As he walked, the deepening cold gnawed through his clothing, and the pain of his injuries reverberated through his body with each step. Only by focusing every ounce of effort was he able to continue trudging forward, step by step.
He was gritting his teeth, his attention funneled down to the few yards of gravel road before him—so much so that he was startled when an unfamiliar pickup pulled up beside him and the driver’s-side door was suddenly flung open.
“Dylan! Dylan, you’re alive! Thank God!”
Warm arms were flung around him, squeezing him so tightly that he grunted in pain.
“What did he do to you?” Aurora asked. “There’s blood on your face and— Here, get in, where it’s warm. You’re freezing.”
“You came back,” he murmured, his voice shot through with disbelief.
The damp, blue eyes that peered into his shone like crystal in the sunlight. “Of course I had to come back. Joey had you. But what happened? How did you get away?”
“Sh-shot him, maybe killed him,” he said as she walked him to the passenger-side door, “by the eastern gate, where we have the weanlings. I got away but then—wrecked the truck.”
“Here,” she said, opening the door for him. “Let’s get you inside. Then you can tell me what happened on the way to the ranch.”
Nodding, he managed to climb up, groaning as he did. Moments later, she was behind the wheel and shifting into Drive.
“Wait!” he said, pointing up at his face. “Your eyes.”
“Forget about it,” she said. “I’m a lot more worried about you.”
“No, Aurora. You can’t risk drawing any more attention to yourself than you already—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, sounding exasperated as she reached for the small purse she’d been carrying. “I’ll put the contacts back in, if it makes you feel any better.”
As she did so, the heater’s blessed warmth soaked into his flesh, and he asked her, “Where’d you get this truck?”
“Trust me, cowboy,” she said with a grimace. “You don’t want to know.”
He felt the flare of anger, along with his returning strength. “What did you do? And how’d you manage to ditch your shadows?”
“Seems to me I just showed up in time to save you from a very long walk—or more likely, dropping in your tracks and freezing to death. Now, enough about me. Tell me what happened to your head.”
“Somebody kicked me in it with one mighty big boot.” Just mentioning it made him want to be sick. “After he tried to run me down, that is.”
“Is that what happened to your arm?”
He nodded. “Don’t think it’s broken, only scraped up. Ribs might be another story.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“But you’ll never be safe as long as anyone believes you mean anything to me.”
“It’s nobody’s damned business how I feel about you.”
“Someone’s guessed. Somehow, word about us must’ve gotten out to Joey.”
“There is no us,” he said stubbornly. “There can’t be because you’re going back to federal custody, if I have to handcuff you myself and take you back in.”
“Things have changed. My ex-husband’s dead now—murdered in custody. But we’ll talk about our situation later,” she murmured as the mansion came into view.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he responded. “You’re going back where you’ll be safe from your ex’s people, with WITSEC looking out for you. And as for me, I’ll be working on some ranch as far from Colton influence—and the Colton name—as I can get.”
Her gaze swung to meet his, her eyes filled with a compassion that assured him that she’d already guessed the results of the DNA test, that unburdened by the emotional blinders he’d been wearing, she must have realized from the start what he’d refused to see.
What he was refusing to accept, even now.
Chapter 19
It had to be Dylan’s injuries, combined with the shock of learning that he was Jethro Colton’s oldest son, making him look at her so coldly. Making him reject her as strongly as he had.
But as Aurora sat waiting for word from Levi, who had asked her to step outside while he examined Dylan, his words kept echoing through her mind, the finality in them unmistakable.
“You have to understand,” Amanda told her, “he’s just found out that everything he thought he knew about himself was a lie, a lie told to him by a woman he’s grieving all over again. But he’ll come around.... I’m sure of it. With love and patience, he’ll learn to accept that he’s—”
“But he’s right about me,” Aurora answered, tears sliding down her face. “I nearly got him killed. If I stay, how long would it be till someone else comes by and this time kills him, like my father. Or you and your family, for that matter.”
“No one’s going to hurt me or you or Dylan, either,” Amanda insisted. “First of all, the hands found the assassin dead by the gate, and he seemed to have been working alone. And until the mastermind’s in custody, I’ll hire enough additional security to keep you and Dylan and everyone on this—”
“If security were all it took, these attacks on the ranch would’ve ended months ago, right?”
Amanda pressed her lips together, her golden gaze betraying that, much as she would like to argue, the continuing incidents would not allow it.
“Which means Dylan was right. I have to leave again,” Aurora told her. “If I can’t patch things up with the WITSEC program now that my ex-husband’s dead, I’ll have to risk accessing my money so I can—”
“To do that, you’ll have to get out of the country.”
Sighing, Aurora said, “I don’t have a passport, or enough credentials to get one.” She felt exhausted thinking of it.
“We’ll find a way. I’ll help you.”
Aurora stared at her, surprised to hear Amanda suggest doing anything illegal.
With a shrug, Amanda added, “Colton money and connections ought to be good for something. And we’ll get that pickup you hijacked back to its rightful owner, too, along with a substantial compensation for his trouble.”
