Single mom under siege

A thrilling Coltons of Roaring Springs romance

Detective Liam Kastor assumed he’d never see gorgeous Sloane Colton again after high school...right? So when the lovely lawyer suddenly shows up in town years later, Liam is floored. Newly divorced, Sloane is determined to make a life for herself and her toddler daughter. But when deadly threats show up on Sloane’s doorstep, Liam is determined to find out who’s after her—and why.

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author CINDY DEES is the author of more than fifty novels. She draws upon her experience as a US Air Force pilot to write romantic suspense. She’s a two-time winner of the prestigious RITA® Award for romance fiction, a two-time winner of the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award for Romantic Suspense and an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Best Author Award nominee. She loves to hear from readers at www.cindydees.com.

Also by Cindy Dees

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Navy SEAL Cop

Soldier’s Last Stand

The Spy’s Secret Family

Captain’s Call of Duty

Soldier’s Rescue Mission

Her Hero After Dark

Breathless Encounter

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Colton Under Fire

Cindy Dees

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09363-7

COLTON UNDER FIRE

© 2019 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Her cell phone flashed.

Incoming text for Sloane Colton Durant from Ivan Durant.

She scowled at the screen. Ivan could keep his last name. She would rather go back to being a Colton, even with all of its notorious implications in Roaring Springs.

This isn’t over.

The cell phone flashed another incoming message. Irritated at being disturbed at dinnertime by her ex-husband, she nonetheless touched the screen to see the next message.

She gulped.

I WILL expose what you did and get her back.

A frisson of terror skittered down Sloane’s spine. Her ex, a high-powered corporate attorney, didn’t make threats idly in court and he wasn’t making any now. The custody battle over their daughter had been a bloodbath, and she’d had to resort to blackmailing Ivan with his infidelities and gambling to get him to back off. Her own divorce lawyer had warned her that Ivan probably wasn’t done trying to take Chloe from her.

Sloane’s gaze hardened. Her ex would get custody of Chloe over her dead body. He didn’t care about their daughter at all. Ivan merely saw her as a trophy. The spoils of war.

Sloane winced as two-year-old Chloe let out a piercing squeal, and heads across the dining room turned to glare. It hadn’t been her idea to bring a toddler to a family supper at the upscale Del Aggio steak house at Roaring Springs, or The Lodge, as locals called it. She’d tried to talk her adoptive father, Russ Colton, out of this particular restaurant, but the man was a born-again bull in a china shop.

He didn’t listen to anyone.

“Is Chloe all right?” Sloane’s biological brother, Fox, asked in concern. “She looks flushed.”

“Kids always turn red in the face when they’re winding up for a tactical nuclear meltdown,” she muttered.

“That sounds serious,” Fox responded, eyeing his niece warily.

She and Chloe had spent a few weeks at the Crooked C Ranch while she looked for a permanent place to live. Her adoptive brother, Wyatt Colton, owned the ranch and lived there with his fiancée, Bailey. Fox also had a house on the property and helped manage the spread. They all had a healthy respect for the temper of a tired, hungry two-year-old.

Sloane scooped Chloe out of the wooden high chair, which was probably half the problem. The log contraption might be considered rustic chic, but it looked uncomfortable.

Of course, the other half of the problem was that Little Bug’s bedtime had come and gone, and still, there was no sign of dinner.

“Let’s go for a walk, sweetie, and look at the skiers.”

Chloe felt warm in her arms. And her cheeks were rosier than usual. Poor thing had really had a time of it, getting ripped out of the only home she’d ever known and being dragged to this new town full of strangers who thought they could walk right up to a baby and get in her face or pick her up because they shared the same last name.

Sloane almost hadn’t come back to Roaring Springs, Colorado for that exact same reason. She didn’t need her entire loud, nosy, raucous family getting in her face, either. It had been hard enough getting through the divorce without the interference of the whole Colton clan.

“Mama. Pitty!” Chloe exclaimed, pointing at one of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows on either side of the thirty-foot-tall stone fireplace in the main lodge.

Sloane looked outside at the white stripes of ski runs between stands of fluffy black pines, the slopes bathed in brilliant light for night skiing. Hundreds of skiers dressed in bright colors zigzagged across the snow like a moving dance of jeweled butterflies.

It was pretty. She’d forgotten how much she loved this time of year in Roaring Springs. Ski season was at its peak, The Lodge bursting at the seams with wealthy patrons who’d come in from all over for the world-class ski runs and five-star facilities. She’d missed the laughter and ruddy cheeks, the scent of hot buttered rum, and wood fires burning cheerily. She’d even missed the funny hitch-step rhythm of skiers tromping around The Lodge in their ski boots.

This was why she’d come home with Chloe. To give her daughter stability. Family. A little joy in her life for a change.

From the first moment Sloane had announced her pregnancy to Ivan, he’d been furious about it. Marriage to him had been great provided she gave her undivided attention to him and brought him status and a fat paycheck. But as soon as those were threatened with the imminent arrival of a baby and parenthood, he’d turned on her.

They’d argued constantly through her entire pregnancy. After Chloe had been born, he’d been gone more than he’d been home—betraying his marriage vows and gambling, as it turned out. But when he was home, there’d been only shouting and fuming silences from him.

By the time Chloe was a few months old, she had become withdrawn and silent anytime mercurial Ivan was in the house. It was uncanny how quickly she’d learned to hide from her own father.

But then, Sloane had learned to hide from him as well. His temper was uncertain at best and violent at worst. He’d never struck her or Chloe, but she was certain it was only a matter of time. The morning after he smashed every single piece of her mother’s china—one of the few things she had that had belonged to her—Sloane had filed for divorce. She wasn’t sticking around until she or her daughter got hurt. Or worse.

She shuddered and hugged Chloe tightly. Lord, she’d hoped she was done with that nightmare and never had to deal with Ivan Durant again. But apparently, he wasn’t done torturing her.

Her brain kicked into lawyer gear. She would save his texts. Collect pieces of evidence to build a case against him, and then she would ask for a restraining order. The Colton name should hold a little extra weight in the local court, at any rate. If she had to live with the negative implications of the name, she supposed she should benefit from its power, too.

“I go, Mama,” Chloe declared, pointing again at the ski slopes.

“Would you like to learn how to ski? I can ask about some lessons for you if you’d like.”

Chloe bounced up and down so eagerly that Sloane had trouble hanging on to her. She would take that as a yes. Struck again by how warm Chloe felt, she asked, “Hey, Bug, how’s your tummy feeling?”

“Rumbwy tumbwy.”

Rats. They’d been reading Winnie the Pooh, and Chloe might just be repeating that.

“Do you feel sick?” Sloane asked.

Chloe stuffed her thumb in her mouth and twisted to look out the window, seemingly disinterested in the current discussion. She had mostly given up thumb sucking in Denver. But with the move to Roaring Springs, she’d reverted to the habit. She’d also reverted to bed-wetting and temper tantrums.

Sloane figured Chloe had some pent-up anger to act out and wasn’t too concerned about the regressive behavior. It wasn’t as if she could blame her daughter for it when she had at least as much anger at her ex to work through.

She’d been boxing at a local gym for the past few weeks, and she’d been amazed at how much fury rose up in her belly whenever she envisioned Ivan’s face on a punching bag.

Sloane laid her palm on Chloe’s forehead. The velvet baby skin was burning hot. “I think you’re coming down with something, sweetheart. How about you and I go home and climb into our jammies, have a nice grilled cheese sandwich, and I’ll read you a bedtime story—your choice.”

“Pooh Bea-uh?”

“Sure. Winnie the Pooh.”

Sloane ducked into the restaurant to grab the baby bag, which doubled as her purse, briefcase, gym bag and zombie apocalypse survival kit.

“You’re leaving? But the steaks are just about to come out,” her biological aunt, Mara Colton, protested. They’d adopted her and Fox after their own parents had died in a car accident. Sloane had been five and Fox seven at the time. She loved them for it, but truth be told, she’d never felt like a real part of their family of three boys and two girls of their own.

“I think Chloe’s sick,” Sloane explained. “I don’t want to share her baby germs with any of you.”

Her brother Decker, general manager of The Lodge, stood up. “I’ll have the chef put your steak in a to-go box and have the valet pull your car around.”

Wyatt and Bailey expressed regret that she had to go and promised to come see her new house soon.

Bailey was awesome. She was a veterinarian who’d recently reconciled with Wyatt after six years of an on-again, off-again relationship and was about to marry him for a second time. Furthermore, Bailey was expecting their first child. She and Sloane had hit it off from the first moment they’d met. Maybe it had something to do with feeling like outsiders in the middle of the loud, overbearing Colton clan.

