by Addison Fox
The most shocking Colton family secret yet is revealed!
Claudia Colton has always felt different from her siblings. But the fashion designer doesn’t expect a PI with knowledge of her family to show up in her tiny Texas hometown. The tall, blond stranger on her doorstep announces Claudia might not be the daughter of criminal mastermind Livia Colton...but then who is she?
Widower Hawk Huntley, hot on the trail of a cold kidnapping case, is stopped dead in his tracks by Claudia. He vows to protect her in any way possible—heart, body, and soul—as they track down the truth of her identity. But will Claudia’s hidden past—and a gun-wielding stalker—change everything for Colton?
“I’ve only been here a few days, but it’s been long enough to know that anything Colton-related is hot gossip around town.”
Claudia sighed. “Sad truth. But still true all the same.”
“Hey.” He brushed several strands of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
“It’s not insensitive when it’s the truth.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” Hawk traced the shell of her ear before trailing a path down the column of her throat. “But right now I’d really like to kiss you.”
“I’d really like that, too.”
The last vestiges of fear that lingered at the afternoon’s events faded as Hawk lowered his lips to hers. With his body pressed to hers and the door at her back she should have felt claustrophobic.
Trapped.
She felt anything but as she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung.
Simply clung as the touch of his hands, the warmth of his body and the sheer power of his kiss carried her away from all the pain, trouble and confusion that was life in Shadow Creek.
The Coltons of Shadow Creek: Only family
can keep you safe...
* * *
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Dear Reader,
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you’d been born into a different family? As a daughter of notorious criminal Livia Colton, Claudia Colton wondered it plenty of times. She never felt like she fit into her family, despite a deep and abiding love for her brothers and sisters, but it is a genuine surprise when Hawk Huntley shows up in Shadow Creek and suggests she really isn’t a Colton after all.
While Claudia may be willing to accept the suspicions of this new stranger to Shadow Creek, she can’t hide her increasing fears as she discovers she’s been targeted by a new threat. Is her mother, recently escaped from prison, back in Shadow Creek making trouble? Or is it more personal than that?
Welcome back to the world of the Coltons. I’m so excited to bring you the fourth book in this year’s Coltons of Shadow Creek miniseries. The Coltons have a long history in the Harlequin Romantic Suspense line and it’s always great fun to revisit different branches of the family, each loaded with new secrets to reveal.
I hope you enjoy Cold Case Colton, and be sure to watch for the fifth and sixth books to close out the series, coming in July and August.
Best,
Addison Fox
COLD CASE
COLTON
Addison Fox
Addison Fox is a lifelong romance reader, addicted to happy-ever-afters. After discovering she found as much joy writing about romance as she did reading it, she’s never looked back. Addison lives in New York with an apartment full of books, a laptop that’s rarely out of sight and a wily beagle who keeps her running. You can find her at her home on the web at www.addisonfox.com or on Facebook (Facebook.com/addisonfoxauthor) and Twitter (@addisonfox).
Books by Addison Fox
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
The Coltons of Shadow Creek
Cold Case Colton
The Coltons of Texas
Colton’s Surprise Heir
Dangerous in Dallas
Silken Threats
Tempting Target
The Professional
The Royal Spy’s Redemption
House of Steele
The Paris Assignment
The London Deception
The Rome Affair
The Manhattan Encounter
The Adair Affairs
Secret Agent Boyfriend
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For Maddie and Vivian
Two of the most wonderful young women I know.
You both own Texas-sized pieces of my heart.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Excerpt from Take It to the Grave (Part 1 Of 6) by Zoe Carter
Chapter 1
The random bark of a dog and a puttering truck with a rusted out muffler battled each other for prominence in the early morning air. Claudia Colton juggled a to-go cup of coffee in one hand and her keys in the other as she fumbled with the door of her boutique, Honeysuckle Road. Dog and truck faded away as she closed the door, satisfied to simply stop and stare for a moment.
On a soft sigh, she smiled at the racks that spread out before her in welcoming arcs. Bright, vivid silks and bold prints swirled among the racks, offsetting more timeless pieces in soft pastels and classic solids. Her racks spanned all sizes, hidden among them a match for every woman in Shadow Creek, from the petite to the curvaceous and every iteration in between.
“It may be a long way from Fifth Avenue, but it’s mine.”
Shadow Creek, Texas, was a far cry from New York City, but she was determined to make it feel like home.
Bound and determined.
All the work that had gone into renovating the store and the grand opening preparations had diverted her mind for the past few months, and there was something deeply gratifying to see the fruits of her hard work.
Fruits that bore sashes, sequins and the occasional well-placed bow.
