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Add on the fact that Selina’s desire to find Payne’s shooter didn’t seem fully altruistic—especially since she already had a candidate in mind—and Nikolas knew to watch his back. He might not have a particularly large reserve of restraint in the face of a beautiful woman seeking his professional help but he did have standards. Which meant he needed to stay focused and keep his nose clean.
And do whatever he could to determine who had put Payne Colton in his or her crosshairs.
In the meantime, he’d given Selina his agreement to work the case. The long-term success of Colton Oil depended on happy stockholders and a healthy leadership. If Payne didn’t recover and the investment community caught wind of so much drama at the top, the stock prices would fall and all the Mustang Valley Coltons would suffer. As PR director for Colton Oil, Selina had the job of making sure that wind never swirled above a whisper. And Payne’s daughter Marlowe, the current CEO, had managed to keep a firm finger in the dam, despite her own danger earlier in the year and the arrival of her new baby.
Even with the effort, there were cracks.
And it was his job to find answers before they split wide open.
* * *
Nova walked through the main downtown thoroughfare of Mustang Valley and thought longingly of the breakfast bar she’d buried in her purse. She’d been trying to ration the food she had left, and the two boxes of breakfast bars she’d stumbled upon in a buy-one-get-one deal at a convenience store just over the line into Arizona had been too good to pass up. But she was always hungry now and the baby had her burning food like crazy. She was worried whatever passed as strawberry filling wasn’t the healthiest approach to eating during pregnancy, but hadn’t figured out any other choice.
She took some solace that it hadn’t been like this the whole time. After the whole debacle in Ferdy’s office, she’d run from New York, doing little more than grabbing a suitcase full of stuff from her apartment before she took off. Her mother’s occasional notes of wisdom had come surprisingly handy and Nova was suddenly grateful she’d paid attention.
Her entire life her mother had always kept cash in the house. “Enough to pay a month’s worth of bills” had always been the ever-eccentric Allegra Ellis’s motto. Nova had often thought it an odd juxtaposition to a woman who’d willingly spend the same amount on a wild bender of a shopping trip, but some things stuck and she’d done her best to maintain that stash since going out on her own. It was only after she’d needed to go off the grid that she’d come to recognize the wisdom in her mother’s teaching.
Between the five thousand she’d squirreled away and the odd jobs she’d taken at diners across the country, she’d gotten by. The diner owners she’d worked for hadn’t cared that she was pregnant, only that she could work, and they’d been more than willing to feed her three square meals from the kitchen.
She’d been more diligent then, eating a proper balance of protein and fruit, keeping away from anything unhealthy and taking vitamins. Her first few weeks on the road she’d fallen love with the sticky buns on the counter in one of the diners where she’d worked and had quickly realized that there was no way she could fuel her growing baby on just sugar and carbs. So since then, she’d adhered to a strong eating regimen and even found ways to conserve gas in her car while walking around whatever town she’d worked in, getting some solid exercise in the process.
Even as kind as most everyone had been at all her stops along the way, she’d refused to stay anywhere for too long. The cell phone she’d stuffed in her bag had remained resolutely off and she’d finally given in and spent the money to get a burner phone in Iowa so she’d have some link to help if she needed it. Luckily, she hadn’t needed it. Nor had she seen any sign of Ferdy or his colleagues, even as she’d kept careful watch every one of the one hundred and fifty days since she’d run.
Throughout that time, she’d questioned her initial panic. Would Ferdy really hurt her? Especially once he knew about the baby? Sure, he’d seemed different after that first date, a bit more hot-tempered and emotional than she’d expected. But wasn’t that life? He had a big job and that meant big problems.
She’d nearly convinced herself to turn back about two weeks in, but something had ultimately held her back. That discussion of shipments and problems at the port sticking in her mind on an endless loop.
Ferdinand Adler was a real estate developer. Not a drug dealer. And yet...that exchange she’d overheard through the door suggested he was exactly that. Could she really expose her child to that?
So she’d stayed on the run. After a circuitous path out of New York, she’d headed straight for Tennessee before heading back north to Michigan, steadily weaving south and west from there. Somewhere deep inside of her, she’d known where she’d end up. The idea had nagged at her since her mother had shared the news of her real father’s identity so many months ago.
But the search for Ace Colton—and her belief in his ability to help her—had grown deeper and more intense as she checked one state after another off her list.
She needed his help and she had to believe that he’d give it. And once safe, secure in the knowledge her child would be protected, she had to find a way to get word back to the authorities in New York.
Because there was no way Ferdy Adler was a good guy.
She’d finally given in and done an internet search at one of the towns she’d passed through. She’d noticed signs for the local library and had gone in to use the public computer terminals, curious to see if she’d find anything to help her understand the real personality of the man she’d believed herself in love with.
The man who had fathered her child.
What she’d found was full of suspicion and innuendo and a few all-out accusations, and it all reinforced the suspected drug dealer angle. Several articles had comment sections underneath and the anonymous notes were not favorable. One mentioned he was “a real leg breaker,” and another had flat
out accused him of putting “laced dope” on the streets.
God, how could she have been so stupid?
Like, bone-deep stupid with a side of flighty airhead on the side. She knew better than to give her heart that easily. After all, what had she really known about Ferdinand Adler? Other than the good conversation they’d had on that very first date, his behavior after had been modestly kind at best. But oh boy, had he hooked her good.
She’d had a lot of time to think over the past months and one thing had become embarrassingly clear: Ferdy had played her like a fiddle. He’d somehow keyed into her deepest needs and desires on that very first date and had pushed and played every button she had from that moment on. Which didn’t excuse her role in any of it, but it had given her a sense of how she’d found herself in such a raging mess.
And how she needed to protect herself—and her child—moving forward.
Although she hated coming to town feeling like she had her cup in hand, the idea to find her father had been a persistent flame since her mother had first told her of Ace Colton and their brief teenage love affair. The research she’d done on the man had turned up more than a few surprises, especially the notion that the man was suspected of trying to murder his own father and was recently ousted as the CEO of Colton Oil. There was also a blog post she’d read that gleefully shared “all the Mustang Valley gossip” and said that the man wasn’t even actually a Colton.
Was it possible?
Could the man whose blood flowed in her veins be that cold? That devoid of feeling or decency? And not at all the man her mother had told her about?
