The Colton Ransom

by Marie Ferrarella

  He also believed that if anything could go wrong, it did. What that meant in this case was that most likely, Avery’s mother was not going to come back for her. Which, in turn, meant that he was going to be stuck with a baby unless he could figure a way out of this situation.

  Right now, he was thinking about giving her up for adoption. She stood a better chance with parents who wanted her and were willing to learn what it took to take care of her. He didn’t have the time or the patience—or the financial fortune—to raise a kid.

  It took Gabby a couple of moments to figure out what the man was saying to her.

  Rather than take offense at his tone, she smiled and said, “Yes, actually my ‘horses’ do come back to the stable,” she said, using his metaphor. “But then,” she continued, deliberately smiling as widely as she could, “I just take them out for another ride.”

  He shook his head. “It figures,” he snorted. The woman was clearly flighty. What did she know about life—or hardship? But then, he supposed there was something almost admirable about her rabid determination to remain so upbeat in the face of everything—including the self-centered, wounded-bear of a father she had. Living in the Colton family was no easy feat.

  “You put the kid to bed in my room?” he asked.

  Faye Frick, the Colton’s head nanny for the past couple of decades, had unearthed an extra crib for Avery and had it brought to his room.

  Faye had a way of looking out for all of them, he recalled fondly, though his expression never changed. He cared about Faye a great deal.

  Years ago, the widow had taken it upon herself to raise him when his own father, a former wrangler at Dead River, had dumped him and taken off for parts unknown. He’d been all of fourteen at the time and determined to live on his own, although the state had other ideas about the way he would spend his next four years. He would have been swallowed up by the system if it hadn’t been for Faye.

  Consequently, he had always had a soft spot in his heart for the older woman, but it still didn’t mellow his rather abrupt way of interacting with all the other people around him.

  “Actually, no, I didn’t put her in your room,” Gabby replied.

  His dark brows narrowed as his eyes bored into her. “Where did you put her to bed?” he asked, even as he told himself it really didn’t matter where the kid was sleeping, as long as she wasn’t here, hollering in his ear.

  Gabby couldn’t help looking rather pleased with herself for having thought of this. “I thought I’d treat your daughter to a nap in Cheyenne’s crib—in her nursery,” she specified, just in case Trevor didn’t make the connection right away.

  The man might be head of security, but she suspected that incidental details like cribs with canopies and specially decked-out nurseries were completely under his radar.

  “You didn’t think the one she has was good enough?” he asked.

  Trevor’s sharply worded question caught her completely by surprise. He was unnerving her again, she realized, and she’d almost stepped back, away from the scowl she saw looming over his brow.

  She had to stop that. Stop avoiding confrontation. She was a Colton and she would be running that center for troubled teens soon enough. They weren’t all going to tiptoe around her just because she was trying to do something decent and charitable for them. They would come on angry and resentful at times—just as this man was doing right now.

  If she didn’t learn how to stand up to him and stand up for herself, then she might as well pack it in right now, Gabby reasoned. She had to learn not to come across as a spineless wimp.

  Her voice quavered at first, but it took on strength as she continued to speak. “I meant no disrespect, Trevor. But Cheyenne’s nursery looks like something a princess would sleep in, and I thought it would be an uplifting change of scenery for Avery to take her nap in that room.”

  “And you really think she’s supposed to notice the difference?” he asked incredulously. “At three months?” Trevor pressed, emphasizing the ludicrousness of her thought process.

  Gabby refused to back down. “Maybe,” she countered, adding, “Subconsciously.”

  “Yeah, right,” he all but jeered.

  And then Trevor stopped abruptly, taking stock of what he was saying. He supposed, in her own way, the Colton woman meant no harm and probably thought she was doing a good deed. From what he knew of her—and had heard—it wasn’t in the youngest of the Colton women to thumb her nose at the difference in their stations in life.

  Handing over her niece, he murmured, “I didn’t mean to go off on you like that. I grew up not having much. There were those who liked to rub my nose in it. I guess that made me kind of thin-skinned when it comes to certain things.”

  Her heart instantly ached for the boy he had once been.

  “Well, I was not trying to rub your nose in anything,” she told him in a voice that all but throbbed with compassion, even as Gabby stated her case assertively.

  “Yeah, I know,” he told her in a low voice that was utterly devoid of any indications of emotion. “And if the kid could notice her surroundings, she’d probably not want to come back to the room she has,” he acknowledged. “Most likely it definitely isn’t anywhere near as fancy as your niece’s.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Gabby said in a firm voice he couldn’t remember ever hearing come out of her mouth. “There are a lot more important things in life than pretty bedrooms and fancy cribs. They certainly don’t make up for the lack of a parent’s love,” she maintained.

  Gabby was admittedly thinking of her own situation. Her mother had just taken off one day, abandoning her and her sisters without so much as a backward glance while her father, whom she stubbornly loved even though at times the man definitely did not deserve it, had a very hard time showing any of them so much as a thin sliver of affection.

