Cold Case Colton

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1 (#u597b5560-eaac-5ed4-85bc-b13fd2296446)

The random bark of a dog and a puttering truck with a rusted out muffler battled each other for prominence in the early morning air. Claudia Colton juggled a to-go cup of coffee in one hand and her keys in the other as she fumbled with the door of her boutique, Honeysuckle Road. Dog and truck faded away as she closed the door, satisfied to simply stop and stare for a moment.

On a soft sigh, she smiled at the racks that spread out before her in welcoming arcs. Bright, vivid silks and bold prints swirled among the racks, offsetting more timeless pieces in soft pastels and classic solids. Her racks spanned all sizes, hidden among them a match for every woman in Shadow Creek, from the petite to the curvaceous and every iteration in between.

“It may be a long way from Fifth Avenue, but it’s mine.”

Shadow Creek, Texas, was a far cry from New York City, but she was determined to make it feel like home.

Bound and determined.

All the work that had gone into renovating the store and the grand opening preparations had diverted her mind for the past few months, and there was something deeply gratifying to see the fruits of her hard work.

Fruits that bore sashes, sequins and the occasional well-placed bow.

And if the life she’d attempted to divert herself from was still a raging mess, well, at least she had a few pretty things to look at while she dealt with it all.

She flipped the lock behind her back and headed for her workroom. Many of the designs at Honeysuckle Road were her own and she’d taken great joy in bringing her visions to life, but no vision quite compared with the wedding dress that had come to life on her dressmakers’ form over the past few weeks.

Claudia had been equally touched and excited when her brother Thorne’s fiancée, Maggie, asked her to make her wedding dress. And she was fast becoming a nervous wreck that the small details she’d envisioned for the dress wouldn’t be completed in time for the wedding.

Wasn’t that a twist?

Maggie was an easygoing bride with an exacting, seamstress-zilla.

Which meant Claudia’s days were filled with quite a few early hours as she worked to finish up the dress.

That also gave her a chance to collect her thoughts. While getting Honeysuckle Road up and running had been a pleasant diversion, it couldn’t change the realities of what she’d run from in New York, or her current situation here in Shadow Creek.

An ex-boyfriend who’d increasingly made the city she loved a nightmare of dark streets, threatening messages and late-night harassments.

And the small town she’d grown up in that seemed to exist in a perpetual state of fear of her mother. Livia’s recent escape, ten years after being put away for multiple lifetimes, had once again gripped the town in her thrall.

Neither situation was tenable.

But what to do about it?

Claudia had innately understood her mother was different. It wasn’t just the unique characteristics that made up her family, from a series of relationships that had produced Livia Colton’s six children. Nor was it simply the large estate that had provided the backdrop to her childhood. No, it was the odd, nearly reverent way the entire town of Shadow Creek treated her mother.

Livia Colton was the town’s patron saint and their resident demon, and everyone treated her with the softest of kid gloves. Livia could do no wrong, even when others suspected her of the worst sorts of crimes.

Theft. Human trafficking. Murder.

Which had left her children to puzzle through the realities of their mother. Was Livia Colton some misunderstood, benevolent benefactor or some demon temptress who used kindness as one more tool in her psychopathic arsenal?

Claudia had spent much of her childhood wondering, only to have the truth finally come out the year she turned sixteen. Her mother’s crimes—all she’d been suspected of and more—had been exposed and she’d been soundly convicted by the State of Texas, sentenced to spend the rest of her life—as well as four more—in prison.

At the time and in all the years since, Claudia had tried desperately to feel some sense of sadness, or remorse or even relief that she and her siblings finally had some answers.

But none came.

Instead, she continued to struggle with this odd sense of indifference that kept her mother at an emotional distance. Separate, somehow, as if they’d never really had a mother-daughter bond at all. Claudia lived with the shame of that—that strange, unapologetic apathy—and used the guilt as a way to push herself forward.

She didn’t feel it for her siblings. Nor did she feel it for Mac, the man who’d practically raised her. So maybe there was hope for her, after all.

Claudia ran a hand over the slender, gathered shoulder strap of the dress. Her brother would marry the woman who wore this dress. The wedding would be hosted on Mac’s ranch. In addition to Thorne, the groom, all her siblings would be there.

Joy filled her at the thought of them all being together and in that, Claudia knew there was strength. Bonds that were forged in truth and honesty and love.

And in that joy, she felt no guilt. No empty ties. Not even a trace of sadness. Instead, she knew she was home.

It couldn’t come at a better time, she thought as she fiddled with the ruching on the shoulder strap, seeking to match its folds to its twin. After nearly ten years in a Texas prison, Livia had found a way to escape.

Her mother’s extensive network of contacts had helped engineer the escape, but it was the events that came after—including the kidnappings of Claudia’s nephew and then Mac just last month—that had proven just what sort of people her mother had surrounded herself with.

Her brother Knox had spent a tense time in an emotional standoff that started with Cody’s kidnapping and ended in the death of one of Livia’s minions. Although her nephew was back, safe and unharmed, neither Claudia nor her siblings had fully rested easy since. The fact that the kidnapping had been the byproduct of an old enemy of her mother’s, using the boy as a pawn to get money Livia would never have paid, had only added to the horror of the situation.

And Mac. Her heart still leaped into her throat at the thought they’d nearly lost him. Livia’s cruelty—and the pain she’d exacted on her third husband—had contributed to the man’s plot against Mac. Thank God they had him back, safe and sound. And through it all, Maggie and Thorne had found each other, as well. A challenging way to begin any relationship, but one that was firm and solid all the same.

One that had also reinforced another truth. Her family needed her and she needed them. And with her mother’s disappearance going on nearly four months, she couldn’t deny her fervent hope the woman would never come back. Livia’s disappearance would finally give them all much-needed peace.

The prison break had proven her mother had established her influence far and wide. But the one thing, if she knew her mother at all, was that there was little Livia Colton wouldn’t do to avoid going back to prison.

Life was calmer without her mother’s presence. That had been as true ten years ago as it was now. And in the months she’d been back in Shadow Creek, she’d had the opportunity to reforge bonds with her siblings. To build an even closer one with Mac. He was still the most wonderful father figure and her time away hadn’t changed their relationship.

Claudia ran a hand down the pale silk of Maggie’s gown, the subtle fall of material plunging from the bodice in a dramatic, almost Grecian sweep. The suggestion of a goddess fit Maggie to a T and her future sister-in-law had been in love with the design from the start.

Now to stop woolgathering and finish it.

She settled her coffee on the edge of her station, far away from any material, and focused on today’s work.

The bustle.

Claudia ran her fingertips over the silk, gathering large folds and pinning them to the areas she’d premarked with small pins. Fold by fold, the bustle came together, the elegant weight forming and reshaping the gown in her hands.

What felt like only moments later Claudia heard a different sort of bustling behind her. “Oh. Oh, wow.”

She turned to find Evelyn Reed, employee number two of Honeysuckle Road and the woman Claudia fondly thought of as her partner in crime.

“What do you think?” She took a few steps back and reached for her coffee, frowning when she realized it had gone cold.

Evelyn already had a fresh cup out of a holder, extended in Claudia’s direction. “I think Thorne’s eyes are going to pop out of his head. We haven’t had a bride this bedecked in Shadow Creek since the Thompson wedding of 2001.”