Colton Under Fire
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Cindy Dees
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HarlequinChapter 1
Her cell phone flashed.
Incoming text for Sloane Colton Durant from Ivan Durant.
She scowled at the screen. Ivan could keep his last name. She would rather go back to being a Colton, even with all of its notorious implications in Roaring Springs.
This isn’t over.
The cell phone flashed another incoming message. Irritated at being disturbed at dinnertime by her ex-husband, she nonetheless touched the screen to see the next message.
She gulped.
I WILL expose what you did and get her back.
A frisson of terror skittered down Sloane’s spine. Her ex, a high-powered corporate attorney, didn’t make threats idly in court and he wasn’t making any now. The custody battle over their daughter had been a bloodbath, and she’d had to resort to blackmailing Ivan with his infidelities and gambling to get him to back off. Her own divorce lawyer had warned her that Ivan probably wasn’t done trying to take Chloe from her.
Sloane’s gaze hardened. Her ex would get custody of Chloe over her dead body. He didn’t care about their daughter at all. Ivan merely saw her as a trophy. The spoils of war.
Sloane winced as two-year-old Chloe let out a piercing squeal, and heads across the dining room turned to glare. It hadn’t been her idea to bring a toddler to a family supper at the upscale Del Aggio steak house at Roaring Springs, or The Lodge, as locals called it. She’d tried to talk her adoptive father, Russ Colton, out of this particular restaurant, but the man was a born-again bull in a china shop.
He didn’t listen to anyone.
“Is Chloe all right?” Sloane’s biological brother, Fox, asked in concern. “She looks flushed.”
“Kids always turn red in the face when they’re winding up for a tactical nuclear meltdown,” she muttered.
“That sounds serious,” Fox responded, eyeing his niece warily.
She and Chloe had spent a few weeks at the Crooked C Ranch while she looked for a permanent place to live. Her adoptive brother, Wyatt Colton, owned the ranch and lived there with his fiancée, Bailey. Fox also had a house on the property and helped manage the spread. They all had a healthy respect for the temper of a tired, hungry two-year-old.
Sloane scooped Chloe out of the wooden high chair, which was probably half the problem. The log contraption might be considered rustic chic, but it looked uncomfortable.
Of course, the other half of the problem was that Little Bug’s bedtime had come and gone, and still, there was no sign of dinner.
“Let’s go for a walk, sweetie, and look at the skiers.”
Chloe felt warm in her arms. And her cheeks were rosier than usual. Poor thing had really had a time of it, getting ripped out of the only home she’d ever known and being dragged to this new town full of strangers who thought they could walk right up to a baby and get in her face or pick her up because they shared the same last name.
Sloane almost hadn’t come back to Roaring Springs, Colorado for that exact same reason. She didn’t need her entire loud, nosy, raucous family getting in her face, either. It had been hard enough getting through the divorce without the interference of the whole Colton clan.
“Mama. Pitty!” Chloe exclaimed, pointing at one of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows on either side of the thirty-foot-tall stone fireplace in the main lodge.
Sloane looked outside at the white stripes of ski runs between stands of fluffy black pines, the slopes bathed in brilliant light for night skiing. Hundreds of skiers dressed in bright colors zigzagged across the snow like a moving dance of jeweled butterflies.
It was pretty. She’d forgotten how much she loved this time of year in Roaring Springs. Ski season was at its peak, The Lodge bursting at the seams with wealthy patrons who’d come in from all over for the world-class ski runs and five-star facilities. She’d missed the laughter and ruddy cheeks, the scent of hot buttered rum, and wood fires burning cheerily. She’d even missed the funny hitch-step rhythm of skiers tromping around The Lodge in their ski boots.
This was why she’d come home with Chloe. To give her daughter stability. Family. A little joy in her life for a change.
From the first moment Sloane had announced her pregnancy to Ivan, he’d been furious about it. Marriage to him had been great provided she gave her undivided attention to him and brought him status and a fat paycheck. But as soon as those were threatened with the imminent arrival of a baby and parenthood, he’d turned on her.
They’d argued constantly through her entire pregnancy. After Chloe had been born, he’d been gone more than he’d been home—betraying his marriage vows and gambling, as it turned out. But when he was home, there’d been only shouting and fuming silences from him.
