JOE COLTON’S JOURNAL

There’s nothing like a big family bash at our home, Hacienda de Alegria, to make a man proud. The entire Colton clan is coming together from far and wide to celebrate my sixtieth birthday. I worry about my kids when they aren’t around, some more than others. Take my darling daughter, Sophie. I see red every time I think of anyone trying to hurt my sweet baby girl, but I’m glad she’s back where she belongs. And if it means putting some distance between her and that gold-digging fiancé of hers, even better. Now, my foster son River James is a man worthy of my daughter’s affections. Ever since I took this hard-edged rebel into my home, I’ve sensed something special brewing between those two. I don’t care what either of them say to the contrary—they belong together. Just like me and my Meredith do. But things haven’t been so rosy between us for a while now. However, I refuse to give up on her…or any of my own. Something tells me we have some rough times ahead….

About the Author

KASEY MICHAELS

is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than sixty books that range from contemporary to historical romance. Recipient of the Romance Writers of America RITA Award and Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times Magazine, in addition to writing for Harlequin and Silhouette, Kasey is currently writing single-title contemporary fiction for Zebra Books, and Regency historical romances for Warner Books. When asked about her work for THE COLTONS series, she said that she has rarely felt so involved in a project, one with such scope and diversity of plot and characters.

Beloved Wolf
Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Meet the Coltons—

a California dynasty with a legacy of privilege and power.

Sophie Colton: The rich girl. This beautiful executive seemed to have it all—until her world was brutally shattered one dark night by a vicious act. Coming home to Prosperino, there’s only one person to whom she can turn—the renegade she’d once loved with all her adolescent soul.

River James: The brooding loner. This proud Native American had once known he was all wrong for Sophie Colton—but now his heart wanted him to believe otherwise….

Joe Colton: The honorable family patriarch. On the eve of his sixtieth birthday, this savvy tycoon sensed something was amiss…something that could threaten the very essence of the Colton dynasty!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

One

N othing, absolutely nothing, had gone right for Sophie Colton that entire early-April San Francisco day.

The new telephone system touted by her advertising agency boss to make everyone’s life easier had lost her a hard-won connection with a client in Tokyo—twice—and had probably cost her an important account.

The child star who had just been signed for a national commercial had picked this week to have his voice go from angelically pure to crackly pubescent, and would have to be replaced.

She’d gotten a run in her panty hose on the way to lunch with a client, been caught in a quick shower the weather forecasters had missed, and now she’d had an argument over dinner with Chet Wallace, her fiancé since this past Christmas.

Okay. Maybe not an argument. Maybe that was too strong a word. A disagreement. She and Chet never argued. Mostly he talked and Sophie listened. Sometimes she wondered why she listened.

Chet wanted to leave their cushy jobs at the San Francisco advertising agency and strike out on their own, form their own company. Sophie wasn’t so sure. She liked her job, had worked hard to get it, and in this cutthroat world, starting a marriage and a new business at the same time…well, it scared her.

At least that was what she tried to tell herself as she walked home in the dark after throwing a mini-tantrum at the restaurant and leaving Chet to finish dessert and pay the check on his own.

Maybe what really bothered her was that Chet had done just that. He’d stayed behind, sipping coffee and eating his chocolate mousse, and let her go. Granted, she lived only four blocks from the restaurant, but did he have to be so blasé about it? Tell her to take a walk, cool down, and he’d meet her at her apartment in thirty minutes? She hated Chet when he was reasonable. Didn’t he know that?

Sophie stopped at the curb of an alleyway situated halfway down a long city block. She lifted her head, sighed and pushed at her chin-length golden brown hair, tucking a naturally blond-streaked lock behind her ear. She blinked her huge brown eyes that were so like her mother’s, sighed again and stepped off the curb, one long straight leg in its three-inch heel making contact with the macadam…before she was suddenly being pushed, shoved back into the alleyway.

“Hey!” she called out loudly, trying to disengage herself from the arms that held her. She was pushed against a dew-slick brick wall so hard that anything else she might have said was lost. The side of her head slammed against the bricks, and seemingly all the air in her lungs whooshed out of her body.

It was unreal. Surreal. Couldn’t be happening. Certainly couldn’t be happening to her.

But it was. As she fought to stay conscious, as she struggled to breathe, to beat down the panic that rose like bile in her throat, Sophie felt the tip of a knife press against her throat.

“Move, bitch, and I’ll cut you. You got that?”

She couldn’t nod. She’d be cut if she moved. So she blinked. Yes, that blink said silently. I’ve got that.

“Okay. Okay-okay-okay,” the male voice said. Her attacker was obviously very excited, possibly high on drugs. Sophie didn’t know, couldn’t be sure. She just knew the man was nervous, hyper, definitely out of control. He might kill her even as he said he wouldn’t.

The knife eased away from her throat, and the next thing Sophie knew she was facedown on the hard gravel in the alleyway, her right knee exploding in agony as it took the brunt of her fall.

Sophie closed her eyes against the white-hot pain and swallowed. “What—what do you want?” she managed to ask, still unable to move, for the man’s knee pressed hard against her back. “I don’t have a purse, but there’s a wallet in my coat pocket. Money. Credit cards. Let—let me get it for you.”

“Don’t listen, do you, bitch? Huh, huh?” the man growled against her ear, his putrid breath and body odor turning her stomach. “Move and die, bitch, move and die.”

Then his hands were on her, touching her through her light coat, for the evening had been warm, and she hadn’t expected to be on the streets anyway. She could feel him brace most of his body weight on the knee jabbing into her back, while he used his left hand to reach under her, twist her upper body painfully and clumsily pinch and paw at her throat, her breasts. He bit her shoulder, hard.

Maniac. The man was a maniac. He didn’t want her money—or he’d take it once she was dead. What he wanted was her. Her body. He wanted to hurt her.

She was only twenty yards from a main street, and she was helpless. He still held the knife in his right hand as he groped at her with his left. His stronger body pinned her against the gravel. If she cried out, she’d die.

Did it matter if she moved, if she fought? The man was out of his mind, out of control. He had a knife. She’d die anyway.

But she’d be damned if she’d die without a struggle.

Sophie might be a city girl now, years away from her roots on a California ranch, but she’d been a tomboy once, a girl child with big brothers she’d often fought with, sometimes in fun, sometimes in earnest.

Brothers. Oh, God. Michael had died, and his death had nearly destroyed her parents, her entire family. If she were to die, too… No! No, that couldn’t happen! She wouldn’t let that happen! Mommy! Daddy! I won’t let that happen!

Forgetting the pain in her right knee, forgetting the knife blade she could feel pressing against her jaw-line, forgetting the violation she felt as the man’s hand slipped inside her V-neck blouse, his filthy, jagged fingernails tearing at her skin, Sophie reacted.

She dug her elbows and knees into the gravel and bucked like a wild pony out to unseat the rider on its back. Fear lent her strength, and surprise gave her a second advantage. The off-balance man toppled to one side, so that she could backpedal away from him on her hands and buttocks, putting precious space between them.

“Help! Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “In the alley. Help me!” As she screamed, Sophie grabbed on to a huge plastic garbage can and somehow got to her feet, her right leg all but useless. She pulled the top off the garbage can and threw it at the man, then blindly reached into the open can and pulled out the first “weapon” to come to hand—the sliced-off top of a pineapple.

What a ridiculous weapon. But, then, the alleyway ran behind a block of upscale restaurants. What had she expected to find, a fully loaded .357 Magnum?

Sophie threw the pineapple top at the man, followed by a huge, empty can of tomato puree and two handfuls of rotting vegetables, all the time screaming for help. She knocked over smaller, metal garbage cans, making more noise than impact, but making herself as undesirable a victim as possible. “In the alley! Help me! Help me!”

The man cursed, ducked a wilted cabbage and ran off down the alley moments before two well-dressed men entered the alley, coming to Sophie’s rescue.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, falling against one of them as the other ran back toward the street to call an ambulance and the police.

Sophie’s right knee hurt her so much that she didn’t even know that her attacker’s knife had laid open her cheek from ear to chin, that she was losing blood rapidly. She knew nothing at all, for within moments she had sunk into blessed unconsciousness.