Sloane followed Decker to the spacious covered portico out front with its huge timbered roof soaring overhead. Stone-clad columns rose to support the roof, and slate slabs stretched away underfoot. This place was solid. Permanent. Safe. The Lodge really was a remarkable resort.

Decker said, “You’re sure I can’t talk you into coming to work for me here, Sloane? That is why Dad paid for your law school.”

“I’ve told Russ over and over that I have no training for nor interest in corporate law.”

“Training or not, you’re smart as hell. I need someone I can trust in my legal department.” He lowered his voice. “We’ve had some cancellations after last month’s murder, and we’ve got a big film festival coming up this summer. I could really use your help managing our corporate image and distancing The Lodge from any unpleasantness.”

“Then you need a publicist, not a criminal defense attorney. Honestly, Decker. Hiring me would raise more questions, not less.”

“You’re a Colton. And this is a family business.”

Chloe fretted, giving Sloane a convenient excuse to end the conversation. She struggled to put the fussy toddler into a snowsuit, and Chloe kept pushing the hood off her head. As a result, her daughter’s fine blond hair stood up in a halo of static. Sloane tried to smooth it down, but Little Bug was having no part of that and threw her head back and forth, shouting, “No way! No way! No way!”

What had gotten into her? She was usually a sweet baby, cuddly and happy when Ivan wasn’t around.

“Terrible twos?” Decker asked sympathetically.

“That and she’s not feeling well. A deadly combination,” Sloane answered.

As her mini-SUV pulled up, Chloe swan-dived off the emotional cliff into a full-blown tantrum and screamed bloody murder.

Women nearby, obviously mothers, threw Sloane sympathetic looks. Everyone else winced and hurried inside to escape the earsplitting screams.

With a sigh, she put Chloe into her car seat and buckled her in around flailing fists and feet. Ahh, parenthood. And she’d thought being a lawyer had been hard. Ha.

Tonight was one of those nights when she wished to be back at the Crooked C with Fox. The adult moral support would help her get through the challenge of dealing with a cranky baby, and her brother would pour her a glass of wine when Chloe finally wound down and crashed.

She’d had no illusion that being a single parent would be hard, but sometimes it was harder than others. Like tonight.

Finally pulling into the garage of the cute craftsman bungalow she’d just bought with a piece of her divorce settlement, she sighed with relief. But the feeling was short-lived because once she extracted Chloe from her car seat, her daughter had gone from rage to even more alarming listlessness. Which was totally unlike her high-energy child.

It took Sloane several minutes to find the box, not yet unpacked, with the baby thermometer in it. She ran the device across Chloe’s forehead.

102 degrees.

Oh, my gosh!

After giving Chloe a quick cool bath and putting her into her footie jammies, then getting into her own pajamas, Sloane made a grilled cheese sandwich, Chloe’s all-time favorite food, but Chloe wouldn’t take even the first bite.

She measured out the recommended medications for a baby with this high of a fever and convinced Chloe to swallow them. Honestly, her Little Bug should have put up more of a fight than she did at taking the medicine. Sloane’s alarm spiked a little more.

She made up a bottle—which Chloe hadn’t used for months—with an electrolyte drink and rocked Chloe like an infant to feed her the bottle.

Sloane desperately missed baby moments like this, but she hated that her child was sick enough to need one. Chloe fell asleep in her arms, and Sloane dozed with her in the big recliner chair that had been her first purchase for her new house.

Sloane woke with a jerk as Chloe whimpered in her sleep.

Good grief. She might as well be holding a furnace in her arms. Chloe was still burning up. Carrying her carefully into the kitchen, Sloane ran the thermometer across her little girl’s forehead again.

103.6.

Oh, no.

She transferred Chloe’s head to her shoulder, grabbed the baby bag, stuffed her feet into fleece boots and headed for her car. Chloe didn’t fully wake up as she got her buckled into her car seat and tucked a blanket around her. Trying to stay calm, Sloane quickly climbed behind the wheel and pulled out of the driveway.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the emergency room was empty as she carried Chloe inside. A nurse showed her to an examining room and agreed to stay with Chloe while Sloane went out front to fill in paperwork and hand over insurance information.

She rushed through a pair of swinging doors that led back to the check-in station...and plowed face-first into a man’s chest. He must have been standing just beyond the doors. Sloane, at five-foot-three and not much over a hundred ten pounds, barely budged the much larger person.

She inhaled sharply, and the scent of pine trees and fresh air filled her lungs. It was as rugged as the Rockies, as big as the endless skies, as free as a bald eagle soaring. She inhaled again, relishing the scent.

Powerful, gentle hands grabbed her upper arms and steadied her. Which was just as well. Suddenly, she was feeling a tiny bit dizzy.

“Sloane? Sloane Colton?” the man murmured in shock.

She looked up into a pair of familiar aspen-green eyes.

“Liam?” she blurted, equally shocked to have bumped into Fox’s childhood best friend.

Bookish, but charming. Smart, but self-deprecating. A good skier on the high school ski team. More handsome than he realized... All the girls had loved Liam. But he’d been oblivious. Suppressing a sigh, Sloane’s eyes drifted over him. He had been tall and skinny in high school but had grown taller since she’d last seen him. And had filled out. A lot. In all the right places. My goodness.

“Liam Kastor, at your service. I was friends with...”

“Fox. I remember. You two tortured me incessantly in junior high and high school.”

“We did not! We just were looking out for you.”

She snorted. “You two drove me crazy.”

“You studied too much to even notice our hijinks.”

Lord, it felt good to smile. She set aside the strange sensation of happiness. “I would love to argue the point with you, but my daughter’s here and I need to give these folks my insurance information and get back to her.”

“Of course,” Liam said quickly, stepping away.

She whipped through a daunting stack of medical history and personal information and then hurried back to Chloe’s room. The nurse looked up when she slipped inside. “The doctor has already been in to take a peek at your daughter. He’d like you to try to get a bottle laced with some medicine down her.”

Sloane nodded.

Chloe still didn’t become fully alert when Sloane picked her up and popped a bottle in her mouth. Little Bug only glanced around the strange room, then closed her eyes and turned her cheek to Sloane’s chest.

She looked up at the nurse in worry. “This is totally unlike her. She’s usually wide awake anywhere new. Wildly curious. Full of questions.”

“She’s a sick little camper. You did good to bring her in when you did.”

“Any idea what she has?”

“Not yet. There has been a nasty virus going around, though. We’ve seen a half-dozen kids with it in the past couple of weeks.”

The doctor came back in a few minutes, and Sloane laid Chloe on the bed. He did the usual doctor things—listened to her breathe, took her pulse, and looked at the chart where the nurse had written down Chloe’s vitals. He looked up at Sloane. “I’d like to do a quick CT scan of Chloe’s abdomen. Also, her temperature is continuing to spike, and we need to get control of that.”

Sloane frowned. She knew in her gut that he wasn’t telling her everything. “What do you suspect?”

“Nothing yet. I’m just eliminating various possibilities.”

“Look. I’m a lawyer. I deal much better with blunt than tactful.”

“Okay. Your daughter’s belly is painful to the touch. But her reaction is generalized and I can’t pinpoint a source of pain. Could be her spleen. Could be appendicitis. Maybe something else altogether.”

“Worst case?” Sloane bit out.

The doctor shrugged, and she didn’t like the evasiveness that entered his eyes. He answered, “Worst case, we admit her and watch her.”

“You’d make a lousy poker player, Doctor. Wanna try that, again?”

The guy sighed. “I administered a massive dose of a broad spectrum antibiotic in that bottle you fed her. Based on what the CT shows, we may need to put her on an IV drip and throw more antibiotics at her. If her fever doesn’t start responding to the meds soon, we’ll have to take measures to cool her head and protect her brain from injury.”

Sloane nodded stiffly, too scared to do much more. Still, she would rather know what they were up against than not. The nurse wheeled Chloe’s bed out of the room, leaving Sloane to wait. And worry. And imagine the worst.

A need to do something overwhelmed her, and she jumped up. The room was too small and too crowded with machines for a good nervous pace, so she went out into the hall to stride back and forth.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

She looked up, startled, as she all but face-planted against Liam Kastor’s chest. Again. “I’m so sorry.”

“How’s your daughter?” he asked, cutting off her apology.

“They don’t know. Sick. Her fever’s not coming down.”

“What can I do to help?” Liam asked quietly.

“I have no idea. She’s never had a bad fever before.”

He smiled gently. “I was talking about you. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Oh!” The idea of a man lifting a finger to take care of her was a completely foreign concept. “Distract me. Keep me from panicking.”

“Do you want me to call Fox?”

“God, no! He wouldn’t know what to do and would call Mara. And she would call everyone in the whole blessed Colton clan.”

“There is that,” Liam replied dryly. “When’s the last time you ate?”