Aurora threw her arms around her friend. “You’re the best friend a Jersey girl could ever have. You know that?”
She only wished she could risk sticking around long enough to allow Amanda to give her the help she’d offered. But for everyone’s sake, she needed to slip away as soon as she learned that Dylan would be all right.
For with her finally gone for good, maybe he would find a way to make peace with who he was now and embrace his newfound family. And maybe someday she would find some way to forgive herself for all the pain and the heartache she’d caused...even if she never forgot the man she left behind.
* * *
“I don’t know why I bother advising people to go to the hospital,” Levi grumbled as he taped up Dylan’s ribs, hiding the ugly purple knot on his left side. “No one around here listens to me anyway.”
“It’s nothing that I won’t get over,” Dylan said, telling himself that he’d get over leaving the ranch behind, too. But not Aurora, not if he lived to be a hundred years old.
Still, letting her go was the right thing, the only thing he could do. He only prayed she hadn’t blown her last chance by coming back to try to save him.
“If you start coughing up blood, I want you to promise me you’ll tell me. And if you lose consciousness again, I’m calling an ambulance whether you like it or not.”
“I won’t pass out. Trust me, I’ve had worse on the rodeo circuit and the back pastures. I’ll be sore for a few days, but—”
“Weeks,” Levi corrected, “or months, most likely.”
When Dylan didn’t give an inch, the doctor shook his head and gave him a rueful smile. “You’re as stubborn as my father. Our father, I understand.”
Scowling, Dylan said, “So Amanda told you?”
Levi set down the roll of tape and nodded. “My condolenc
es, man. And welcome to the family.”
Awkward as it was with bandages and his right arm sore, Dylan grudgingly accepted the handshake Levi offered before conceding, “Guess you’re about the only one who halfway understands.”
Levi shrugged. “My situation was different. Rough in its own way, though. If I didn’t have Kate here to help me through it—”
“I’m pretty sure she feels the same way about you,” said Dylan, though the thought of their relationship only made him ache to have someone of his own to help him celebrate the good times and share the burden of the bad.
Not just someone, but Aurora—the one woman he could never have.
Just as he would never find his own way to fit into the Colton family. He’d meant what he’d said when he had told her it was high time he moved on. But first, there was one responsibility he couldn’t shirk.
“So how long before I can do this marrow-transplant thing for Jethro?”
Levi frowned. “I’ll tell you what I told Amanda earlier. There’s not going to be a transplant. Not even if Jethro pulls out of this coma.”
“He’s in a coma?”
“Unfortunately, yes. And I’m hampered in how aggressively I treat him. You see, the stubborn old coot had a living will drawn up, forbidding me to give him anything but the most basic palliative treatment to relieve his suffering. He’s done fighting, Dylan.”
“But what if I could cure him? Or my marrow could, I mean?”
“First of all, you’d have to have further testing. There are other markers beyond blood type that would have to be checked out, and who knows if he’d live long enough for any of that to happen. More importantly, I’m telling you, he would refuse it, absolutely. Gabby, Cath and Amanda all imagine they could talk him into changing his mind, but he’s been very adamant with me, and very specific about how he wants things to proceed. You know what he told me, last time that we talked?”
Dylan shook his head.
Levi dropped his voice in an approximation of Jethro’s graveled tone. “He said, ‘I’ve made enough money, done enough deals, loved enough women and lived enough life. Done enough wrong, too, for about a hundred lifetimes. You tell those girls of mine that. You tell ’em all that, if they ask you why, and tell ’em I’d rather go out on my own damned terms if I have to go at all.’”
Dylan snorted, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Sounds like the arrogant old coot, all right. I only hope it won’t be too hard on his daughters.”
“And his sons, too,” Levi said, gently clapping a hand down on Dylan’s shoulder. “Speaking of the devil, I’d better go back upstairs and check in on him. I imagine you could use a little rest now anyway, before the police chief comes by to interview you about the specifics on that dead assassin.”
Nodding, Dylan thanked him, but he was far too keyed up to sleep. So instead, he hauled himself up from the exam table minutes later and dug through a desk drawer until he found a pen and pad of paper. Painful as it was to move, he was determined, knowing this might be his only chance for privacy before he left.
Dear Mr. Colton, he began, thinking it a surreal way to address the man who was—he was still reeling with the shock of it—his father. His biological father, anyway, with no more of a paternal bond with him than Jethro’s stallion Midnight had with the many foals he’d sired.
But that didn’t mean they had no history together, a history marred by Dylan’s growing disgust with the ranch’s caste system and three decades of dealing with Colton’s casual contempt, not only for the employees he was only too happy to remind of “their place,” but for the family he professed meant everything. A family that included three broken marriages, five children—unless his long history of adultery had resulted in other bastards besides Levi—and the kind of “friends” Dylan wouldn’t trust at his back with anything sharper than a crayon. The kind of friends who hadn’t come to visit once since hearing the Colton family patriarch was dying.