And if the life she’d attempted to divert herself from was still a raging mess, well, at least she had a few pretty things to look at while she dealt with it all.
She flipped the lock behind her back and headed for her workroom. Many of the designs at Honeysuckle Road were her own and she’d taken great joy in bringing her visions to life, but no vision quite compared with the wedding dress that had come to life on her dressmakers’ form over the past few weeks.
Claudia had been equally touched and excited when her brother Thorne’s fiancée, Maggie, asked her to make her wedding dress. And she was fast becoming a nervous wreck that the small details she’d envisioned for the dress wouldn’t be completed in time for the wedding.
Wasn’t that a twist?
Maggie was an easygoing bride with an exacting, seamstress-zilla.
Which meant Claudia’
s days were filled with quite a few early hours as she worked to finish up the dress.
That also gave her a chance to collect her thoughts. While getting Honeysuckle Road up and running had been a pleasant diversion, it couldn’t change the realities of what she’d run from in New York, or her current situation here in Shadow Creek.
An ex-boyfriend who’d increasingly made the city she loved a nightmare of dark streets, threatening messages and late-night harassments.
And the small town she’d grown up in that seemed to exist in a perpetual state of fear of her mother. Livia’s recent escape, ten years after being put away for multiple lifetimes, had once again gripped the town in her thrall.
Neither situation was tenable.
But what to do about it?
Claudia had innately understood her mother was different. It wasn’t just the unique characteristics that made up her family, from a series of relationships that had produced Livia Colton’s six children. Nor was it simply the large estate that had provided the backdrop to her childhood. No, it was the odd, nearly reverent way the entire town of Shadow Creek treated her mother.
Livia Colton was the town’s patron saint and their resident demon, and everyone treated her with the softest of kid gloves. Livia could do no wrong, even when others suspected her of the worst sorts of crimes.
Theft. Human trafficking. Murder.
Which had left her children to puzzle through the realities of their mother. Was Livia Colton some misunderstood, benevolent benefactor or some demon temptress who used kindness as one more tool in her psychopathic arsenal?
Claudia had spent much of her childhood wondering, only to have the truth finally come out the year she turned sixteen. Her mother’s crimes—all she’d been suspected of and more—had been exposed and she’d been soundly convicted by the State of Texas, sentenced to spend the rest of her life—as well as four more—in prison.
At the time and in all the years since, Claudia had tried desperately to feel some sense of sadness, or remorse or even relief that she and her siblings finally had some answers.
But none came.
Instead, she continued to struggle with this odd sense of indifference that kept her mother at an emotional distance. Separate, somehow, as if they’d never really had a mother-daughter bond at all. Claudia lived with the shame of that—that strange, unapologetic apathy—and used the guilt as a way to push herself forward.
She didn’t feel it for her siblings. Nor did she feel it for Mac, the man who’d practically raised her. So maybe there was hope for her, after all.
Claudia ran a hand over the slender, gathered shoulder strap of the dress. Her brother would marry the woman who wore this dress. The wedding would be hosted on Mac’s ranch. In addition to Thorne, the groom, all her siblings would be there.
Joy filled her at the thought of them all being together and in that, Claudia knew there was strength. Bonds that were forged in truth and honesty and love.
And in that joy, she felt no guilt. No empty ties. Not even a trace of sadness. Instead, she knew she was home.
It couldn’t come at a better time, she thought as she fiddled with the ruching on the shoulder strap, seeking to match its folds to its twin. After nearly ten years in a Texas prison, Livia had found a way to escape.
Her mother’s extensive network of contacts had helped engineer the escape, but it was the events that came after—including the kidnappings of Claudia’s nephew and then Mac just last month—that had proven just what sort of people her mother had surrounded herself with.
Her brother Knox had spent a tense time in an emotional standoff that started with Cody’s kidnapping and ended in the death of one of Livia’s minions. Although her nephew was back, safe and unharmed, neither Claudia nor her siblings had fully rested easy since. The fact that the kidnapping had been the byproduct of an old enemy of her mother’s, using the boy as a pawn to get money Livia would never have paid, had only added to the horror of the situation.
And Mac. Her heart still leaped into her throat at the thought they’d nearly lost him. Livia’s cruelty—and the pain she’d exacted on her third husband—had contributed to the man’s plot against Mac. Thank God they had him back, safe and sound. And through it all, Maggie and Thorne had found each other, as well. A challenging way to begin any relationship, but one that was firm and solid all the same.
One that had also reinforced another truth. Her family needed her and she needed them. And with her mother’s disappearance going on nearly four months, she couldn’t deny her fervent hope the woman would never come back. Livia’s disappearance would finally give them all much-needed peace.