She frowned. She hadn’t gotten around to eating because she’d been more concerned with taking care of Chloe. And earlier, she’d left The Lodge before dinner had arrived. “Lunch, I guess.”

Liam asked a nurse at the station in front of Chloe’s room to call him as soon as Chloe was brought back, and then he whisked Sloane down the hallway. “Come with me. Cafeteria’s this way. Food’s terrible, but the coffee’s outstanding.”

“How do you know that?” Sloane asked. Did he work here? The nurse had clearly known who he was and had his phone number. “Are you a doctor?” she blurted.

“Me? Never.”

“What brought you to the emergency room, then? Do you have a loved one here? I’m sorry to be so insensitive. I’m such a mess right now—”

He stopped just inside the door to a small lounge with linoleum-topped tables, plastic chairs and institutional fluorescent lights. Gently, he laid a fingertip on her lips. “I’m a police detective. We were shorthanded at the station tonight, so I volunteered to transport a prisoner who got sick in the drunk tank.”

“You’re a cop?”

He grinned and steered her over to the coffeepot.

“How was law school?” he asked over his shoulder.

How—Fox. Of course. “It was hard. But fascinating.”

She scrutinized him as he studied the self-service line. She supposed some people might call him boyishly handsome, but she sensed a quiet strength in him. Mature. Reliable.

Funny, but a few years ago, she would’ve called Liam boring. And then she went and married an exciting man who took her straight to hell. Boring was starting to look pretty darn good these days. It was amazing how time and life changed a person’s point of view.

“How do you like your coffee?” he asked.

“As black as my soul,” she replied dryly.

“Do tell,” he replied mildly. One corner of his mouth turned up sinfully, though, for just a moment. “Tuna salad okay with you?”

She picked up the cups of coffee and carried them to a table while he went to a vending machine and bought two sandwiches in triangular plastic packages, two bags of chips, a packet of baby carrots and a bag of apple slices.

He dumped his haul on the table and slid into the seat opposite her. “I haven’t seen you around Roaring Springs since you left for college. What have you been up to since then, Sloane?”

She ripped open a sandwich package and bit into the day-old bread and nearly dry tuna. Not that she cared what anything tasted like at the moment. “After I graduated from law school at Colorado State, I moved to Denver and got a job as a criminal defense attorney at Schueller, Mangowitz and Durant.”

Liam whistled under his breath. “That’s a high-powered firm.”

She rolled her eyes. “The women there call it Chauvinist, Misogynist and Douchebag.”

“Ouch. That bad?”

“Worse,” she growled.

“I sense a story.”

“Don’t be a detective tonight, okay?”

He threw up his hands. “No interrogations out of me.” He took a cautious sip of his coffee. “Am I still allowed to ask what brings you to Roaring Springs—as a friend-slash-past-tormentor? ”

She shrugged, sipping at her own coffee. “I’ve moved back home with Chloe—she’s my daughter—to give her a better life.”

“Better than what?”

Darn it. He was being all perceptive, again. “Better than a rotten father and a failed marriage.”

Liam laid his hand on top of hers briefly. Just a quick touch of his warm, calloused palm on the back of her hand. But the comfort offered was almost more than she could bear right now. She was too worried about Chloe. Her emotions—usually carefully suppressed—were too close to the surface.

She spent the next few minutes fixedly concentrating on her food and regaining her emotional equilibrium. Or trying to, at least.

As if he sensed her teetering on the edge of a breakdown, he gathered up the empty food packaging and said briskly, “Take the chips with you. Let’s go see if there’s any news on your daughter.”

As they walked back to the emergency ward, he said quietly, “The docs here are excellent. Chloe’s in good hands.”

She nodded, her throat too tight for a response.

Liam’s timing was perfect because, as they rounded the corner into the emergency area, the nurse who’d taken Chloe away for the CT scan came toward them.

“Where’s my daughter?” Sloane demanded, her inner mama bear on full alert.

“Come with me, Mrs. Durant.”

“Colton. Ms. Colton. I’m not keeping my ex-husband’s name.”

“Right. The doctor would like to admit your daughter overnight.”

“Why?” Sloane croaked.

“The doctor will fill you in.”

She wanted to scream as the nurse walked at far too leisurely a pace to an elevator. Sloane was barely aware of Liam holding the elevator door for her as it opened on the third floor, or that he kept pace beside her as she charged for the doctor standing at the far end of the hall.

Please God, let Chloe be all right. She was Sloane’s entire world.

The doctor stood just outside a room with a glass window in the wall. Inside the dimly lit hospital room, Chloe was asleep in a stainless steel crib. She looked so tiny and lost among the wires and blankets.

“What’s wrong?” Sloane demanded without preamble.

“She doesn’t have appendicitis, or an intestinal blockage, or an enlarged spleen. But since her fever still hasn’t broken, I want to keep her here for observation until we can get her temperature down to a safe level. This is probably just the virus that’s been going around. But babies can get hit hard by things like this.” Fixing his gaze on hers, he asked calmly, “Has your daughter been sick recently? Under unusual stress that might have compromised her immune system?”

“Oh, God.” Guilt crashed in on her. “We moved from Denver recently as part of my divorce. It’s been hard on Chloe, and she has been reverting to baby behaviors. I had no idea I compromised her immune system. I’m a terrible mother. I should have realized something like this would happen—” She broke off on a sobbing breath.

Arms came around her, gentle and strong. She didn’t care whose they were. Her baby was seriously ill and she’d completely missed the signs until Little Bug was burning up with fever. Ivan was right. She wasn’t fit to be a mother. Chloe would be better off with him and the expensive professional nanny he would hire to raise his daughter for him.

The doctor commented from somewhere beyond the circle of Liam’s arms, “This virus comes on fast. You didn’t miss any warning signs, Ms. Colton. The fever was likely the first symptom anyone would have noticed. And you got her here before the fever became dangerous.”

Sloane lifted her head to glare at the doctor. “Don’t coddle me. I suck as a parent.”

Liam’s voice rumbled with light humor in her ear. “You couldn’t suck at anything you put your mind to.”

She would have argued with him, but the doctor commented, “If you’d like to spend the night with Chloe, there’s a daybed in her room by the window.”

Duh. Of course she was staying with Chloe. Her baby would be scared to death if she woke up in a strange place and Sloane wasn’t there for her.

Liam said briskly, “Give me your keys, Sloane, and I’ll run by your place and pick up a few things for you. Toothbrush, a change of clothes...”

For the first time since she’d arrived at the hospital, it dawned on Sloane that she was wearing her pajamas. Thank God she’d put on her practical flannel pajamas consisting of a manly shirt and pants. Liam would think she was a total weirdo if she’d been wearing her footie onesie that matched Chloe’s.

Not that she cared what Liam, or any man, thought of her, of course.

“You don’t have to. I can call my brother to run by and pick up some stuff—”

“And alert the entire Colton clan that Chloe’s sick? They’ll descend upon you like a swarm of locusts, and you won’t get a moment’s rest tonight. You need your sleep, too, you know.” He held out an expectant hand.

He was totally right. “Good point.” She dug around in the baby bag, where she’d randomly tossed her keys earlier. It took an embarrassingly long time, but she finally came up with them. “You’re sure about this?”

Liam grinned. “It’s my job, ma’am. Plus, my prisoner is passed out and likely to stay that way for several hours.”

She rolled her eyes at him. But truthfully, she was grateful for the help.

“I’ll be back in a jiffy. Go be with your daughter and get some sleep if you can. I’ll drop off your things with the nurses so I don’t wake you up.”

What was this? Consideration for her comfort? Huh. So that was what it looked like when a man was decent and caring. Who knew?

Liam turned and headed for the elevator, and she tiptoed into Chloe’s room.

She couldn’t resist brushing the hair off Chloe’s forehead and dropping a featherlight kiss on Little Bug’s hot cheek before she stretched out on the daybed, bunched up the lumpy feather pillow under her head, and pulled a blanket over her shoulders.

She stared at her daughter for a long time while sleep refused to come. The weight of being a single parent, for real now, not just in practical application, landed heavily on her shoulders. She prayed for wisdom to make the right decisions for her baby girl to keep her safe and healthy.

Everyone had told her she had this. That she was a great mom. That she would be better off without her spouse. How hard could it be to raise just one child by herself?

But suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she had this at all.

Chapter 2

Sonofagun. Sloane Colton was back in town. And single, to boot. His boyhood prayers had finally been answered—just a decade and a half too late. The universe had one hell of a sense of humor.

If only Liam had known back then what he knew now about life and about women now. He would’ve gone after her with both barrels back in high school if he’d had the confidence to tell her how he’d felt about her. Instead, he’d kept his feelings hidden. But he’d learned since then to rip the lids off boxes and expose the truth, be it in solving a crime or in personal relationships. Life was too short to waste time being shy.

