Colton by Marriage

“This wasn’t my imagination, Sheriff,” Boyd insisted stubbornly with feeling. “This was a real live dead person.”

Wes didn’t bother pointing out the blatant contradiction in terms. Instead, he stood at the edge of the creek and looked around.

There was nothing but the sound of mosquitoes settling in for an afternoon feed.

A lot of mosquitoes, judging by the sound of it.

It was going to be a miserable summer, Wes thought. Just as he began to turn toward Boyd to tell the rancher that he must have been mistaken about the location of this “body,” something caught Wes’s eye.

Flies.

An inordinate number of flies.

Mosquitoes weren’t making that noise, it was flies.

Flies tended to swarm around rotting meat and waste. Most likely it was the latter, but Wes had a strong feeling that he wasn’t going to be free of Boyd until he at least checked out what the insects were swarming around.

“There, Sheriff, look there,” Boyd cried excitedly, pointing to something that appeared to be three-quarters submerged in the creek.

Something that had attracted the huge number of flies.

There was no way around not getting his newly cleaned uniform dirty, Wes thought. Resigning himself to the unpleasant ordeal, Honey Creek’s newly minted sheriff waded in.

Annoyance vanished as he drew closer to what the flies were laying claim to.

“Damn, but I think you’re right, Boyd. That does look like a body,” Wes declared. Forgetting about his uniform, he went in deeper. Whatever it was was only a few feet away.

“See, I told you!” Boyd crowed, happy to be vindicated. He was grinning from ear to ear like a little kid on Christmas morning. His expression was in sharp contrast to the sheriff’s. The latter had become deadly serious.

It appeared to be a dead body all right. Did it belong to some vagrant who’d been passing through when he’d arbitrarily picked Honey Creek to die?

Or had someone dumped a body here from one of the neighboring towns? And if so, which one?

Bracing himself, Wes turned the body over so that he could view the face before he dragged the corpse out.

When he flipped the dead man over, his breath stopped in his lungs. The man had a single bullet in the middle of his forehead and he was missing half his face.

But the other half could still be made out.

At the same moment, unable to stay back, Boyd peered over his shoulder. The rancher’s eyes grew huge and he cried out, “It’s Mark Walsh!” No sooner was the name out of his mouth than questions and contradictions occurred to Boyd. “But he’s dead.” Confused, Boyd stared at Wes, waiting for him to say something that made sense out of this. “How can he look that fresh? He’s been dead fifteen years!”

“Apparently Walsh wasn’t as dead as we thought he was,” Wes told him.

It was extremely difficult for Wes to maintain his decorum, not to mention an even voice, when all he could think of was that finally, after all these years, his brother was going to get out of jail.

Because Damien Colton had been convicted of a murder that had never happened.

Until now.

Chapter 1

Duke Colton didn’t know what made him look in that direction, but once he did, he couldn’t look away. Even though he wanted to.

Moreover, he wanted to keep walking. To pretend that he hadn’t seen her, especially not like that.

Susan Kelley’s head was still down, her short, dark-blond hair almost acting like a curtain, and she seemed oblivious to the world around her as she sat on the bench to the side of the hospital entrance, tears sliding down her flawless cheeks.

Duke reasoned that it would have been very easy either to turn on his heel and walk in another direction, or just to pick up speed, look straight ahead and get the hell out of there before the Kelley girl looked up.

Especially since she seemed so withdrawn and lost to the world.

He’d be doing her a favor, Duke told himself, if he just ignored this pretty heart-wrenching display of sadness. Nobody liked looking this vulnerable. God knew that he wouldn’t.

Not that he would actually cry in public—or private for that matter. When he came right down to it, Duke was fairly certain that he couldn’t cry, period. No matter what the situation was.

Hell, he’d pretty much been the last word in stoic. But then, he thought, he’d had to be, seeing as how things hadn’t exactly gone all that well in his life—or his family’s life—up to this point.

Every instinct he had told Duke he should be moving fast, getting out of Susan’s range of vision. Now. Yet it was as if his feet had been dipped in some kind of super-strong glue.

He couldn’t make them move.

He was lingering. Why, he couldn’t even begin to speculate. It wasn’t as though he was one of those people who was bolstered by other people’s displays of unhappiness. He’d never believed in that old adage about misery loving company. When he came right down to it, he’d never had much use for misery, his own or anybody else’s. For the most part, he liked keeping a low profile and staying out of the way.

And he sure as hell had no idea what to do when confronted with a woman’s tears—other than running for the hills, face averted and feigning ignorance of the occurrence. He’d never lay claim to being one of those guys who knew what to say in a regular situation, much less one where he was front-row center to a woman’s tear-stained face. But this was Susan.

Susan Kelley. He’d watched Susan grow up from an awkward little girl to an outgoing, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed little charmer who somehow managed to be completely oblivious to the fact that she was as beautiful as all get out.

Susan was the one who cheered people up. She never cried. Not that he was much of an expert on what Susan did or didn’t do. He just heard things. The way a man survived was to keep his eyes and his ears open, and his mouth shut.

Ever since his twin brother Damien was hauled off to jail because everyone in town believed he had killed Mark Walsh, Duke saw little to no reason to socialize with the people in Honey Creek. And Walsh was no angel. Most people had hated him. The truth of it was, if ever someone had deserved being killed, it was Walsh. Mark Walsh was nasty, bad-tempered and he cheated on his wife every opportunity he got. And Walsh and Damien had had words, hot words, over Walsh’s daughter, Lucy.

Even so, Damien hadn’t killed him.

Duke frowned as, for a moment, fifteen years melted away. He remembered watching the prison bars slam, separating him from Damien. He didn’t know who had killed that evil-tempered waste of human flesh, but he would have bet his life that it wasn’t Damien.

Now, like a magnet, his green eyes were riveted to Susan.

Damn it, what was she crying about?

He blew out an impatient breath. A woman who was that shaken up about something shouldn’t be sitting by herself like that. Someone should be with her, saying something. He didn’t know what, but something. Something comforting.

Duke looked around, hoping to ease his conscience—and not feel guilty about his desire to get away—by seeing someone approaching the sobbing little blonde.

There was no one.

She was sitting by herself, as alone as he’d ever seen anyone on this earth. As alone as he felt a great deal of the time.

Damn it, he didn’t want to be in this position. Didn’t want to have to go over.