  And while she, Catherine and Amanda didn’t lack for anything material, emotional connection with a parent was a whole different story. There were times when she felt almost starved for a display, no matter how small, of parental approval. It was, she felt, what a lot of kids strove for—and what they grew up missing. It was what made her so eager to help underprivileged kids.

  Belatedly, Gabby read between the lines. “Does this mean you’ve made up your mind to keep her?” she wondered out loud, asking the question with a degree of excitement that unsettled him.

  There she went, off on another tangent, he thought in barely restrained annoyance. Why couldn’t the woman just take things at face value instead of making mountains out of molehills?

  “It doesn’t mean anything at all,” he told her in a flat, distant voice. “I was trying to be polite and apologize. Don’t look for any hidden meanings in that—because there aren’t any. Why are you grinning?” he asked. Was she laughing at him?

  Her grin only grew wider, as if she were harboring a secret and he didn’t have the first clue what it was. “You come on all mean and tough,” she told him, “but deep down inside, there’s this other layer—”

  “—that’s just as mean and just as tough,” he concluded with finality. Placing a wide palm on each armrest, he pushed himself out of his chair and to his feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got rounds to make. With the ranch this empty, it would be a perfect time for some yahoos to come barging in and try to steal something or do something they shouldn’t.”

  Holding the sleeping infant to her cheast, Gabby put a protective hand around Cheyenne and looked at him, a little of her smile fading. Up until now, she’d felt incredibly safe here at home. Now he was giving her cause if not for alarm, then at least for concern.

  “You really think there’s something to worry about?” she asked.

  He shrugged, his wide shoulders rising and falling in an asymmetrical movement. “Better safe than sorry, I always say. The guy next door isn’t looking to ‘love his neighbor.’ He’s looking to take advantage of his neighbor, maybe steal from him if that neighbor happens to be rich—li
ke you and your family,” he added pointedly.

  The expression on his face left no room for argument.

  She did anyway. It had never been in her nature to accept pessimism at face value. “That’s a horrible way to look at life,” she protested.

  “Horrible?” He pretended to consider the word, then dismissed it with a “Maybe.” Trevor said the word for her sake. He didn’t consider it horrible at all. To him, it was just the way life was. “But realistic?” he continued. “You bet. The sooner you wrap your head around that, Miss Colton, the sooner you’ll be able to come face-to-face with reality.”

  Gabby raised her chin. “I don’t like your reality, Mr. Garth.”

  He surprised her by saying, “Me neither. But that doesn’t change the facts as I see them,” he told her.

  “If that’s what you think, then it’s no wonder you’re always scowling,” she told him.

  “Wasn’t aware that I was,” he lied. “Now, you got anything else you want to tell me, or can I go on my rounds?”

  “Only that it wouldn’t hurt you to try to change your attitude a little, look on the bright side once in a while.”

  “I will when they get a little brighter,” he answered, picking up his Stetson from his desk.

  “They?” she questioned.

  “The bad guys,” he clarified, then added, “The ones I’m providing your family security against. Your rosy world would be real to me if these guys went away.” He brought the irony full circle.

  Gabby sighed and tried one more time, feeling as if there were more at stake here than just winning a philosophical argument. She had the distinct impression that the state of his soul was in play here.

  Trevor just couldn’t be satisfied being this disgruntled, this dark in his outlook, in his take on life, she thought. Could he?

  There had to be a way to get through to him, to get him to come around, even if only a little, to her mind-set. There just had to be.

  To that end, Gabby began racking her brain to find it.

  “Maybe there aren’t as many bad guys as you think,” she told him, adding that she needed just a little more time to get this right and convince him, bring him around to her way of thinking—or at the very least, a little closer to her way of thinking.

  “And maybe there are a lot more of them than you think,” he countered. His eyes seemed to pin her in place for a moment, leaving her nowhere to turn away. “Did you ever consider that?”

  Rather than cave, she answered firmly, “No,” as she tossed her head for emphasis.

  “Didn’t think so,” he muttered under his breath as he tipped the brim of his hat to her. With that, he left the room.

  “There goes one unhappy man, Cheyenne,” she murmured softly to the baby in her arms.

  Cheyenne just continued sleeping. The baby didn’t know how lucky she was.

  Chapter 3

  He supposed, in an odd sort of way, he had to admire the youngest Colton woman, Trevor thought approximately an hour later as he started to head back to his office once again.

  Dumb though the subject of her focus seemed to him, Gabriella Colton did appear to know what she wanted, what she believed in.

  And, more impressively, she’d actually stood up to him rather than cave in the face of his disapproving judgment of those beliefs she held so dear.

  Not all that many people actually stood up to him when push came down to shove. He had a way of making people back off without his having to resort to physical action. Just his attitude—coupled with a dark, contemptuous scowl—usually did the trick.

  Despite her soft, attractive appearance, Gabby Colton was one hell of a feisty female; he’d have to give her that.

  Now, as far as being smart, well, that was a whole different story, Trevor mused as he made his way back across the grounds.