Sloane had only gotten more beautiful with age, which anyone could have seen coming if they bothered to take a good look at her back in high school. What he hadn’t predicted, though, was the sadness lurking in her big, expressive hazel eyes. Like she’d given up on herself. What had done that to her? She’d been braver than just about anyone he knew.

A need to understand her, to find out what had happened to her, surged through him. She looked as if she could use someone to protect her. Which was quite a change from the girl he’d once known.

Ever since he’d met her at the ripe old age of seven or so, Sloan had been a firecracker, fully able to take care of herself. She raced through life like a runaway train, flattening every obstacle that dared step into her path.

Not that her fierce independence had prevented her older brother, Fox, from looking out for her just as fiercely. Of course, as Fox’s best friend, it had fallen to Liam to help defend Sloane over the years. A task he’d taken on with secret relish—

Let it go, buddy.

His fantasies of Sloane Colton were just that. Fantasies. She would never see anything in a plain, ordinary, hometown guy like him. If only he could show her who he was now—

Nope. Not even then. He was a small-town cop living a small-town life. The girl he remembered wouldn’t ever see any appeal in that.

Sloane had run off to the bright lights of the big city as soon as she could after high school and college. Married a rich, high-powered lawyer, and became a renowned defense attorney herself. She obviously wanted excitement out of life. Challenge. She didn’t want anything to do with sleepy Roaring Springs or the people in it.

He swore under his breath. Who knew that, after all this time, he could still carry a hotly lit torch for a girl he’d grown up with? He had to find a way to douse it and get on with his life.

Liam checked in on the prisoner on the second floor, still sleeping off his alcohol binge, before heading out to his truck. It dawned on him he didn’t know where Sloane lived. He could call Fox—Strike that. No Coltons. He called the police station to run her address.

Her house was only a few blocks from where he’d grown up. And where he lived now. He’d renovated and then moved into the apartment over the garage of his parents’ home last year after his father died.

It was hell on his social life to be that guy who, in his early thirties, lived at home with his mom. But her health was frail and she needed help. He’d been a late-in-life only child, and there was no one else for his mother to lean on.

Sloane’s street was quiet. Bucolic. Lined with trees and upscale craftsman bungalows vying to be the most authentically restored. It was well after midnight, and only sporadic imitation gas porch lights cast any glow into the dark shadows wreathing the street.

Huh. He wouldn’t have pegged her for the type to live in a cozy neighborhood like this. What was up with that?

He pulled his truck into Sloane’s driveway and was just reaching for the door handle when he spied something slipping around the back corner of her house.

Whatever it was looked too big for a dog or a coyote. Frowning, he climbed out of his truck and crunched up the gravel drive. He moved cautiously toward the bushes, giving a wild animal plenty of time to get away. No sense startling a bear or cougar. He turned on the flashlight function of his smartphone and shone it at the holly bush. No eyes glowed back at him. But jumbled shoe prints leaped into view in the snow. What the—?

He raced around the corner of the house, following the boot prints through the ankle-deep snow in Sloane’s backyard and into the green belt behind her house. The prints led down a hill to an asphalt bike path that the snow had melted off of in the past few days. The asphalt was dry and gray and gave no clue as to which direction the person had gone. He listened carefully and heard no running footsteps.

His money was on the guy having had a bicycle parked back here. Jerk was long gone by now.

An intruder, maybe? Burglar? Peeping Tom? Or maybe he was thinking too much like a cop. It could’ve just been some neighborhood kid sneaking home through her yard.

Except it was too cold and too late on a school night for kids to be out fooling around. In full detective mode, he snapped photos of the footprints and called in the incident, putting it into the official police record. It was going to cause some extra paperwork for him, but whatever. Sloane might be in danger.

Before he unlocked her front door, he inspected the lock and jamb for signs of any attempt at forced entry. Nope, no scratches. Although that was a pitiful excuse for a lock. Just the original brass knob’s lock protected her house. She needed a decent dead bolt at a minimum. Even an amateur thief could pick the existing lock in a matter of seconds.

Frowning, he opened the door and stepped in.

The living room was thin on furniture with only some bean bag chairs, a big recliner and a flat screen TV hanging on the wall.

The place had clearly undergone one of those open concept remodels recently that knocked out most of the walls. The living room flowed into a dining room taken up with toddler toys and no furniture and on back into a gourmet kitchen.

He headed down the hallway, and the first room he came upon was Chloe’s, a princess paradise. A low bed was tucked inside a fairy castle, and a night-light cast firework patterns on the ceiling. He backed out of the room, feeling oversize and alien surrounded by so much...sparkle.

A hallway bathroom was unremarkable and he left that quickly. A utility closet held a furnace, and the door at the end of the hall revealed a bedroom much more his speed. Four-poster bed. No-frills navy comforter. A handmade-looking oak dresser and chest of drawers were crowded with framed pictures of Chloe, but other than those, the room was devoid of decoration—or any personality.

Odd. Was Sloane still unpacking, or was she that shut down emotionally?

He opened the first of two interior doors in Sloane’s bedroom and found an elegant, but sterile, bathroom. It was pretty but didn’t feel lived in.

Where was the real Sloane Colton hiding in this house? He hadn’t found her yet.

The second door revealed a spacious walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom. A riot of color and texture assaulted his eyes as he turned on the light. Ahh. Here she was. The fiery Sloane he remembered so clearly.

He looked for something to put her clothes in and spied a duffel bag stuffed on a high shelf. He reached up, needing his full six-foot height to grab it. He turned his head to the side as he reached for the back of the shelf and happened to glance out into her bedroom. Which was probably why he spotted the tiny hole in the wall, hidden high in a shadowed corner of the room, tucked beneath the beautiful, dark oak crown molding.

Maybe if he hadn’t already been suspicious of an intruder, he would’ve ignored the hole. But as it was, he took the duffel and moved over to the chest of drawers underneath the hole, and then took a quick peek. A tiny glass circle filled the small opening.

Alarm exploded in his gut and fury threatened to overcome reason.

For all the world, that looked like a surveillance camera.

Stop. Breathe. Think. It wasn’t necessarily what it looked like.

Maybe Sloane had some sort of high-tech security system installed in her house.

Or was that camera something more sinister?

Surely, he was being paranoid. After all, he was bored to death being a police detective in a quiet little town where the occasional bicycle theft was about as exciting as police work got.

Until that murder last month out at the Crooked C ranch, of course. A high-end call girl who’d been seen up at the resort had been killed by a client. Initially, there were two possible suspects—Wyatt Colton as well as European millionaire George Stratton, who’d brought the girl in from Vegas. But upon further investigation, the sheriff’s department figured out that a disturbed man who’d later killed himself had done the deed.

Liam forced himself not to look up at the camera lens as he randomly opened drawers in search of clothes for Sloane. His mind raced as he found socks, T-shirts and sweaters.

Why would anybody covertly surveil a young mother in Roaring Springs? Who had Sloane made an enemy of? A criminal she’d been involved with in her work? The ex-husband? Either way, a random stranger going to all the trouble to set up surveillance on her was not likely.

He retreated to the closet, where he spied jeans and sweatshirts folded on shelves and grabbed one of each.

He moved to the shoe rack and was bemused to discover that it rotated. How many pairs of shoes did one woman need, anyway?

He grabbed a pair of gym shoes made of a knit fabric that looked comfortable and headed for her bathroom. There had better not be a camera in there, or there would be hell to pay. He took a surreptitious look at each of the corners and spied nothing but paint. Then he did a thorough search of the walls as well to assure himself there were no hidden surveillance devices in the vicinity.

Not a sicko Peeping Tom, then. Which left something—or someone—more sinister behind that camera in her bedroom. He swore under his breath and grabbed a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste out of the cup by her sink.

Taking a moment to look at the duffel bag, he forced himself to think about what he’d forgotten to pack for her.

Goop. Fox always used to complain that Sloane was a world-class goop collector and hogged the bathroom they’d shared to smear it all over herself.

Liam warily eyed the neat rows of bottles and tubes on the counter.

Did Sloane even wear makeup? He honestly didn’t remember. He’d been so shocked by the girl he’d had a giant crush on all through high school slamming into him out of the blue at the hospital that he hadn’t registered any of the details he usually would as an observant detective.

What was he missing?

Of course. Underwear.

His gut jumped a little at the idea of handling Sloane Colton’s unmentionables. Which was absurd. He was a decent-looking man in his thirties and had been around plenty of lingerie, and the women in it. But his very first fantasies of a skimpily clad female, all the way back in junior high, had involved Sloane Colton. He’d never admitted it to Fox and had pretended to have a crush on another girl. But it had been Sloane he’d dreamed of and woke up in hot sweats over.

