Long ago, he broke her heart.
Now he’d do anything to save her life.
Rafe Colton and Kerry Wilder were inseparable as kids—until Rafe cut Kerry out of his life without explanation. Now a detective, Kerry unexpectedly crosses paths with Rafe again while investigating a deadly shooting. When Rafe discovers she’s also investigating a cold case that puts her in harm’s way, he vows to work overtime to protect her. But can Rafe redeem his betrayal...and keep her safe?
“Tonight...when that shot rang out... When I thought at first that you’d been shot...” She looked at him. She should never have looked at him. “You’re in my heart, Kerry. You’re there. Exactly where you’ve always been. As much as you’ve always been. I just need you to know that.”
For a brief second, her spirit soared. She was young again. With a heart filled with hope and possibility. With plans. With a heart that knew how to dream. And then reality hit. Him standing there in his expensive clothes. In front of a wall filled with her brother’s murder details.
She wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt by Rafe’s defection. And he hadn’t said a word about coming back, either. About being friends in the future.
Because he couldn’t. She got that. He’d been a Colton for too long. His family depended on him. And he on them, too, she figured. Whether he liked that or not.
She wanted to tell him that he was in her heart, too, but that door wasn’t open. Not even a little bit.
* * *
Book two of the Coltons of Mustang Valley
* * *
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Dear Reader,
I’m thrilled to have you join me for book two of The Coltons of Mustang Valley! I love being part of this family, and I hope you feel like you are one of us!
I was an introvert and pretty much a loner growing up. Definitely not one of the popular kids. So when I was asked to tell the story of a woman who’d lost the love of her life because she wasn’t “good enough,” I knew I was up to the task. I love Kerry. She’s had some truly tough times, but she doesn’t let them define her. She doesn’t let them victimize her. Instead, she finds her own strength and creates a life that she loves. And Rafe... Oh, my word, the heir who isn’t really one of them, but gives his whole life to trying... He’s one of those heroes you just take with you when you go.
I hope you’ll enjoy the Colton family as much as the family that is bringing them to you has done so. It takes a tribe to create stories like these, and all of us involved with the Coltons form a bond, working together, during the year it takes us to bring these people to life. We’re very, very happy to have you become a part of us.
Tara Taylor Quinn
COLTON’S LETHAL REUNION
Tara Taylor Quinn
Having written over eighty-five novels, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and is a seven-time RWA RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.
Books by Tara Taylor Quinn
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
The Coltons of Mustang Valley
Colton’s Lethal Reunion
Where Secrets are Safe
Her Detective’s Secret Intent
Harlequin Special Edition
The Daycare Chronicles
Her Lost and Found Baby
An Unexpected Christmas Baby
The Baby Arrangement
The Fortunes of Texas
Fortune’s Christmas Baby
Harlequin Superromance
Where Secrets are Safe
Child by Chance
Mother by Fate
The Good Father
Love by Association
His First Choice
The Promise He Made Her
Her Secret Life
The Fireman’s Son
For Joy’s Sake
A Family for Christmas
Falling for the Brother
Visit the Author Profile page at
Harlequin.com for more titles.
For Rachel Marie. I think of you in all I do and have been reminded through this book that family is forever—the tie that binds is too strong to break. I love you.
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
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Excerpt from Stalked in Conard County by Rachel Lee
Chapter 1
He had to see her. This wasn’t news. Rafe Colton had known for years that he owed Kerry Wilder an explanation for the way he’d cut out on her—on them—abandoning her and their budding love with no warning. Leaving her to face life alone after they’d been friends, best friends, even secret friends, since they’d been old enough to walk and talk.
For years he’d known. And for years, he’d been avoiding her.
For so many reasons. Not the least of which was that he suspected, maybe even feared, that he was still in love with her. He couldn’t be, of course. There was no way the pubescent feelings of youth would carry unrequited into adulthood. And certainly wouldn’t still be incubating in a grown man of thirty-six.
And yet, he’d procrastinated. Which made him not real fond of himself—deep down in the places he rarely visited, at least.
And then, in the middle of the shock that had rocked his whole adoptive family—the Coltons—she’d walked in the room. And in the two days since, he’d been able to think of little else. Payne, his adoptive father, had been shot—was still lying comatose, unchanged since he’d been admitted to the hospital—his oldest brother was the prime suspect in the murder, and Kerry was the detective assigned to the case.
How could that possibly be?
