“Mommy!”
Emma’s delighted cry brought Jolie running. T.C. brought Flash to a halt and slid off, the girl in his arms. He found to his surprise he didn’t want to put her down, and hung on until Jolie was there and he could put her safely in her mother’s arms.
“Did you see, Mommy? I was a trick rider!”
Jolie was hugging the girl fiercely, but her gaze was on T.C. “I saw,” she said. “Oh, I saw. Both of you—” she glanced at Flash “—no, all three of you were perfect.”
“You did all right yourself,” T.C. drawled, nodding toward the wrecked car. “Is she...?”
“Just dazed, I think. She’s pretty much pinned in there, though. Don’t really care.”
“Me, either. Recognize her?”
She shook her head.
“She’s the mean lady,” Emma said helpfully, giving a wary glance over her shoulder at the gold car.
“Emma, honey, did she say anything to you?” Jolie asked, smoothing back her tangled hair.
“She yelled a lot. Like mean people do.”
Jolie hugged her tighter. T.C. reached out and cupped the girl’s cheek and said firmly. “And now she’s going to go away where she can’t be mean to you ever again.”
The child considered that for a moment, then nodded and snuggled up to her mother.
T.C. walked over to the car then, where the woman appeared to be coming out of it. Jolie was right, she was trapped by the compressed car door, and although she was aware enough to look at him fearfully, he doubted she was up to trying to climb back to get out through the open window. He’d keep an eye on her, and if she did try, he’d make sure she got exactly nowhere.
He went back to Jolie and Emma and, thinking it might help, gave the child the task of walking Flash around to cool him down after the crazed run. She was delighted at the task, and cooed lovingly at the horse as they walked the short path he’d sketched out for her from the road to a big rock, back and forth.
T.C. made the call to the police. Then they waited.
“I’m sorry about your car,” Jolie said after a moment.
He shook his head. “You did what you had to do, used what you had. Worth more than a car to put her away.”
“How did she find us?” Jolie said it in a musing tone, as if not expecting an answer.
“I have a clue,” he said.
She gave him a startled look. “What?”
“One of our newer hands was talking about a woman who started flirting with him at a bar, after she found out he worked here. Description matches.”
He heard a siren start up in the distance, and guessed a patrol car was on the way to take control of the scene. By then he told Emma Flash was cooled out enough and she could stop.
That was when the girl looked toward the car in the ditch and said, sounding only puzzled, “She knows my daddy.”
Jolie froze. T.C. felt her shock as if it were a physical thing.
“She said that?” T.C. asked gently, when Jolie was clearly unable to speak.
Emma nodded. “She said she was making sure.”
“Of what?”
“That he wouldn’t ever see me.”
Jolie shuddered visibly. “Oh, Emma,” she whispered.
“Don’t care. Don’t want him.” She looked at T.C. “Want you.”
Later, he would swear his heart stopped. It stopped, and when it started again it was a bigger, fuller heart, all because of two small words from a little girl.
Chapter 31
“One of those prison pen-pal romances,” Detective John Eckhart said. “Never understood it myself, but there’s a kind of woman who goes for it.”
Jolie sat silently, the shock of all that had happened in the last twelve hours making the uncomfortable chair barely noticeable. Of all the things she might have expected, learning that the woman was Kevin’s girlfriend was probably the last. She looked at T.C. Her mind was reeling, careening in so many directions at once she felt helpless to even know where to begin to ask any questions.
“When was the last time you saw Oberman?” Eckhart asked.
“The night he walked out,” she said. “The night he found out about Emma.”
Eckhart’s mouth tightened at one corner. “Big man, that one.”
T.C. uttered a term that made Jolie glad Emma was with Officer Wilcox, the patrol officer who had been so kind the day of the shooting. Not that she didn’t think T.C. was absolutely right, but Emma didn’t need to hear it. So she was glad Eckhart had called the woman in when Jolie told him Emma had been okay with her before. Emma had remembered her and gone willingly when she had suggested an ice cream in the department lunchroom.
But Jolie was still bewildered. “But why would Kevin’s girlfriend come after Emma? Kevin never wanted her.”
“She didn’t come after Emma,” T.C. said quietly. “She came after the only witness.”
Jolie’s breath caught. For a moment, so caught up in her panic and focused on what had nearly happened to her precious little girl that she had forgotten exactly what began all this. But now the ramifications tumbled into her mind in rapid succession.
“It was no coincidence that woman looked like you,” T.C. said, his voice so cold it took her a moment to realize he was angry. Very angry.
“She thought...it was me.”
“Yes,” Detective Eckhart said. “Apparently Oberman had started talking about wanting a relationship with his daughter, which obviously would mean being in contact with you.”
“A little late,” Jolie muttered.
“Too late,” T.C. said, in that same icy voice. She had a moment to marvel that such a cold tone could warm her so, but then all she could think about was the awfulness of what had happened.
“That poor woman.” Regret flooded her. “She died for no reason except she looked like me.”
