” he rasped.
“Hi, Owen,” she murmured and that was it. The extent of her brain’s ability to form words. Her throat’s ability to make sounds.
After all this time, after all the scenarios she’d envisioned, the tongue-lashing she’d give him if they were ever in the same room together again—that was all she could come up with? Lame.
“Are you one of the nurses?” he asked, blinking slowly. “Why aren’t you wearing scrubs?”
Raising a brow, she eyed him. “It’s me, Owen. Hannah. I know I’ve put on a few pounds, but come on.”
Only five! Maybe seven, tops. Plus her hair was the same, since she hadn’t changed styles in... Good grief. Had it really been four years that she’d been getting this exact same cut?
“Are we related? The hospital said they were trying to track down my family.”
Confused, she cocked her head. “You’re kidding, right? We’re not related, not anymore, though I don’t know that being married is actually the same as being related, come to think of it.”
And now he had her babbling, which felt like par for the course. She’d been knocked sideways since the phone call back at home, and being here in this room with Owen hadn’t fixed that any.
She had to get it together. This was her chance to make her fondest wish come true—Owen on his knees, begging her forgiveness, blathering about how sorry he was he’d left her. How much he missed her. How big of a mistake he’d made.
Then and only then could she hold her head up high and walk away. Forget this man and the way he’d made her question her judgment every hour of every day, which was not a great parenting skill, by the way.
She’d get that confession out of him or die trying. She opened her mouth.
“Ms. Colton, I presume?” Hannah glanced at the door where a white-coated older gentleman stood with an iPad. “I’m Doctor Farris. Mr. Mackenzie is unfortunately suffering from amnesia. We had hoped that seeing you might jog something loose, but based on what I just heard, that doesn’t seem to have happened.”
“Amnesia.” The concept bounced around in Hannah’s head, searching for a place to land, but she couldn’t quite connect all the dots. “You mean he lost his memory? That’s a real thing? I thought Hollywood made up that condition for dramatic purposes.”
“Oh, no, it’s very real.” Dr. Farris smiled kindly. “It’s also not very well understood or studied so a lot of times, we’re a little unsure on how to treat it. Conventional wisdom says to give it time, and eventually everything will come back to him.”
“Sorry... Hannah?” Owen called, his gaze searching hers as if desperately trying to recall even a sliver of a memory that included her. “I wish I remembered you, but I don’t. I don’t remember who I am either. Can you tell me?”
Oh, she could. Absolutely. She’d had four years and change to stew about how this man had treated her. He deserved to hear every last horrible thing he’d done to her. Every last tear she’d shed.
But instead, she sat down heavily in one of the bedside chairs and blurted out, “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved.”