By the time Chloe was a few months old, she had become withdrawn and silent anytime mercurial Ivan was in the house. It was uncanny how quickly she’d learned to hide from her own father.
But then, Sloane had learned to hide from him as well. His temper was uncertain at best and violent at worst. He’d never struck her or Chloe, but she was certain it was only a matter of time. The morning after he smashed every single piece of her mother’s china—one of the few things she had that had belonged to her—Sloane had filed for divorce. She wasn’t sticking around until she or her daughter got hurt. Or worse.
She shuddered and hugged Chloe tightly. Lord, she’d hoped she was done with that nightmare and never had to deal with Ivan Durant again. But apparently, he wasn’t done torturing her.
Her brain kicked into lawyer gear. She would save his texts. Collect pieces of evidence to build a case against him, and then she would ask for a restraining order. The Colton name should hold a little extra weight in the local court, at any rate. If she had to live with the negative implications of the name, she supposed she should benefit from its power, too.
“I go, Mama,” Chloe declared, pointing again at the ski slopes.
“Would you like to learn how to ski? I can ask about some lessons for you if you’d like.”
Chloe bounced up and down so eagerly that Sloane had trouble hanging on to her. She would take that as a yes. Struck again by how warm Chloe felt, she asked, “Hey, Bug, how’s your tummy feeling?”
“Rumbwy tumbwy.”
Rats. They’d been reading Winnie the Pooh, and Chloe might just be repeating that.
“Do you feel sick?” Sloane asked.
Chloe stuffed her thumb in her mouth and twisted to look out the window, seemingly disinterested in the current discussion. She had mostly given up thumb sucking in Denver. But with the move to Roaring Springs, she’d reverted to the habit. She’d also reverted to bed-wetting and temper tantrums.
Sloane figured Chloe had some pent-up anger to act out and wasn’t too concerned about the regressive behavior. It wasn’t as if she could blame her daughter for it when she had at least as much anger at her ex to work through.
She’d been boxing at a local gym for the past few weeks, and she’d been amazed at how much fury rose up in her belly whenever she envisioned Ivan’s face on a punching bag.
Sloane laid her palm on Chloe’s forehead. The velvet baby skin was burning hot. “I think you’re coming down with something, sweetheart. How about you and I go home and climb into our jammies, have a nice grilled cheese sandwich, and I’ll read you a bedtime story—your choice.”
“Pooh Bea-uh?”
“Sure. Winnie the Pooh.”
Sloane ducked into the restaurant to grab the baby bag, which doubled as her purse, briefcase, gym bag and zombie apocalypse survival kit.
“You’re leaving? But the steaks are just about to come out,” her biological aunt, Mara Colton, protested. They’d adopted her and Fox after their own parents had died in a car accident. Sloane had been five and Fox seven at the time. She loved them for it, but truth be told, she’d never felt like a real part of their family of three boys and two girls of their own.
“I think Chloe’s sick,” Sloane explained. “I don’t want to share her baby germs with any of you.”
Her brother Decker, general manager of The Lodge, stood up. “I’ll have the chef put your steak in a to-go box and have the valet pull your car around.”
Wyatt and Bailey expressed regret that she had to go and promised to come see her new house soon.
Bailey was awesome. She was a veterinarian who’d recently reconciled with Wyatt after six years of an on-again, off-again relationship and was about to marry him for a second time. Furthermore, Bailey was expecting their first child. She and Sloane had hit it off from the first moment they’d met. Maybe it had something to do with feeling like outsiders in the middle of the loud, overbearing Colton clan.
Sloane followed Decker to the spacious covered portico out front with its huge timbered roof soaring overhead. Stone-clad columns rose to support the roof, and slate slabs stretched away underfoot. This place was solid. Permanent. Safe. The Lodge really was a remarkable resort.
Decker said, “You’re sure I can’t talk you into coming to work for me here, Sloane? That is why Dad paid for your law school.”
“I’ve told Russ over and over that I have no training for nor interest in corporate law.”
“Training or not, you’re smart as hell. I need someone I can trust in my legal department.” He lowered his voice. “We’ve had some cancellations after last month’s murder, and we’ve got a big film festival coming up this summer. I could really use your help managing our corporate image and distancing The Lodge from any unpleasantness.”
