Colton by Marriage. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

      Donald weighed his options. He knew his wife was passionate about him not smoking, and she seemed to be on a personal crusade these days against his beloved cigars. With a loud sigh, Donald allowed the cigar to fall from his fingers, landing back in the trash. There were plenty more cigars in the house—and a few of them stashed in various out-of-the-way places. Places that Bonnie Gene hadn’t been able to find yet. He could wait.

      The rear door opened and closed for a second time. All three Kelleys turned to see Linc walk in. He was accompanied by a blast of hot July air. It was like an oven outside. A hot, sticky, moist oven.

      “I must have caught every red light from the hospital to the restaurant,” Linc complained, addressing his words to the world at large.

      Bonnie Gene felt her daughter stiffen the moment she heard Linc’s voice. The reaction was not wasted on her. Her mother’s instincts instantly kicked in.

      Releasing Susan, she approached her daughter’s self-appointed shadow. “Linc, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

      It was no secret that Linc was eager to score any brownie points with the senior Kelleys that he could. “Anything, Mrs. Kelley.”

      “The linen service forgot to send over five of our tablecloths. Be a dear and run over to Albert’s Linens and get them.” Taking the latest receipt and a note she’d hastily jotted down less than an hour ago, she handed both to Lincoln. “Nita at the service is already waiting for someone to come for them. Just show her these,” she instructed.

      Lincoln glanced at the receipt and the note, looking somewhat torn about the assignment he’d been given. It was obvious that he’d hoped that whatever it was that Susan’s mother wanted done could be done on the premises and near Susan.

      But then he nodded and promised, “I’ll be right back.” He looked at Susan, possibly hoping that she would offer to come with him, but she didn’t. With a suppressed sigh and a forced smile, he turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen through the same door he’d come in.

      Susan looked at her mother. It completely amazed her how the woman who could drive her so absolutely crazy when the subject of marriage and babies came up could still somehow be so very intuitive.

      She flashed her mother a relieved smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

      Bonnie Gene’s eyes crinkled as she smiled with pleasure. “That’s what I’m here for, honey. That’s what I’m here for.”

      “Here for what?” Mystified, Donald looked first at his wife then at his daughter, trying to understand what had just happened. “And thanks for what?”

      But rather than answer him, his wife and his daughter had gone off in completely opposite directions, leaving him to ponder his own questions as he scratched the thick, short white hair on his head. The action unintentionally drew his attention to the fact that his haircut, courtesy of his wife whom he insisted be the only one to cut his hair, was sadly lopsided. Again.

      Though she’d been cutting his hair ever since they had gotten married all those years ago—originally out of necessity, now out of his need for a sense of tradition—Bonnie Gene had never managed to get the hang of cutting it evenly.

      Donald didn’t mind. He rather liked the way the uneven haircut made him look. He thought it made him appear rakish. Like the bad boy he’d never had time to be. And because he was who he was, the owner of a national chain of restaurants, no one ever attempted to tell him any differently.

      Glancing over his shoulder in the direction that his wife had gone—to the front of the restaurant, undoubtedly to rub elbows with the customers—Donald quickly dipped into the trash basket and retrieved his cigar for a second time. This time, he didn’t bother going through the motions of dusting it off. Instead, he just slipped it into his pants pocket.

      With a satisfied smile, Donald assumed a deliberately innocent expression. Hands shoved into his pockets—his left protectively covering the cigar—he began to whistle as he walked toward the swinging double doors that led into the dining hall.

      Life was good, he thought.

       Chapter 3

      The moment he’d realized that this time Boyd Arnold’s discovery wasn’t just a figment of his imagination, Wes had firmly sworn Boyd to secrecy. Knowing that Boyd had a tendency to run off at the mouth, words flowing as freely as the creek did in the winter after the first big snowstorm, he’d been forced to threaten the small-time rancher with jail time if he so much as breathed a word to anyone.

      Boyd had appeared to be properly forewarned, his demeanor unusually solemn.

      As for him, despite the fact that the words kept insisting on bubbling up in his throat and on his tongue, desperate for release, Wes hadn’t even shared the news with his family. Not yet. He couldn’t. He needed to be absolutely sure that the man with the partially destroyed face—he supposed the fish in the creek had to survive, too—actually was Mark Walsh.

      There would be nothing more embarrassing, not to mention that it would also undermine the capabilities of the office of the sheriff, than to have to take back an announcement of this magnitude. After all, Mark Walsh had already been presumed murdered once and his supposed killer had been tried and sentenced. To say, “Oops, we were wrong once, but he’s really dead now,” wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

      His reasons for keeping this under wraps were all valid. But that didn’t make keeping the secret to himself any easier for Wes. However, he had no choice. Until the county coroner completed his autopsy and managed to match Mark Walsh’s dental records with the body that had been fished out of the creek, Wes fully intended to keep a tight lid on the news, no matter how difficult it got for him. Why dental records weren’t used properly to identify the victim of the first crime was anybody’s guess.

      With any luck, he wouldn’t have to hold his tongue for much longer. He desperately wanted to start the wheels turning for Damien’s release. If the body in the morgue was Mark Walsh, then there was no way his older brother had killed the man over fifteen years ago. Not that he, or any of the family, including seven brothers and sisters, had ever believed that Damien was guilty. Some of the Colton men might have hot tempers, but none of them would ever commit murder. He’d stake not just his reputation but his life on that.

      Damien was going to be a free man—once all that life-suffocating red tape was gotten through.

      Damn, he thought, finally.

      Deep down in his soul, he’d always known Damien hadn’t killed Mark. Been as sure of it as he was that the sun was going to rise in the east tomorrow morning.

      He supposed that was one of the reasons he’d run for sheriff, to look into the case, to wade through the files that dealt with the murder and see if there was anything that could be used to reopen the case.

      Now he didn’t have to, he thought with a satisfied smile.

      And he owed it all to Boyd, at least in a way. Granted, the body would have been there no matter what, but Boyd was the one who’d led him to it.

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