“It’s not your fault, Jolie.” T.C.’s voice was urgent now as he sat beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders.
Before she could slip any further down that rabbit hole of guilt, Detective Eckhart continued in a very brisk, businesslike manner that seemed to help. She supposed he knew that; he’d clearly been at this awhile, and she could hardly be the first thoroughly shaken person he’d had to deal with.
“We’ll match her DNA to what we got from the ski mask you grabbed, but there’s no real doubt. She had all the gear in the trunk of the car. Garbage bag, duct tape, a shovel. Probably wanted it to look like the girl just got lost. Lots of premeditation there.”
Jolie shuddered as the words made clear just how close Emma had come to death. If not for T.C., and Flash, she might have died. Even if she’d managed to stop the car as she had, Emma could have been badly hurt in the crash; she’d had no seat belt on. His dramatic, utterly cowboy rescue seemed even more heroic now. And the fact that he had made Emma feel like she’d done something magnificent herself, making it seem almost an exciting game to the child, meant more to her than she could even find words to express.
“Plus,” Eckhart added, “she had an hour’s drive from where she and Oberman were living to the day care. Lots of time to reconsider. She’s in a whole lot of very deep trouble.”
“So all this was to...what?” Jolie asked, feeling sluggish, like she couldn’t quite grasp it all at the moment.
“Keep him to herself. You and your daughter were competition in her eyes.”
“For Kevin? I’ve not even spoken to him since that night. I only knew he was locked up because I saw it in the news. That’s crazy.”
“She went looking for a romance with a convicted felon while he was still in prison,” T.C. pointed out. “That’s not exactly high on the normal scale.”
“And apparently she started a correspondence with several inmates. Oberman was just the one who got ou
t first.”
Jolie’s breath caught. “He’s out?”
Eckhart nodded. “Six months ago.” He gave her a steady look. “He swears he didn’t know about any of this. And so far, his alibi checks out for the times everything has happened.”
“You’ve talked to him,” Jolie said, starting to feel a little numb.
“He came in voluntarily, once we contacted him. If he did know, he sure threw her under the bus in a hurry. Said it was all crazy, that she was crazy. And he was about to break it off. Which may be what set her off.”
“Do you believe him?” T.C. asked.
“I went at him pretty hard. He never wavered. And his parole officer says he’s been toeing the line since he got out. Working hard at a pretty drudge job, long hours. I don’t usually cut cons much slack, but we both think that on this he’s telling the truth. And he’s scared. She had a gun, he’s a convicted felon. He could be in big trouble if we could prove he knew about it.”
He started to say something more, then stopped himself.
“What?” Jolie asked.
“Nothing factual. Just a feeling, after twenty years of being a cop.”
“What?” T.C. repeated her question.
“I got the feeling, from talking to him, that he’s determined to stay straight. Some talk the game, but my gut tells me he means it.”
“So Emma’s father, the guy with the prison record, is innocent, but his girlfriend, with no record, is guilty?” T.C. asked.
Detective Eckhart’s mouth quirked upward. “Unexpected, but it does happen.”
“He’s not her father,” Jolie said firmly. “He’s never done a thing beyond making a biological contribution.”
“I’m guessing you don’t want to see him, then?”
Jolie blinked. “He’s here? Now?”
T.C. leaped to his feet. “No.” He looked at her. “You don’t have to see him.”
Jolie stood more slowly. “Did he ask for this?”
Eckhart nodded. “He has something he wants to say. But it’s up to you. And he knows that. He said to tell you if you never want to speak with him, he understands.”
Jolie was feeling stunned, her head almost spinning. She wanted more than anything to just grab Emma and run home, now that it was safe.
“Let me talk to him,” T.C. said. Jolie lifted her gaze to his face. His jaw was set in that way she knew so well. “I’ll make things clear to him. That he has no claim on Emma, or you.”
Panic clutched at her throat. She hadn’t thought of that. She looked at Eckhart. “Could he? Come after Emma?”
“Legally he has a claim. I don’t think that’s where his mind is, though.”
“It better not be. If he tries to make a move, he’ll come up against every lawyer Colton’s got. And he won’t find a decent lawyer in the entire city who will touch him. And if that doesn’t stop him, I will. Personally. Unless and until Jolie changes her mind, he gets nowhere near Emma.”
She couldn’t doubt he meant it. Resolve echoed in every word. And she knew in that moment that T. C. Colton was exactly who she’d always thought he was, a man who would do anything for the ones he loved.
Loved.
This at last, out of everything that had happened, both took her breath away and restored her shivering heart to warmth. And that was what gave her the courage to face Kevin.
She stopped dead when she stepped into the small interview room Eckhart led her to. It shocked her. He looked worn, thin, and the thick blond hair he’d been so proud of was getting sparse on top. She did a quick calculation, realized he was only thirty-eight. He looked a decade older. And he looked wary; T.C. had indeed talked to him first without her, and whatever he’d said had clearly been taken to heart.
