Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

“That’s your version of it,” he said. “Or maybe it’s that what I feel is so intense it won’t let me put you in the Colton line of fire,” he said. And he immediately wanted to take the words back, too. The Coltons had their faults, their quirks, but they were good people. They were his family.

“Payne could make life difficult for you, Kerry. With the chief.” He hated the admission. Hated that he loved a man who he believed could do that. “Not because of anything against you,” he said as he told her what he should have said the night before, when he’d told her the truth about why he’d abandoned her all those years ago. “But because he’s afraid I won’t be loyal to the Coltons if I go back to my roots. It’s like, in his mind, the only way I prove my loyalty to him, to my family, is to not look back. The only way I can be a Colton is to be a Colton. Not a Kay.”

“I know.” Tears pooled in her eyes, but she didn’t look away. “I already figured that out,” she said. “But here’s the thing, Rafe... The way I feel about you...the way I fel

t about you then... What you didn’t get back then was that I would have been happier living in a foster home in Tucson and being in touch with you than I was living on the same ranch as you and not being able to see or talk to you.”

Emotion tightened his throat. He had no comeback. He had nothing.

He’d told her that he’d taken comfort from having her close all those years. Apparently he’d taken that comfort at her expense. Guilt ate at him. Topped with regret that couldn’t be assuaged. He couldn’t go back. Couldn’t change any of it.

“I wouldn’t have sacrificed my father or Tyler that way, but if you’d have given me the choice, I’d have tried to get Dad to change jobs. Hell, I’d have been out there looking for a job for him. I might not have found one, but I’d have tried, Rafe. I’d have shared the problem with you, let you try to think of something. But you...you’d slowly been becoming one of them... All those years of living with them, seeing me on the sly...it worked for you in some convoluted way. By the time Payne caught us, you’d already converted. You were his more than mine. You didn’t even tell me what he’d said. Didn’t give us a chance to find a way to be together. I’d at least have tried, Rafe...”

And he hadn’t. That’s what she was telling him.

And that’s why she’d meant it when she said that, after the case was solved, she didn’t plan to see him again.

“You moved on, Rafe,” she told him. “You accepted what came at you and you became one of them and the thought of being a Colton makes me shudder. You and I...we aren’t alike anymore. We want different things. We like different things. We value different things. You were smart enough to figure this all out when we were thirteen. You were right to move on. Now I have to, too.”

He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to. That he’d find a solution, just like she said, but he wasn’t sure he would. Or could. He couldn’t just walk away from the Coltons. That would be as wrong as walking away from her.

Chapter 21

Of the five mines they found that afternoon, only two of them were still viable. They were overgrown, but if they’d stepped on them, they could have gone in. One wasn’t deep. Maybe ten feet. Straight down. The other was deeper, but the circumference had closed in over the years. No way a grown man would fit down it, let alone a grown man carrying contraband.

Searching was going to take time. Kerry planned to take whatever time was required; if she had to search for the next year, one acre of ground at a time, she’d do so to avenge her brother’s death. Tyler, her father, they were the only family she was ever likely to have—unless by some miracle she met some great guy after she got over Rafe, fell in love and lived happily ever after.

It was the stuff dreams were made of. She wanted to learn how to dream again. And maybe letting go of an old dream—as painful as it was—was the only way to find new ones.

She wanted to have dinner with Rafe, too, when he offered as they got back to town, but she didn’t. Telling him she still had work to do at the station, she dropped him off at his truck and drove away before he’d taken more than a step or two.

Dane was still at the station and she filled him in on what she’d found at the junkyard, uploading the pictures and sending them to him and the chief. It was going to be on the MVPD radar, starting immediately. Every squad car, every officer, would keep a watch on it. They were closing in on Odin Rogers. It was only a matter of time.

“I gotta hand it to you, Kerry,” Dane said, his brows raised, giving his craggy face a handsome appeal. “You’re one hell of a detective. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you two years ago...”

A week ago, that apology would have lit up her world. That night she shrugged. “I could just as easily have been wrong,” she told him. But she was always going to go with her instincts.

And she was always going to fight for where they led her.

Lizzie and James came in just as she was getting ready to leave, and Lizzie asked her to head over to the bar for a beer. It was the last thing she wanted—to be in public, to be with anyone who knew her and to drink a beer, which was exactly why she accepted. Growing up with her father’s drinking, and later, dealing with Tyler’s drug abuse, she’d always gone light on imbibing, but she could take down a couple of beers without going over her blood alcohol limit to still operate vehicles legally. She’d had herself tested, while she drank, just to be sure.

When Lizzie suggested they get a booth, and dinner, she was glad that she’d came. And after an hour of her friend’s company, she was more than glad.

Lizzie had to notice she wasn’t her usual carefree self. Kerry wasn’t cracking jokes or complaining about Dane’s superiority complex. She didn’t tell her friend about the older detective’s apology. Nor did Lizzie pry. She knew Kerry had been spending time with Rafe Colton. Though she knew nothing of their history, the fact that he had spent the night at Kerry’s house—three nights in a row—was worth discussion. Lizzie was friend enough to leave it alone.

But as they were paying their bill, getting ready to leave, Lizzie, still in her dark blue uniform and black shoes, looked across at her. “You okay?”

She might have crumbled. The night before. Yesterday. But not anymore. “No. But I’m going to be,” she said, because she was who she was. The woman who handled what came to her. And went on to have a purpose and make life better.

As soon as she pulled into her drive, walked in her door, she knew why she’d gone out with Lizzie. She’d been putting off the inevitable. The sense of loss. Of excruciating loneliness. He’d only been there with her three nights and yet it was like he owned the place.

Because home was where the heart was and he owned her heart.

For the moment.

Just for the moment. She was in the process of reclaiming it. Taking her life back.

So thinking, she drew a hot bubble bath. Lit candles. Found an instrumental channel she could stream, set her Bluetooth speaker on the bathroom counter.