Louise Smith sat up straight in her narrow bed, her eyes wide with fright, her body drenched in perspiration in the heat of the Mississippi night. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

She slipped from the bed, stumbled to the light switch, then pressed her hands against the top of the dresser, blinked at her reflection in the mirror. She saw a woman who somehow didn’t look all of her fifty-two years—except for her large brown eyes, which held the misery of the ages. She ran a hand through her wavy, golden-brown hair that showed very little gray and took several deep, steadying breaths, trying to beat down the panic that still held her in its grip.

See? It’s just you. Nobody else is here. Nobody can harm you. Nobody knows. Nobody. Not even you.

She’d been dreaming. She dreamed so often. All the dreams were confusing. Some of them were good, for a while, but all of them ended unhappily, with no answers, no resolution.

But this had been different. She couldn’t remember a dream. All she could remember was a flash of fright…and the certainty that she was needed, that someone needed her help.

A child. A little girl. A little girl who called her Mommy.

But where was she? Where?

Louise left her bedroom, padded toward the kitchen and a glass of water, knowing she would not be able to sleep anymore that night.

Joe Colton burst from the elevator before the doors had fully opened and raced down the corridor toward the nurse’s station, his foster son River James right behind him. They’d flown from the family ranch in Prosperino, River at the controls, within an hour of the phone call from the San Francisco police, arriving shortly before dawn.

“My daughter—Sophie Colton,” Joe demanded of the unit clerk, who was otherwise occupied in filing her nails. “What room is she in?”

The young woman looked up at him blankly. “Colton? I don’t think we have a Colton.” She swiveled in her chair, spoke to a nurse who’d just come into the station. “Mary, do we have a Colton?”

The nurse stepped forward, looking at Joe. “May I ask who you are, sir?”

“I’m her father, damn it!” Joe exploded, his large frame looking more menacing than paternal at that moment, his nearly sixty years having made small impact on him other than to dust some silver in his dark brown hair.

River took off his worn cowboy hat, put a hand on his foster father’s arm and smiled at the nurse. “Senator Colton is a little upset, ma’am,” he said, being his most charming at the same time he emphasized the word senator, even if Joe had left office years earlier. “His daughter was mugged last evening. Colton. Sophie Colton.”

It might have been the dropping of Joe Colton’s title, or it might have been River’s lazy smile, but Mary quickly stepped out from behind the desk, asking the two men to follow her down the corridor.

“I’m sorry, Senator,” Mary said as they walked, “but your daughter was the victim of a crime. We can’t be too careful. She came back from surgery a little over an hour ago and is probably sleeping, but I can tell you that she made it through the surgery without incident. Have you been apprised of her injuries?”

“Oh, God.” Joe stopped, put a hand to his mouth and turned away from the nurse. Obviously the long night had taken its toll. That, River thought, and the fact that Meredith Colton, Sophie’s mother, hadn’t seen any reason to accompany her husband to San Francisco.

“Yes, we have, but we’d like to hear a recap from you, if you don’t mind,” River said, stepping up, taking over for this so very strong man who had already buried one child. River knew he couldn’t understand all that Joe must have been going through since the call about Sophie had come into the ranch, but he had a pretty good idea that the man had been living in his own special hell, reliving the call about Michael, fearing the worst for his daughter.

River, however, had been more mad than frightened, once he’d spoken to the patient liaison at the hospital, who had assured him that Sophie’s injuries, although extensive, were not life threatening. While Joe Colton had sat in the back of the small private jet, praying for his daughter, River had been at the controls, wishing himself in San Francisco so that he could knock down Chet Wallace. Then pick him up, knock him down again. And again.

Joe collected himself and motioned for the nurse to continue down the hallway.

“She suffered a mild concussion, Senator,” Mary told them, stopping in front of Room 305, her hand on the metal door plate. “I want to prepare you for that, as she may be confused for a while once she wakes. Plus, she’s got lots of scrapes and bruises, from her contact with a brick wall, as I understand it, and the gravel in the alley. Those have been cleaned up, of course. And there are some fairly deep scratches on her…on her chest. They’ll be painful, but aren’t serious, and we’ve already begun treatment with antibiotics. We can’t be too careful with human bites and scratches. I—I’m sorry.”

The bastard had bitten her? River hadn’t known that part, wished Joe didn’t have to know that part.

Joe moaned low in his throat. River squeezed his work-hard hands into fists.

Mary continued, “The orthopods put her knee back together—torn Medial Meniscus, which is fairly common—but she’s in a J-brace and will be on crutches for at least five or six weeks, and then will need some pretty extensive rehab. And,” she added, sighing, “Dr. Hardy, chief of reconstructive surgery, sewed up the knife gash on her face. She’ll need follow-up plastic surgery, at least that’s what’s on Dr. Hardy’s postop notes, but at least she’s been put back together. It’s a miracle the knife didn’t hit any large blood vessels or nerves. Still, even though the cut wasn’t dangerously deep, it took over one hundred stitches to close her up again.”

“Oh, God,” Joe said. “My baby. My beautiful, beautiful baby.”

River clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt. Sophie. Beautiful Sophie. Dragged into an alley. Mauled, beaten, cut, damn near killed. And for no reason, no reason at all. Just because a bastard high on drugs had gone berserk. Just because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now her entire life had been changed forever.

“I think we’re prepared to see her now, ma’am,” River said, motioning for the nurse to step back so that he and Joe could enter Sophie’s room. “We promise not to disturb her.”

“Certainly,” Mary agreed, then walked past them, back to the nurse’s station.

“Ready, Joe?” River asked, a hand on his foster father’s back.

“No,” Joe told him, his voice so low River had to lean close to hear him. “A parent is never ready to see his child lying in a hospital bed.” He lifted his head and took a deep breath. “But let’s do it.”

River pushed open the door, let Joe precede him into the room, then followed after him. He didn’t want to see Sophie this way, injured, helpless. That was not how he had seen her when he’d first come to live at the ranch and she’d chased after him until he’d let down his guard and let her into his life. His Sophie, four years his junior, which had been such a huge gap when they were younger. The angry young man and the awkward, braces-on-her-teeth, skinned-knees, pigtailed, hero-worshiping kid.

She’d driven him crazy, made him angry. Gotten under his skin. Wormed her way into his bruised, battered and wary heart.

And then she’d grown up.

Oh, God, she’d grown up.

She’d talked him into escorting her to her high school senior prom. They’d danced, they’d talked about how she would leave the following morning to do an internship at Joe’s radio station in Dallas, before she began college in the fall.

She’d kissed him. He’d kissed her back. Again and again and again. He’d held her, trying not to say the words that screamed inside his head: “Don’t go, don’t go. Stay with me, Sophie. Love me, Sophie.”

The foster son of Joe Colton owed the man better than that. The half-breed son of a drunk owed Sophie more than that. So he’d pushed her away, out of his arms, out of his life. Coldly, almost brutally telling her to go away, to grow up.

For the past nearly ten years they saw each other only at Colton family gatherings—which were only slightly less populated than some small countries. They acknowledged each other, but they’d never been alone together since that night.

They weren’t alone now. Joe was standing on the other side of the bed, tears streaming down his face as he held his daughter’s limp hand.

“She’s going to be fine, Joe,” River assured him, wincing at the sight of Sophie’s bruised and battered face, the bandages he could see peeking out above the slack neckline of the hospital gown. She looked as if she’d been dragged behind a runaway horse, her tender white skin scraped raw in spots, swollen and in livid shades of purple in others.

The largest bandage covered the left side of her face. There were more than one hundred stitches beneath that bandage. Her knee would heal. He’d make sure of that, even if he had to carry her on his back until the ligaments and tendons grew strong again. The scrapes and bruises, the scratches, would heal.

But her face? Sophie had never been vain, but she was young, only twenty-seven, and beautiful. How would she react to a scar on her face? A scar that reminded her, each and every time she looked in the mirror, of the terror she must have felt in that alley?

The mugger hadn’t just hurt her physically. River feared that he might also have destroyed her confidence, badly scarred her in ways not so readily apparent. Robbed her of her freedom, her ability to walk down a street without fear.

River ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair, rubbed at the back of his neck. His eyes sparkled with unshed tears that threatened to spill down over his lean, deeply tanned cheeks.

On the bed, Sophie stirred slightly, moaned, seemed to be trying to open her eyes.

