by Dana Nussio
“You’re not asking for anything. And that’s not what I’m suggesting, either.” She held up her index finger. “Give me a second.”
Willow pulled her phone from her back pocket and typed out a text, her thumbs flicking over the keys as fast as any teenager he’d seen. She’d only returned it to her pocket when it buzzed, so she took it out again and glanced at the screen.
“Good. Candace said she can be here in two minutes.”
“Who’s Candace?”
“My best employee and dearest friend. She lives right down the street and is headed over to help out.”
“It takes both of you to watch two sleeping babies?”
She chuckled at that. “You need to get to the hospital, and we should discuss our daughters’ safety. Sooner rather than later.”
He drew his brows together. “What are you saying?”
“That I’m going with you.”
* * *
Why had she thought this would be a good idea? Willow stood outside the door as Asher pushed it open and stepped inside. Across the room, she caught sight of a woman sitting in a guest chair at the foot of a hospital bed.
Payne Colton’s bed.
Hadn’t she had enough of this hospital in the past few days without choosing to come again to visit the room of her mother’s sworn enemy.
She could tell herself that it was only about discussing the welfare of those babies sleeping back in Luna’s nursery, but she’d hardly said anything after reaching his truck. She’d barely breathed inside that cramped space where the scents of his cologne, sweat and hard work melded into something much too appealing for her own good.
Asher hadn’t spoken, either, but he’d probably just been too preoccupied with handling so many problems at once. Was that why she’d offered to go? Because focusing on his issues for a while would be easier than thinking about her own?
“...this is,” his voice traveled from inside the room.
Suddenly, Asher was back to her at the doorway. He looked different as he’d stopped by her restroom before they’d left and had slicked back his hair with water. Had he made that adjustment for his dad’s benefit, even if his father wasn’t awake to notice it?
“You coming in?” he asked.
“Oh, right.”
She stepped farther inside, walking as close to the wall opposite the bed as was possible without flattening herself against it. A single-patient room, of course, it had rich wood accents and a recliner that looked suspiciously like leather instead of the usual plastic-chic decor. Maybe a celebrity room would have the best equipment that money could buy, but none of it had purchased Payne’s recovery from the coma.
A thin brunette Willow immediately recognized as Ainsley Colton waved at her from a straight-back guest chair that looked out of place against the rest of the amenities.
“This is—”
“Hey, don’t I know you?” Ainsley asked, interrupting her brother’s second attempt to introduce them. “Aren’t you Willow Johnson?”
“Uh. Yeah.” In addition to it having been a few years since she’d heard that name, she was surprised that Asher’s sister knew it. Most royalty weren’t familiar with commoners. “It’s Merrill now.”
“I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Ainsley.”
Willow cleared her throat. “Yes, I remember.”
Ainsley looked back and forth between them, clearly curious about seeing them together. “Willow and I went to high school together.”
Asher shifted and cleared his throat, gripping his hands together. “Ainsley’s the corporate attorney and on the board of Colton Oil, and Willow owns the day-care center where Harper will be going, but it sounds like you know each other already.”
“We passed each other in the halls a few times, anyway,” Ainsley said.
Willow wasn’t sure what to do with the discoveries, first, that she hadn’t been as invisible as she’d once believed in high school and, second, that Asher was uncomfortable having his sister seeing them together. She tilted her head so that she could see past the privacy curtain to the bumps of the patient’s feet.
“Sorry to hear about your dad,” she said to them both.
“Thanks,” Ainsley said.
For a few seconds, Asher’s sister stared at the patient, and then she turned back, her eyes shiny.
“He’s a fighter, though. He’ll be back to drive us crazy at the office before we know it.”
The truth hung in the air among them that Payne had already been lying in that bed for nearly four months, but no one gave it a voice.
“He’s looking better every day,” Ainsley said.
Despite her reluctance, Willow stepped forward so that she could see the patient. If the way he looked now was an improvement, she couldn’t imagine how horrible he’d appeared in the beginning.
She’d never seen Payne Colton in the flesh before, but this man looked nothing like the towering multimillionaire whose photo filled local newspaper pages. Small and frail, he hardly resembled the evil nemesis from her childhood imagination, either. His familiar head of white hair looked clean but stood up in all directions. Though his usual beard and mustache had been shaved off, silver whiskers sneaked out from the edges of his oxygen mask.
Willow swallowed over yet another discovery: a hospital bed could serve as a great equalizer. Outside it, he might have been the powerful Payne Colton, but between its sheets, he was just another patient, a host for an IV tube and the subject of vital-sign monitoring. Ainsley stood and crossed to the door. “The nurses keep getting after us for having too many visitors in the room. We’re only allowed two at a time, and we’ve had as many as five, so if you two will be staying awhile, I’ll escape a tongue-lashing this time and head home.”
“That’s fine. You can go.”
