Page 5 of Colt
“Their father?” Betty nodded slowly. “Yes. That’s what Graham told me.”
I turned back to the window, watching Luca push Knox on the swing. My fierce protector and my quiet observer. My whole world since I woke up seven years ago.
Their father had looked at me with hatred today. Had accused me of cheating, of abandoning him. Had scared them with his anger.
“He thinks I left him,” I said. “He thinks I cheated and ran away.”
“It seems that way.”
“But I didn’t. I was hurt. I was in a coma. I didn’t choose to leave.”
“No, sweetheart. You didn’t.”
I watched Knox throw his head back laughing at something Luca said, and something hardened inside me. Whatever had happened seven years ago, whatever the truth was, those boys were mine. I’d raised them alone. I’d built a life from nothing, with no memories and no help from the man who’d apparently been my husband.
He didn’t get to show up now and terrify my boys. He didn’t get to look at me like I was a monster when I didn’t even know who he was.
“What do we do?” I asked Betty. “If he’s here, if he’s found us…”
“I need to call Graham.” Betty’s voice was firm now, the nurse taking charge. “He’ll know what to do. He knows the truth about what happened that night.”
“And if this Colt comes back? If he comes here looking for me?”
Betty moved to stand beside me, her hand finding mine. “We tell him the truth. That you don’t remember him. That you don’t remember anything. If he wants answers about what happened seven years ago, he’ll have to look somewhere other than at you—because you don’t have them to give.”
I nodded, but my stomach was churning. Somewhere out there was a man who had once been my husband. A man who was the biological father of my children. A man who looked at me with hatred because he believed I’d betrayed him.
Apparently, I’d once loved him enough to marry him.
But all I could remember was a flash of Texas heat and the sound of a laugh I couldn’t place.
It wasn’t enough.
Chapter 3
?
— Colt —
The whiskey wasn’t working. Three glasses in and I could still see her face. Still feel the jolt that had gone through me when she’d turned around in that produce aisle, dark hair catching the fluorescent light, looking at me like I was a stranger.
“Another?” The club girl—Tanya? Tonya?—leaned against the bar beside me, her body angled in a way that made her intentions clear. She’d been circling all night, getting closer with each pass. Pretty enough, with blonde hair and curves in all the right places. The kind of woman who knew exactly what she was offering and didn’t play games about it.
Unlike some people.
“Sure.” I pushed my glass toward her and watched her pour, letting my eyes drift down to where her tank top gaped open. She noticed me looking and smiled, slow and inviting.
This was what I needed. Something simple. Something that didn’t come with years of baggage and a pair of green-eyed kids who looked at me like I was a monster.
“You seem tense tonight.” Tanya—I was pretty sure it was Tanya—set the bottle down and trailed her fingers up my arm. “I could help you relax.”
I should take her up on it. That’s what I would have done before Lilac. That’s what I’d done plenty of times after, in those first raw years when I was trying to fuck her out of my system. It never worked, but it numbed the edges for a while.
“Yeah?” I caught her wrist. “What did you have in mind?”
“Your room is right upstairs.” She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume—something floral and heavy, nothing like vanilla. “I could take a break.”
I stood up from the bar stool, and she smiled like she’d won something. Maybe she had. I let her lead me toward the stairs, past the common room where Handful was holding court with a couple of prospects, up to the second floor where the officers had their rooms.
