Colton's Cinderella Bride. Lisa Childs

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       Chapter 4

      Blake paced the suite on the twenty-first floor of the Colton Plaza Hotel. This was the same room where he’d spent that incredible evening with Juliette. He hadn’t known her last name then. And after she’d slipped away from him, he hadn’t even known if Juliette was her real first name or if she’d just been a Shakespeare fan. He’d had no idea who she really was. Hell, he still didn’t know who she was or even if she would show up like he’d requested.

      He stopped at the windows that looked down onto the lights of Red Ridge. He’d turned on only one of the lamps in the room, so his reflection stared back at him in the glass.

      And he had to be honest. He hadn’t requested that she come; he’d demanded. Maybe he was more like his old man than he’d thought—than he’d ever hoped to be. But then, he had every reason to make demands of Juliette. She’d been lying to him—that night all those years ago and every day since, when she’d kept his daughter from him.

      The fury he’d felt when he’d seen her—with that child in her arms—coursed through him again. He was not going to spend another day in the dark. Hell, he was not going to spend another minute. He’d give her a little more time to show up tonight. Then he would track her down, and at least this time—unlike last—he knew where to look for her. At the Red Ridge Police Department...

      She’d been wearing a uniform. She worked there. He shouldn’t have left the building. He should have talked to his cousin Finn, but not about what was going on in Red Ridge. He should have asked him about Juliette and about what the hell crime her—their—daughter had witnessed.

      How much danger were she and her mother in? Was that why Juliette hadn’t shown up yet? Had something happened?

      Too anxious for answers, Blake turned away from the windows and headed toward the door. When he jerked it open, he found her standing in the hall—as if she’d been trying to work up her nerve or her courage to face him.

      He glanced around her, but she was alone. She hadn’t brought the little girl or her dog. She wasn’t wearing her uniform anymore, either. She’d changed into a khaki skirt and a loose blouse. It didn’t matter what she wore—that glittery gown from years ago, the uniform or casual clothes—like a blonde doll getting dressed up in different outfits, she looked beautiful in anything.

      But she was the most beautiful in nothing at all...

      “You’re here,” he murmured, and instinctively he reached out to touch her, to see if she was real. Because when he’d thought about that night for the past five years, he’d always wondered if it had really happened or if it had just been some fantasy he’d conjured up.

      Before he could brush his hand across her cheek, she flinched and stepped back. “That’s not why I came here.”

      She must have thought he was making a pass. And he hadn’t been—at least, not consciously.

      “That’s not why I asked you here,” he said. He stepped back so she could enter the suite.

      But she hesitated, as if she didn’t believe him.

      “Seriously,” he said. “All I want from you is the truth. You damn well owe me that.” She’d owed him that for the past five years.

      She drew in a deep breath and stepped across the threshold, which reminded him of that night, of how he’d carried her across it and freaked out. She glanced up, met his gaze and nodded, as if she remembered it, too. “That’s why,” she said. “Even if I could have found you after you left town, I didn’t think you’d want to know. You’d made it clear that you didn’t want to be a father—ever.”

      He still didn’t. But he didn’t have a choice now. He was one. Wasn’t he?

      “So she is mine?”

      She hesitated a moment, as if debating whether she could get away with lying about it.

      “I’ll ask for a paternity test,” he warned her. No matter what she told him, he should do that anyway. But he didn’t need one. That little girl looked like him—down to the dimple in her left cheek.

      Color rushed to her pale skin as her face flushed. “She’s yours.”

      He hadn’t shut the door yet, so he looked into the hall again. Empty. “Why didn’t you bring her?” he asked as he closed the door.

      He hadn’t chosen to be a father, but now that he was one, he wanted to know about his child. He wanted to see her, to talk to her, to hold her...especially when he remembered how upset she’d been at the police department. The tears, the fear...

      Juliette’s teeth sank into her bottom lip and she shook her head. And in her eyes were the same СКАЧАТЬ