Colton 911--Guardian in the Storm

by Carla Cassidy

  “I think he’s asking about her hip, not the ongoing argument we were having with her about her going to a rehab center once this is all finally behind us,” Nash told Aaron.

  “Rehab center?” Damon echoed. He hadn’t even thought that far ahead. He was just worried about her immediate condition. “Just how bad is Mom?” he asked, looking from one brother to the other. He had gotten no details.

  “Not as bad as Aaron is making it sound,” Nash told Damon.

  It was obvious to them that their undercover DEA agent brother had come here straight from his assignment without bothering to take the time to change out of what he was wearing. Because of his attire and his rather long hair, Damon was getting some very suspicious looks from the security guard. The latter had made it a point to slowly circle the area. For his part, Damon gave the impression of a man on the move who appeared to be less than trustworthy. That was his main intent when he was on the job.

  It was all part of the role he was playing.

  But role or no role, Damon, like Nash and Aaron, dearly loved the woman who had been mothering and caring for them equally all these years, whether or not they had actually come from her womb.

  Aaron took over the narrative. “The short version is that Mom was in a hurry—as she always is—and she slipped on a wet spot on the floor. According to her, she went down hard, and much to her everlasting annoyance, she wound up breaking her hip,” he told Damon, repeating verbatim what he had already told Nash when his architect brother had shown up at the hospital shortly after Aaron and their mother had arrived.

  Damon, who faced down dangerous drug dealers without batting an eye, physically winced when he heard Aaron’s narrative.

  “Wow, that really must have hurt. Is she going to be all right?” he asked, looking from one brother to the other for reassurance.

  Aaron nodded. “The hip replacement went off without a hitch. No complications,” Aaron told him. The relief was all but palpable in his voice.

  Damon had been holding his breath the entire way here, not knowing what to think. He’d never been summoned to the hospital because of his mother before. He breathed a sigh of relief now. “Is she awake? Can I see her?” he asked.

  Aaron had just waylaid a nurse moments before Damon had arrived, questioning her for an update. “The nurse said that she was still in recovery. We can see her when they finally transfer her to a room,” he told his DEA agent brother.

  Damon nodded. And then he thought of what his brother had said to him when he first inquired about their mother’s condition.

  “You said something about her being ornery,” he recalled. “What did you mean by that?”

  “When I first got to the house and found her after her fall, it kind of got to me,” Aaron admitted. “I guess I lost it and told her she needed to move into a smaller house, not one that was sprawled out on three levels.” He flushed. It wasn’t his finest hour. “Needless to say, that didn’t make her very happy.”

  “Oh hell, Aaron, you should have known better,” Damon told him. “You know how independent Mom is. She has more energy and acts younger than women who are half her age. Saying something like that to her is like rubbing salt into her wounds.”

  Nash nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you definitely said the wrong thing, brother,” he told Aaron, then softened his words. “For all the right reasons,” he granted. “But it was still the wrong thing.”

  Aaron sighed. “I know, I know,” he admitted. “But be that as it may, when Mom finally gets to go home, there are going to have to be some changes made—whether she likes them or not.” Aaron had always been the decisive one in the family and now was no different than before. “She’s going to need a nurse or some live-in help. Maybe both,” he added, looking from one brother to the other to see if they understood.

  For once, they were all in agreement.

  “No argument,” Nash told Aaron. “Whatever the cost, we can take care of it.”

  “You can count me in,” Damon said, adding his vote to the others.

  “Cost isn’t the issue here,” Aaron told his brothers. “Whatever it is, it is. The problem, we all know, is getting Mom to agree. You know she’s going to see this as a restriction.”

  As if on cue, all three brothers nodded their heads. Their mother was a fighter from the get-go, and knowing her, it was going to be a very steep, uphill battle to get Nicole Colton to loosen her grip on the reins of her life and actually listen to her sons. Even if she knew that their only concern was her safety.

  Easier said than done, Aaron thought as he saw the operating room nurse head straight in their direction.

  All three brothers rose to their feet in unison as if they were all joined at the hip.

  And all three had their fingers crossed as they went to meet the nurse partway.

  A single thought was going through their heads. Nicole Colton had to be all right. Anything less was just not acceptable to the brothers.

  * * *

  “No, no, no,” Nicole told her oldest son in no uncertain terms.

  It was five days since the accident had happened. Five days since the emergency hip replacement surgery had taken place. Rather than the standard surgical procedure, she had gotten the more superior “anterior-posterior repair” version. That version of the surgery allowed her to heal faster. But not even her surgeon had expected her to make this much progress, certainly not so quickly, even though she was exceedingly fit, especially for someone her age.

  Her surgery had taken place on Wednesday. On Friday she went home and, over all three sons’ rather loud objections, Nicole had actually walked up the stairs to her room. She had totally ignored her sons’ complaints about her doing too much too soon.

  As she crossed the threshold to her bedroom, Nicole felt as if she had just reclaimed a little of her life back. She was not about to give that up, not even to placate her sons.

  The chorus of noes she had just uttered was in response to yet another attempt on Aaron’s part to talk her into having a nurse come and live with her until such time as they felt she had recovered.