He went to the dresser in her bedroom and opened a long, shallow drawer.

He inhaled sharply as a spill of brightly colored lace assaulted his eyes. Prim and proper Sloane Colton wore this sexy stuff? Wow. Uh, good to know. Of course, he was never going to look at her again without imagining which jewel-toned ensemble of silk and lace she had on under her clothes.

Swearing under his breath, he grabbed the first pair of skimpy bikinis and bra that matched—a scarlet ensemble with pert little bows strategically placed. Dammit, that was not sweat breaking out on his forehead.

He left the bedroom light on and headed back to the living area. Under the guise of poking around in the toy box for a stuffed animal to take to Chloe, he inspected the walls.

There. Over the front door. Tucked high in the corner under the crown molding. Another tiny, circular hole. From that vantage point, a surveillance camera would have a view of the entire living-dining-kitchen area.

Sonofa—

He ducked into Chloe’s bedroom and grabbed the well-worn stuffed elephant off her bed. A telltale circular shadow lurked in the far corner of Chloe’s bedroom as well. Now, why would a bad guy watch a toddler? The ex-husband climbed to the top of Liam’s suspect list for being the creepo stalker.

He forced himself to keep his rampant cop suspicions in check. After all, he still wasn’t positive Sloane was being watched nefariously. She could have hired a security company to monitor her, or perhaps there was some other legitimate reason for the cameras being there. But his gut was dead certain the explanation wasn’t so innocent. Which was weird. He was usually the soul of logic, relying completely on facts and careful analysis. Intuitions were for amateurs. Real detectives used their minds to uncover the truth.

Assuming Sloane herself wasn’t the source of the cameras, she faced a choice. Rip the cameras out of her walls and have a security firm sweep her house for any more surveillance devices. Or, she could let the cameras ride, pretend she didn’t know they existed, and let him investigate who was behind the surveillance without tipping off the perpetrator.

Fury bubbled up in his gut. When he caught whoever was behind the surveillance, he was going to—

Slow down, there, buddy. He was going to hand the bastard over to the district attorney with an ironclad file of evidence so the perpetrator got put away for a good long time. He was a law enforcement professional and didn’t indulge in gratuitous violence, no matter how angry he might be.

Still. This case was personal. Sloane was his best friend’s little sister. They’d grown up together, for crying out loud.

On his way out, Liam left on lights and turned on the TV. He doubted whoever had been lurking behind her house would come back tonight, but on the off chance that the guy was a burglar, Liam might as well make the house look occupied.

He didn’t recall seeing Sloane carry a coat in the hospital, so he stopped at the cast iron coat tree just inside the front door. He grabbed a neon-pink ski jacket, pink mittens and a matching hat with a jaunty pompom. There. That should keep her warm.

He might not have noticed whether she had makeup on or not, but he’d noticed that she’d been wearing flannel pajamas without much on underneath when she’d banged into him at the hospital. Her body had been soft in all the right places with more curves than he remembered from back in the day, although she was still not much bigger than a whisper.

Of course, he’d put on about forty pounds of muscle when he took up lacrosse in college. It was the universe’s karmic joke that he finally became a buff athlete type after having to go all the way through high school as a beanpole.

He took a hard look up and down the street as he pulled out of the driveway but didn’t spot any movement. He made a mental note to ask police cruisers to roll past her house for the next few weeks.

* * *

When he got back to the hospital, he headed for the nurses’ station outside Chloe’s room to drop off the duffel. As he turned to leave, Sloane stepped out into the hallway.

“What are you doing awake?” he asked, startled.

“You obviously aren’t a parent, or you wouldn’t have to ask. I’m too worried about Chloe to sleep.”

A nurse piped up from behind him, “That and we’re going in and out of Chloe’s room every ten minutes to check her temperature, and naturally mommy wants to know how it’s doing every time we take it.”

“How is it doing?” Liam echoed.

Sloane glanced over her shoulder toward her daughter. “High but steady at 104 degrees. They’ve wrapped her head in refrigerated blankets to cool her down.”

That didn’t sound good. But he wasn’t about to voice the concern aloud. Sloane already had dark shadows under her eyes and looked on the verge of losing control. As much as he wanted to ask about the cameras in her house, that could wait until tomorrow.

“You should sleep,” he suggested.

“Not happening.”

“Maybe you should take a walk, then,” the nurse suggested. “Movement helps burn stress. Your boyfriend brought you clothes, too.”

Liam opened his mouth to correct her, but Sloane beat him to it. “I’m single. He’s—”

He glanced at her, one eyebrow cocked with interest to see just how she classified him.

“—an old family friend.”

He could live with that. Although handfuls of sexy red lace and her chest mashed against his flashed through his head.

Get a grip, man. She’s your best friend’s little sister. How much more cliché could that be? The friend code was clear on the subject: sisters were strictly off-limits. Of course, Liam didn’t have any siblings, so he’d had nothing to worry about over the years. But Fox had always been fiercely protective of his sister. It probably hadn’t helped matters that Fox and Sloane had lost their parents in a car accident when they were little kids. Had their aunt, Mara Colton, and her husband, Russ, not taken them in, they’d have been alone in the world.

“Would you like to finish our hospital tour from earlier?” he offered.

Sloane frowned. “It’s 2:00 a.m. Surely you’d rather be home in bed.”

Yeah. With her—

Strike that. Old. Family. Friend. He added for good measure, Worried mom with sick kid.

“I’m not tired. Do you want to get dressed or go for a walk like that?”

She glanced down at her flannel pajamas. “What? Don’t you like my granny jammies?”

He grinned. “My grandmother had much less frumpy taste than that.”

Sloane stuck her tongue out at him briefly and then whirled and disappeared into Chloe’s room. She still moved like a gazelle, quick and graceful. He watched her through the window until she ducked into the bathroom and closed the door.

He was not thinking about that sassy red underwear. Nope. It would not look smoking hot against her pale skin and dark brown hair. Nothing to imagine there. Move along, you old horndog.

He turned to the nurse. “How sick is Sloane’s daughter?”

“I’m not authorized to release any information to a non-family member—”

“I’m asking as a police officer. I have some news to share with the mother that may be upsetting. If the child is gravely ill, I can hold off telling it for a while.”

The nurse met his gaze candidly and said grimly, “Hold off.”

His stomach dropped with a sickening thud.

“How bad is it?” he murmured low.

“Children’s Hospital in Denver has treated a dozen kids with this virus. Two of them didn’t make it.”

His jaw sagged. “As in they died?”

The nurse nodded soberly.

He whirled and stared through the window at the toddler curled up in the stainless steel crib. He hadn’t been in touch with Sloane since high school, but it didn’t take more than two seconds of being in the same room with her to see that she adored her daughter. If anything happened to Chloe, it would kill Sloane.

The nurse added, “It gets worse before it gets better. And she’s a very young child. This little girl’s got a fight ahead of her. Several dozen children have died around the country from it.”

Sweet baby Jesus.

Sloane stepped out into the hallway, fully dressed, and smiled hopefully at him. Undoubtedly she didn’t know how bad Chloe’s illness was, or she wouldn’t be able to smile at all. His belly felt like glass that had been hit by a stone and shattered into a million razor-sharp shards.

It was hard as hell to do, but he forced a fake smile for Sloane’s sake and held out his forearm gallantly. “Shall we take a stroll along the promenade, madam?”

“You really don’t have to do this, Liam.”

“I’m working the night shift tonight.”

“Then shouldn’t you be out solving crimes?”

He was. He wanted to know why someone was watching her and had been lurking around her house. Were the two related?

“Tell me about where you live here in town,” he said casually.

“You saw it. Pretty street. Quiet. Lots of young families. Chloe will have plenty of kids her age to play with.”

“Fox was disappointed when you left the Crooked C. He liked having you and Chloe out there.”

She shrugged. “It was sweet of the gang out there to let us crash with them while I got my bearings and made some decisions. But Fox is a bachelor. He didn’t need Chloe and me hanging around getting in the way.”

“Why did you choose not to live with your parents? Goodness knows, they’ve got plenty of room in that house of theirs.”

“You mean the mausoleum?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“You didn’t live there,” she retorted.

“I spent a lot of time there with Fox.”

“Then you know that Russ and Mara were never at home.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear they had an ongoing contest going to see who could be more of a workaholic.”

“What about you? Did you grow up into a workaholic like them? You were one in high school, as I recall.”

“I just wanted to get into a good college so I could get away and be on my own.”

“Did you escape whatever you were running from?” he asked quietly.

She glanced up at him, her big hazel eyes dark and troubled. “You must be a heck of an interrogator, Liam. You cut right to the heart of the matter. You’re like a laser.”