“I…um…I’ll get the nurse,” River said quietly as Sophie’s eyes fluttered open for a second, then closed once more. “But I’ll give you and Sophie a couple minutes alone together before I do.”

He turned on his heels and left the room, his worn cowboy boots barely making any noise against the tile floor. The door closed behind him and he stopped in the hallway, one denim-clad shoulder leaning against the wall, his right fist dug deep in his jean pocket as he used his left to rhythmically beat the cowboy hat against his thigh.

River James looked like exactly who he was. A cowboy. A cowboy whose mother had been a full-blooded Native American, and whose father had been a white man. He had the thick black hair of his mother, the vivid green eyes of his father, and the disposition of a man most wouldn’t lightly try to cross. Tall, whipcord lean, well muscled, hardened by years in the saddle as well as his unhappy life until the day Joe and Meredith Colton had taken him in, wised him up and given him a reason to believe he was somebody.

Until then, he’d been like a lone wolf. And once Sophie had gone out of his life, he’d reverted to that lone-wolf state. Complete unto himself. He didn’t need Sophie, he didn’t need anyone. At least that was what he’d been telling himself.

He’d been lying to himself.

It had been a long time since the thirty-one-year-old River James had felt helpless, defeated. It had not, however, been quite so long since he’d been angry. His temper had been his biggest problem when he’d come to Joe Colton’s house as a teenager, and even if that anger had turned into something closer to pride, it was never far from the surface—not where Sophie Colton was concerned.

He’d been angry with her for pestering him. He’d been angry with her for growing up, for making him aware of her as more than his “sister.” He’d been angry with her when he’d kissed her, when she’d tasted so good and he’d wanted her so much.

He’d been angry when she’d done the right thing and gone away, angry when she’d stayed away. Angry when she’d brought that idiot Chet Wallace to the ranch and announced that she was actually going to marry that grinning, three-piece suit—her engagement telling River that she didn’t want someone like him, but wanted someone who was his complete opposite.

Now he was angry with her for lying in that hospital bed, looking so damn fragile, so damn beautiful, and for making him wake up, yet again, to the fact that he loved her.

Had always loved her. Would always love her.

Two

J oe Colton leaned over his daughter’s bed and squeezed her hand. “Sophie? Sophie, honey? It’s Dad.”

Sophie stirred slightly on the bed, winced, then opened her eyes. “Daddy?” she asked, her voice weak.

Joe nodded, unable to speak. She hadn’t called him Daddy in years. Now he was “Dad,” sometimes, when she was being silly, “Senator.” But she was still his baby girl, and as she looked up at him, as her bruised bottom lip began to tremble, he would have cut out his own heart if it could take away just a little of her pain.

“Oh, Daddy, it—it was horrible,” Sophie told him, squeezing her eyes shut. “But I fought him, Daddy, I fought him. Couldn’t…Michael…couldn’t let anything hurt you and Mommy again.”

“Hush, baby,” Joe said, carefully stroking Sophie’s hair. “Just rest, baby. All we want you to do is rest.”

Mary came into the room, and Joe stepped back from the bed to join River as the nurse took Sophie’s vital signs, checked her IV.

“She’s sleeping again?” River asked the senator.

“I think so,” Joe said, nodding. “Look, River, it’s been a long night, and I know you have to get back to the ranch. That new stallion’s coming in today, right? So you just go, and I’ll get a hotel room and stay until Sophie can come back to the ranch with us. Okay?”

A muscle ticked in River’s cheek. He wasn’t being dismissed. He knew that. Joe just wanted to be alone with his daughter. “What about Meredith? Do you think she’ll want me to fly her here, to see Sophie, be with you?”

Joe Colton pressed his fingers against his eyes and shook his head. “I’ll phone her later. Right now I just want to stay here.”

River nodded and patted Joe’s back. “I’ll call around, make a reservation for you, and then head back to the ranch. You’ll phone later? Keep me—keep us informed?”

Joe didn’t answer him. Mary brushed past them, leaving the room, and Joe headed toward the bed once more, dragging a utilitarian metal chair with him, then sat down beside Sophie, obviously dug in for the duration.

River left them alone and headed back down the hallway, toward the elevators. He was family, yes, and had been since his teenage years. He wasn’t being dismissed, pushed away. But blood was blood, and Joe and Sophie were blood. River understood that, respected that.

The elevator doors opened as he approached, and Chet Wallace stepped out, looking as fresh and unwrinkled as if he’d just come out of the shower. His hair was combed, his face had been freshly shaved, his tie was snug against his throat. He could have been on his way to a morning meeting.

“Wallace,” River bit out, taking hold of the man’s elbow as Chet walked past him without so much as a nod. “Where’ve you been? Consulting with your tailor?”

“I beg your pardon,” Chet answered, trying to shake off River’s hand, without success. “Do I know—Oh, wait. You’re one of the employees at Hacienda del Alegria, aren’t you? Sophie’s parents’ ranch? I think I remember you now. Are the senator and his wife here already? I went back to my condo, caught some sleep, showered and changed.”

“How nice for you,” River said, finally letting go of Chet’s elbow. “The senator is with Sophie now,” he continued, motioning for Wallace to follow him into a small alcove set aside as a visitors’ waiting room. “Let’s talk.”

“I’d rather speak with the senator,” Chet said, but River’s slitted-eye glare seemed to make him reconsider, and he followed River into the alcove. “Now, look—”

“No, Wallace, you look,” River shot back, knowing he was going to have to perform a minor miracle if he expected to keep his temper in check. The man had gone home? Grabbed a few winks and taken a shower? No-good son of a bitch. “My name is James. River James, one of Joe and Meredith’s foster children, not that you need to know any of that. What I need to know is why you let Sophie walk home alone last night. Or do the police have that wrong?”

Chet looked at River for a few moments, then shot his cuffs. He was a tall man, as tall as River, but that was where their similarities ended. Chet was sleek, pretty boy handsome, the kind of guy who wore designer sweats as he worked out at his designer gym. Shooting his cuffs, wordlessly pointing out that he was a successful man wearing a six-hundred-dollar suit, was an action meant to intimidate River.

Yeah, sure. River didn’t think so. He just stood there, glaring at Chet Wallace, a tic working in his cheek, his hands itching to take the stylishly dressed man apart, piece by designer-label piece.

Chet broke eye contact first, his artificially tanned cheeks flushing slightly as he actually stepped back a pace, as if it had finally hit him that River James was a wild animal searching for prey, and that he was reacting pretty much like a deer caught out in the open.

In self-defense, Chet went on the attack. “Now look—James, is it? I already spoke with the police. Yes, Sophie and I had dinner together last night, and then she decided to walk home. Four blocks, James, that’s all. As a matter of fact, I was just leaving the restaurant myself when I saw all the police cars and the ambulance. I went to check and found Sophie. I’m the one who identified her.”

“Well, bully for you. Why did she decide to walk home, Wallace?” River asked, putting his cowboy hat on, then looping his thumbs through his belt. “You two have a little spat? That is what you’d call it, right? A little spat?”

Chet’s hand went to his Windsor knot, and he lifted his chin as he nervously shifted the tie from side to side. “We had a slight disagreement, yes,” he conceded. “Not that it’s any concern of yours.”

“I don’t care if you had the mother of all knockdown drag-outs, Wallace,” River told him tightly. “That’s none of my business. What I do care about is that you let her walk home alone.”

Chet held up one hand. “Oh, wait a minute, fella. You’re trying to say this is my fault? How does any of this become my fault? It was Sophie who went running off, you know. It was Sophie who— What? What’s your problem?”

River had bent his head, rubbed his temples with the fingers of his right hand and laughed. He’d thought, really believed, he could get through this without losing his cool. But this Wallace was too thick for words, and River wasn’t going to waste any more of his words on the jackass. He almost wanted to thank him for being so dense.

“My problem, Wallace?” River repeated, dropping his hand and looking at Sophie’s fiancé. And then, before he could remember that he was, for the most part, a highly civilized individual, he planted his right fist square in Chet Wallace’s face.

Chet went down on his backside, holding a hand to his bloody nose.

“Problem? I don’t have a problem,” River said, settling his worn cowboy hat lower over his flashing green eyes. “Not anymore.”