  “Aaron, I don’t need a nurse,” she informed her son. “I can walk up the stairs. You saw me. If I can do it on the first day I came back, I can do it on the second. And the third,” she emphasized. “That means I can take care of myself the way I always have,” she proudly concluded. “I don’t need someone keeping tabs on me.”

  Aaron tried again. “Mom, getting someone to stay here with you isn’t an admission of weakness. And it doesn’t have to be a nurse,” he relented, although he really didn’t want to. He felt like a man who was struggling to win at least a portion of the battle before the war was declared officially over. “It can even be a competent paid companion.” Although he really would prefer that person to be a nurse. “Think of her as being just a warm, intelligent body who can step in to help you out if the need should come up.”

  By the expression on her face, he could see he wasn’t getting anywhere with his mother, and after spending basically two weeks away from the gyms he ran, Aaron really felt that he needed to get back to work. “Look, Mom, if you refuse to do it for yourself—”

  She smiled at that. “Now you get it,” Nicole told him happily.

  But Aaron wasn’t about to be detoured. “Do it for me,” he concluded.

  Nicole stared at her son in disbelief. “You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, I’m very serious,” Aaron assured her. He was accustomed to being listened to without any argument at the gyms he ran as well as with the boxers he trained. This, however, was going to take diplomacy, a gift he hadn’t quite developed. He gave it another shot. “Look, Mom, you are very precious to me. To all of us,” he stressed. “Now, you had an accident. Granted, we didn’t lose you, but we could have if the circumstances had been different.

  “Think of this as putting our minds at rest,”
he told her. “Nash has a job to do, I have a business to run and Damon, well, if Damon doesn’t keep his mind clear and focused on his work, it could very well wind up costing him his life.” Unwavering, Aaron went in for the “kill.”

  “You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

  “Of course not,” she cried with feeling. “But,” she countered, “I also don’t want to become an invalid by just surrendering my independence to set everyone’s mind at rest, either. We need a compromise.”

  Aaron sighed. Determined, he gave it one last try. “Okay, the way I see it, Mom, hiring someone to help you is a compromise.”

  Nicole met her son’s eyes head-on. “Not hiring anyone would be an even better way to go,” she pointed out.

  “Mom,” Aaron said. There was a warning note in his voice. He was reaching the end of his patience. “This is as far as I’m willing to give in. Now until the doctor gives you the ‘all clear,’ you are going to need someone to be here with you when I can’t be and you are going to have someone. The way I see it, you can either pick out that someone yourself, or I will do it for you,” Aaron said. “Your choice.”

  Nicole frowned. “I don’t really feel like I have a choice.”

  “Trust me, you do,” Aaron told her. “Because if you don’t make a choice here,” he repeated, “I will.” Standing over her like this, he knew he was being intimidating—but apparently she needed that. This, he told himself, was for her own good—not to mention his own peace of mind. “So what’s it going to be?”

  Nicole thought of the young woman she had met and talked with during her first physical therapy sessions at the rehab facility. She had taken an instant liking to Felicia Wagner, a perky, friendly and fresh-faced young woman who was working at the facility part-time.

  Nicole smiled as she raised her eyes to her son’s. “I think I know a young woman who would be willing to take on the job.”

  “Ah, finally. Progress,” Aaron declared with a sigh. “Why don’t you give this lady a call? Whatever she wants to be paid—within reason,” he stipulated, not wanting to be taken advantage of, “just say yes. And don’t concern yourself with the cost. I’ll take care of it.”

  Nicole shook her head. “You’re a good son, Aaron, but I can take care of my own bills.”

  He dearly loved this woman, but there were times when his mother could be exasperatingly pigheaded. “Mom, everything doesn’t have to turn into a tug-of-war. I’m making the request and I’m paying for it. End of discussion,” he told her. And then, looking at her face, he added, “Okay?”

  A gracious smile rose to his mother’s lips as she obligingly nodded her head. In her opinion, she had won. “Okay.”

  Relieved that this argument had finally been put to bed, Aaron bent over and kissed his mother’s forehead. “That’s my girl,” he said with genuine relief.

  He knew how much it had to cost his mother to give in this way. She had always been the last word in independence and for her to agree to have someone come in and stay in the home she considered to be her domain for so many years was a huge deal.

  He had to admit that part of him wasn’t prepared to win this confrontation so easily. Obviously, playing the “do it for me” card seemed to have really worked wonders, he thought, congratulating himself.

  But he wasn’t going to overanalyze it. That kind of thing was for working with the fighters who came to him for guidance and training. His analysis kept them alive and moving up the championship ladder. But this was about his mother and he knew better than to be anything but really, really grateful she had stopped fighting him on this and had just agreed to do as he had suggested.

  Right now, it was time to get his mind back on running his gyms. The boxers who sought out his particular gyms weren’t there because of the showers and the state-of-the-art weight equipment he had stocked. They were there to gain insight into his specific training methods as well as the host of other amenities that he could offer them.

  “Do you want me to put in that call for you?” he asked his mother.

