Colton by Marriage

It was a blatant reference to one of the theories surrounding Mark Walsh’s death. The county coroner had said that it appeared Mark Walsh had been strangled, among other things, before his face was bashed in, the latter being the final blow that had ushered death in.

Susan just wanted to get away, to mourn her best friend’s passing in peace, not be subjected to this cross-examination that Linc seemed determined to conduct. She lifted her chin stubbornly. “Duke’s not Damien,” she pointed out.

The look on Linc’s face was contemptuous, both of her statement and of the man it concerned.

“I dunno about that. They say that twins have an unnatural connection. Maybe he’s just like his brother.” Linc drew himself up, squaring his shoulders before issuing a warning. “I don’t want you talking to Duke Colton or having anything to do with him.”

For a second, even with the emotional pain she was trying to deal with, Susan could feel her temper really flaring. Linc was making noises like a possessive boyfriend, and that was the last thing on earth she needed or wanted right now. “Linc, it’s not your place to tell me what to do or not do.”

Realizing the tactical error he’d just committed, Linc tried to backtrack as quickly as he could and still save face.

“Sure it is,” he insisted. “I care about you, Susan. I care about what happens to you. We don’t know what these Coltons are really capable of,” he warned. “And I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you because I didn’t say something.”

Did Linc really think she was so clueless that she needed guidance? That she was so naive that she was incapable of taking charge of her own life? From out of nowhere a wave of resentment surged within her. She struggled to tamp it down.

She was just upset, Susan told herself. And Linc did mean well, even if he could come across as overbearing at times.

It took effort, but she managed to force a smile to her lips. “I’ll be all right, Linc. Don’t worry so much. And I’m still driving myself home,” she added in case he thought he’d talked her out of that.

She could see that Linc didn’t like her refusing his help, but he made no protest and merely nodded his head. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief when Linc unexpectedly added, “All right, I’ll follow you.”

Susan opened her mouth to tell him that he really didn’t have to put himself out like that, but she had a feeling that she’d just be wasting her breath, and she was in no mood to argue.

Maybe she was being unfair. Another woman would have been thrilled to have someone voluntarily offer to all but wrap her in cotton and watch over her like this. There was a part of her that thought she’d be thrilled, as well. But now, coming face to face with it, she found it almost suffocating. All she wanted to do was run away.

Maybe she was overreacting, making too much of what was, at bottom, an act of kindness. But if she was overreacting, she did have a really good excuse. Someone she loved dearly had just died and blown a hole in her world, and it was going to take a while to come to terms with that.

Rather than prolong this no-win debate, Susan nodded. “All right, I’ll see you at the house.” With that, she turned and walked quickly over to where she’d parked her vehicle.

Duke watched the tall, slim, attractive young blonde make her way through the parking lot. More to the point, she was walking away from that annoying prissy little friend of hers.

Lincoln Hayes.

Now, there was a stalker in the making if he ever saw one, Duke judged. He wondered if Susan was aware of that, of what that Linc character was capable of.

Not his affair, Duke told himself in the next moment. The perky little girl with the swollen eyes was her own person. There was no reason for him to be hovering in the background like some wayward dark cloud on the horizon, watching over her. She might look like the naive girl next door, but he had a feeling that when push came to shove, Susan Kelley was a lot stronger, character-wise, than she appeared.

A fact, he had a feeling, that wouldn’t exactly please Lincoln Hayes.

And even if she could be pushed around by the likes of Hayes, what was that to him? Why did he feel this need to make sure she was all right? The girl had his handkerchief and he wanted it back. Eventually. There was absolutely no other reason to pay attention to her, to her comings and goings and to whether that spineless jellyfish, Hayes, actually turned out to be a stalker.

Annoyed with himself, with the fact that he wasn’t leaving, Duke watched as Susan crossed to the extreme right side of the lot and got into her car, a neat little sedan that would have been all but useless on his own ranch. It wouldn’t have been able to haul much, other than Susan and some of her skinny friends.

Her sedan came to life. Another minute and she was driving off the lot.

Rubbing his hands on the back of his jeans, Duke got into the cab of his beat-up dark-blue pickup and drove away.

“Have you been crying? “

Bonnie Gene Kelley fired the question, fueled by concern, the moment her daughter walked into the rear of Kelley’s Cookhouse, the restaurant that she and her husband Donald ran and had turned into a nation-wide chain.