Then he turned on his heels and headed for the elevator. He was not a happy man, definitely. But he was feeling somewhat better. Definitely.

For the next week, Joe Colton was never far from his daughter’s bedside. His many businesses didn’t suffer, because he’d been slowly withdrawing from those businesses, from his family, withdrawing from life itself. He’d allowed life to defeat him, again. Had it taken almost losing his daughter to wake him up, shake him up, force him to look at his life, possibly begin taking steps to fix it?

And when had it all begun to go so wrong?

Michael. Joe sighed, his heart aching as he remembered Sophie’s words that first day, her garbled thoughts that, to anyone else, would have seemed as if she were talking crazy because of her concussion.

But Joe knew differently. He knew what his daughter had meant, and was devastated that, as she struggled with her attacker, her thoughts had been of Michael. Of Meredith and himself. Of the family, and of how the Colton family couldn’t take another tragedy. Couldn’t lose another child.

In a way, Michael had saved Sophie, and that was how Joe was going to look at the thing. It was the only way possible to look at it.

Still, he had to look further than that, and he knew it. As he sat in the chair beside Sophie’s hospital bed, holding her hand, watching her sleep, he had to acknowledge that Sophie had been slowly slipping away from him these past years. All his children had been slipping away, visiting the ranch less and less, avoiding the family that was no longer a family.

At least not the family it had been, the family he and Meredith had brought into the world, added to with adopted and foster children after Michael’s death, family they’d formed into a solid, unbreakable, unshakable unit.

So when had it all begun to change? With Michael’s death? Should he at least start there?

Probably.

Joe and Meredith had been raising five children. Rand, the oldest. The twins, Drake and Michael. Sophie and the baby, Amber. Life was good, better than good. Joe Colton was a rich, self-made man, with oil and gas interests, major investments in the communications industry. Meredith had even convinced him that it was time he gave something back, so that he’d run for the United States Senate and been elected to represent California.

Life was so good. So very good.

And then Michael and his twin had taken their bikes out for a ride, and Michael had been run down by a reckless driver. Dead, at the age of eleven, and while his father was away in Washington, instead of being home where he belonged. Home, keeping his children safe.

Joe pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. His body was hot, his muscles tired, his brain stuffed with memory toppling over memory, few of those memories good.

Joe had resigned from the Senate, come home and made a jackass out of himself. He didn’t see Meredith’s grief. He didn’t see Drake’s special loss, the loss all his children had suffered. All he saw was his own pain, his own guilt. And when Meredith finally suggested they have another baby—not to replace Michael, surely, but because having another child to love might help them all heal—another bomb had dropped into Joe’s shattered life.

He was sterile. How could that be? But it was true. He’d caught the mumps from a child at the nearby Hopechest Ranch, a home for orphaned children he and Meredith often visited, and now he was sterile. He could not give Meredith another child.

Was that when Meredith had begun to turn away from him?

No, that wasn’t it, and Joe knew it. Meredith had stuck with him day and night, even when he was being a selfish, self-pitying jackass.

And it had been Meredith who had finally convinced him that there were many, many children who needed loving homes, many children they could help, who could help them, for Joe and Meredith still had so much love to give.

Joe smiled slightly as he remembered how Meredith had jumped in with both feet, taking on the most troubled children at the Hopechest Ranch, opening their house and her loving arms to Chance, to Tripp, to Rebecca, to Wyatt. To Blake, to River, and to Emily. To Joe Junior, the infant who had been literally left on their doorstep.

Emily. Joe’s thoughts, which had begun to ease, now plunged him back into despair. Because the life he and Meredith had lost when Michael died, the one they’d rebuilt together—not a better life, surely, but a different one, a fulfilling one—had shattered again nine years ago, not six months after Joe Junior had come into their lives, on the day Meredith had driven the then eleven-year-old Emily into town for a visit with her natural grandmother.

Yes. That had been the day the light had forever gone out of Joe’s life, out of the Colton family.

It was a small accident with the car, although there were never any small accidents. Each took its own toll. This particular one had taken Meredith from him, his beloved Meredith. Not in death, but in a head injury that had changed her in some way.

Emily had said her “good mommy” had been replaced by an “evil mommy.” That was, of course, too simplistic, although even the doctors who had treated Meredith were at a loss as to why her personality had undergone such a dramatic change after the accident.

Change? No, that was too mundane a word to explain what had happened to Meredith. His sweet, loving wife, the concerned mother, had been taken from them, to be replaced by a woman who cared only for Joe Junior, a woman who ignored her other children, a woman who positively despised and shunned Emily. A woman who had turned hard, and selfish, and grasping. A woman who had dared to present him with her pregnancy a year after the accident and insist he was the father.

They’d separated then, for long months, but Joe had finally relented, let her come home, even claimed the child, Teddy, as his own.

But nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same again.

“Dad?”

Joe leaned closer to Sophie, who was looking up at him with Meredith’s beautiful brown eyes. “Yes, baby?” Now that she was recovering, she didn’t call him Daddy anymore. But she was still his baby.

“Did Mom call you back yet? Is she coming?”

Joe felt a stab straight to his heart. “No, baby, your mom couldn’t be here. She’s at home, taking care of Joe Junior and Teddy.”

“Oh,” Sophie said, disappointment dimming her eyes. “But she is coming soon, isn’t she? It’s been a week, Dad.”

“Shhh, baby, don’t talk too much,” Joe said, stroking Sophie’s hair. “You need to rest now. You rest and get strong, and soon we’ll be able to go to the ranch and see everybody. All right?”

“She’s not coming, is she?” Sophie looked up at her father, willing him to answer. “Is she, Dad?”

“You know how she doesn’t like to leave Teddy—”

Sophie held up a hand, wordlessly begging her father not to make excuses for her mother. “Teddy’s eight years old, Dad. Surely she could leave him for two or three days to visit me. There are plenty of people on the ranch who would take care of him. Oh, never mind. Why should I think things would be any different now than they have been for almost the last decade? You know, Dad, there are times when I feel this overwhelming urge to call my mother and ask for her help, because something’s terribly wrong with my mother.”

Joe was rescued from having to find some way to respond to Sophie’s heartbreaking remark by the entrance of Dr. Hardy, who had come to remove the stitches in Sophie’s face.

“Good morning, Sophie, Senator,” the cosmetic surgeon said, handsome and imposing in his green scrubs. “Final unveiling today, Sophie. Are you ready?”

Sophie’s hand tightened around Joe’s. “I guess so,” she said quietly.

“Good,” Dr. Hardy said, nodding as a nurse entered and handed him a paper package containing a pair of sterile gloves. “Now remember, Sophie, this isn’t the completed look. You’re sort of a work in progress. You’ll be swollen, bruised, and the cut is still going to look red, angry. That’s to be expected. Later, in, oh, about six months, we’ll go back to the operating room for a little of my magic. Isn’t that right, Alice?” he asked the nurse. “Tell Sophie. I’m a magician.”

The nurse rolled her eyes, then grinned at the doctor, obviously the object of some substantial hero worship. “I don’t know about the magic part, Doctor, but I do know that Miss Colton has nothing to worry about. That scar is as good as gone.”

“Thank you, Alice, and there’ll be a little something extra in your paycheck this week,” Dr. Hardy said, winking at Sophie, then advancing toward the bed even as Sophie began to cringe against the pillows. “No, no, Sophie. We’re going to make this as quick and painless as possible, I promise. Alice is going to remove the bandages and then we’ll get those stitches out of there before they start to do more harm than good. And then, young lady, you, your crutches and your leg brace get to go home—at least that’s the word on the street. Okay? Is that a deal?”

“Dad?” Sophie said, squeezing Joe’s hand until his circulation was all but cut off. “You’ll get me a mirror. You promised.”

Joe nodded, his throat clogged with tears, with fear for how the scar would look, how its appearance would impact his daughter. She’d only allowed Chet to visit her a single time, and had kept her head averted during the visit, so that she hadn’t even asked him about the bandage over his nose. And then she’d made him promise not to try to see her again until she contacted him.

Joe wasn’t sure if she was angry with her fiancé, if she blamed him for her attack or if she was afraid that her appearance had been ruined, so that Chet would be disgusted with her, repelled by her scar.

