Page 43 of Colton's Secret Weapon
Dove looked over at him, met his gaze and held on. “What were you going to say?”
He shrugged. “Maybe the detoxing…is the good that comes out of this.”
Reaching over, Dove slid her hand inside of his, took hold of it and squeezed. He’d gotten her to the point she hadn’t been able to see.
The good that was coming.
Which maybe should have surprised her, him being who and what he was. But it didn’t. At all.
“I saw Kansas as she was leaving,” he said, not pulling his hand from hers. “She said she and a member of her team found him just below a mountain hang outside of town. About half a mile from where they found his cap. She had his clothes in anevidence bag, had already asked Scott Montgomery, one of ABI’s forensic scientists at the office here in town, to get on them ASAP. And was leaving here to go directly to him. If we’re lucky, we might even get a viable fingerprint.”
Heart lifting again, Dove looked over at Mitchell, thanking her lucky stars that they’d led her to him. And got the distinct impression that she needed to lighten up on him a little.
No more sex talk. Or anything else that made him uncomfortable. No challenging him to do better at anything.
The man was already pretty much the best anyone could be. Vastly different from her, but that was okay. To be celebrated, actually. He lived true to himself.
Life’s greatest challenge. At least according to her mother. And now…according to her own heart, as well.
Mitchell—just as he was—was exactly what she needed for this period in her life.
So thinking, she smiled at him and as unobtrusively as possible slid her hand from his.
Local police were providing protection for Whaler at the hospital. Mitchell stayed with Dove until Whaler was moved to a room, and then, when she went to sit with her father, with the officer just outside the door, Mitchell left to head back to the marina. To make certain that Wes was handling things. And to be there in case of any problems that might develop.
The boat rental business was Brad Fletcher’s ultimate goal. With Whaler out of commission, causing Dove to be by his side, Mitchell saw the window of opportunity for the shady businessman to move in. So thinking, he made an executive decision, financed out of his own pocket as he wasn’t going to bother Dove with it, and had hidden security cameras installed at the docks. And up by the office, too. The fact that he wasn’t,technically, an executive hired to watch out for the business yet was immaterial to him at that point.
Didn’t matter to him whether he ever got paid. Nor was he worried that he was opening himself up to potential lawsuits if Dove or Whaler ever decided to come after him for the step he was taking.
Definitely a departure from any other choice he’d ever made—brushing aside potential blowback—but he did it anyway.
Because to leave St. James Boats vulnerable was much more of a risk. And just plain wrong in light of the threats, vandalism and assumed abduction that had all just taken place.
He hadn’t forgotten the neighbor’s call about someone suspected to have been watching Dove’s place, either.
Whoever was out to get Dove and her father had started out tamely enough. But was clearly escalating to dangerous proportions.
A thought that was brought home to Mitchell most clearly when Eli called him midafternoon to suggest that St. James Boats might want to consider getting security cameras installed ASAP.
It was nice validation of Mitchell’s decision to have already put that into motion. And good, too, as the least actively aggressive male in his family to be able to tell his older brother “Happening as we speak.”
“I’m impressed,” Eli said then, sounding tired, but with a note of older brother, egg-him-on punch, too. “It’s not like you to get so hands-on involved.”
And like the younger brother he was, he let Eli’s words rankle. “I’m always hands-on. My job just requires less in-your-face presence.”
“From what I hear, you’ve maybe got more than just your hands on this one.” There was no mistaking the quiet humor in that one.
Mitchell tensed, in spite of himself. “You haven’t learned by now not to believe everything you hear?”
“I believe Kansas. She tells me that Dove St. James answered your phone just after dawn. You were upstairs in the shower, she told Kansas. And then you came downstairs and took the call.”
Damn Kansas.
And… Dove had saidthat?
Making it sound like…
“We are not sleeping together,” he said, for the record, while a part of him noted that it was good to get the words out while they were still valid.
