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“Just as we started to intervene to give him his best chance for survival, he popped up on his feet and went to his mom for breakfast.”
“Sounds like a lucky calf to be born on the Triple R. Are you calling him Lucky?”
“We don’t give them nicknames.”
“That’s not a rule, is it?”
Asher shifted his head so Jace wouldn’t see his grin. He still didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but he had a good feeling about Jace. It would be nice to have at least one sibling who cared about animals as much as he did. His cell buzzed in his back pocket, interrupting his thoughts. He pulled out the phone and checked the number to make sure it wasn’t Neda, one of the housekeepers, calling about Harper. Usually, he let business calls go to voice mail and answered them when he returned to his office at the back of the barn, but he froze at the words on the caller ID. Mustang Valley General Hospital? Had his dad’s condition changed? Or worse? Maybe Payne Colton wasn’t the kind of dad people wrote greeting cards about, but that didn’t mean Asher wanted him to...
“Sorry. I should take this.”
He stepped away and turned his back before tapping the button to answer the call. “Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch. May I help you?”
“Have I reached Asher Colton?” a female voice asked.
“This is Asher.” He squeezed the phone tighter and pressed it against his ear.
“My name is Anne Sewall. I am the administrator at Mustang Valley General Hospital.”
“Has something happened with my father?” he blurted before he could stop himself.
His heart thudding, he clamped his free arm to his side and waited for the worst news he could imagine.
“Oh. No.” The woman made a strange sound into the phone. “You’ll have to call the nurse’s station on the floor for specifics on your father’s condition. I’m sorry for causing you distress.”
“Then why are you calling?”
It was a testament to his superior restraint that he didn’t include the hell in his question. What had she thought he would assume? It wasn’t a secret in town that his dad was a patient at Mustang Valley General.
“There’s another, unrelated matter that we need to discuss. I was hoping that you could bring your infant daughter to my office today and—”
“What are you talking about? And what do you want with Harper? Was there something the pediatrician missed in her six-month checkup?”
“No.” Her nervous chuckle filtered through the connection. “It’s not that. Again, I apologize, Mr. Colton. I realize that this is unusual. But if you’ll just meet me in my office, I’ll explain the whole situation.”
“I would rather that you explain it right now.” His mother had always called him stubborn, and he was proving her right, but he couldn’t help it. This woman had already frightened him twice, and he wasn’t about to let her go for a hat trick.
“That would be highly irregular.” She cleared her throat again. “This is a delicate matter. We don’t customarily divulge this type of information over the phone.”
“Well, I would say that it’s not usual to phone a community member out of the blue and, in the space of two minutes, give him concerns about both his father and his child.” He didn’t care if he was the one jumping to those conclusions. She should have explained herself better.
“Fine.” She sighed. “Obviously, this information would be more appropriate if given in person.”
“Noted. So?”
“I’m sorry to inform you that there’s a possibility that your daughter, Harper Grace Colton, and another infant, also born on November 2, might have been accidentally switched in Mustang Valley General’s nursery.”
“Again?”
He didn’t care if his question came out as a yelp. Was this a joke? In what realm of possibility could there be two Colton babies—albeit forty years apart—who’d been switched at birth?
“How could you let this happen?”
“Now, we don’t know anything for certain, Mr. Colton. That is why we’re asking you and the other party to bring your infants in immediately for DNA tests.”
She prattled on about how sorry the hospital board was for this possible mix-up, but he wasn’t listening. All he could think about was his sweet little Harper, with her crop of light brown hair, those dimples like his and eyes as brown as Nora’s. How could there be a chance that she wasn’t his? Or Nora’s, if a mother who abandoned her baby could even count as one.
Harper was his. She looked just like him. Everyone said so. He shook his head to dismiss the unfathomable possibility that they weren’t even related.