“Then you need a publicist, not a criminal defense attorney. Honestly, Decker. Hiring me would raise more questions, not less.”
“You’re a Colton. And this is a family business.”
Chloe fretted, giving Sloane a convenient excuse to end the conversation. She struggled to put the fussy toddler into a snowsuit, and Chloe kept pushing the hood off her head. As a result, her daughter’s fine blond hair stood up in a halo of static. Sloane tried to smooth it down, but Little Bug was having no part of that and threw her head back and forth, shouting, “No way! No way! No way!”
What had gotten into her? She was usually a sweet baby, cuddly and happy when Ivan wasn’t around.
“Terrible twos?” Decker asked sympathetically.
“That and she’s not feeling well. A deadly combination,” Sloane answered.
As her mini-SUV pulled up, Chloe swan-dived off the emotional cliff into a full-blown tantrum and screamed bloody murder.
Women nearby, obviously mothers, threw Sloane sympathetic looks. Everyone else winced and hurried inside to escape the earsplitting screams.
With a sigh, she put Chloe into her car seat and buckled her in around flailing fists and feet. Ahh, parenthood. And she’d thought being a lawyer had been hard. Ha.
Tonight was one of those nights when she wished to be back at the Crooked C with Fox. The adult moral support would help her get through the challenge of dealing with a cranky baby, and her brother would pour her a glass of wine when Chloe finally wound down and crashed.
She’d had no illusion that being a single parent would be hard, but sometimes it was harder than others. Like tonight.
Finally pulling into the garage of the cute craftsman bungalow she’d just bought with a piece of her divorce settlement, she sighed with relief. But the feeling was short-lived because once she extracted Chloe from her car seat, her daughter had gone from rage to even more alarming listlessness. Which was totally unlike her high-energy child.
It took Sloane several minutes to find the box, not yet unpacked, with the baby thermometer in it. She ran the device across Chloe’s forehead.
102 degrees.
Oh, my gosh!
After giving Chloe a quick cool bath and putting her into her footie jammies, then getting into her own pajamas, Sloane made a grilled cheese sandwich, Chloe’s all-time favorite food, but Chloe wouldn’t take even the first bite.
She measured out the recommended medications for a baby with this high of a fever and convinced Chloe to swallow them. Honestly, her Little Bug should have put up more of a fight than she did at taking the medicine. Sloane’s alarm spiked a little more.
She made up a bottle—which Chloe hadn’t used for months—with an electrolyte drink and rocked Chloe like an infant to feed her the bottle.
Sloane desperately missed baby moments like this, but she hated that her child was sick enough to need one. Chloe fell asleep in her arms, and Sloane dozed with her in the big recliner chair that had been her first purchase for her new house.
Sloane woke with a jerk as Chloe whimpered in her sleep.
Good grief. She might as well be holding a furnace in her arms. Chloe was still burning up. Carrying her carefully into the kitchen, Sloane ran the thermometer across her little girl’s forehead again.
103.6.
Oh, no.
She transferred Chloe’s head to her shoulder, grabbed the baby bag, stuffed her feet into fleece boots and headed for her car. Chloe didn’t fully wake up as she got her buckled into her car seat and tucked a blanket around her. Trying to stay calm, Sloane quickly climbed behind the wheel and pulled out of the driveway.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the emergency room was empty as she carried Chloe inside. A nurse showed her to an examining room and agreed to stay with Chloe while Sloane went out front to fill in paperwork and hand over insurance information.
She rushed through a pair of swinging doors that led back to the check-in station...and plowed face-first into a man’s chest. He must have been standing just beyond the doors. Sloane, at five-foot-three and not much over a hundred ten pounds, barely budged the much larger person.
She inhaled sharply, and the scent of pine trees and fresh air filled her lungs. It was as rugged as the Rockies, as big as the endless skies, as free as a bald eagle soaring. She inhaled again, relishing the scent.
Powerful, gentle hands grabbed her upper arms and steadied her. Which was just as well. Suddenly, she was feeling a tiny bit dizzy.
“Sloane? Sloane Colton?” the man murmured in shock.