  How the hell she could believe in goodness and light when she was surrounded by all sorts of wheelers and dealers, not to mention people like her old man, a black-hearted, womanizing devil if ever he’d come across one, was just beyond him.

  Granted, there were good people here on the ranch, like Faye, who’d raised him when there was nothing in it for her beyond being guilty of a good deed, and like her sister Amanda, the baby’s mother, whose only sin was letting herself be sweet-talked by the wrong guy.

  But then there were people around like her father’s third ex-wife, Darla, and Darla’s two adult kids from some previous marriage, Tawny and Trip. All three were worthless parasites, one worse than the other, in his opinion.

  He still couldn’t figure out why the old man allowed those three to stay on. Ordinarily, he would have expected Jethro to send all three of them packing the second the ink had dried on the divorce papers—ending a marriage that had barely managed to pass the one-year anniversary. Instead, the old man had set the trio up to live in one of the extended wings.

  Trevor laughed shortly. That kind of thing clearly smelled of blackmail to him. Which meant one of the three—most likely Darla—had something to hold over the boss’s head—which in turn meant that the old man had done something pretty damn bad.

  Not that that surprised him.

  The lot of them, Darla, Tawny and Trip, weren’t worth even a plugged nickel. They just didn’t fit in with the rest of them. All three of them looked as if they’d been transplanted from some bad, made-in-one-afternoon movie about grifters. They reminded him of vultures, circling carrion and just waiting for it to die so they could swoop down and tear off its flesh. He didn’t trust any of them any farther than he could throw them. Less. And yet there was starry-eyed Gabby, not just talking about starting up a center for troubled teens but actually working toward that goal and trying to convince the old man to have the center built right here, converting an old barn he had on his property.

  That kind of drive either took an absolute fool—which he didn’t think Gabby was—or it took someone who saw only the good in people.

  He figured it had to be the latter.

  That made her too good to deal with the likes of the majority of the people living on or around the Dead River Ranch.

  Frowning, Trevor shrugged away the thought. This was way too complicated for him to sort through, and it was pointless to waste his time that way. It was what it was, and besides, he had his own dilemma to untangle and come to grips with, namely what to do with the kid he was suddenly saddled with.

  If he experienced any parental stirrings toward her—she was rather cute when she wasn’t crying—he banked them down. He—and more importantly, she—couldn’t afford to have them. It just wasn’t in the little girl’s best interest to remain here, so there was no sense in allowing himself to feel anything at all for her.

  There was no doubt in his mind that he would make a really poor father, and a kid needed a father—and a mother, too, something else he couldn’t give Avery. As far as he saw, the only logical conclusion to be reached was that Avery needed to be adopted and raised by someone other than him—preferably two “someones.”

  In the interim, maybe he should get over his pride, stop trying to handle this on his own and ask Faye for help, Trevor thought. She’d always been the sensible one, stable even when everything else looked as if it was just going to hell in the proverbial hand basket. She’d stepped right in not just in his case, but also when the Colton girls’ mother, Mandy, decided to take off, leaving the ranch—and them—ten years ago. It was Faye who made sure they didn’t lack for attention, didn’t feel abandoned. Faye would know what he needed to do to ensure that Avery was not just looked after, but well taken care of, too.

  After all, he didn’t just want to dump the kid. None of this was her fault. She hadn’t asked to be born, right? Trevor reflected silently. Just like he hadn’t asked to become a father.

  Life had a way of making things happen, but he didn’t have to just stand there and take it. There had to be options, decent options, he reasoned, in order to make things right.

  He and Faye would find Avery a goo
d home and that would be the end of it.

  With his game plan roughly in place, Trevor went into his office. There was some paperwork he still needed to catch up on. It was his least favorite thing to do, but he decided that he might as well utilize the peace and quiet he found himself in while it lasted. He’d be listening to Avery howl soon enough.

  * * *

  Trevor glanced at his watch and realized that at this point he’d had over two hours of sweet silence and freedom from the daunting burden of fatherhood. He wasn’t exactly eager to get caught up in it again, but on the other hand, he’d never been one to shirk his responsibilities, no matter how oppressive or annoying they might be.

  Maybe he’d be lucky and Avery would still be sleeping, although he sincerely doubted it. In the short time he’d had the infant, he couldn’t remember a single instance when Avery had slept more than ninety minutes at a clip, much less over two hours. To expect that it could go on indefinitely was just plain wishful thinking on his part and completely unrealistic.

  Trevor sighed as he pushed himself away from his desk and squared his shoulders. Time to face the music.

  Literally.

  Since Gabby was so good with kids and didn’t seem to mind being around them, maybe he’d see if he could get her to volunteer her services again—soon. Oh, he wouldn’t come out and actually ask her to mind Avery for him, but if he happened to show up somewhere in her vicinity and Avery was howling like last time, he had a pretty good hunch that Gabby would take it upon herself to put the kid—and him—out of their misery and just take over. She wasn’t the type to leave well enough alone or ignore a situation that needed remedying. He figured she had what they called a type A personality and just couldn’t help herself when it came to taking over.