As Asher stepped around the side of the bed and rested his hand on his father’s arm above where the IV line was taped, his sister glanced back at him.
“I didn’t know you were friends.” She pinned him with a curious glance before turning it on Willow.
“It’s not—” Asher cleared his throat. “I mean we’re not...”
His gaze went from his father to his sister and back.
“Let’s go out in the hall, and I will explain.” Though Ainsley had been ahead of him, Asher brushed past her on the way out the door. Willow would have mentioned that Payne probably wasn’t listening, but she doubted it would go over well with his children. She was still deciding whether to stay or follow when he leaned back in and gestured with a circular motion for her to hurry. He gave his sister a few of the week’s highlights he must not have shared before, from the hospital’s call about the possible switch to the DNA test and his decision to place Harper at Tender Years.
“I didn’t want to add more stress to the family after the bomb threat and the vandalized fence,” he explained.
His sister shot a glance at Willow that made her wish she’d stayed away from the conversation.
“She already knows everything.”
“You shouldn’t have shared.”
He shrugged. “I did. She’s caught up in at least part of this mess, anyway.”
Willow raised a hand. “You know, I’m right here.”
“Sorry.” Ainsley lowered her head and rubbed her temples as if she was developing a headache, but then she straightened again. “Two baby switches?”
“We didn’t believe one was possible,” Asher said. “Look what happened there.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“I couldn’t share it while we were still waiting for the bomb squad to determine if someone had really planned to blow up Colton Oil.”
Ainsley crossed her arms in a classic older-sibling move.
“You still should have.”
“Maybe. But I hadn’t realiz
ed there might be a connection. I still don’t know if there is.”
“Or if Harper’s really yours.”
The raw look in Asher’s eyes caused a lump to form in Willow’s throat. She was intimately familiar with the pain of that possibility.
His sister patted his arm in the awkward way of siblings who didn’t often touch each other.
“She’s mine. I know it,” he said and then cleared his throat.
Ainsley nodded. “Where is she now? At home with Genevieve?”
Willow stepped forward and answered for him, not sure if he was ready to speak again. “No, she’s at my place with my friend Candace and my baby, Luna.”
“So, why are you both here?”
Willow rushed on, making up her story as she went. “He’s, well, we’re both concerned about the girls’ safety. He mentioned hiring a private service to patrol around my business and my apartment above it, especially at night.”
“Makes sense, particularly if, um—” Ainsley paused, as if trying to remember, “—Luna is—well, if the test produces unexpected results.”
Willow didn’t have to ask who the attorney was in the Colton family.
“What do you think about me getting some security guards?” Asher asked Ainsley. “I thought I’d let you weigh in, but I’m going to do it, anyway.”
She gave him a mean look.
“Thanks for at least asking my opinion. I agree with you, by the way. In fact, we need to beef up security at the headquarters and ask the ranch hands to do more patrols on the property. If these incidents are related, and it’s becoming more difficult to believe that they’re not, then someone wants to hurt us. Who could possibly not like the Coltons?” Ainsley chuckled.
Asher exchanged a secret look with Willow, and though she braced herself for him to share her story, he paced up the hospital hallway instead.
“Have you spoken with Jace today?” Ainsley asked him when he returned.
“He helped me fix the fence.” He lifted a shoulder and lowered it. “You know, I think he might be the real deal.”
“You mean the ‘real Ace’ like everyone keeps saying?” she asked. “I know I’m trained to look at the evidence, but I think you might be right.”
Ainsley began to pace herself and then spoke over her shoulder. “Jace is just so, I don’t know, different from the guy I thought was my big brother all these years.”
“If he is our brother, then it isn’t his fault that Luella Smith switched him and Ace. It’s not our Ace’s fault, either. Just dumb luck.”
“With a whole lot of human assistance.”
Willow shook her head. “Thanks for reminding me that I was lucky to be an only child.”
They chuckled at her joke and then quieted, probably as lost in their thoughts as she was in hers. The Coltons had always seemed to lead such a charmed existence, insulated with the cosmic protective dome of fat trust funds. It was clear now that they had as many problems as anyone else—more than some—and money only amplified them.
Ainsley startled her from her thoughts as she stepped in front of her and held out her hand.
“It was nice officially meeting you, Willow. I don’t think we were ever properly introduced in high school.”
“I’m pretty sure no one was.” She gripped her hand and smiled.
Ainsley’s gaze shifted to her brother. “Want me to tell the others about this?” She pointed her index finger and rotated her hand back and forth between them a few times.
“No, I’ll let them know.”
Asher’s sister was talking only about the possible switch of their babies and not anything specific between the two of them, but when his gaze snagged hers, the electricity that sparked inside her had nothing to do with their children.
Ainsley must have missed whatever had passed between them as she wasn’t smiling when she spoke to her brother.
