the bar was a portrait of a woman, who seemed out of place in the sumptuous and suggestive room— Eudora Wellesley, he’d been told. Colleen’s ancestress. There was nothing flamboyant or even particularly attractive in her appearance. In fact, she was dressed primly, in dark clothes, and there was a set to her mouth as if the lady was shocked by the things that had gone on in this room. And yet, the artist had painted a sparkle into her alert gray eyes.
Grumbling to himself, Shawn headed outside. He wasn’t the imaginative sort. This new twist to his career as an arson investigator turned covert agent was giving him fits.
As he stepped through the front door onto the porch, he nearly ran into Dexter Jones, the foreman. His other boss, for his cover at the Royal Flush as ranch hand.
“You seen Ms. Wellesley?” Dex asked. The foreman was in his early fifties. He kept his hair, obviously once dark but now sprinkled with silver, no-nonsense short. He seemed a no-nonsense guy, dedicated to making sure the ranch ran smoothly.
As smart and wily as tough-acting Dex seemed, the foreman supposedly had no idea of what went on in the basement. But Shawn sensed the man’s strong suspicion that more went on at the Royal Flush than just ranching.
As part of his Colorado Confidential cover, Shawn had to act as if he’d no clue what Dex was talking about when the older man blew off steam by guessing what his lady boss was really up to.
“I saw Ms. Wellesley a while ago,” Shawn told him. “I came in to ask whether she was going to ride Dora today, and if so when she wanted me to have her saddled.” Dora was Colleen’s horse, a mare she’d named after the illustrious lady whose picture hung over the bar. The bay and white paint was a lot prettier, in Shawn’s estimation, than her namesake.
“And she said—?”
“She’d let me know. I think she’s back in her room on the phone. Or maybe she’s getting changed. In any event, she said she didn’t want to be disturbed for the next hour.”
“Right,” Dex muttered, and turned on his heel without entering the house.
If Shawn wasn’t mistaken, the gruff foreman had a thing for his employer. That wasn’t any of Shawn’s business.
But his new assignment certainly was.
Shawn walked down the porch steps and to the side of the main house. He inhaled crisp, clean air tinged with the scent of the nearby horse enclosure. To his left was the winding road to the ranch, and beyond it the meandering South Platte River. To his right were rolling green acres of ranchland, surrounded by the massive, tree-covered slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Some of the ranch’s red Hereford cattle grazed in the distance.
Heaven.
But he wouldn’t be here much longer. In three days, he’d be back in Denver. Investigating Dr. Kelley Stanton. The main focus of his assignment.
Colleen would provide further details first, the results of the initial investigation into the woman and her background as well as information about the hospital fire.
A fire in a hospital, damn it. He felt his teeth grind.
Sure, the fire had been confined to a records room, but who knew what damage it could have done? People could have been killed.
What would drive a woman with a young child to set a fire? Shawn would sure as hell find out.
“OKAY, SWEETHEART. We’re here.” Not that Kelley had any doubt that Jenny knew full well that they’d arrived at the Gilpin Hospital KidClub day-care center. As soon as they went through the door into the main playroom, the blond three-year-old, clad today in a flowered T-shirt and matching red slacks, stopped prancing at her mother’s side and stood still, thumb in her mouth. With her other hand, she clutched Kelley’s midcalf-length black skirt. Tears filled her brown eyes.
Before the fire, Jenny had been eager to come here to play. She had always dashed into the midst of the kids who started their day in this charming room adorned with bright rainbows on the walls. Mostly, the little ones congregated at one of the child-size tables, coloring until it was time for the caregivers to begin planned activities.
But since the fire, her daughter had demonstrated every symptom of separation anxiety—tears, protests and tantrums.
It broke Kelley’s heart every morning. She’d spent days at home with Jenny after the fire, and had taken her to a kind counselor. But Kelley couldn’t stay off work indefinitely. When Jenny had started to recover emotionally, Kelley had returned to her demanding medical practice. Luckily her office was in the adjoining building, and she spent a lot of time seeing patients in the hospital itself. She dropped by often to look in on Jenny, staying far in the background so that her daughter, busy playing, wouldn’t notice her.
Once Jenny got used to being there each day, she seemed to thrive once more, with all the other children to play with and the excellent staff who watched over the kids while teaching them things commensurate with their ages and abilities.
But those first minutes when she dropped Jenny off…
“Good morning.” At the gruff, masculine voice, Kelley raised her gaze from her daughter—until she stared into eyes as blue as a cloudless winter sky. They looked about as cold, too. But the man behind them was one of the most gorgeous hunks Kelley had ever seen.
She felt her face flush at the direction her thoughts had veered. But that didn’t deter her mind from noting the breadth of shoulders beneath an off-white shirt and leather vest, the slim cut of faded brown jeans, the sturdiness of a set jawline and the short hair that was a cross between dirty gold and golden brown. And the cowboy boots.
“Good morning,” she returned, knowing her tone was quizzical. Was he the father of one of the half dozen kids settled at places along the tables? Kelley forced herself not to look at his hands to see if he wore a wedding ring. That wasn’t her business. Besides, a man who looked like him had to be taken. Either that or he had a bevy of beautiful women at his beck and call.
Not that Kelley cared. She wasn’t interested in any man, great-looking or not. In her experience, not one was worth a fraction of the aggravation he caused.
“And who is this?” The man looked down at Jenny, who clutched at Kelley’s clothes all the tighter. The smile on the man’s face looked sour, as if he had sucked on a lime.
“This is Jenny Stanton,” Kelley said, her tone cheerful for her daughter’s benefit. “Are you the daddy of one of the kids?”
“No, I’m the new caregiver.”
What? Kelley stared. He certainly didn’t look like the other child-care providers, who were mostly college-age men and women who studied teaching and needed to earn money in their spare time. A few were career preschool teachers. But this man…?
He knelt in front of Jenny. “My name is Shawn,” he told her. Then he rose. “Shawn Jameson. And you’re Mrs. Stanton?”
No. Kelley nearly shuddered. She definitely wasn’t Mrs. Stanton. That implied she was Randall Stanton’s wife.
She hadn’t been his wife for two years now. And that was fine with her.
It was her turn to force a smile onto her lips. “I’m Dr. Kelley Stanton,” she told the man. “I’m