No matter what Sophie felt, however, Joe had already made up his mind that any man who would stay away from the bedside of his injured fiancée because she told him to…well, he wasn’t the man for his Sophie!

Joe blinked, surprised to see that the bandage was already gone, and that Dr. Hardy was in the process of removing the stitches, his green-clad frame blocking Joe’s view of his daughter’s face.

And then it was done, and Sophie was nervously asking for the mirror.

“Maybe later, baby,” Joe said, only to be cut off by Dr. Hardy, who took a mirror from Alice and handed it to Sophie.

“Just don’t get used to how you look, Sophie, because that’s going to change—not that it’s looking so bad right now, in my opinion. You’re young, your health is excellent, and I expect the final scar to be almost invisible.”

Sophie held the mirror in front of her, slowly lifted her hand to tentatively touch the livid red wound that stretched from just below her ear, up and over her jawbone, then back down, so that it ran under her chin.

“He—he didn’t make a very clean cut, did he?” she asked at last, putting down the mirror. “I could be marked with a big S, for Sophie. Or for Scarred,” she ended, biting her bottom lip between her teeth.

Joe reached for her hand, but Dr. Hardy had already taken both of Sophie’s hands in his. “Look at me, Sophie,” he said, all traces of humor gone. “Look at me, sweetheart, and listen to me. It’s a scar. That’s all it is. And it will be gone soon, or as close to gone that you’ll forget it’s even there. But that scar, visible or not, isn’t you. Do you understand that? If that’s an S on your jaw right now, it stands for Survivor. Don’t forget that.”

Sophie nodded, and Dr. Hardy and his nurse left the room.

“Sophie? He’s right, you know,” Joe said. “You are a survivor. And you’re going to be fine. Five more weeks at your apartment with the nurse I’ve hired, until the orthopods take that brace off your leg, and then you’ll be with us, at the ranch. Six months from now, once Dr. Hardy is done with his magic, it will be as if this never happened.”

“But it did happen, Dad,” Sophie told him, a huge tear slipping down her cheek. “Every night when I close my eyes I remember that it happened. Every day, now that the bandage is off, I won’t be able to forget that it happened.”

She tugged her hand free of Joe’s and pulled the large diamond ring from her third finger, left hand. “Here,” she said, handing the ring to Joe. “Tell Chet I’ll see him in six months, not before then.”

“Oh, honey, don’t do this,” Joe begged her, while inwardly he relaxed, with at least one problem being solved for him. “I’m sure Chet will be banging down the door to see you, to change your mind.”

“Like he’s been banging down the door all week?” Sophie asked, her smile wry. “No, Dad. I just want to go home to my apartment, wait for this thing to come off my leg, and then come to the ranch. If you want me there?”

“If I— Ah, baby,” Joe said, folding his daughter into his strong arms. “All I want out of life right now is to have you home with us again.”

Three

H ome. It had never looked so good.

Sophie sat in the passenger seat as her father drove the car along the private roadway, past various ranch buildings, heading toward the huge, circular drive that fronted Hacienda del Alegria—the House of Joy.

She gave a small, lopsided smile as she remembered the day River had told her about another House of Joy, somewhere in Nevada, that had been a topnotch “pleasure palace” in its heyday, years earlier. Sophie had been highly affronted, saying that wasn’t what her parents had in mind when they’d named the ranch, and then minutes later had retold the story to her oldest brother, Rand, giggling as he looked shocked that his little sister would even know about such things.

River had gotten into big trouble over that one—which served him right, because Sophie had also been subjected to quite a lecture from Rand on what a lady isn’t supposed to let anyone know she knows, even if she knows it.

Sophie held up a hand and squinted into the setting sun as the car entered the huge circular drive. Nothing had changed since her last visit. Nothing altered the physical beauty that was Hacienda del Alegria.

There was still the central area of the house, a two-story, sand-color adobe structure sporting California’s version of a pillared porch, and a terra-cotta roof.

The sun still rose against the front windows, and set behind the house, over the wonderfully blue Pacific Ocean that lay below a series of cliffs.

Single-story wings wrapped back from either side of the house, affording every room a view of the ocean, of the marvelous gardens, of the courtyard, pool, and gardens that played such a large role in the everyday life of everyone who lived in the house.

And so many, many people had lived in Hacienda del Alegria over the years. Her parents occupied a large suite in the south wing, Sophie’s and Amber’s bedrooms were also located there, with the north wing housing their brothers and foster siblings.

A full house. A lovely house. Once a happy house.

But not anymore.

“Luckily you’ll have no stairs to navigate,” Joe Colton told his daughter as he stopped the car and turned off the ignition. “Even with the brace off, I think you’re going to have to get used to being called Gimpy for a while, at least by your brothers. Just remember, Sophie, it’s a measure of their affection. Everyone’s been worried sick about you. Boys just often don’t know how to say what’s really in their hearts.”

Sophie smiled, shook her head at her father. “Senator, you know, you never cease to amaze me. How can you still be giving us all lessons? Did it ever occur to you that we might be grown up now?”

“Never. Not in my wildest dreams,” Joe answered, reaching over to flick a fingertip against Sophie’s nose. She flinched at the near contact and turned her head, raising a hand to the scar on her left cheek.

“Baby—”

“Not now, Dad,” Sophie said tightly. She’d been nervous ever since they’d gotten within twenty miles of the ranch. Nervous about her welcome, who would be there to welcome her home, what they’d think when they saw her. “Let’s just get inside, okay?”

Leaving the baggage in the trunk, Joe quickly came around and opened the car door for Sophie, then walked with her to the front door that stood open in welcome. Their housekeeper, Inez Ramirez, waited there, a broad smile on her wide, pleasant face. “Welcome home, Miss Sophie,” Inez said, holding out her arms, and Sophie gratefully walked into them, allowing the hug, needing the hug.

Then it was time to pass into the large great room that made up the nerve center of the house, a huge room furnished well, but casually.

The empty room.

“Dad?” Sophie asked, turning to her father, who then pointed toward the wall of glass doors leading out to the courtyard. Following his gesture, Sophie could see Meredith Colton lounging on a chaise beside the pool, clad in a bra-like swim top and a long, filmy, patterned skirt, dark glasses shading her eyes.

“I’ll go get her,” Joe offered, but Sophie shook her head and started for the doors. “Sophie, she couldn’t know the exact time we’d arrive,” he called after her, then swore under his breath and quickly turned his back on a scene he didn’t have the strength to witness.

Sophie limped out onto the patio, slowly made her way down the steps and past the fountain. The beauty of the courtyard was lost to her, its sights, its sounds, its glorious smells. All she could see was her mother, the woman who had spoken to her on the telephone only a single time in the past six weeks, the woman who hadn’t had the time or the inclination to visit her in San Francisco.

Sophie stood beside the chaise and looked down at the woman who had taught her how to tie her shoes, who had giggled with her when Sophie had tried on her very first training bra, who had put up her hair for her the night of the senior prom. The woman who had kissed her cuts and scrapes, hand sewn her Princess Leia Halloween costume, held her when she cried because River James was just the most awful, miserable, nasty boy in the whole entire world.

Who are you? Sophie asked silently, gazing down at the sunscreen-slick woman with the bloodred fingernails, the perfectly coiffed golden-brown hair, the too-youthful swimsuit…the pitcher of martinis on the table beside her. Who are you? Because you aren’t my mother anymore. You can’t be my mother.

“Hello, Mother,” Sophie said at last, when Meredith Colton didn’t respond to her presence. “I’m home.”

Meredith raised a hand, removed her sunglasses, then slid her long legs to one side and stood, looking at Sophie with Sophie’s own huge brown eyes. “Well, so you are,” she said, motioning toward the metal cane in Sophie’s left hand. “Is that going to be around for much longer? I mean, really, it’s so…medical. Couldn’t you find something nicer?”

“It’s good to see you, too, Mom,” Sophie said, giving in to her fatigue and sitting down on the matching chaise. She kept her head down, so that the curtain of her hair slid forward, covering her cheek.

“Don’t be snide, Sophie,” Meredith told her, sitting down again herself and taking hold of her martini glass. “Or hasn’t it yet occurred to you that you’re twenty-seven years old? Old enough to move to San Francisco. Old enough to be out on your own, just as you wanted to be. You wanted to be independent, and I let you be independent. But, obviously, for all that independence, you’re still not so grown up that you couldn’t insist that your doting daddy jump up and run when you wanted him.”