“That’s me. Laser Man,” he quipped. “I cut away the lies and obfuscations to expose the naked truth. It’s my superpower. What’s yours?”

“These days, it’s making grilled cheese sandwiches and knowing the lyrics to every single princess musical ever made.”

“What about before Chloe came along?”

“There was life before Chloe?” she asked wryly.

He laughed. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Don’t get me wrong. She’s the light of my life. I didn’t know it was possible to love anyone the way I love her.”

“That’s obvious at a single glance. The way you look at her...” He searched for words. “It’s magical.”

Sloane shrugged. “I’m just a mom.”

“You’re a great mom.”

Sloane snorted. “And yet, my baby is in a hospital room fighting some awful illness that I should have seen coming. I had to have missed something—”

“You can’t control every situation every time. Sometimes life sneaks up on you.”

She snorted like a prizefighter who’d just been told she couldn’t use her fists in a fight.

He frowned and turned the corner into the cafeteria. “How were you supposed to know she would catch a nasty bug? Psychic powers? You’re being too hard on yourself. Chloe got sick and you got her to medical care in a timely fashion. There was nothing else you could have done.”

“Keep telling me that. Maybe I’ll believe you someday.”

He stopped and turned to face her. “I’m serious, Sloane. Cut yourself a break. Your little girl needs you to be calm and confident, not wracked by unnecessary guilt and distraction.”

Sloane took a deep breath. Exhaled it slowly. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“No problem. I just call it as I see it.”

She glanced up at him shyly and smiled. And lit up the whole darned cafeteria. Her smile transformed her heart-shaped face from pretty to radiant. Her gorgeous hazel eyes filled with warmth and gratitude.

“There it is,” he murmured. “The old Sloane Colton sparkle. Thought I’d lost you there for a while.”

“I’m still plain old me. Just a little older and hopefully a little wiser.”

He chuckled. “You were never plain. Do you have any idea how many guys Fox and I had to chase away from you?”

Her voice took on a stern tone. “No. I don’t. Do enlighten me.”

He grinned. “I’ll never tell. Just trust me...none of them were worthy of you.”

She planted her hands on her hips in what looked like indignation. “I thought I was a completely unattractive dork in high school because no guy would even look at me, let alone talk to me, or heaven forbid, ask me out. And you’re telling me that was your and Fox’s doing?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“I’ll kill him. Next time I see him, I’m doing him in.”

Liam grinned. “Cut him a little slack. He loves you a lot. Thinks you walk on water.”

“That, I definitely don’t do.”

Sadness overtook her entire demeanor. What had happened to leave so much pain in her soul? Just how big a jerk had the ex-husband been?

“Tell me about how you acquired wisdom en route to becoming older and wiser,” Liam asked, resuming their walk down a hallway lined on one side with windows that looked out on a garden. Right now, it was bare beds of dirt covered in patches of snow. Sloane shivered a little, probably from the cold radiating off the windows.

An urge to put his arm around her shoulders, to draw her close to his side, nearly overcame him. Nope, nope, nope. Not going there with her.

“I married a charming man who turned out to be a bastard.”

“How so?”

“Let’s just say he was honesty-challenged.”

“Example?”

She thought for a second. “Well, he said he liked kids. Wanted a family. Turned out he liked the idea of a family Christmas card in matching bad sweaters but not much more.”

“That sucks.”

“Oh, that’s not the worst of it. Turns out he can’t resist any hot female who looks at him twice, and he’s a compulsive gambler. Real winner I picked, huh?”

Liam shrugged. “I’m sure he had a few redeeming qualities that drew you to him.”

“You’re far too optimistic about mankind in general.”

It was his turn to snort. “I’m a cop. I see all the worst mankind has to offer. In fact, I find that most people harbor at least one good, ugly secret about themselves.”

“Oh, yeah?” Slone asked. “What’s yours?”

“I’m actually a superhero, but I can’t reveal my true identity to anyone. I keep my cape hidden under my street clothes.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re Laser Man. I forgot.”

“That’s me, all right.”

Sloane winced a little. “Where were you when I started dating Ivan? I was completely fooled by him.”

“Sorry. I would’ve come to Denver and chased him off if Fox had let me know you were dating a jerk. Just like in high school.”

“Is that why you tormented the boys who flirted with me?” she exclaimed. “Fox put you up to it? I’m seriously going to have to have a word with him—”

He interrupted, laughing. “I swear, we had your best interests at heart. We heard them talking in the locker room and knew they wouldn’t treat you well.”

“What gave you the right to be my personal dating police?”

She didn’t sound angry, but he sensed danger in the lightly worded question. She wasn’t a defense attorney for nothing. He answered carefully, “You were my best friend’s little sister, and Fox had a bit of a temper back then. I was worried he would go too far protecting you and get himself into trouble.”

“Ahh. So you didn’t care about me. It was all about looking out for Fox. Got it.”

That wasn’t what he’d meant at all, but he wasn’t sure he ought to correct the misunderstanding. This Sloane was pricklier and quicker to jump on statements he made than the Sloane of old.

“Do you like being a lawyer?” he asked her, hoping to change the subject.

“I do.”

He could see how it fit her direct personality. “Are you going to hang out a shingle here in Roaring Springs?”

“I’ve actually just started up a nonprofit foundation with some of the proceeds of my divorce. I’m reviewing cases for prisoners who think they were wrongly convicted.” She warmed to her topic. “I can work from home and do some good while I’m at it.”

Her face glowed with excitement as she described having found a big mistake in a case she’d just reviewed. A wrongly convicted woman was due to be released from prison in a few days because of her discovery.

Sloane always had been softhearted. Loved to help people. Looked out for the downtrodden.

“And who looks out for you?” he mused aloud.

“I beg your pardon?”

Startled, he realized he’d voiced the thought aloud. “Nothing. Just random thoughts.” Badly in need of a distraction, he commented, “Mara must love having her first grandchild back in Roaring Springs.”

Sloane shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, sure, Mara loves Chloe, but she’s not exactly the most maternal person I’ve ever met.”

“True.” Not like his mother, who was warm and nurturing. Fox always had preferred to hang out at the modest Kastor bungalow rather than at his own family’s luxurious estate. As for him, he’d liked the Colton mansion for its elegance and proximity to the ski slopes. And to Sloane.

“So. Does a defense attorney make enemies in the course of her job?” Liam risked asking.

Sloane frowned. “That’s a strange question.”

He shrugged. “I figure your clients would like you because you’re fighting for them.”

“They do, unless they’re guilty and want me to pull a miracle out of my hat and get them off. As a defense attorney, it was my job to give them the best possible legal defense, not hoodwink juries and pull television tricks to magically sway jurors to release a guilty person who’s been properly tried.”

He nodded ruefully. “Television gives people a distorted view of police work, too. They think I can solve any crime in forty-eight minutes between commercial breaks.”

“Is there much crime in Roaring Springs these days?” she asked curiously.

“Not nearly enough.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He glanced down at her. “Don’t get me wrong. Low crime is great for the residents. But as a detective, it can be a bit...boring.”

“What about that grisly murder a few weeks ago? I am so glad that Wyatt’s name was cleared.”

He nodded. “County sheriff’s office investigated it. Did a good job, too.”

“Poor baby,” she teased him. “You didn’t get to take part in any of that, did you? I can’t say as I wish for another murder to keep you occupied.”

He grimaced. “Me, neither. I’ll keep consoling myself with reading forensic investigation books.”

“Sherlock Holmes mysteries don’t count,” she deadpanned.

She remembered that he’d read all the Sherlock Holmes books over and over in high school? Wow. That was a pretty obscure detail to recall. Surely she hadn’t actually noticed him in that way back then—

Nah. No way. She’d barely known he existed. She wouldn’t know he existed now if she hadn’t physically run into him earlier.

He sighed. Better to keep things friendly and professional. Speaking of which... As tempted as he was to ask her if she had a security system installed in her house, he refrained. She was a lawyer, and she would sense a motive behind his question. And as sure as she was standing there, she would dig at him until she found out why he’d asked. Better to avoid the subject completely for the moment. Besides. He had a starting place. The rotten ex-husband.

“I have a favor to ask of you, Liam. I hate to ask because you’ve already done so much for me—”

“Anything,” he interrupted. “Ask it.”

“Would you mind terribly bringing me some more clothes? The nurses are telling me it could be a few days before Chloe is released.”

Perfect. It would give him an excuse to go into Sloane’s house again and investigate further. “Of course, I’ll swing by and pick up whatever you need.”

“Thank you.”

The shy note that entered her voice was nearly his undoing. Who’d have guessed that a strong, smart, together woman would have such a hard time asking for a small thing?

They turned into the hallway where Chloe’s hospital room was, and he felt her attention rivet on her daughter’s well-being once more. He walked silently beside her to Chloe’s door.

