Page 60 of Hunting the Colton Fugitive (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

Her appreciative murmur took him straight back to the sounds of pleasure he’d coaxed from her when the two of them had been together—a memory that had him groaning in frustration before he could stop himself.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, clearly unaware of how difficult it had been for him to focus on his father’s ongoing recovery, the continuing search for the real Ace Colton and worries over what his birth mother might still have in store for the family.

“What’s wrong,” he admitted, “is that I can’t keep up this charade any longer. Can’t keep holding back my feelings for you and playing the genial, low-pressure host when I’m really worried sick that at any moment you’re going to cut and run.”

“I wouldn’t—” she began. “I won’t—not without telling you goodbye. And th-thanking you. For loving me. For healing me.”

“But you’re not healed yet, are you, Sierra?” he demanded, frustration hardening his voice. “Not if you’re too scared to love anybody back. And not if you’re still leaving, after what Detective Stratford told you about Ice Veins’s nephew being murdered by a rival gangster this morning after being returned to jail awaiting trial.”

Sucking in a startled breath, she choked and coughed on her drink. She still had tears in her eyes by the time she’d recovered enough to ask him, “Brie called you, too? I mean, Detective Stratford?”

“Don’t act so put out,” he said. “Your best friend didn’t rat you out. It was Spencer who called me after she’d informed him.”

The color in her cheeks deepened, her nostrils flaring with sudden indignation. “Let’s just back up a second, Ace. What do you mean, Brie didn’t rat me out? Are you suggesting that after all you’ve done for me and everything we’ve been through together, I was intending to keep this news from you? And what? Just slink off somewhere one night? Is that what you think of me?”

“It isn’t like you haven’t warned me of your intentions to leave Mustang Valley.”

“So you and your family wouldn’t be in danger,” she insisted, a fire igniting in her eyes.

“But we won’t be in danger from your pursuers any longer, will we?” he asked. “Because without Eddie Harris alive to pay the price he’d offered on your head, you aren’t going to have to worry about hit men any longer, are you?”

“I’ll have to be careful for a while, and maybe stay clear of Las Vegas in case of close associates,” she said, “but Brie doesn’t think it will take long for word to get out that there’s no money in the job to make going after me worth the risk or trouble.”

“That’s wonderful news, Sierra,” he said. “You’ll be safe again. And you’ll have choices. Hell, you’ll even get to return from the dead. How many people can say they’ve ever gotten that chance?”

“It’s still sinking in, I guess. I suppose I’m still numb.”

“Are you sure that’s all?” he challenged. “Because you look more scared to me.”

After balancing her mug on the fence post near her elbow, she turned up her palms, her eyes shining. “Of course I’m scared. More scared than I’ve ever been before.”

Reaching out, he enfolded each of her hands in his. In spite of the morning’s warmth and the coffee she had just been holding, they felt like ice.

“Are you afraid—afraid to tell me you don’t feel about me the way that I do you?” he asked, something in him giving way at the thought of losing her now, when finally, the reason she’d been giving him for leaving had vanished. Or had that been an excuse all along? Had the tsunami of events they’d been swept up in, the one that had amplified her feelings for a time, left behind nothing but a clean-swept blankness when it receded?

“If that’s the case,” he told her, his throat thickening, “I’ll do everything I can to help you start your life over anywhere you’d like. I promise you...even if it means you never want to see me again.”

“Ace, no, that’s not what I mean at all,” she blurted, flinging her arms around his waist and pushing her head against his chest. “Don’t you understand? It’s not that I don’t love you, far from it, or that I haven’t been thinking about what you said about you and I being together. I—I want that. I want you, more than anything.”

After squeezing her tight, he pulled back, enough to cup her face in his hands. That beautiful face, looking up at him completely stripped of its usual defensive layers.

“Then what on earth are you so afraid of, Sierra?”

“I—I’m scared that when you get to know the real me, the girl who practically raised herself and has the battle scars to prove it, that there’s no way you’re going to like what you see.”

“That’s half of what I love about you, that you’re smart, resourceful, tough,” he said. “So different from the pampered princesses and the social climbers I’ve dated in the past that I can’t believe I’ve wasted so many years chasing after the wrong women. Or more likely, the truth was, I wasted my life being the wrong man. But you’ve changed that for me, Sierra. You and what I’ve been through lately have helped change me forever. That’s why I still want you. I want you to be my—”

She shook her head. “Please, just let me finish. I wasn’t raised like this, Ace—” she gestured to the mansion, its architecture designed to blend into the beautiful terrain “—with a town place and some grand ranch like this out in the country and staff to anticipate my every need. Instead, I always had to be on my guard for people looking to take advantage—and sometimes I wasn’t fast enough, good enough. Back when I was just a kid, there were a couple of men, gambling buddies of my father’s. So-called family friends, who...”

Her gaze dropped, and heard the sound of her swallowing, saw her hands knotting into fists. The fists she’d made into weapons to protect herself. Because she’d had no other option.

“I’m sorry, Sierra. So damned sorry for what happened to you back then—and mad as hell to think of anybody hurting you or letting you be hurt when you damned well should have been protected.”

“My—my father didn’t—he had no idea. In his way, he did his best, I think. And those men...” She shook her head, gaze drifting. “One’s dead, and the other’s in prison for another—It’s all over. It’s over, but it will always be a part of who I am.”

“Listen to me, Sierra.” Ace laid his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes, willing. “If you believe that what happened to you as a child could in any way diminish the way I feel about you, you’ve got things completely backward. You had no more choice in those crimes than I did when some nurse switched me out of a hospital when I was nothing but a newborn. The only thing your story does is make me admire even more what a damned strong, confident woman you’ve become.”

She gave a little laugh. “Is that what it looks like from the outside? Because right now I don’t mind telling you, I’d

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