Shock made Sophie lift her head, and she watched in horror as Meredith’s eyes widened at the sight of the scar. She raised a hand to her jaw, but it was too late, because her mother had seen everything there was to see.

Meredith’s upper lip curled in distaste. “Not bad? That’s what your father said. The scar wasn’t bad. Doesn’t the man have eyes in his head? Oh, you poor thing. How are you going to manage, being so horribly disfigured like that? And your father says you sent Chet away? That wasn’t smart, Sophie. How do you expect to get another man with that ruined face? I really think you should— Where are you going? Is this how you were raised? How dare you walk away while I’m speaking to you. I’m your mother!”

But Sophie had gotten to her feet as quickly as she could and was already hobbling back toward the house, wondering what on earth had possessed her to come home. Whoever had said it had been right: You can’t go home again.

At least not to Hacienda del Alegria. The House of Joy?

No, not anymore.

River walked back to the stables after watching Joe’s car drive past, seeing Sophie’s form in the passenger seat.

So. She was home. Healing, but not quite mended. And without a diamond on her third finger, left hand.

Not that he was going to do anything about that, could do anything about that.

Besides, it might only be temporary, some sort of emotional fallout from the mugging. Joe had told him how sensitive Sophie was about the cut on her face, how she refused to see that the scar was fading every day, growing less obvious to everyone but her.

If nobody mentioned the scar, made a big deal about it, Sophie would probably soon be able to deal with the thing, put it behind her, look forward to the surgery that would finish the job the doctor had begun and her healthy body had taken from there. After all, her knee was already so good that the J-brace and crutches were gone.

She’d been in physical therapy in San Francisco almost from the beginning, and now that she would soon be putting aside her cane, the therapy could begin in earnest, building up muscles grown weak from disuse.

Sophie was fine. Fine. And she was going to be even better.

River told himself that every night. She was healing. She was back with her family, who would do everything in their power to help her heal. She’d soon be his own laughing, happy, optimistic Sophie again.

Please, God.

River busied himself in the tack room, making up excuse after excuse not to leave the stables, not to head up to the house. See Sophie.

She’d be too busy for him anyway, with everyone else crowding around, hugging her, kissing her, welcoming her back. Why, he might even take dinner out here with the boys rather than go up to the house for the evening meal. That wasn’t so unusual; he did it all the time.

“Coward,” he muttered under his breath as he hung up the bridle he’d just inspected. “What do you think she’s going to do, buddy? Bite your head off?” He lowered his head and sighed. “Ignore you?”

Okay, so now he was finally getting down to it. She might ignore him—or worse, treat him the same as she did her brothers and sister, her foster siblings. Happy to see him, polite, even loving. But not special.

Not the way they’d been, years ago.

He wouldn’t have made it without Sophie, wouldn’t have survived. He knew it, even if she didn’t.

River had come to the ranch a rebellious teenager—alternately hotheaded and morose, a teeming mass of hate and anger and, often, despair. He lashed out at anyone who came near him, tried to help him, although he didn’t realize until many years later that he kept people at arm’s length because he was too afraid to let anyone into his world, for fear they’d leave him.

He’d been born to a white rancher and a Native American mother whom his father had married only because he’d been careless and put a child in her belly, River. His father resented his Native American wife, and Rafe, her son from a previous marriage, but that didn’t mean he kept his hands off her.

River’s earliest memories were of his mother’s love and his father’s undisguised disgust.

And then his mother left him, died in childbirth when he was only six. His new sister, Cheyenne, was taken in by her maternal grandmother, to be raised on reservation land. Rafe, River’s protector, also stayed on the reservation, because their father didn’t want him, couldn’t control him. But not River. Oh, no, he wanted River. He was six years old now. Old enough to “help” eke out a poor living on that small, decrepit excuse for a ranch. Old enough to do a “man’s” work. Rafe, on the other hand, was old enough to talk back, and so he was left behind, considered worthless, too much the savage for his stepfather to have to face every day.

All the love went out of River’s life when his mother died, when his sister and brother had been taken away. His own life was reduced to caring for and avoiding the slaps from a rotten drunk.

School was a place River went when his father was passed out drunk on the couch and couldn’t stop him, saddle him with another chore. It was at school, when River was nine, that one of his teachers had seen the bruises.

Now his father was gone, left at the ranch while River was removed from his not-so-tender care and placed at the Hopechest Ranch, a haven for children from “troubled homes.”

He’d hated it there. Hated the kindness, the caring, the promise that he was safe now, had nothing to worry about anymore. What did those do-gooders know? He was alone, that was what he was. His mother gone, his Native American family unwilling or unable to take him, his father a brutal drunk who could show up at any moment, drag him back to the ranch.

River found some solace with the horses at Hopechest Ranch, a project initiated by Joe Colton, a charitable contribution he believed would help the children who cared for the horses, learned responsibility through that care, and in return were given something to love.

That was how it began. River James, half-breed and teenage menace, and Joe Colton, rich man, senator, and a man stubborn enough to ignore River’s animosity, his rebuffs, and finally take the troubled teen into his own home.

Joe and Meredith tried their best, they really did. So did the other Coltons. But River held out, held himself aloof from them all, ignoring their kindness while spending his days cutting school and hanging out at the stables. Hacienda del Alegria wasn’t exactly a working ranch, but Joe Colton did raise horses, and that was enough for River.

Except he couldn’t shrug off Sophie Colton, because the girl simply refused to go away, to leave him alone. God, how he’d tried to send her away. Called her names, ignored her, let her know her company wasn’t welcome.

For all the good it did him.

Just entering her teens, Sophie had been skinny as a Popsicle stick and just as physically two-dimensional. Bright silver braces on her teeth. Silly pigtails in her hair. With a curiosity that drove him nearly insane as she tagged after him asking “Why?” and “How’dya do that?” and “Can I ride him next, huh, huh, can I?”

He longed to strangle her, because she wouldn’t give up. Her tenacity infuriated him, right up until the moment he realized that Sophie Colton was special. All the Coltons were special, but Sophie was extraordinary. She had a heart so big it included the whole world, even him. She wore him down, wormed her way through his defenses, and the two of them became friends, more than friends. Inseparable.

And then she had to ruin it all and grow up, start seeing him as her boyfriend, her first love. God, that had been hard. Especially since River felt like her boyfriend, wanted to be the one who awakened Sophie to love, then held her in his arms forever.

He’d been a fool to agree to escort her to her senior prom, more of a fool to kiss her.

And then she’d gone away, and his last sight of her had been the tears in those huge brown eyes when he’d told her to go away, to grow up, to leave him alone.

He should have left then, left the ranch, left the Coltons. He was old enough to be on his own, legally free to leave. But then there was that mess with Meredith, the marital separation that had so unsettled everyone, and Joe’s unhappiness over these past nine years.

How could River leave the man who had given him so much? Even as word of River’s expertise with horses traveled far enough to have ranchers from Colorado to Texas making him offers, River had stayed with Joe and built up the Colton stud.

He had stayed with Joe and waited for Sophie to come home, knowing she never would. Not with her successful career in San Francisco. Not with that damned ring on her finger. And most especially not to revisit the strained unhappiness that hung over the ranch.

“River? You back there?”

River walked out of the tack room, toward Joe Colton, who was standing in the stables, looking lost and defeated. “Senator? Is everything all right? I saw you drive up a while ago with Sophie.”

River retrieved two soda cans from a small refrigerator and handed one to Joe, motioning for them to step outside, sit down on the bench against the wall, just to the left of the huge doors. “Joe? Everything is all right, isn’t it? I mean, you told me she was fine—”

Joe gave a slight wave of his hand. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. Sophie’s doctors are over the moon with her progress, just as I told you. All of them. And they’re satisfied that you’ll make sure she gets to physical therapy in Prosperino three times a week. So, no, nothing’s wrong there. It’s just…it’s just…”

“Meredith?” River asked, his jaw tight. “Tell me. What did she do?”

