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Her father frowned. “I understand all that, but you still have an obligation to the family,” he reprimanded. “When you didn’t answer, we didn’t know what to think. You could have saved us all that grief.”
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Marlowe apologized.
But one of her brothers took offense at the way their father was badgering Marlowe. “C’mon, Dad, give Marlowe a break,” Rafe chided.
She didn’t like being defensive, but she liked being blamed for having a normal, understandable reaction even less.
There was no such thing as being cut any slack when it came to her father. “That homicidal maniac almost succeeded in kidnapping me,” she stressed, repeating what her father had already acknowledged.
“But he didn’t,” Payne said, pointing out the obvious. And then normal curiosity got the better of him. “How did you stop him?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” Marlowe answered, then told her father something she knew he didn’t want to hear. “Bowie did.”
Payne’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows drew together, forming a single squiggle. “The Robertson kid? What was he doing in your office after hours?” he demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Marlowe answered her father, deliberately sounding nonchalant, “saving my life when he didn’t get an answer from the bodyguard he hired to watch over me.”
“He did what?” Payne demanded. His face turned a bright shade of red as he tried to come to terms with what his daughter had just told him. “What the hell is Robertson doing hiring bodyguards for you?”
“Bodyguard, Dad, not bodyguards. There was just the one,” she emphasized. “And to answer your question, Bowie hired a bodyguard for me because he was worried about me. For good reason.”
That was clearly not a winning argument in Payne’s estimation. “We Coltons can take care of our own,” he said bitingly, throwing back his shoulders.
“Apparently we’re not very good at it,” Marlowe contradicted, “because if Bowie hadn’t come to check on his man, we might not be having this conversation right now. Just admit it, Dad,” she retorted, losing her patience. “Bowie did a good thing.”
“Yeah, after he did a bad thing,” Payne declared, deliberately staring at his daughter’s still flat stomach.
Disgusted, Marlowe threw up her hands. “There is just no talking to you!” she cried, completely exasperated.
“Well, you’re going to have to, missy,” he informed his daughter. When she looked at him quizzically, he explained his comment. “As our new CEO, you’ll be reporting directly back to me.”
She had been expecting this ever since he’d let Ace go, and it had been weighing heavily on her mind. “About that,” she began, since her father had given her an opening. “I don’t know if I can handle being a CEO and an expecting mother.”
The look on Payne’s face told her that he harbored no such doubts. “You underestimate yourself, Marlowe,” her father said. “I have every confidence that you’ll rise to the occasion.”
“But,” Marlowe began, feeling that her father was not being realistic, “I’m going to be a new mother in a few months,” she stressed. And that opened up an entirely new, unknown world for her. A world she knew nothing about and one she felt she needed to focus on, in order not to shortchange the baby, herself—or Bowie.
That argument was not a deterrent for her father, however. “So, you’ll find a good nanny. Hell, I’ll even pay for one,” Payne told her, then declared, “There, problem solved.”
“Not really,” Marlowe told him. He was being far too simplistic. “And even if finding a good nanny did solve my problem, what about all the other mothers who are working for Colton Oil?”
Her father looked completely lost. It was obvious that he wasn’t following her. “What about them?” he asked.
Marlowe sighed. “Does Colton Oil even have a day care center?” She knew it didn’t, but she was trying to make a point.
Payne looked at her blankly. “What?”
She did her best to patiently explain what she was thinking. “I feel awful that I never even thought about that until it suddenly affected me directly.”
Her father scowled at what he felt was convoluted thinking. “Why should you?” he asked her. “I certainly didn’t.”
“That’s just the problem, Dad,” Marlowe insisted. Couldn’t he see that?
It was obvious that Payne was losing his patience with this discussion. “Marlowe, maybe you should take a few more days off,” her father told her. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“No, Dad,” Marlowe contradicted, “for the first time in a long time, I am thinking clearly. We need to set up a day care center right here on Colton Oil’s premises.”
Exasperated, Payne exchanged glances with Rafe. “So now you’re saying we need child labor?” her father asked sarcastically.