Okay, he knew how. At eighteen, Kerry had left the ranch where they’d both grown up, but she’d returned to Mustang Valley after college. Had joined the police force in the small Arizona town that was home to Colton Oil. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been near Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch since. Probably didn’t know that, unlike the biological Colton heirs, he’d moved out of the family mansion he’d moved into at five, when he’d been orphaned and subsequently adopted by Payne and his first wife, Tessa.
Kerry also wouldn’t know that, instead of moving back into the old foreman’s house he’d lived in until his father had died—which, as a Colton, and CFO of Colton Oil, would have been completely inappropriate—he’d built his own home. The adopted, nonbiological Colton house. Sitting on a stretch of land out of view of the mansion, a flat piece on the other side of a hill close by the barns—the place where he and Kerry used to go play until he was no longer just the foreman’s son and they weren’t allowed
to be seen together anymore. Then it was the place where they hid out, just to be able to see each other.
None of which mattered as the long stretch of two-lane road he’d been traveling through the barren and stark Arizona land gave way to signs of the town ahead. What mattered was that he had to see Kerry.
It wasn’t a mistake that she’d been assigned to investigate his adopted father’s attempted murder. It was fate. Forcing him to do what he should have done long ago. Especially since his adoptive brother Ace, who’d recently been outed as a non-Colton by blood, appeared to be a person of interest to her.
Giving him an excuse to go see her, to talk to her, without raising any eyebrows. Or Payne Colton’s ire. Spoken displeasure, clear lessons that had held Rafe in check where Kerry was concerned for far too many years.
The last admission made him slightly sick. He wasn’t thirteen anymore, ashamed after being caught during his first kiss. He was a man who should have known better then to have let so much time pass. Who should have come clean sooner.
Or at the very least, apologized.
* * *
She could look at the video for the hundredth time. Study it another few hours and still come up with no more than she already knew. Payne Colton’s elegant and luxurious corner office showed up in black-and-white on the security footage. And a tad bit grainy. Made the looking easier for her without the proof of his lavish living so obvious. And identifying his shooter more difficult.
She knew what she knew—very little and not enough—and all the staring in the world wasn’t changing that.
“Kerry! You got a visitor.”
James Donovan, the redheaded officer ten years her junior, was leaning back in his chair to peer into the small office Kerry shared with the department’s only other senior detective, P. J. Doherty. Why Doherty couldn’t have pulled the Colton case she didn’t know, but there you had it. Kerry was stuck with it. Spencer was a sergeant, but he was also a Colton. Just a distant cousin, and not close with his family, but also not appropriate for him to be working the case.
Standing, she nodded to Donovan, shut down her screen, headed out front, and a so-so day got a whole lot worse.
Rafe Colton. CFO of Colton Oil. The boy who’d once been a lowly farmhand kid, like her, on the Colton family’s Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch.
With a backward look at Donovan, letting him know she didn’t appreciate him not giving her any warning, she walked to the small reception area.
Donovan didn’t know about her past with Rafe—as far as she knew, no one did. But he should have given her a heads-up that a member of the Colton family was there. Especially since he’d just been involved in a Colton case himself—helping catch a stalker who’d been after another sibling, Marlowe.
It wasn’t like they handled cases involving billionaires all that often. Or ever. And while the Coltons weren’t the only wealthy family within fifty miles of sleepy little Mustang Valley, they were by far the most prominent. The Colton heir, Ace, was her prime suspect at the moment.
“Mr. Colton.” For anyone else, she’d have held out a hand in greeting. “What can I do for you?”
His head tilted a bit, as though her formal response to his sudden presence in her sphere surprised him. Whatever.
“Can we go someplace and talk?” While his body had changed enormously since the last time she’d stood close to him—filled out, sprouted up—his hair was still the thick blond mass she used to imagine running her fingers through. And those blue eyes... They looked right into her.
“No.” She realized the inappropriateness of the stark response a second too late. “Not really,” she amended. His dark pants, white shirt and tie were all new to her, but fitting for one who’d traded her away for a chance at having finer things. “I assume this is about your father’s case?”
The word father stuck in her throat, but she got it out. Payne Colton might be Rafe’s adoptive dad, but Kerry had known Rafe’s biological father, Carter Kay. Known and loved him, probably as much as Rafe had. The man had taken Kerry’s own father under his wing, and Kerry and her younger brother, too, because they were a package deal.
Carter had been foreman of Rattlesnake Ridge when Kerry’s ranch hand father had been at his lowest point, recovering from the defection of his young wife, struggling to raise two young kids on his own. Tyler Wilder Sr. had been a hard worker until the day he’d died after falling thirty feet into an old grown-over mine in the desert. He’d also been a heavy drinker—mostly when he wasn’t working, which didn’t bode well for Kerry or Tyler Jr.’s home life. He didn’t hit them or scream at them much. He was just too drunk to parent, and sometimes so drunk he needed to be parented. He’d stumble and break things. Said he’d take them places they needed to be, but then couldn’t. Couldn’t always even remember to pay all the bills.