“Get some sleep, Sloane. Chloe’s going to wake up in the morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and you’ll need to be on your mommy A-game.”

“Lord, I hope so.”

On impulse, he drew Sloane into a hug. She was warm and soft, and that bergamot and orange scent clung to her. She was all at once familiar and foreign to him. A woman had taken over the teenager he’d once known so well.

She hugged him back, her cheek warm against his chest, clinging tightly to his waist for an instant, as if he was her only lifeline, before letting go.

He took the cue and released her, stepping back to a safe distance. “I’ll say a prayer for Chloe tonight.”

Chapter 3

Dawn broke through the windows of the hospital room, and Sloane gave up trying to sleep. In the past hour, Chloe’s fever had inched down slightly, but Little Bug was starting to vomit. Sloane sat by the crib with the side lowered, and Chloe curled around Sloane’s hand pitifully, clinging to it tightly.

Sloane’s heart broke to see her daughter suffering like this. Thankfully, the doctor came in a little before 8:00 a.m. to check on Chloe.

“She’s doing worse,” Sloane murmured to him.

“Actually, vomiting is the next stage of the infection, so she’s progressing through the illness,” the doctor replied.

“Does that mean she’s getting better?” Sloane asked hopefully.

“If this progresses like it has in the other children, the last stage will involve chest congestion, and that will actually be the most...delicate...time.”

Sloane frowned. Delicate wasn’t the word he’d been on the verge of saying. Ten to one he’d been about to say critical. “There has to be something more we can do for her, doctor.”

“We’re monitoring her closely. We’re pumping fluids, nutrition and massive antibiotics into her to take the load off her immune system. All we can do in the case of a virus like this is provide palliative support, meaning we can only treat the symptoms.”

“Aren’t there any specific antiviral drugs you can give her?”

“Not that have had any efficacy on this particular strain of virus,” he answered.

“Is this some sort of flu?”

“Although it looks like a flu, Chloe tested negative for influenza. It’s something else with similar symptoms. Just be patient and let this run its course, Mrs. Durant.”

“Colton. I’m not keeping my ex-husband’s name.”

“Sorry. A Colton, huh?”

She winced as the doctor looked at her speculatively and then beat a quick exit. An orderly brought her a tray of breakfast, and she nibbled on a piece of toast without any appetite. She downed the glass of orange juice but ignored the oatmeal. A nurse had no sooner pushed out the breakfast tray than Mara Colton swept into Chloe’s room.

Rats. The doctor had betrayed her and called the matriarch of the Colton clan.

“Sloane, dear, why didn’t you call me last night? We could have had a specialist down from Denver by now to look at our sweet girl. How is she?”

Chloe, who’d recently drifted off to sleep after throwing up, stirred and whimpered. Sloane waved her mother out of the room and leaned over Chloe quickly, kissing her hot forehead, and murmuring against her daughter’s skin how much she loved her and to dream about angels.

Chloe settled, and her eyes drifted closed once more. Gently, Sloane disengaged her hand from the child’s grasp, placing Snuffles, Chloe’s beloved plush elephant, into her daughter’s arms. God. She looked so tiny and vulnerable curled up in the middle of all those wires and tubes.

Sloane hurried from the room, fighting back the tears. She had to be strong for her baby. She was a tough, independent woman. She could do this.

“How are you holding up, dear?”

Mara might not be the most maternal person in the world, but even this brief show of concern was enough to strain Sloane’s steely self-control. She would not break down, darn it!

She took a deep breath. Lawyers never cried in court. This was just like that. She took note of the nurses and orderlies nearby, a doctor walking down the hall, a visitor looking for a room number. She was in public. She was a professional.

Her years of courtroom experience kicked in, and her emotions steadied. Receded.

Better.

She heard her own voice answer, “I’m fine, thanks, Mother. Worried, of course. But Chloe’s getting excellent care. They’re monitoring her closely and have seen this virus before. They know what to expect.”

Liar, liar. Pants on fire. She was a wreck and to say otherwise was blatantly untrue.

“Have you eaten, dear?”

“I just had some breakfast,” she replied.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

Sloane stepped forward on impulse and gave her mother a hug. Mara stiffened in surprise for a moment, then returned the hug briefly before backing away and straightening her suit.

“I never knew being a mother was so scary. How did you survive raising five of your own kids plus Fox and me?”

“I raised seven of my own kids. You and Fox are as much mine as any of the others. And it was a trial at times.”

“Weren’t you scared that something awful would happen to one of us?”

Mara smiled gently, real warmth and understanding glimmering in her blue eyes. “Always. Terror is the constant state of being a mother.”

“I’m so afraid I’ll mess it up and that Chloe will pay the price.”

“Oh, darling. No parent is perfect. You’ll do your best, and you’ll make mistakes. But at the end of the day, Chloe will know how very much you love her, and she’ll forgive you.” She sighed. “God knows, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes.”

“Really?” Slone would’ve loved to hear more about what mistakes Mara thought she’d made, but Chloe let out a wail just then, and Sloane whirled and raced back to her daughter’s side.

“Mommy’s right here, sweetie. I would never leave you. I love you, Little Bug...”

* * *

Liam strode into the Roaring Springs Police Department first thing in the morning. The institutional metal cubicle dividers and plastic chairs were disguised with wood paneling and dark green trim paint. The place tried to be, but didn’t quite achieve, a national park office. At the end of the day, it was a cold, hard police department at its core.

When he’d first gotten his badge, he’d reveled in the small town feel of this place. But recently, he’d hankered for something a little...more interesting...in his career.

He might as well do some digging into the mystery of those cameras in Sloane’s house. It wasn’t as if he’d gotten a wink of sleep last night, what with worrying about Sloane and her daughter, anyway.

He started by calling every security company in Roaring Springs and the surrounding towns. Not one of them had installed a security system at the address in question. He did luck out, though, when he discovered that one of the places had installed window locks at that address a few months back as part of a renovation. That company had the name of the contractor who’d remodeled the house. A quick phone call to that gentleman confirmed that no security system had been in place at Sloane’s house at the time she purchased it and moved in.

Interesting.

Liam picked up his phone and placed one more call, this time to the FBI field office in Denver.

“This is Special Agent Roberts. How can I help you?”

“Detective Liam Kastor, here. Roaring Springs PD. I need some advice.”

“Does this have to do with that murder at the Colton ranch? I wasn’t the agent consulted on that case, but I can pass you to—”

“That’s not what I’m calling about. I have a local citizen, a single mother, who appears to have someone doing high-tech surveillance in her house.”

“Any idea why?”

“None. She used to be a defense attorney in Denver, but she’s been down here for a little while doing the stay-at-home mom thing with her toddler. There’s an ex-husband, but the divorce and settlement are finalized.”

“Have you examined the cameras?” Roberts asked quickly.

“No. I haven’t acknowledged that I spotted them, and the homeowner didn’t stay in her house last night. Her child is sick, and they stayed at the hospital.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir. Well, we’ve got a tech specialist I can hook you up with. He could take a look at what’s installed. But you’ll need a warrant to get into the house to look at the surveillance equipment.”

“I have permission to enter the premises.”

“That’s handy. Let me give you our tech guy’s number...”

In short order, Liam spoke with a man named Rahm Zogby, who agreed to drive down to Roaring Springs and take a look at what was going on in Sloane’s house. But he wouldn’t arrive until after lunch, so Liam had some time to kill.

An internet search of Ivan Durant proved educational. The guy was the only son of a wealthy couple and had grown up with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. Fancy private schools, fancier private university and law school, hired by a top law firm, fast-tracked to partner. No doubt, daddy bringing his considerable legal business to the firm hadn’t hurt Ivan’s career.

The guy was handsome in a squared-jawed, Nordic way. But Liam found his eyes a little too cold, the set of his shoulders a little too arrogant, the pout of his mouth a little too spoiled.

Durant had better not cause Sloane any more pain, or ol’ Ivan and he were going to have a problem.

Liam used police sources to dig into Ivan’s financials and discovered the guy was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The gambling Sloane had mentioned must be a serious problem. That, or the dude’s lavish lifestyle was draining his finances. Or maybe both.

Liam did stumble across a magazine interview where Ivan railed against prenups. Durant hinted that paying his off had wiped him out financially.

Good for Sloane. At least she’d walked away from the jerk with financial security. However, it also made for a pretty decent revenge motive.

Still. She was the mother of the man’s child. Surely Ivan wouldn’t mess with Sloane if it meant hurting his own daughter. Or was the guy that big an ass?

“Hey, Liam!”

He glanced up at his boss, Police Chief Tegan Howard. “Yes, ma’am?” She hated being ma’amed by anyone other than very contrite teenagers, who’d better ma’am her or get a lecture on manners.