“Thanks again for asking my opinion. Usually, we would have gone to Dad over a question about adding security.” She paused, sending a wistful look toward the hospital room door. “Or at least Ace. But everything is different now.”
“Yeah, as the second oldest, you get your chance to shine.”
She shook her head. “The biggest opportunity I never wanted.”
Chapter 13
“Have I told you recently how much I adore you?” she said as she applied a wicked red lipstick to the perfect bow of her lips. At least that was how someone had described them the other night.
Her caller chuckled on his end of the line, oblivious.
“As a matter of fact, you haven’t.”
“Well, let me begin now.”
She spent a few minutes puffing him up and getting him worked up as she carefully coiffed her hair for another man. It wasn’t wasted time, not when any means to this end would be well worth the investment. No one could take something that belonged to her. Woe to the few who’d tried.
The words came easier, anyway, as she pictured her man for tonight, someone who knew how to treat a lady. Unlike her caller, with his tape-repaired glasses and chronic halitosis. If not for his big, beautiful brain, she would have swiped left to make him disappear a long time ago.
“You’re going to love how I did this.”
While he blathered on about some technical nonsense that no one outside labs or computer companies cared a whit about, she applied quick bursts of hair spray. Was this supposed to excite her or something?
“You’re amazing,” she said when he finally stopped talking.
“Do you think we can get together tonight? I can tell you exactly what I’ll do to—”
“Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, my love. We have to stay focused, or we’ll make mistakes.”
“I don’t make those.”
“That’s why I chose you, honey. To be mine.” She added the last almost too late.
“When can I see you again?”
“Soon. I promise. Now let’s both get some rest. We have so much more work to do.” Well, he did anyway.
He finally acquiesced, and she was able to cut the call with a singsong “sweet dreams.”
She hung up just in time, it seemed, as her doorbell rang.
* * *
Asher climbed into the driver’s seat of his pickup in the hospital parking lot and gripped the steering wheel, his shoulders curling forward and his chin dropping to his chest. That night’s visit with his father had been tougher than any he’d experienced in weeks, and he wasn’t sure why. Could it have been that some part of him hoped Dad would wake right then so he could introduce him to Willow? If she was the reason, he had bigger problems than only a bomb threat and a vandalized fence.
“It’s still so hot tonight,” she said.
Willow slid off the sweater she’d worn over her sleeveless blouse and skirt in the hospital’s air-conditioning, and all he could think about was how soft that exposed skin of her arms would feel. On his fingertips and his lips.
When he didn’t respond, she glanced over at him. “You okay?”
Other than realizing he was getting in over his head with this independent beauty and that it might have to do with more than her sexy curves and all that dark hair? Or that he’d already learned a lot about her, and he craved more details? If not for all those things, he was just fine. He’d told himself he would never let another woman get close to him, yet, for a reason he couldn’t explain, Willow tempted him to break his own promise.
Still, he straightened and glanced her way. Her delicate nose and chin, along with those beautiful curls, were outlined in both light and shadows coming from the parking-lot lamps.
“I’m fine. It’s just tough sometimes.” Letting her believe that this was only about their time in his dad’s hospital room was a coward’s way out, but it was easier than admitting the truth.
“It’s so hard to see
our parents when they’re frail like that. I had a tough time with it before Mom died.” She jerked her head back suddenly. “I didn’t mean... That’s not what I was trying to say.”
“Don’t worry. I understood what you meant.” He was quiet for a few seconds, and then he added, “Every time my phone rings, I’m praying that it will be the news that he’s finally awake. Then I’m terrified to answer because there could have been some complication, and he’ll just be...”
Asher didn’t finish his words. He couldn’t think about that awful possibility after he’d looked at his father through Willow’s eyes that night. Dad wasn’t getting better. He was just existing, with oxygen filling his lungs and an IV drip feeding him.
“I know it’s hard, but you can’t think like that,” she said. “You have to be strong for him, just like you are for Harper.”
“You, of all people, have to know who my dad is. He’s not a perfect guy. He put the company and the ranch ahead of not just me, but all his kids. I can’t remember a single time he ever took me outside and threw a baseball with me.”
“Do you even like baseball?”
He cleared his throat. “No. But that’s beside the point.”
Asher shifted toward her in the seat, his right leg coming up on the upholstery. “He’s the type of hands-off parent I’m determined not to be for Harper, and yet—”
“You love him,” she finished for him, turning to face him, as well. “He’s your dad.”
“He’s my dad. I guess it’s pitiful, but I want him to wake up so he can see that I’m a good father. A better one than he was to me.”
“Harper was born a few months before your dad was shot, right?”
“Yes. So?”
“Then he knows.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve only just met you, and I can see it.” As she spoke the words, she covered his hand with her own.
Asher swallowed as he stared down at their fingers. When he finally looked up again, she was watching him. Was she as surprised as he was that she’d reached out to him? Did she just feel sorry for him after seeing his dad in the hospital, or was it something more?