Seeing for herself that the answer to her question was yes, Bonnie Gene quickly crossed to her youngest child and immediately immersed herself in Susan’s life. “Did you and that boy get into an argument?” she wanted to know.

Ever eager for one of her children to finally make her a grandmother, the way all her friends’ children had, Bonnie Gene fanned every fire that potentially had an iron in it. In Susan’s case, that iron had a name: Lincoln Hayes.

Lincoln wouldn’t have been her first choice, or even her second one. Bonnie Gene liked her men more manly, the way her Donald was—or had been before the good life had managed to fatten him up. But Linc was here and he was crazy about Susan. Her daughter could do a lot worse than marry the boy, she supposed.

But if he made Susan cry, then all bets were off. She absolutely wouldn’t stand for someone who could wound her youngest born to the extent of making her cry. Sophisticated and worldly—as worldly as anyone could be, given that they were living in a place like Honey Creek, Montana—her maternal claws would immediately emerge, razor-sharp and ready, whenever one of her children was hurt, physically or emotionally.

“No, Mother,” Susan replied evenly, wishing she’d waited before walking into work, “we didn’t get into an argument.”

Part of her just wanted to dash up to her room and shut the door, the other part wanted to be enfolded in her mother’s arms and be told that everything was still all right. That the sun still rose in the east and set in the west and everything in between was just fine.

Except that it wasn’t. And she needed to grow up and face that.

“Is Miranda worse?” her father asked sympathetically, coming out of the large storage room where they kept the supplies and foodstuffs that were being used that day. He pushed the unlit cigar in his mouth over to the side with his tongue in order to sound more intelligible.

Focusing on her husband for a moment, Bonnie Gene allowed an annoyed huff to escape her lips. She marched over to him, plucked the cigar out of his mouth and made a dramatic show of dropping it into the uncovered trash basket in the corner. It was an ongoing tug of war between them. Donald Kelley seemed to possess an endless supply of cigars and Bonnie Gene apparently possessed an endless supply of patience as she removed and threw away each one she saw him put into his mouth.

Susan had long since stopped thinking that her father actually intended to smoke any of these cigars. In her opinion, he just enjoyed baiting her mother.

But today Susan didn’t care about the game or whether her father actually smoked the “wretched things” as her mother called them. All of that had been rendered meaningless, at least for now. Her friend was dead and she was never going to see Miranda again. Her heart hurt.

“Miranda’s gone,” Susan said in small, quiet voice, answering her father’s question.

“Gone?” he echoed. “Gone where?” When his wife gave him a sharp look, a light seemed to go on in his head and Donald realized what Susan had just told him. “Oh. Gone.” A chagrined expression washed over his face as he came over to his youngest child. “Susan, sweetie, I’m so sorry,” he told her. The squat, burly man embraced her, a feat that had been a great deal easier in the days before his gut had grown to the size that it had.

Coming between them, Bonnie gently removed Susan from Donald’s grasp, turned the girl toward her and hugged her daughter closely.

For a moment, nothing was said. The other people in the kitchen, employees who had helped make the original restaurant the success that it was, went about their business, deliberately giving their employers and their daughter privacy until such time as they were invited to take part in whatever it was that was happening.

Still holding Susan to her chest and stroking her hair, the way she used to when she had been a little girl, Bonnie Gene said gently, “Susan, you knew this day was coming.”

She had. Deep down, she had, but that didn’t mean that she hadn’t still hoped—fervently prayed—that it wouldn’t. That a miracle would intervene.

“I know,” Susan said, struggling again to regain control over her emotions, “it’s just that it came too soon.”

“It always comes too soon,” Bonnie Gene told her daughter with the voice of experience. “No matter how long it takes to get here.”

Bonnie Gene had no doubt that if Donald were to die before she did it wouldn’t matter whether they’d been together for the past hundred years. It would still be too soon and she would still be bargaining with God to give her “just a little more time” with the man she loved.

“She’s in a better place now, kiddo,” Susan’s father told her, giving her back a comforting, albeit awkward pat. “She’s not hurting anymore.”

Bonnie Gene looked at her husband, a flicker of impatience in her light-brown eyes. She tossed her head, sending her dark-brown hair over her shoulder. “Everyone always says that,” she said dismissively.

“Don’t make it any less true,” Donald told her stubbornly, pausing to fish the cigar out of the trash. He brushed it off with his fingers, as if the cursory action would send any germs scattering.

Bonnie Gene’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her husband over her daughter’s shoulder. “You put that in your mouth, Donald Kelley,” she hissed, “and you’re a dead man.”