She rolled her eyes. “You busy?”

“Not especially.”

“Any chance you could pick up that prisoner you dropped off at the hospital last night and bring him back here? He’s got an arraignment this afternoon, assuming he can stand and speak coherently.”

“I’m on it.” Perfect. He could stop by and check in on Sloane and Chloe while he was there. Liam grabbed his coat and headed for the hospital.

The elevator door opened to the third floor of the hospital, and Liam stared at a block party in progress. Or at least, that was what it looked like. The hallway was crowded with people talking and milling around. He recognized Russ Colton with a start, then Wyatt and his fiancée, and then he spied Fox.

Aww, hell. The Colton clan had found out Chloe was here and had converged on Sloane. He waded through the crowd to his best friend. “Hey, Fox. How’s Chloe doing?”

“No idea. Can’t get a straight answer out of anyone around this place. What are you doing here?”

“I came to pick up a prisoner. Is Sloane around? I’d like to say hi. Give her my best.”

“Yeah. She’s in with Chloe. Chased everyone out of her daughter’s room a few minutes ago so the kid can rest.”

“With this mob out here? A dead man couldn’t rest.”

Fox grimaced at his family. “Yeah, you’re right. Help me get rid of them?”

“Sure.”

Liam strolled over to Mara Colton, whom he’d long ago identified as the real power in the family, while Fox headed for their father, Russ. “Howdy, Mrs. C. I’m sorry to hear your granddaughter is sick.”

“Why, thank you, Liam. That’s kind of you.”

“I don’t know much about these things, but do you think all this commotion is good for Chloe? Maybe a little more...quiet...might help her rest and recover?”

Mara glanced around in fond exasperation at the crowd. “I do believe you’re right. I’ll go have a word with my husband.”

Mission accomplished. Between the two of them, Russ and Mara would clear the place fast. Sure enough, it took about three minutes flat for the ward to go silent and deserted.

Ahh. Better.

Liam poked his head inside Chloe’s room. The little girl was fiddling with the elephant he’d brought her last night, and a cartoon was playing on her television, but she looked listless.

“I hope you don’t mind that I chased your family off,” he murmured.

“You’re why they left? Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Sloane said sincerely. She stepped away from Chloe’s bed to come over to him.

“How’s she doing?”

“Fever’s down, but she’s been throwing up, and she’s starting to cough. Doc says the respiratory infection is the rough part of this virus. So we’re not out of the woods yet.”

“She’s getting constant care and the best support available. She’ll be fine,” he murmured.

“From your mouth to God’s ear.”

“How are you holding up?” he asked softly.

“Fine.”

“No. Seriously. How are you doing?”

She looked up at him candidly, and for an instant, naked fear shone in her hazel eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” he muttered as he gathered her into his arms for a hug.

She shuddered against him, a long, full-body shiver of terror. “I—”

Her phone buzzed, interrupting whatever she was about to say.

Frowning, she stepped out of his arms and pulled out the device. She swore quietly and moved out into the hallway, away from Chloe.

Liam followed her. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s Ivan. I don’t want to talk to him, but I suppose I’ll have to tell him Chloe is sick.”

“Why? You don’t owe him anything. He doesn’t have custody of her.”

Sloane stared up at him as the call went to voicemail. “You sound like you don’t like him.”

“I don’t.”

“But you’ve never met him.”

“He hurt you.”

Sloane’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak, but her phone started to ring again. “Crud. It’s Ivan. He’ll keep calling until I answer. Can I ask a favor of you...as a police officer?”

Startled, Liam replied, “Of course.”

“Listen to the call. So you can—” her breath hitched and then she continued grimly “—so you can testify to what you heard in court, if it comes to that.”

Alarmed, he took Sloane’s arm and steered her into the empty hospital room next door. He pushed the door shut. “Why do you need a witness for the call? Is he threatening you?”

“Not exactly.”

“What exactly?” he asked sharply. The hackles on the back of his neck were standing up, and he realized with a bit of a start that his right hand was balled into a fist. He forcibly relaxed the fingers and focused all of his considerable observational skills on Sloane. Elevated breathing. Faint sheen of perspiration on her skin. Gaze darting around. She was scared.

“You’d better damned well believe I want to hear this phone call,” he growled.

The phone rang for a third time, and she took a deep breath. He watched, eyes narrowed, as she put the phone on speaker and accepted the call.

“Hello, Ivan.”

“Why the hell are you avoiding me?” a male voice snarled.

“I’m busy. And I don’t have to answer your calls. We’re not married anymore. You can speak to my lawyer if you have something to say to me. You have her phone number.”

Ivan swore viciously at that suggestion, and Liam’s eyebrows climbed. Temper much?

Then Ivan spat out, “I’m not kidding, Sloane. I’ll expose what you did. I want Chloe back. I will take her from you.”

“You don’t want Chloe. You just want to punish me.”

More swearing.

“Look, Ivan. Chloe’s sick. She’s in the hospital with a bad viral infection. If you want to come see her, I won’t stop you.”

“I’m busy. And besides, I don’t want to catch some godawful disease.”

“She’s your daughter.”

“I said I’m busy.”

“Then get to your point. Or were you just calling to threaten me?” Sloane asked coolly. Liam had to give her credit. She was an icicle under pressure.

“My parents wanted me to remind you that they’ve got a scheduled visit with Chloe next week. You have to bring her to Denver.”

“I haven’t forgotten. But you did just hear me say she’s in the hospital, right? I don’t know if she’ll be well enough to go—”

Ivan cut her off. “I don’t care if you have to scrape her out of her sickbed and pour her into an ambulance to get her here. I’ll sue for breach of contract and overturn the custody agreement if you don’t comply with the court order down to the last letter.”

“She’s a baby. She’s very sick.”

“Tough shit.”

“Ivan. She’s your flesh and blood. Show a little compassion—”

Ivan cut her off with another blistering round of swearing that made a muscle tick in Liam’s jaw.

Then Durant snarled, “I’ll drag you back into court so fast it’ll make your head spin. And I’ll get that eff-ing custody order amended. I’m going to end up with Chloe if it’s the last thing I do—”

Sloane cut him off, her voice hard enough to cut through glass. “I’ve got a police officer listening to this phone call, Ivan, so before you devolve into more threats against me, consider yourself notified that you are being monitored.”

“That’s a load of crap. You had no idea I was going to call you. No way did you have time to arrange for a cop to listen in. You can take your high-and-mighty attitude and choke on it, wifey dearest.” His tone turned even more menacing “You’re going to regret ever dragging our personal life into court. I’ll make you beg for mercy before I’m done with you. You’ll never see your daughter again. I ruin your life. I’ll ruin you—”

Sloane had gone pale, and the hand holding her cell phone was trembling violently.

Liam lifted the phone out of her hand and disconnected the call. He was sorely tempted to give Ivan Durant a piece of his mind, but pulling a stunt like that would force him off the investigation of what was going on with Sloane’s house.

Besides, she was shaken enough without him heaping any more drama on top of what Ivan had just piled onto her.

The phone rang again. Liam glanced at the caller ID and blocked the number.

“You can’t block him!” Sloane exclaimed. “What if there’s an emergency and—”

Liam cut her off with quietly intensity. “And what? You can always unblock him and call him, But are you really going to turn to that jerk for help with anything in your life? He didn’t show even a hint of concern when you told him his own child was in the hospital. Do you really want a man like that anywhere near your daughter?”

“No. Of course not. But what if he actually does need to talk to me about something?”

“You have a lawyer. He can call him or her.”

Sloane looked up at him, lost. She appeared so young and vulnerable and scared out of her mind in that moment. Liam swore silently at himself. As attracted as he was to this woman, he had no business even considering a romantic entanglement with her. She was off balance, frightened and still trying to get on her feet after what had obviously been a hideous divorce. She was in no condition to get into a relationship with any man.

God knew he didn’t want to be the rebound guy. It would only end up hurting them both in the end.

“You should seriously consider installing an app on your phone that will record phone calls. If he threatens you again, it would help us to have a recording of it for evidence purposes.”

“Good idea,” Sloane replied woodenly.

He pressed her phone back into her hand. “You have tons of family. Friends all around you. Turn to us. You don’t need Ivan Durant for anything. We’ve all got your back.”

Sloane drew one wobbly breath. Let it out slowly. Then her spine stiffened, her chin came up and she dashed at the tears glistening on her cheeks.

Admiration unfurled in Liam’s gut. What kind of strength did it take for Sloane to gather her tattered courage around herself like that, to set aside the attack Ivan had just hurled at her, and to march back to her daughter’s sickbed with a brave smile on her lips? She was a hell of a woman. A warrior mom.

And the last thing she needed in her life right now was a man like him to complicate matters.

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