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Nikolas looked at her for another minute and realized she had effectively removed any lingering awkwardness between them over the kiss. Their ongoing discussion about food, and her consistent hunger, had given them a chance to refocus. And once again, she awed him with her ability to read people and to understand a situation.
To understand how to shift things just enough so they could move forward.
Normally he’d take something like that as the gift it was and back off. They’d shared an impulsive moment—one not meant to be repeated. And yet...
Unwilling to fully let the subject of the kiss drop, he moved up in front of her, closing the space between them to barely nothing. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Know that you can have whatever you want?” He bent down and, holding her hand still, took a bite of her apple, smiling as he did. “But you might need to share a little bit.”
Chapter 11
Sierra Madden sized up her opponent and considered what she knew. It was a favorite game—one that she’d honed after a lifetime of boxing—and she enjoyed playing it against prospective clients.
The aim of her little game was to see just how much she could find out with the fewest questions.
Take the woman opposite her, here in the booth at the heavily used diner about twenty miles outside of Mustang Valley.
Selina Barnes Colton.
The woman had reached out to have a meeting, intimating on her call that she wanted to hire Sierra to find someone. The who, of course, was the interesting part.
Selina’s former stepson, Asa “Ace” Colton, who was wanted by the cops.
The man had been the subject of endless news stories and quite a bit of gossipy speculation over the past few months. Ever since his father, Payne Colton, was found shot in his office and Ace had gone to the top of the suspect list for the crime.
A crime whose victim hadn’t woken up to name his killer. An attempted killer who may or may not be a man who had recently discovered he wasn’t his biological son.
For her money, Sierra didn’t get a guilty vibe from Ace, but it ultimately wasn’t up to her to decide. That was the funny thing about being a bounty hunter. The only thing she had to decide was whether or not to take the job. Once she made her choice, the rest was up to someone else.
Sierra had read all the news stories, of course. There weren’t many in Arizona who hadn’t. But for some reason, she’d found herself lingering overly long on the incredibly attractive heir to the Colton Oil fortune—even one who was accused of murder. There likely hadn’t been a filed photo of him at this point that hadn’t made its way into news stories and she was convinced she’d seen damn near every one of them.
Sierra didn’t believe in fate, nor was she superstitious, but it still struck her as odd that Selina Barnes Colton had somehow come looking for her. It was a question she planned on asking when the time was right.
For now, she held off while she considered the other pieces she did know.
Selina was the ex-wife of Ace’s father. For reasons no one seemed to understand, despite their divorce and his moving on to a third marriage, Payne had kept the woman on and given her a rather high-ranking position at Colton Oil. Selina was in charge of all public relations for the behemoth company.
She also seemed to have a rather sizable ax to grind with her former stepson.
Oh, she’d said all the right things on their initial call when Selina had reached out to set up the meeting. She’d talked of her “deep desire to bring Ace back to his loving family, keeping him safe at home while they hire the best criminal defense attorneys.” Words that, while kind and caring on the surface, had carried a twisted sort of manipulation when she’d actually spoken.
That inconsistency alone had Sierra on high alert. But it was something more—some strange, undefined air of malice about Selina—that had kept her in her seat and unwilling to look away from the woman claiming she’d pay big for Sierra’s services.
Sierra had discovered boxing in her teens and had used the sport to hone both body and mind. You learned a lot about yourself when you took a punch and you learned even more when you figured out how to throw the right ones in return. She knew when an opponent was going to feint a move, when they were getting tired and breathing through their mouth and when they were looking somewhere over your shoulder, eyeing their next move.
Selina had been doing that last one since they’d sat down. A move that made Sierra’s survival instinct kick in.
Every. Damn. Time.
“And you want me to find your stepson?”
Selina’s lips tightened as if she’d just tasted the lemon that sat beside her cup of tea. “Ace and I don’t refer to one another in those familial terms.”
“Oh? What do you use, then?”
“Our first names suffice.”