She looked up into a pair of familiar aspen-green eyes.
“Liam?” she blurted, equally shocked to have bumped into Fox’s childhood best friend.
Bookish, but charming. Smart, but self-deprecating. A good skier on the high school ski team. More handsome than he realized... All the girls had loved Liam. But he’d been oblivious. Suppressing a sigh, Sloane’s eyes drifted over him. He had been tall and skinny in high school but had grown taller since she’d last seen him. And had filled out. A lot. In all the right places. My goodness.
“Liam Kastor, at your service. I was friends with...”
“Fox. I remember. You two tortured me incessantly in junior high and high school.”
“We did not! We just were looking out for you.”
She snorted. “You two drove me crazy.”
“You studied too much to even notice our hijinks.”
Lord, it felt good to smile. She set aside the strange sensation of happiness. “I would love to argue the point with you, but my daughter’s here and I need to give these folks my insurance information and get back to her.”
“Of course,” Liam said quickly, stepping away.
She whipped through a daunting stack of medical history and personal information and then hurried back to Chloe’s room. The nurse looked up when she slipped inside. “The doctor has already been in to take a peek at your daughter. He’d like you to try to get a bottle laced with some medicine down her.”
Sloane nodded.
Chloe still didn’t become fully alert when Sloane picked her up and popped a bottle in her mouth. Little Bug only glanced around the strange room, then closed her eyes and turned her cheek to Sloane’s chest.
She looked up at the nurse in worry. “This is totally unlike her. She’s usually wide awake anywhere new. Wildly curious. Full of questions.”
“She’s a sick little camper. You did good to bring her in when you did.”
“Any idea what she has?”
“Not yet. There has been a nasty virus going around, though. We’ve seen a half-dozen kids with it in the past couple of weeks.”
The doctor came back in a few minutes, and Sloane laid Chloe on the bed. He did the usual doctor things—listened to her breathe, took her pulse, and looked at the chart where the nurse had written down Chloe’s vitals. He looked up at Sloane. “I’d like to do a quick CT scan of Chloe’s abdomen. Also, her temperature is continuing to spike, and we need to get control of that.”
Sloane frowned. She knew in her gut that he wasn’t telling her everything. “What do you suspect?”
“Nothing yet. I’m just eliminating various possibilities.”
“Look. I’m a lawyer. I deal much better with blunt than tactful.”
“Okay. Your daughter’s belly is painful to the touch. But her reaction is generalized and I can’t pinpoint a source of pain. Could be her spleen. Could be appendicitis. Maybe something else altogether.”
“Worst case?” Sloane bit out.
The doctor shrugged, and she didn’t like the evasiveness that entered his eyes. He answered, “Worst case, we admit her and watch her.”
“You’d make a lousy poker player, Doctor. Wanna try that, again?”
The guy sighed. “I administered a massive dose of a broad spectrum antibiotic in that bottle you fed her. Based on what the CT shows, we may need to put her on an IV drip and throw more antibiotics at her. If her fever doesn’t start responding to the meds soon, we’ll have to take measures to cool her head and protect her brain from injury.”
Sloane nodded stiffly, too scared to do much more. Still, she would rather know what they were up against than not. The nurse wheeled Chloe’s bed out of the room, leaving Sloane to wait. And worry. And imagine the worst.
A need to do something overwhelmed her, and she jumped up. The room was too small and too crowded with machines for a good nervous pace, so she went out into the hall to stride back and forth.
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
She looked up, startled, as she all but face-planted against Liam Kastor’s chest. Again. “I’m so sorry.”
“How’s your daughter?” he asked, cutting off her apology.
“They don’t know. Sick. Her fever’s not coming down.”
“What can I do to help?” Liam asked quietly.
“I have no idea. She’s never had a bad fever before.”
He smiled gently. “I was talking about you. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Oh!” The idea of a man lifting a finger to take care of her was a completely foreign concept. “Distract me. Keep me from panicking.”
“Do you want me to call Fox?”
“God, no! He wouldn’t know what to do and would call Mara. And she would call everyone in the whole blessed Colton clan.”
“There is that,” Liam replied dryly. “When’s the last time you ate?”