Joe, unable to sit still, got up and began to pace. “It’s more like what she didn’t do. She does nothing, and it hurts Sophie. Then she finally does do something, and it hurts Sophie. The poor kid’s in her room, crying her eyes out.”

“Sophie’s crying? Why?” River crushed the soda can, its contents spilling over his fingers, so that he tossed it into the garbage container beside the bench.

Joe sat down once more, his shoulders slumped, his hands locked together between his spread knees. “Meredith didn’t even watch for us, or come into the house when Inez told her we’d arrived. Inez took me to one side and told me she’d let Meredith know we’d arrived. But Meredith just stayed out at the pool, sunning herself, and then let Sophie know that her cane was ugly, her scar even more ugly. She told her…she told her she shouldn’t have tossed Chet over because now she’ll never get a man, not with that scar.”

River muttered a few choice words under his breath, then sighed. That was Meredith. Always saying the wrong thing, never concerned for anyone except herself, and Joe Junior, and Teddy. Nobody else mattered to her anymore. She only seemed to use the other members of the Colton family to sharpen her claws on. “Now what?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t know, son. Sophie was already pretty shaky about that scar, but I figured she’d get over it now that she’s here, with us. I never expected Meredith to— Aw, hell, River. What happened? What in hell happened to us?”

Four

S ophie had fled Meredith Colton’s presence and run to her room—hobbled to her old bedroom—and thrown herself on her bed to cry. It had been a veritable storm of weeping, as she’d cried with huge gulping sobs, the sort she hadn’t cried since her teenage years.

Since the night River had rejected her.

She’d come apart after Meredith’s cold, cutting comments that had sliced at her, injuring her as much as the knife had done, possibly more. There was no pretty way to say it, no rationalization that could explain how thoroughly Sophie fell apart, how completely she finally gave in, gave herself up to her grief as everything that was wrong in her life came together at once, threatening to destroy her.

Sophie had held it together, held everything in, since the first days after the mugging, once the painkillers had been stopped and she had more control over her thoughts, her reactions. She couldn’t let her father see how frightened she was, how defeated she felt. How violated. How used.

Because she’d known how nearly homicidal Joe had been, sitting beside her hospital bed as the police asked her for details of the attack, how impotent he still felt that he couldn’t protect his child, keep her from all harm. He had stayed with her for two weeks, the first spent in the hospital, the second as she got settled back into her apartment, hovering over her, fussing over her, worrying about her, playing mother and father to her in his wife’s absence.

She’d held back her tears as she slowly realized that Chet had taken her at her word. He didn’t phone. He didn’t come pounding on her door, demanding to see her. Yes, he had sent a note stuffed inside a soppy Get Well card, telling her that he loved her and he’d wait for her to “come to her senses.”

That had hurt. Come to her senses? Is that what he thought? That she’d lost her senses? Didn’t he understand? Didn’t anyone understand?

She’d lost a lot more than her “senses.”

When her dad had come into the room and gathered her into his arms, Sophie had told him what Meredith had said. She shouldn’t have done that, really, she shouldn’t have. But the loss she felt was so great, the hurt so overwhelming, that she hadn’t been able to keep the truth from her father—the truth that her mother, her own mother, now considered her disfigured and a total loss.

“She’s sick, baby,” Joe had said to her, his words sounding sad and tired and eerily hollow. “Ever since the accident. Something happened. Something changed her. You just have to remember how she was, baby. We all have to remember that, remember how she once loved us.”

That was when Sophie had gotten herself back under control. She couldn’t bear to hear the defeat in her father’s voice, the deep sadness that had to have been slowly destroying him these past nine years.

Sophie had hugged him, kissed him and promised to remember, to hold on to the memories of the good days. She listened as he discussed the physical therapy she’d begin in Prosperino in a few days, the surgery she’d have in less than five months, to minimize her scar.

She’d agreed with him on everything, assured him she was all right, and watched after him as he left her room, his large frame stooped, his feet dragging.

Her impulsively formed plan to leave the ranch the next morning embarrassed her as she watched her father. How could she leave him? How could she have stayed away so long? Why had she stayed away so long? Because of Meredith? Perhaps.

But there was another reason, and Sophie knew it.

She watched now as that reason walked toward her through the soft patches of misty yellow drifting down from the vapor lights placed around the stables.

He walked with his head down, his face hidden by that ever-present dusty tan cowboy hat that seemed so much a part of him. He had his hands stuffed deep in his jean pockets and kicked a stone along the drive with the tip of his worn cowboy boots. The lone wolf, prowling his nocturnal territory.

Sophie’s stomach muscles clenched as she watched him approach, drank in the sight of him. Long and lean, his shoulders broad, his waist and hips narrow, his straight legs wrapped tight in faded jeans. He moved gracefully, unaware of his natural grace.

When she had been a kid, she’d marveled at his shoulder-length hair, black as night, straight as sticks, and the perfect frame for his tanned, brooding face, his sparkling green eyes, the intriguing slashes that appeared in his cheeks at his rare smiles.

River had figured in all her dreams for just about as long as she could remember having dreams. The barely tamed rebel, the exotic creature with a Native American mother and a father who had tried, and failed, to destroy him. The misfit. The one person on the ranch who didn’t immediately love her, think she was wonderful, do anything and everything to please her.

A creature of light, Sophie had been drawn to his darkness, his secrets. He spoke to the horses, whispered to them, and they listened. He stood toe to toe with her father, the only person Sophie had ever seen do that, and never backed down. Never backed down from anyone, from anything.

He was wild, and wonderful, and Sophie would have done anything for his smile, a single word of praise, to have him notice her, talk to her, let her into at least a small slice of his life.

No, Sophie knew that she hadn’t stayed away from the ranch because her family had changed while she was gone at college. She’d gone, and stayed away, because River hadn’t wanted her.

Everything she had done since the night he had kissed her then pushed her away, told her to go away, had been to hurt River. Her choice of career. Her engagement to Chet Wallace, who was as different from River James as a pin-striped three-piece suit was from a battered cowboy hat pushed down low over all-seeing green eyes.

River had always been strong, definitely stronger than her. Because he had stayed, he had taken the good with the bad, raised himself above a truly tragic childhood. Stayed to give back for all he’d been given.

She watched as he lifted his head and saw her sitting on the bench. His step faltered for a moment, and then he walked toward her with his lazy, rolling gait, sat down beside her in the space she’d left for him—on her right, so that he couldn’t see her scar. Not that he could see much more than form and shadow in this spot just out of the reach of any of the vapor lights, but she just felt more comfortable with her left cheek hidden.

“Evening, Sophie. Welcome home,” he said, the sound of his voice soft, smooth. It was a voice that could soothe a frightened horse, spin a young girl wonderful stories of Native American life as it had been before the white man came. A voice that could whisper, “I want you. God, Sophie, how I want you.”

Sophie just nodded, her tongue cleaving to the roof of her suddenly dry mouth. He smelled of soap and shaving cream and something else, something undefinable, but definitely male. All male, all man.

“They were waiting for you up at the house,” he said, leaning back against the side of the stables, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his head still bent forward, so that he didn’t bang the rim of his hat against the wall. “Dinner’s up.”

“I know, Riv,” she said, wondering if he could condense his sentences anymore, make them shorter, more clipped. It was as if he didn’t want to talk to her at all. “I asked Inez to save me something in the refrigerator, in case I get hungry later. Riv, why did you tell me to leave?”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. Had she gone mad? How could she have asked that?

He didn’t react, didn’t flinch. It was if he’d been expecting the question, maybe waiting for it. Waiting ten years for her to ask.

“It was time for you to go,” he said, taking off his hat and placing it beside him on the bench. “Time for you to grow up, see the world, find out who Sophie Colton was.” He turned toward her and tipped his head as he looked at her in the darkness. “Did you find her, Sophie? Did you like her?”

“I thought I did,” she answered truthfully. “As long as I hated you, I liked myself.”

River chuckled low in his throat. “That’s my Sophie. Give her a good mad, and she can bring the world to its knees.”

She smiled, in spite of herself. “You remember that? You remember how I wanted to conquer the world?”

“Rule the world, I think it was, actually,” River corrected her. “Right after you flew to Mars, cured cancer and invented a pimple cream that really worked—which would have been just before you won the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, I remember. You had big-time dreams, Sophie. Dreams that were a lot bigger than this ranch.”