Sorry you aren’t well enough to have this conversation man to man, Dylan wrote, wishing he were more at ease with words. But with Jethro now too sick to see him, he reminded himself this was his only shot at saying his piece. If you hadn’t refused to consider a marrow transplant point-blank, I want you to know, I would’ve done it. Not out of pity for you or for the money, either, but I’d help you for Amanda’s sake, and Gabby’s, and Cath’s and Levi’s, too. They’re good people, daughters and a son you should be proud of.
He left the rest unspoken, how Jethro’s adult children had turned out well in spite of, rather than because of, his influence. Because he hadn’t been raised to chase a sick man to his grave with accusations, especially not the employer who’d been his and his mother’s bread and butter all these years. But he kept writing:
It’s too late in the game for us now, too late to try to elbow my way in and claim a name I don’t feel easy with, much less any of your money. Maybe I wasn’t raised as your kid, but I’ve still got enough of you in me to want to make my own way—to build a business and maybe someday a family on my own steam instead of taking something that I haven’t earned.
That’s why I’m leaving Dead River Ranch—and the name I was born with. I’ll have a lawyer draw up papers, and I’ll sign them, giving up any inheritance. After what you said the morning after the fire, I imagine that might surprise you. It isn’t meant to hurt you, though. I only wish you peace.
Peace and a little more time to get things straight with the kids you still have. To tell them that you love them, if you have half as much sense as you have money, and let them tell you back. ’Cause I can tell you, I’d give every dollar in that fat bank account of yours to tell my mother—and by that I mean Faye Frick, not that poor wreck of a drunk woman who ditched us both—that I love her and forgive her and to hold her one last time.
You might want to think on what it is that really matters while you still can. And you might want to do something about it before it’s too late.
He signed the letter with the name that defined the man that he was, not the man he might have been if not for that kidnapping so many years before.
Thinking of that man, he jotted one last note...and passed it to the first person he saw when he stuck his head out into the hallway.
“Would you take this to Hope Woods, please?” he asked, needing to say something to blunt the harshness of his earlier words. Though it would change nothing, he didn’t want her to leave regretting their few stolen hours together, or believing he would ever be sorry they had met.
* * *
As the sun dipped behind the mountains, Aurora’s heart sank even lower. Because as dangerous a refuge as Dead River Ranch had proved, she desperately wanted to cling to what little familiarity she’d found here.
Even more, she wished to hold on to the possibility of a real relationship with Dylan, or at least to interrupt his rest to see for herself how he was before her last goodbye. After what they’d shared in Laramie, she owed him that much, she knew, but earlier, Levi had gently told her and Amanda that Dylan needed rest now—and that he had been adamant that he preferred to rest alone.
“It’s the DNA test, not you,” Amanda had assured her. “I’m sure he’ll come around soon.”
But Levi had only shaken his head and countered, “I’m not so sure he will. But I’ll remind him again you’re waiting after he’s spoken to police chief Peters.”
Aurora had gone back to her room and waited. Waited for hours for an invitation that never came.
It’s better this way anyway, better not to give me a chance to be talked out of doing what I have to. What’s best for us both, in the long run.
Brave as the thought was, a bruised hollow of her heart still felt his silence as rejection. But if it was, so be it, especially if it made their parting easier for him.
It was after ten that night when she slipped downstairs with a small bag containing a few remaining items packed up from her room. There was little enough to account for her short life as Hope
Woods, even less to help her get through whatever came next. But when a person was down to almost nothing, she grasped tightly to what was left.
Even if all that remained were memories—and the need to do right by those she’d come to care for.
With a new bodyguard on his way to the ranch the following morning, Aurora knew Amanda would be upset that she hadn’t waited. Her good friend might even be angry, especially considering the expensive payout she’d negotiated to convince the owner of the stolen truck to call the police and tell them his initial report had been a big mistake.
As for Aurora, she’d find a way to safely pay Amanda back, once she’d made it safely beyond U.S. borders. And she swore that she would find a way to accomplish that goal, too, one way or another.
But first, she had to put some distance between herself and her friend’s good intentions, along with the temptation to turn back to the man who’d nearly lost his life on her account. Closing her eyes, she sucked in a breath for focus, then dredged up the memory of what he’d looked like as he trudged along that cold road, staring blankly as ribbons of blood dripped down his face and arm.
Time to leave him to heal, she told herself, whether it ends up being here or elsewhere.
As she reached the ground floor, she noticed Hilda Zimmerman, pulling a set of car keys from her coat with a tired sigh.
“You’re here awfully late tonight,” Aurora told her. “I thought you usually left for home before dinnertime.”
Hilda grimaced. “With Thanksgiving coming, Mrs. Perkins wants everything cleaned and polished to a shine.”
“You mean the staff still plans to go ahead and have a formal dinner, even with Mr. Colton so ill?”
Hilda drew up with a shocked look. “Why, certainly. We wouldn’t want it to be said that we’re slipping, regardless of the circumstances. But it has been a challenge, especially considering how short we are on qualified staff. Why, even Mrs. Perkins has been scrubbing and rubbing right alongside the rest of us—as bad as her arthritis has been lately. Now, that’s true dedication, unlike some employees I know.”
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