by Addison Fox
Had she misread Nikolas completely?
Yes, she knew he was curious about the father of her baby. That much had been clear last night, but they had come to a sort of truce over it. He’d seemed willing to leave those questions unanswered, giving her the room she needed to decide what to do about Ferdy.
How jarring to realize there was no truce at all.
A fact made even clearer by Nikolas’s plea to Marlowe. “How can you ask that? What if it has everything to do with finding your brother? What if she’s working with someone? Jace Smith already made a run for your family. What if she’s just a new tactic?”
“I thought she was working with you,” Marlowe insisted.
Bowie chose that minute to come back into the room, concern lining his face. “What’s going on out here? I just got the baby back to sleep.”
“Nikolas has a few questions.” Marlowe waved a hand in his direction, before moving to stand closer to her fiancé.
“Well, get them out,” Bowie said, his arm coming around Marlowe’s shoulders in support.
Solidarity Nova was suddenly envious of as she realized that, once again, she had precious little of that in her life. And certainly not from a life partner.
While she shouldn’t have leaped to the conclusion that she had that camaraderie with Nikolas, she had come to believe that he was in her corner. Yet here they were, suddenly on opposite sides.
A small muscle ticked in Nikolas’s jaw and for the first time since he’d come back into the condo, Nova saw something other than anger.
Doubt?
Confusion?
Or the sudden realization that he’d been a raging ass?
Nova finally spoke. “I think it’s time to leave. I’ll go ahead and show myself out.”
“Please don’t go. I’m glad you’re here, and I’d like you to stay,” Marlowe said.
Once again, the simple offer stunned her. How was it so easy for Marlowe—someone she’d met an hour ago—to take her at face value? Nova didn’t want to be ungrateful, but the roller-coaster emotions of the day had shaken her.
But it was Nikolas’s sudden change of heart that had done the rest.
All she could think of at the moment was running. Finding some quiet time by herself, even if she had to do it in her car, and just getting away.
“I drove you over here. I’ll drive you back to town,” Nikolas said.
“I think I’ll be fine,” Nova said. “Town isn’t that big and it won’t take me that long to get to my car. It’s parked just across from your office, where we left it this morning. All I need are five minutes to get my stuff out of your place.”
“This is ridiculous,” Bowie finally spoke up. “Nova, we will take care of getting you back to your car.”
* * *
Nikolas felt all eyes on him and recognized his mistake. Honestly, he’d realized his error the moment he’d stomped out of the house under the guise of making a phone call. Yet something had kept him going. Some small flickering flame, growing bigger by the moment as his thoughts gave it air and room to breathe.
“I can take Nova back to her car. She and I can discuss a few things while we’re at it.”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Bowie said.
Nikolas hadn’t come here to pick a fight, nor had he come with the expectation he would bungle things so badly. “Nova’s things are still at my house. I do think that she and I should talk alone, and then I’m happy to bring her back here.”
Bowie and Marlowe both looked at Nova, as if waiting for her assent. It took a moment and Nikolas bore up under Nova’s scrutiny as she considered his offer. Although he had seen a myriad of emotions from her over the past twenty-four hours, he hadn’t yet seen betrayal.
That was exactly what he saw now.
And he had no one but himself to blame.
“I’d like to go get my things. And I’m fine if Nikolas drives me back to his house.”
“Why don’t you plan to come back here later?” Marlowe said. “We’d love to have you stay with us until we get everything sorted out.”
“Thank you, but it really is important to me to find a job. I did some looking yesterday and I’d like to do a bit more this afternoon.”
“Look for the job and then come back. Please,” Marlowe added.
“Okay.” Nova’s eyes widened. “We also need to set up a DNA test like we discussed.”
DNA test?
Nikolas kept his focus on her. “What test is this?”
“The DNA test I told Marlowe I wanted to take. The one that will prove if I’m Ace Colton’s daughter or not. The one that will make sure we’re all making the right decisions here.”
Everyone except him.
Shame filled him.
Nikolas made it a point to be thoughtful and measured and even-tempered in his work. So how was it that in a wild blaze of confusion, he could so easily throw all that away when it came to Nova Ellis?
“We still have Ace’s DNA. From the test that was done between him and my father,” Marlowe said. “It would be easy enough to take Nova over to the lab and test against the same sample.”
“You have a DNA sample?” Nova asked, her attention shifting back to Marlowe. “Why? I know there’s been gossip about Ace but did you really believe it?”
“She doesn’t know?”
Nikolas knew Marlowe’s question was directed at him. And suddenly, he had to admit that Nova Ellis hadn’t been the only one keeping secrets.
“I’m handling a case for Selina. I didn’t think it was appropriate to say anything about the paternity test.”
Marlowe’s gaze was direct and pointed, her attention fully on him, even as she kept her seat like a sentinel beside Nova. “What does Selina have to do with any of this?”
“She hired me to find your brother.”
