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ot you?” Payne shouted, pulling himself up to his full height.
“Now, calm down, Mr. Colton,” Barco began in a soothing tone. His words had absolutely no effect on the oil baron.
Marlowe moved in between her father and Bowie, predominantly to keep her father from doing something that they would all wind up regretting rather than to protect Bowie.
Even at sixty-eight, Payne Colton was no one’s idea of an old man. On the contrary, her father was still a force to be reckoned with and exceedingly imposing in his own right.
“No, Dad,” she insisted, “Bowie didn’t try to shoot me.”
“Then what the hell is he doing here?” Payne demanded. “Are you spying on us, boy? Doing some recon for your old man because he’s just too weak and afraid to do it himself?” With each word, Payne only succeeded in working himself up more and more.
She could tell Bowie was having trouble holding on to his own temper, but losing it would only make a bad situation worse.
“No, sir—” Bowie answered politely, only to have Payne cut him short.
“Well, you can tell that coward who sired you he knows what he can do with his precious company, and I’ll thank him not to send his boy sniffing around my daughter, if he knows what’s good for him.” Drawing back his shoulders, the senior Colton gave the illusion of towering over Bowie, even though they were actually about the same height. “Because if he crosses me, your father’s going to get a hell of a lot more than he ever bargained for, you hear me?” Payne demanded, all but shouting the question in Bowie’s face.
This was going to turn into a really bad situation faster than she had ever bargained on, Marlowe thought. Chief Barco was a nice man, but he was basically afraid of her father. It was up to her to put a stop to it before it got really ugly, Marlowe observed.
“Dad,” she said, raising her voice. But her father either didn’t hear her or didn’t want to hear her, because he went on shouting and threatening Bowie.
“Now you get your sorry butt out of here, boy, if you know what’s good for you.” Bushy silver eyebrows drew together in an angry wave. “I am not going to ask you nicely again,” Payne warned in a menacing tone.
“Dad—” Marlowe tried again, raising her voice even louder. She got the same result she had the first time. Her father continued to deliberately ignore her.
Payne turned toward his son. “Callum, get him out of here,” the Colton patriarch ordered, “before I do something that I am going to really regret.”
“Mr. Colton,” Barco said, trying to interrupt Payne, who paid even less attention to the chief than he did to his daughter.
Marlowe was well aware that her father’s threats were far from empty. She was also aware of how quickly they could escalate. Sticking two fingers into her mouth, she whistled loudly, which forced all the men in the room to focus their attention on her.
“Nothing you can say right now is going to keep me from throwing this whelp out to teach him some respect for his betters—” Payne began to tell his daughter, not even looking at her.
“Well, you had better learn how to hold on to your temper, Dad,” Marlowe informed him, shouting the words at Payne.
“And just why the hell would I do that?” Payne demanded angrily, glaring at Marlowe.
“Because Bowie’s the father of your grandchild!” she answered in a voice that all but shook the ceiling tiles loose.
It also stunned the other three men in the room. And even Bowie looked surprised that she was breaking the news this way.
“Say what?” Callum responded, the first one to recover.
Payne blanched. “He’s the what?” he asked almost at the same time.
“The father of your grandchild,” Marlowe repeated, enunciating each word. She saw the shock on her father’s face and sincerely wished she could have given him the news a different way. But her father never made anything easy for her. “I’m pregnant, Dad, and you and Franklin Robertson are going to have to find a way to deal with that and learn to stop fighting!” she cried, her voice sounding almost hoarse.
Callum looked at her, wide-eyed. He asked, “Is it true, Mar?”
“Trust me,” Marlowe said wearily, “I wouldn’t make up something like that.”
Chief Barco slanted a look at the Colton men, as if unsure if he should be congratulating the parties involved, or just holding his peace. Instincts apparently had him opting for the latter.
But Payne was not about to willingly accept this situation, not without registering his intense dissatisfaction and contesting the matter.
Glaring at Bowie, Payne angrily demanded, “Did you force yourself on my daughter? Because I swear if I find out that you did—”
Marlowe blew out an angry breath. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with, she had to smooth her father’s ruffled feathers. “Nobody forced themselves on anyone, Dad. You know me better than that,” she told him. “I would have gutted him before I let that happen.” She drew in a fortifying breath, then said, “It was mutual.”
