background checks on the people she hired and that she had the best interests of the family at heart at all times. She’d been a devoted employee for many years.
As he pulled on a pair of clean jeans and a denim shirt, he reminded himself that Catherine and her situation weren’t his problem. All he had to worry about was ordering supplies, overseeing the other ranch hands and keeping the horses and cattle healthy and happy.
Catherine Colton wasn’t part of his job, nor was she a part of his life, and he definitely intended to keep it that way.
Chapter 2
Dinner in the Colton family dining room was always a study of pretend civility, underlying tension and slight unpleasant innuendoes. The dining table stretched from nearly one side of the plush, elegant dining room to the other and as Catherine took her seat her gaze automatically went to the empty chair at the head of the table.
Her father had been a stern man with little time for his daughters, but Catherine loved him in spite of all his flaws and she always missed his presence at the evening meal.
When she’d been little he’d command the conversation, talking about how he’d built Dead River Ranch to be the most prosperous ranch in the entire state of Wyoming. He loved his ranch, his money and women and he occasionally remembered that he had three little daughters who were totally dependent on him since their mother had run out on them.
Now his chair was empty because of his illness. At the opposite end of the table was another empty chair, one that stood ready for Cole Colton, Jethro’s son who had been kidnapped as a baby thirty years ago.
When their father had first become ill, Catherine, Gabriella and Amanda had hired a private investigator in an attempt to find their missing half brother, hoping that a reunion would buoy Jethro’s spirits and give him a reason to fight his illness. There was also a possibility that Cole could be a bone marrow donor and save Jethro’s life.
But, while some clues had come to light, there had been nothing so far that pointed them to Jethro’s missing son. It was a thirty-year-old cold case that wasn’t going to be suddenly solved.
Next to Catherine at the table were Gabby and her fiancé, Trevor Garth, who also served as head of security for the ranch. Amanda sat at the end of the table with six-month-old Cheyenne in a bouncy seat on the floor next to her.
On the opposite side of the table were Levi and Katie, Jethro’s third ex-wife, Darla Colton, and her two grown children, Tawny and Trip.
Without Jethro at the table, meals had become noisy, chaotic affairs where people talked over one another while the air shimmered with distrust. Darla, the Botox bottled-blond bitch, as the sisters referred to her, loved the sound of her own voice and if it wasn’t her doing the talking, then it was her son, Trip, who often smelled of booze or pot, depending on the day and the time.
A headache began at Catherine’s left temple as she declined the traditional glass of wine that was always served with the evening meal.
The conversation that swirled around the table throughout the meal was much like it had been for the past couple of weeks. It revolved around the latest attempted kidnapping of Cheyenne, the intervention by Jagger McKnight, an investigative reporter who had been attacked and left for dead on the ranch property. For a while everyone had believed that Jagger was the long-lost Cole, especially when it was discovered he had a piece of an old blue blanket with distinctive embroidery on it in his pocket, a piece of blanket that had once belonged to the missing Cole.
The truth had come out, that Jagger was a reporter, that the blanket bit had been planted on him while he’d been unconscious and everyone had been left with more questions than answers.
Halfway through the meal Catherine wished she had decided to eat in her room. Gabby touched her arm lightly, her green eyes filled with concern. “Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I’m fine. I just have a touch of a headache,” Catherine replied.
“Gee, I wonder why?” Gabby inclined her head toward Trip, who was on his fourth glass of wine and getting louder and louder with each minute that passed. His favorite topic was his prowess with the staff and how every maid who worked in the house had the hots for him.
The sisters had speculated for a long time why Darla and her children were allowed residency in the house. Jethro and Darla had been divorced for years and he’d never shown any interest in her or her two children by a previous marriage, and yet they had their own suite in one of the wings of the house.
They had all decided that Darla knew something about her ex-husband, that she had some piece of information so damning that she’d managed to blackmail herself into a cushy place in the mansion for herself and her children.
Catherine wasn’t close to Darla or her two spoiled adult children and with everything that had happened recently, she couldn’t help but be suspicious of them.
Everyone was suspicious of everyone else, and the recent months of murder, deceit and chaos had taken a toll on each and every resident in the huge mansion. The only people Catherine truly trusted were her sisters.
When the meal was finished, head housekeeper Mathilda Perkins slid into the room and stood next to the wall as two young women carried silver trays of after-dinner coffee.
Mathilda looked like something from a gothic movie with her silver-blond hair pulled into a severe knot at the nape of her neck. Narrowed blue-gray eyes and a starched gray dress added to the aura of a gothic servant. The only difference was she watched the two new kitchen hires, Lucinda Garcia and Kyla Winters, with benevolent eyes, the same way she gazed at each and every person at the table with a hint of fondness.
Catherine’s headache had blossomed from her left temple to chase all the way across her forehead. Caffeine. There was nothing she loved more than her after-dinner shot of leaded coffee.
As Kyla was about to pour her a cup, Catherine suddenly thought about the new life inside her and quickly stopped her. “I’d rather have decaf,” she said.
From across the table Darla arched a blond perfectly tweezed brow. “Interesting. No wine before dinner, no caffeine in your coffee. Why one would think that you might have a little secret.”
“She’s pregnant,” Tawny exclaimed with excitement, as if she’d suddenly cured cancer.
It was obviously just a guess on her part, but the expression on Catherine’s face must have given her away. Suddenly the conversation ratcheted up in volume as everyone talked about the prospect of a new Colton heir.
Escape! With her head pounding, Catherine needed to escape the table, escape this room and these people. She excused herself and ran for the door, leaving the rest of them to speculate on who the father might be, when the due date would come and whether it would be a boy or a girl.
She’d scarcely found out about her condition herself and already it was gossip fodder around the dining room table. How had Tawny guessed so easily? Drat it all, Catherine should have taken the pregnancy test and buried it in the pasture instead of throwing it into her bathroom trash can. For all she knew Tawny went through everyone’s trash to learn whatever secrets somebody might have.
There were only three places where Catherine found peace, the first was her bedroom suite, the second was the petting barn and the third was in her father’s suite where she often sat next to his bed and