“Under whose auspices? And for what reasons?”
Marlowe’s edges may have softened with her engagement and the birth of her son, but the woman was still a highly competent business professional. And it was that boardroom badass who faced him down now.
“She claimed it was for the good of Colton Oil.” Nikolas knew he had to navigate this carefully. “She said that as PR director of the company, she needed to understand what you were dealing with.”
“And you believe her?”
“I’m not saying Ace is guilty and I told her as much. I’m not looking for guilt. I’m looking for the truth.”
“And it didn’t strike you as odd that my father’s ex-wife is the one looking for the dirt?”
“I took the case and I’m willing to see it through. Ace’s guilt or lack of it is irrelevant.”
Nikolas might have a lot to apologize for, but he wasn’t going to apologize for doing his work. He’d had one of Mustang Valley’s best-respected professionals in his office, asking him to work a case. Whether he thought the subject was innocent or guilty had no bearing.
He would do his job.
“Nikolas? What is this about?”
Nova had been quiet up until now, leaving the inquiring to Marlowe. But she obviously had more than a few questions of her own.
“I know you said you had taken the case. You were very up-front about that. But what does that have to do with my father’s DNA? And why were Payne and Ace given a DNA test? I thought all this business was nothing but malicious gossip.”
At Marlowe’s nod, Nikolas laid it out. “It’s not gossip. Or maybe a better way to say it is that it is fact that has been gleefully repeated.”
“But how could it be true? I don’t know much beyond what I’ve read online, but as I understand it, Ace was Payne’s first child with his late wife. A loving marriage, by all accounts.”
“It was. My father loved Tessa. But there was—” Marlowe broke off, her dark brown stare direct an
d challenging.
Nikolas knew the subject was concerning, but he didn’t know what had Marlowe’s eyes narrowing like that.
It was only as those brown orbs widened once more that something seemed to dawn on her. “You don’t know about the email?”
“What email?” Nikolas and Nova asked the question in unison.
Marlowe glanced between both of them before her earlier anger seemed to fade. “Why don’t I start from the beginning?”
* * *
More than once over the past few months, Nova had felt a bit like Alice down the rabbit hole. Traveling through strange lands on the run from Ferdy and knowing that her body was changing daily with her pregnancy had added a degree of the surreal to her life that had never been there before.
But now? In this exact moment? She had to be some weird combination of Alice down a rabbit hole, through a looking glass and then traveling into orbit. She’d found an outcome so unexpected that there could be no other explanation.
She listened quietly as Marlowe outlined the email that had come in to all of the Colton Oil executives back in January. A tell-all email from a masked sender that spoke of Ace Colton’s birth. An email that had come to them all before Payne’s shooting.
And the fact that, at only a few hours old, Ace had supposedly been switched with another baby in Mustang Valley General’s maternity ward.
“Did you believe it?” Nova asked the question first, but she could see Nikolas was curious to do the same.
Marlowe shook her head. “No one wanted to believe it. It just seemed so odd and far-fetched and out of the blue. If my brother had been switched, why did it take so long for it to come out?”
Her question hung there, absolutely valid, yet still unanswered. It was Nikolas who finally spoke up. “But was he switched?”
Marlowe looked to Bowie for support, before nodding in the affirmative. “Yes. That was what the DNA test was for. It’s a requirement that the CEO position at Colton Oil is held by a Colton by blood and Ace was CEO. We needed to know Ace’s paternity or risk violation of the company’s governance documents.”
Marlowe finally stood and moved to Bowie’s side. “Ace isn’t a biological Colton. He’s not Payne’s son. Based on what they can do with DNA, they’ve ruled him out as a biological sibling of Ainsley or Grayson, too.”
“Which means he’s not Tessa’s son, either.”
“No.” Marlowe shook her head. “That horrid email was correct.”
Whatever Nova had expected to hear coming here, the idea that her father wasn’t who he thought he was, or who she thought he was, was the last straw. She glanced around, suddenly desperate to get out.
Out of the condo.
Out of the company of these amazingly kind people.
And possibly out of Mustang Valley altogether.
She’d come here trying to find her family, only it turned out they weren’t really her family. The fragile hope that had been building since the moment they walked in vanished.
And in its place was an emptiness that was somehow colder and even more bereft than what she had carried before.
She wasn’t Nova Ellis. Paul Ellis had never been her biological father.
But apparently she wasn’t Nova Colton, either.
Who was she? What name would she give her child? Where would they go?
Nova struggled out of the deep cushions of the couch. Nikolas leaped forward immediately, his hand outstretched to help her to her feet. Nova took the help—there was nothing she could do but take it—and then dropped his hand as soon as she was steady.
“Marlowe. Bowie. You both have been too kind. I’m going to go now. I think that would be best.”
“You will come back, won’t you? There’s more to the story and I think you should know what’s going on.” Marlowe stepped away from Bowie’s side and moved in closer, pulling Nova into a hug. Although Nova knew she was putting up an emotional wall, she couldn’t deny the woman’s hug and gentle words meant something.