“I was a kid, Riv,” she shot back angrily. “What the hell did I know about life?”

“Well, Sophie, that’s just it. You didn’t know about life, did you? But you deserved a chance to find out what was out there.”

Sophie sniffed, shook her head. “What’s out there, Riv, is doing homey, tearjerker ads for health insurance companies who withhold treatment to their customers, writing jingles for pimple creams that don’t work…and a world that’s a lot bigger, and stronger, and meaner than I ever could have imagined.” Her voice broke slightly. “It knocked me down, Riv. The world out there knocked me down.”

“And so now you’re home again. Damn, Sophie. How do you sit there looking so comfortable, with your tail tucked between your legs like that?”

She turned sideways on the bench and glared at him. “You son of a— Damn it, Riv, shut up!” How did he do it? How could he make her so mad?

He reached up and scratched at a spot just below his left ear. “Hasn’t worked any miracles for you yet, has it, Soph? Coming home, that is. Joe told me about Meredith’s version of welcoming the prodigal back into the fold this afternoon. Nice. Very nice. Very Meredith.”

“I’m not going to let her get to me,” Sophie declared, trying to believe what she said, trying to tell herself that her mother’s words hadn’t hurt, didn’t still hurt. “She’s sick. Dad says so. The car accident did something—she banged her head, jiggled her brains, shook up her personality. Or maybe it’s…well, maybe it’s the changes. Some women have real problems as they go through menopause.”

“Wrote up a hormone replacement ad for that company of yours, did you?” River said, his even white teeth visible in the soft glow of light as he grinned at her. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all talk in advertising slogans and actually believe all the promises? A thirty-second fix for everything from bad hair days to world peace, if only you used the right product, picked the right party, whatever. Do you do political ads, Sophie? I’ll bet you do. Making silk purses out of sows’ ears, and then ramming it all down the public’s throat. Very commendable.”

Sophie clenched her hands into fists. “If you’re all done making fun of what I chose to do with my career…?”

“All done? Nope. I’ve got a few more stored away somewhere, but I guess I’ll leave them there for now. But admit it, Sophie, I got your mind off that cheek you were keeping turned away from me until a few moments ago.”

She quickly lifted a hand to her cheek, turned her head. “You never did play fair, did you, Riv?” she asked, staring out into the night, blinking back tears. “I—I didn’t know you were so disappointed in the career I chose.”

“You were going to do the internship at Joe’s place in Texas, then major in Communications at college. Graduate, work at one of the television stations, or do investigative reporting for one of the Colton family newspapers. Be like your dad, one of the few men who have used public office, public responsibility, to really help people. Next thing I heard, you were making up slogans for tartar-reducing toothpaste, earning the big bucks, but selling out all your dreams. Hey, now that’s really making a contribution, isn’t it?”

“You don’t understand,” Sophie told him, once more forgetting about her scar, forgetting to hide that scar from River. “Those were dreams, Riv. Young girl dreams.”

“So you really enjoy your work?”

“Of course I enjoy my work!” Sophie exploded, grabbing at her cane and rising to her feet. “I love what I do!”

“Funny. That’s not what Rand told me.”

Sophie sat down again. “Rand? I—I don’t know what you mean.”

“Really? You know, Sophie, you didn’t use to lie to me.”

She bit her bottom lip for a moment, then asked, “What did Rand say?”

“He said that you contacted him just after you and Wallace got engaged, because Wallace wanted the two of you to leave the advertising agency and set up one of your own. He said that you sounded less than enthused, partly because Wallace was talking his expertise and your capital, but also partly because you’d been thinking about getting out of the business.”

“And coming back here to write a book,” Sophie ended for him, wincing as this very private dream seemed now to be everybody’s business.

“Really? Write a book? Actually, Rand didn’t say anything about that.”

“He shouldn’t have said anything,” Sophie blustered, to cover her embarrassment. “I spoke to him as a lawyer, not my brother.”

“And Rand talked to me because he knows I care about you,” River replied in that low, smooth voice that might have the power to soothe savage beasts, but only prodded Sophie into another white-hot streak of anger.

“Care about me? Oh, cut me a break, Riv,” she said bitterly. “If you’d truly cared about me, you’d never have let me— Oh damn!”

“Back to square one, aren’t we?” River asked her, reaching out, stroking her arm.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Sophie agreed. “I left because you pushed me away, and now I’m back and the first thing I do is come chasing after you. Ten years, Riv, and it looks like I haven’t learned a damn thing.”

River was silent for a long time, and Sophie began to relax, fall back into the sort of comfortable silences they used to share, times when it was enough to be with him, sitting under a starry sky, sharing his world.

“Meredith’s full of crap, you know,” he said at last, startling her. “You’re a beautiful woman. Even with both your eyes blackened, and bandages, and scrapes and bruises all over your face, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

Sophie closed her eyes, digested his words. “You were there? You saw me?”

“I flew the senator to San Francisco within an hour of getting the news about the mugging. So, yes, I saw you. I saw you, and then I broke pretty boy Wallace’s nose for him because he let you walk home alone. Didn’t he tell you?”

“I—I didn’t know,” Sophie said, remembering Chet’s visit, vaguely remembering a bandage on his nose. She’d been so worried about her own appearance, and so angry with him, that she’d never really looked at him, never seen more of him than his carefully ironed shirt, his perfectly arranged necktie. “You punched him? You really punched him?”

“Real mature, wasn’t I?” River said, shaking his head. “I guess I just needed to punch something—and lover-boy accommodated me.”

“It wasn’t Chet’s fault,” Sophie said, for the first time wondering if perhaps it was, if perhaps, just perhaps, that was why she didn’t want to see him…and why he hadn’t made any attempts to see her. “I’m the one that left the restaurant.”

“And he’s the one who let you leave,” River responded without missing a beat.

“Yes, he was. And he wasn’t the first man to let me leave, was he? I don’t want to talk about this,” Sophie said, rubbing her arms, as either the evening had turned colder, or her thoughts were sending a chill into her body. “I don’t want to talk about any of this. I just want to forget it.”

“Fine,” River agreed, positioning his hat back on his head, standing up, holding out his hand to her. “Let’s walk. We can talk about this book you want to write.”

“Maybe some other time,” Sophie told him, although she did put her hand in his and allow him to help her to her feet. “It’s still just an idea, Riv, and I’d rather keep it to myself for a while longer.”

“You used to tell me everything, including a bunch of stuff that, trust me, no teenage boy wanted to hear. Do you remember how you were so gung-ho to show me your first push-up bra? I damn near had to climb a tree to get away from that one.”

Sophie ducked her head, grinned. “I was a real pain, wasn’t I? Well, I promise not to be your resident pest anymore, okay?”

He turned to her and picked up her chin with his crooked index finger. “Oh, I don’t know. I think I’d miss my resident pest. I think I have missed her, quite a lot. My pretty little pest, all grown up into a beautiful woman.”

Sophie turned her head, so that he couldn’t see her scar, then pulled away from him. “Don’t do that, Riv,” she told him, all but begged him. “Don’t lie to me. I could always count on you never to lie to me.”

River took hold of her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “What in hell are you talking about?”

“What am I— Oh, for God’s sake, Riv! My face! I’m not the person you knew. The pest, the hero-worshipper, the idiot teenager who thought the sun rose and set on you. I’m not the career woman, I’m not Meredith’s cherished child. I’m not anyone I know or recognize anymore. I’m scared of my own shadow, and everything I’d ever hoped or believed died in that damn alley. And I most certainly am not beautiful.”

“Ah, Sophie,” River said, pulling her into his arms, even as she struggled to be free of him. “Don’t let the world win, sweetheart. You can’t let the bad guys win.”

“Meredith? May I come in?”

Joe Colton stood just inside the door to his wife’s bedroom, still able to be shocked by the overblown femininity of its furnishings, the lavish white Restoration French furniture and elaborate decorations that Meredith would once have called silly, and definitely shunned.

Then again, she had always slept with him, sharing his bed as she shared his life. Once, this bedroom had been done up in the Mission style, with hand loomed Native American rugs scattered on the hardwood floors. They’d furnished the room together, choosing each piece, surrounding themselves with memories of trips they’d taken, sights they’d seen, moments they’d shared.

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