She frowned. She hadn’t gotten around to eating because she’d been more concerned with taking care of Chloe. And earlier, she’d left The Lodge before dinner had arrived. “Lunch, I guess.”
Liam asked a nurse at the station in front of Chloe’s room to call him as soon as Chloe was brought back, and then he whisked Sloane down the hallway. “Come with me. Cafeteria’s this way. Food’s terrible, but the coffee’s outstanding.”
“How do you know that?” Sloane asked. Did he work here? The nurse had clearly known who he was and had his phone number. “Are you a doctor?” she blurted.
“Me? Never.”
“What brought you to the emergency room, then? Do you have a loved one here? I’m sorry to be so insensitive. I’m such a mess right now—”
He stopped just inside the door to a small lounge with linoleum-topped tables, plastic chairs and institutional fluorescent lights. Gently, he laid a fingertip on her lips. “I’m a police detective. We were shorthanded at the station tonight, so I volunteered to transport a prisoner who got sick in the drunk tank.”
“You’re a cop?”
He grinned and steered her over to the coffeepot.
“How was law school?” he asked over his shoulder.
How—Fox. Of course. “It was hard. But fascinating.”
She scrutinized him as he studied the self-service line. She supposed some people might call him boyishly handsome, but she sensed a quiet strength in him. Mature. Reliable.
Funny, but a few years ago, she would’ve called Liam boring. And then she went and married an exciting man who took her straight to hell. Boring was starting to look pretty darn good these days. It was amazing how time and life changed a person’s point of view.
“How do you like your coffee?” he asked.
“As black as my soul,” she replied dryly.
“Do tell,” he replied mildly. One corner of his mouth turned up sinfully, though, for just a moment. “Tuna salad okay with you?”
She picked up the cups of coffee and carried them to a table while he went to a vending machine and bought two sandwiches in triangular plastic packages, two bags of chips, a packet of baby carrots and a bag of apple slices.
He dumped his haul on the table and slid into the seat opposite her. “I haven’t seen you around Roaring Springs since you left for college. What have you been up to since then, Sloane?”
She ripped open a sandwich package and bit into the day-old bread and nearly dry tuna. Not that she cared what anything tasted like at the moment. “After I graduated from law school at Colorado State, I moved to Denver and got a job as a criminal defense attorney at Schueller, Mangowitz and Durant.”
Liam whistled under his breath. “That’s a high-powered firm.”
She rolled her eyes. “The women there call it Chauvinist, Misogynist and Douchebag.”
“Ouch. That bad?”
“Worse,” she growled.
“I sense a story.”
“Don’t be a detective tonight, okay?”
He threw up his hands. “No interrogations out of me.” He took a cautious sip of his coffee. “Am I still allowed to ask what brings you to Roaring Springs—as a friend-slash-past-tormentor? ”
She shrugged, sipping at her own coffee. “I’ve moved back home with Chloe—she’s my daughter—to give her a better life.”
“Better than what?”
Darn it. He was being all perceptive, again. “Better than a rotten father and a failed marriage.”
Liam laid his hand on top of hers briefly. Just a quick touch of his warm, calloused palm on the back of her hand. But the comfort offered was almost more than she could bear right now. She was too worried about Chloe. Her emotions—usually carefully suppressed—were too close to the surface.
She spent the next few minutes fixedly concentrating on her food and regaining her emotional equilibrium. Or trying to, at least.
As if he sensed her teetering on the edge of a breakdown, he gathered up the empty food packaging and said briskly, “Take the chips with you. Let’s go see if there’s any news on your daughter.”
As they walked back to the emergency ward, he said quietly, “The docs here are excellent. Chloe’s in good hands.”
She nodded, her throat too tight for a response.
Liam’s timing was perfect because, as they rounded the corner into the emergency area, the nurse who’d taken Chloe away for the CT scan came toward them.
“Where’s my daughter?” Sloane demanded, her inner mama bear on full alert.
“Come with me, Mrs. Durant.”
“Colton. Ms. Colton. I’m not keeping my ex-husband’s name.”
“Right. The doctor would like to admit your daughter overnight.”
“Why?” Sloane croaked.
“The doctor will fill you in.”