  As she was already making plans in her mind, her son had managed to lose her. “To who, dear?” Nicole asked, admittedly somewhat confused.

  He began to wonder if she had been putting him on after all. “To this person you said you would be willing to have come stay with you until you’re ready to be on your own,” Aaron explained to his mother, enunciating every word.

  Because she loved him, Nicole smiled indulgently. “I still know how to make a phone call, Aaron.”

  “Then you have her number,” he assumed. He knew he was treating his mother like a child and she was going to resent it even if she didn’t show it, but he needed to have all this spelled out so he was sure that she was going to do as he asked and not find some way to wiggle out of it.

  “Yes, dear, I have her number,” she answered patiently. She didn’t roll her eyes, but it was there in her voice.

  “Good. I can make the arrangements,” Aaron offered again.

  This time, his mother did roll her eyes. “Aaron, I said I would take care of it. There may come a day when you will have to take care of me,” Nicole told her son, “but—much as I appreciate the thought—that day is not today.”

  “Okay, I get that,” he allowed, looking at the situation from her point of view. “But I still want to meet this ‘caretaker,’” he stressed.

  “And you will, dear—once she accepts the job and has gotten accustomed to staying in this ‘barn of a house,’ as you referred to it in the hospital. But for now, just let me handle this my way.”

  He wasn’t about to back away from this totally. “Will I be meeting her soon?” he asked.

  Maybe it was the spill she had taken and the hip fracture that had resulted, but Nicole found that her patience seemed to be in shorter supply than it normally was.

  Still, she managed to tell her oldest, “Yes, you will be meeting her soon. Felicia is a very sweet, accommodating young woman, so I’m sure she would be willing to put up with your scrutiny.”

  Aaron nodded. “Felicia.” he repeated, rolling her name over on his tongue. “Pretty name.”

  “If her name was Maude, would that disqualify her from the position?” Nicole asked, amused.

  “No, I just—” Aaron paused, realizing what his mother was doing. “You’re yanking my chain, aren’t you?”

  “With both hands, dear,” she answered, flashing a wide smile. “Now, don’t you have a life to get back to?” she asked him. “A life that you’ve been away from much too long?”

  “Nothing is more important than you, Mom,” he answered honestly.

  “I appreciate that, dear,” she told him. “But I have taken you away from that gym you worked so hard to get up and running long enough, not to mention the other gyms you’re overseeing. Remember, guilt is not helpful for my recovery,” Nicole stressed.

  “Point taken.” There was that independence of hers, rearing its head again. “But I still don’t want to leave you alone in the house.”

  She looked at him, knowing exactly what was going on in his head. “I’m not going to fall again,” she informed him.

  “I wasn’t worried about that,” he answered a bit too quickly.

  He was lying, she thought. “Yes, you were. You have a tell, Aaron,” Nicole said, leaning forward. “When you’re not being completely truthful, you get this little furrow in your brow,” she told him. She flittered her fingertips across his forehead. “Now, you don’t have to stay here and hover over me. If it makes you feel any better, Vita is coming over,” she told him.

  Vita Yates was her former sister-in-law. The two women were very much alike, both having weathered divorces from their respective Colton husbands and survived the dealings of a viper-like mother-in-law who could have very easily run a school for unemployed witches in her spare time. The two women had bonded early on and their relatio
nship only grew stronger as the years went by. They also acted as each other’s support group, providing encouragement when needed most.

  “Aunt Vita?” Aaron asked, surprised. His mother should have told him this to begin with. “You’re sure?” he asked, wanting to make sure his mother wasn’t just trying to get rid of him.

  “Aaron, I broke my hip. I didn’t hit my head and get a brain injury. Yes, I am sure. Now go before I show you what a needy, clinging mother can really be like.”

  He made no move to leave. “When is Aunt Vita coming?” he asked.

  The doorbell rang just then. “Now,” Nicole answered with a smile.

  “Okay, you win this one, Mom,” he said as he went to answer the door.

  “I win them all, dear,” Nicole called after her son with a smile.

  Aaron sighed. He knew she was right.

  Copyright © 2021 by Marie Ferrarella

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Colton’s Covert Witness by Addison Fox.

  Colton’s Covert Witness

  by Addison Fox

  Chapter 1

  Evangeline Whittaker stared down the main street of Grave Gulch, Michigan, and wondered when the whole world had gone sideways. Although her eyes were protected from the early-evening sun by oversize sunglasses and a floppy hat, no amount of shielding her gaze could stop what she saw through the lenses.

  The citizens of Grave Gulch, now protesting outside the city’s police department—a common sight over the past few months, due to an increase in local crime—with signs and heavy shouting, eerily audible even though she was several blocks away.

  Protesting...and the subtle yet unrelenting pressure from the knowledge that a killer was in their midst.

  Although the GGPD was doing its job, people were fed up and anxious by the latest details pouring out of the news cycle. Only, instead of the news showing a random family dealing with a bad situation in a faraway place, this time, it was local. As local as you could get, Evangeline admitted to herself as she stepped aside to allow a couple to walk past her on the sidewalk.