“I was young and stupid and irresponsible,” he told her. “I had no right to do what I did to you. I’m more sorry than you could ever believe. But I swear, Jolie, I had no idea Lena would do anything like this.”
She came away believing him, as Detective Eckhart had. This was a mere shell of the cocky, pretty boy she’d fallen for, and she didn’t think he had enough energy or drive left in him to do this. She almost felt sorry for him.
Not, however, quite sorry enough to give him access to Emma. Not yet, anyway. And thanks to T.C., if it came to that, she wouldn’t be alone and helpless to fight the system.
“Don’t want him. Want you.”
Emma’s mumbled words echoed in her mind. Like mother, like daughter, she thought.
“Is Art Reagan still around?” she asked Eckhart after Kevin had gone.
Eckhart looked startled. “He’s brass now, a deputy chief over in patrol. Why?”
“He saved me from that,” she said, gesturing toward the doorway Kevin had left through. “Just thinking I owe him more than I ever realized. I’d like to thank him.”
Eckhart smiled. “He’d like that. Sometimes I think he’d rather still be in the trenches than up top.”
“Often the case,” T.C. said with a grin.
“I’ll get your little girl for you,” Eckhart said.
And then they were alone, in an institutional-style room with uncomfortable furniture and carpet tiles designed to last a millennia. But Jolie didn’t care about her surroundings, only the person in them, the one man who had always come through for her, even when she didn’t deserve it.
“You’re quite something, Jolie Peters,” T.C. said. “That’s a nice thing to do, reaching out to that deputy chief.”
“There weren’t that many who helped along the way. I remember the ones who did very well.”
He seemed to hesitate before saying, “And where do I fall on that scale?”
“You aren’t on it.”
For a moment he looked stung, drew back slightly.
“Because,” she said softly, “the numbers don’t go high enough.”
Only when he let out a long, audible breath did she realize he’d been holding it.
It was her turn to hesitate to speak. The rest of her life could be determined by the next few words, and she suddenly didn’t want to say them. But he’d done everything so far, he’d helped them despite what she’d done, he’d understood why she’d done it as she had always hoped he would if he knew the truth. And he’d saved Emma, in dramatic, effective, Texas-cowboy style. He’d done it all, surely she could do this?
In the end, it came out simply, because there really wasn’t anything else to say.
“I love you. I always have.”
It was up to him now. If he told her it was too late, they couldn’t go back, that this interlude had been just that, brought on only by circumstance, that he hadn’t really meant what he’d said, she didn’t know what she would do. She’d not fought for him once, but there had been other forces at play, making that nearly impossible. This time it would be his decision, and his alone. She held her breath until he finally spoke.
“I’ve spent four years telling myself you were just one woman, you weren’t worth it, millions of fish in the sea, there isn’t just one right person, and all that other crap. And I never believed a damned word of it.”
“I never meant to hurt—”
He waved a hand and she stopped. “I know that. I blame myself for never realizing there was something else going on I didn’t know about.”
“No one would want to believe that about their mother.”
He grimaced. “She’s going to find things are different this time.”
Jolie’s heart gave a flutter in her chest. “This time?”
The last time she asked that, they’d ended up in a pile of fresh straw, making love madly, hotly. This time there was much more at stake, and she saw by his expression he knew it.
And then he smiled, that crooked T.C. smile that never failed to make her pulse spe
ed up.
“This time,” he said, “she won’t be dealing with a scared employee with a child to use as a lever. She’ll be dealing with my wife, and my daughter. If you’ll have me.”
Her breath caught, and moisture pooled in her eyes. For a moment she didn’t have the air to speak.
“I’d like to formally adopt Emma. I don’t ever want there to be a question.”
She opened her mouth, but stopped her own words when he waved a hand, and let him finish.
“I love you, Jolie. I never stopped loving you. Both of you. Through it all. Say yes.”
“Yes.” It was all she could manage, but it was all she needed.
But she barely had time to process what had happened before the door to the room opened. She turned, expecting to see Emma, already thinking about how they would explain to her that they would now be a family, the three of them. She didn’t think it would be hard. The child already adored him. And maybe someday they would add T.C.’s child. Just the thought gave her a little thrill deep inside.
And then her mind froze, stopping her little dream scenario in place. Because it wasn’t Emma coming in.
It was Whitney Colton.
Chapter 32
“What are you doing here?”
T.C. said it sharply, with no preamble or even an acknowledgment of who she was. He hadn’t expected to have to face her down again so soon, but he was bolstered by Jolie’s acceptance, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let this woman mess them up this time.
“I...heard what happened, so I rushed over here.”
She sounded oddly uncertain, but he ignored it. “If you think you’re going to pull another stunt like you did four years ago, you can forget it.”
“I—”
“If I have to leave the ranch, and even Colton Incorporated, to be free of your twisted scheming, then I will. I won’t have Jolie or Emma subjected to that. Jolie and I are getting married, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Don’t even try to interfere this time.”
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