She wanted to scream as the nurse walked at far too leisurely a pace to an elevator. Sloane was barely aware of Liam holding the elevator door for her as it opened on the third floor, or that he kept pace beside her as she charged for the doctor standing at the far end of the hall.
Please God, let Chloe be all right. She was Sloane’s entire world.
The doctor stood just outside a room with a glass window in the wall. Inside the dimly lit hospital room, Chloe was asleep in a stainless steel crib. She looked so tiny and lost among the wires and blankets.
“What’s wrong?” Sloane demanded without preamble.
“She doesn’t have appendicitis, or an intestinal blockage, or an enlarged spleen. But since her fever still hasn’t broken, I want to keep her here for observation until we can get her temperature down to a safe level. This is probably just the virus that’s been going around. But babies can get hit hard by things like this.” Fixing his gaze on hers, he asked calmly, “Has your daughter been sick recently? Under unusual stress that might have compromised her immune system?”
“Oh, God.” Guilt crashed in on her. “We moved from Denver recently as part of my divorce. It’s been hard on Chloe, and she has been reverting to baby behaviors. I had no idea I compromised her immune system. I’m a terrible mother. I should have realized something like this would happen—” She broke off on a sobbing breath.
Arms came around her, gentle and strong. She didn’t care whose they were. Her baby was seriously ill and she’d completely missed the signs until Little Bug was burning up with fever. Ivan was right. She wasn’t fit to be a mother. Chloe would be better off with him and the expensive professional nanny he would hire to raise his daughter for him.
The doctor commented from somewhere beyond the circle of Liam’s arms, “This virus comes on fast. You didn’t miss any warning signs, Ms. Colton. The fever was likely the first symptom anyone would have noticed. And you got her here before the fever became dangerous.”
Sloane lifted her head to glare at the doctor. “Don’t coddle me. I suck as a parent.”
Liam’s voice rumbled with light humor in her ear. “You couldn’t suck at anything you put your mind to.”
She would have argued with him, but the doctor commented, “If you’d like to spend the night with Chloe, there’s a daybed in her room by the window.”
Duh. Of course she was staying with Chloe. Her baby would be scared to death if she woke up in a strange place and Sloane wasn’t there for her.
Liam said briskly, “Give me your keys, Sloane, and I’ll run by your place and pick up a few things for you. Toothbrush, a change of clothes...”
For the first time since she’d arrived at the hospital, it dawned on Sloane that she was wearing her pajamas. Thank God she’d put on her practical flannel pajamas consisting of a manly shirt and pants. Liam would think she was a total weirdo if she’d been wearing her footie onesie that matched Chloe’s.
Not that she cared what Liam, or any man, thought of her, of course.
“You don’t have to. I can call my brother to run by and pick up some stuff—”
“And alert the entire Colton clan that Chloe’s sick? They’ll descend upon you like a swarm of locusts, and you won’t get a moment’s rest tonight. You need your sleep, too, you know.” He held out an expectant hand.
He was totally right. “Good point.” She dug around in the baby bag, where she’d randomly tossed her keys earlier. It took an embarrassingly long time, but she finally came up with them. “You’re sure about this?”
Liam grinned. “It’s my job, ma’am. Plus, my prisoner is passed out and likely to stay that way for several hours.”
She rolled her eyes at him. But truthfully, she was grateful for the help.
“I’ll be back in a jiffy. Go be with your daughter and get some sleep if you can. I’ll drop off your things with the nurses so I don’t wake you up.”
What was this? Consideration for her comfort? Huh. So that was what it looked like when a man was decent and caring. Who knew?
Liam turned and headed for the elevator, and she tiptoed into Chloe’s room.
She couldn’t resist brushing the hair off Chloe’s forehead and dropping a featherlight kiss on Little Bug’s hot cheek before she stretched out on the daybed, bunched up the lumpy feather pillow under her head, and pulled a blanket over her shoulders.
She stared at her daughter for a long time while sleep refused to come. The weight of being a single parent, for real now, not just in practical application, landed heavily on her shoulders. She prayed for wisdom to make the right decisions for her baby girl to keep her safe and healthy.
Everyone had told her she had this. That she was a great mom. That she would be better off without her spouse. How hard could it be to raise just one child by herself?
But suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she had this at all.
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