The prison break had proven her mother had established her influence far and wide. But the one thing, if she knew her mother at all, was that there was little Livia Colton wouldn’t do to avoid going back to prison.
Life was calmer without her mother’s presence. That had been as true ten years ago as it was now. And in the months she’d been back in Shadow Creek, she’d had the opportunity to reforge bonds with her siblings. To build an even closer one with Mac. He was still the most wonderful father figure and her time away hadn’t changed their relationship.
Claudia ran a hand down the pale silk of Maggie’s gown, the subtle fall of material plunging from the bodice in a dramatic, almost Grecian sweep. The suggestion of a goddess fit Maggie to a T and her future sister-in-law had been in love with the design from the start.
Now to stop woolgathering and finish it.
She settled her coffee on the edge of her station, far away from any material, and focused on today’s work.
The bustle.
Claudia ran her fingertips over the silk, gathering large folds and pinning them to the areas she’d premarked with small pins. Fold by fold, the bustle came together, the elegant weight forming and reshaping the gown in her hands.
What felt like only moments later Claudia heard a different sort of bustling behind her. “Oh. Oh, wow.”
She turned to find Evelyn Reed, employee number two of Honeysuckle Road and the woman Claudia fondly thought of as her partner in crime.
“What do you think?” She took a few steps back and reached for her coffee, frowning when she realized it had gone cold.
Evelyn already had a fresh cup out of a holder, extended in Claudia’s direction. “I think Thorne’s eyes are going to pop out of his head. We haven’t had a bride this bedecked in Shadow Creek since the Thompson wedding of 2001.”
“Sugar Thompson?”
“One and the same.” Evelyn nodded, walking around the dress, her gaze sharp as she took in the gown from head to toe.
As Claudia recalled, Sugar Thompson’s marriage hadn’t lasted long, nor had union two and three. Last she’d heard the woman was off to California to make her name in Hollywood and Claudia hoped Sugar found what she was looking for.
Shadow Creek wasn’t for everyone. Hell, she’d believed herself well and gone, so it was a surprise to realize how the town was growing on her as an adult.
“Claudia?”
“Hmm?” Claudia looked up from her musings, unwilling to even mention Sugar’s failed marriages in front of the dress. “You see anything I missed, Eagle Eye?”
“Not a single thing. This dress is amazing. The only worry is that Thorne’s not going to make it through the ceremony once he sees his bride coming toward him in this. Between the wedding and Maggie’s pregnancy, Thorne has been floating about five feet off the ground.”
“I could say the same about his daddy and the dress you’re going to wear.”
Evelyn’s dark skin flashed with a decided blush as she busied herself once again around the dressmaker form. Claudia had recently settled in on the idea that Evelyn needed to make a move on Mac—or at least show her interest—but Evelyn had remained steadfast in her reticence.
&n
bsp; “My dress is age and station appropriate.” Evelyn’s voice was muffled behind the dress, where she bent over to inspect the bustle.
“What station is that?”
“A widow in her fifties with two grown children, two grandchildren and one more on the way.”
Claudia tapped her friend on the shoulder and waited until Evelyn stood, her petite frame still only reaching Claudia’s shoulder. Waited another moment until Evelyn looked her in the eye.
“You’re a beautiful, vibrant woman who deserves to be happy. Joseph Mackenzie is an amazing man. He practically raised me.”
Evelyn rested a gentle hand against Claudia’s cheek. “A ringing testament to just how amazing he is.”
“Amazing.” Claudia laid her hand over Evelyn’s before going in for the kill. “And as stubborn and shy as you. I swear, the sparks practically erupt when you two get within ten feet of each other.”
Evelyn dropped her hand and busied herself with putting her keys into her purse. “We saw each other once.”
“Twice, including the day Mac stopped in here to drop off lunch.” Claudia popped the lid on the fresh cup of coffee. “There were sparks, I tell you.”
“Old people don’t shoot off anything but gas.” Evelyn wagged a finger as if to emphasize her point before she beelined toward the front counter. “Sparks are for the young.”
Claudia wasn’t so sure about that but she was a woman who knew when and how to pick her battles. Even better, she knew how to bide her time.
She might be stuck in the middle of her own personal dry spell, but there was no way she was giving up on making Evelyn and Mac see just how perfect they were for each other.
* * *
Hawk Huntley tossed a six-dollar tip down on his nine-dollar breakfast at the Cozy Diner and figured he’d still gotten a damn fine deal. The hearty steak and eggs would hold him nearly all day, but it was the side of gossip that had proven even more filling than the prime Texas beef.
He’d arrived in Shadow Creek the night before last and was surprised by how quickly the town gossips were willing to bend his ear. In his experience, most small towns protected their own, but one mention of the Colton family and he got an earful.