“Please, Kerry, can we talk?”
Again, she shook her head, standing tall and slender in her jeans, oxford shirt and cowboy boots. If she’d known he was coming she’d have done more that morning than throw her long auburn hair—her best trait—up into a ponytail. Ha. If she’d known he was coming, she’d have made an excuse not to be there.
“I don’t have much to tell you,” she said. “Until or unless your...father...comes out of his coma and can answer some questions...”
Not entirely true. The shooter wasn’t going to get away with attempted homicide. Or murder if Payne Colton didn’t pull through. Even if she couldn’t personally stand the man—or his adopted son.
The chief wasn’t in, but two of their three full-time officers were busy behind her. They’d have no reason to pay attention to her discussion with a member of the victim’s family. Unless they, like Rafe, were enamored with the Colton money.
“I’ve been over the security footage from your father’s office,” she offered, mostly to get rid of him. “The shooter can mostly just be seen in shadow and is hunched, so it’s hard to tell much other than he or she is dressed all in black and is wearing a ski-type mask. We don’t have an accurate height measurement of the body, only of the projectile of the bullet. Don’t really even know if it’s male or female, or have any idea of age. Just know that whoever did this is of a lean build. Maybe thin and the clothes add a little weight, but definitely not heavy.”
Sliding his hands in his pockets, Rafe studied her with that potent gaze, and then said, “But you suspect Ace anyway, even though you have no real evidence against him. Because, what, he’s not overweight?”
Okay, good. He was going to let the past go and just play his Colton part, as she was insisting he do. There was no reason for her to be disappointed by that. Or in him.
She didn’t care enough.
“I have to consider what I do know,” she said, ready to show him that while she might not be impressive enough for him in the personal department, she was a damned good detective. One of the best. “His whole life as he’s known it has just been snatched away from him—something we call a stressor. He just finds out he’s not really a Colton and then he threatens...your... Payne, in front of witnesses, telling him he’d regret having just removed Ace as CEO of your billion-dollar company. He admitted to me that he’d made the threat. He had access to Payne’s private office here in town. And has no way to corroborate his alibi.”
“He was at home, in his wing at the mansion, from eight o’clock on—dealing with work he brought home with him.”
So Rafe had become a puppet for the man he now called brother. Spouting family speak.
“Security cameras don’t bear testimony to that. Yet they show two of your other siblings coming in just before nine. You and Asher.” If Rafe had been a suspect, she’d have had to recuse herself from the case. Too bad he wasn’t.
“The system was probably on a momentary lag—it happens. Being set in the middle of thousands of acres of cattle ranch, it’s not like the reception out there is perfec
t. And in the evenings, when most of the ranch hands are in their cabins using the internet, rather than out working, service can get a little sketchy.”
Because, of course, the Coltons had the fancy, wireless camera system, not some independent job with a tape you could actually remove and take with you.
“And I suppose you’ll use that same excuse to explain why there was no digital time stamp to verify that he’d been signed on at home, or to show any work he’d done?”
“He was going over employee files, ones that had been flagged from a recent performance review. He was looking at the physical files, signed documentation, which is why he was doing it at home. He didn’t want anyone walking in on him.”
Which was exactly what Ace and his attorney had told her. Didn’t mean it was true. Only that the family had their story straight.
If only she had some solid forensic evidence, but there were so many people in and out of Payne’s office; they’d found fibers and hairs from a number of people, including Ace, which meant little since he worked there. Rafe did, too. As did other siblings.
If only Ace hadn’t insisted on having his lawyer present when she’d questioned him the other night, she might have been able to get more out of him.
“Your brother sure didn’t tamp down his anger when he was here the other night,” she told Rafe, stumbling over that last word as she met his gaze head on. She’d shown him a dent in her armor and felt like she’d let herself down.
“How would you feel if there’d just been an attempt on your father’s life, you’re dragged away from the hospital where he’s lying in a coma, from the rest of your family, and treated like a suspect?”
She wouldn’t know. Her father hadn’t been murdered. But her brother had. Not that anyone believed her about that yet. Another case she had to solve.
One she was actively working, albeit secretly, and determined to prove.
“Do you want whoever shot Payne to be caught and pay for what he or she did?” She looked him straight in the eye—to show him she could. That he had no hold over her whatsoever.
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