And the idea that there was more? Nova was having trouble processing this news, let alone anything else that would shake the tenuous ground beneath her feet even harder. “I will. But I need a little bit of time to think.”
“I can understand that. What we just told you is a lot to take in, on top of all that you’ve already had to come to grips with. But there is something I want you to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Ace is my brother. I feel that way, and so do all my brothers and sisters. That email, or a DNA test, can’t change that. More, it won’t change that.”
Nova didn’t know what to say. The fierceness and the absolute loyalty to the man they had always called brother was humbling to witness.
“What it also will not change,” Marlowe continued, “is that you are a part of our family, too. Ace is my brother. You are, too, if you are his daughter. The child you carry would then be Ace’s grandchild. We would all be a family.”
A large lump settled in the middle of her throat. Nova wanted so desperately to take what was being offered. To bask in the glow of family and know innately that she belonged.
Oh, how she wanted that.
Only something held her back.
The DNA test that would prove Ace was her father, but would also prove she wasn’t a biological Colton.
Ace—a man she’d believed was a good, upstanding person—was on the run, suspected of trying to murder the man he’d spent his life calling Dad.
And all of it was happening under the horrible cloud of fear she’d carried all the way from New York.
Why had she ever come here?
“I do hope you know how much I mean that,” Marlowe said before giving her one last hug. “Family is something you make, not just something you’re born to.”
Nova nodded, still numb. “We should go now.”
Nikolas led the way to the door. In moments they were back in his car, navigating through Mustang Valley. The town looked the same as it did before. Empirically, Nova knew that. Only this time, when she looked at the mountains that rose up in the distance, and the sun that warmed the earth, she saw a desolation she hadn’t noticed before. A heavy shadow from the mountain. And a sort of scorched earth from the sun, which had turned the land brown and cracked.
She’d come here and she was too close to giving birth to leave.
But it had become impossible to think that this place would ever become home.
Nikolas didn’t say anything as they drove; he just kept his eyes on the road and seemed to accept the now-awkward silence between them. She caught him glancing over at her from time to time in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t have the energy to turn and meet his gaze. Nor did she really want to.
The man owed her nothing. If anything, she owed him. For his hospitality with his home, the generosity of sharing his food, and his willingness for a short time to help her. She wouldn’t think of the fact that it had felt like the two of them were forming a connection. Nor would she give any breathing room to the hurt and anger that still lingered from the way he had turned on her.
Nikolas pulled up beside her car, which she had parked in one of Mustang Valley’s public lots. She still needed to pick up the few things that she had left in his guest room that morning, but she wanted to use the remaining afternoon hours to look for a job. Determined to tell him as much, Nova turned in her seat.
And came face-to-face with a look of misery so profound it shook her to her core.
“Nikolas? Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not. I’m sorry is what I am. Deeply, deeply sorry.”
It was what she had wanted. An apology. One she knew she deserved. Yet somehow, sitting there staring at him, she felt her anger evaporate. “Thank you for that.”
“It’s only what you deserve. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.” She tilted her head, considering the overwhelming barrage of thoughts that refused to let up. One after another, they rolled through with all the force and power of a high-speed train. “You didn’t have to give me the benefit of the doubt. I would’ve appreciated it if you’d saved your doubts specifically until you asked all your questions.”
“That’s just splitting hairs.”
“No, it isn’t. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. I came to town with nothing but a story. On some level, if you didn’t have a few doubts it would make me wonder about you.”
“Do you have doubts about me? About who your father is?”
“Yes.”
Her response hit its mark, but it also generated the first smile she had seen on his face since the moment he had stood and left Marlowe’s condo for his supposed call. “Direct as always.”
“There really isn’t any other way to be.”
“What doubts do you have about me?” he finally asked.
Nova considered his question, and with it how much she should tell him. Clearly, Ferdy was a question mark between them.
“I’m worried that, no matter how hard you try to keep things separate, my situation will spill over onto your case as you try to find Ace.”
“But I told you I can keep them separate.”
“Which would be fine, if they were separate.”
When he didn’t say anything, Nova continued. “I’m worried that you jumped in to help me, even though you don’t know anything about me. And that I’ll get hurt because of it. And what if Ace isn’t even my dad?”
He didn’t respond, but neither did he avert his gaze. He maintained the direct stare, those hazel-green eyes steady and focused.
Meeting his eyes and taking it all in—from his behavior yesterday, his warm, generous and selfless actions, to his doubts today—Nova knew she had to make a choice.
She could either trust him and trust that things would work out or she could continue to leave him in the dark and allow all the reasons that she was on the run to fester in his mind.
“What I’m worried about is that if I tell you the truth about the baby’s father, it’s going to put us all in danger. You. Me. And most of all, my child. Can you understand that? Do you understand now why I am afraid?”
