as terrible as it sounded, that was the time she found it easiest to sit with him, to talk to him, to simply love him.
It took her some time to walk the long corridors that led to his suite of rooms. She entered his sitting room, a pleasant area filled with a stone fireplace, bookshelves and decorated in rich greens and golds. The fireplace stood cold and empty, but it wouldn’t be long before it would be filled with burning wood to keep the winter chill from invading the area.
To her left was her father’s bedroom and as she entered, she nodded to the middle-aged woman in the white uniform. Nurse Linetta Wheeling had been hired several weeks ago to sit with Jethro during the evenings and overnight.
“Good evening, Miss Catherine,” she said as she rose from the straight-backed chair near Jethro’s bed.
Catherine nodded and then looked at her father, her heart squeezing tight as she took in the sight. Jethro had once been a robust, imposing figure, but now his face was gaunt and he looked tiny beneath the heavy green spread that covered him.
“Any changes?” Catherine asked.
“None.” Linetta offered a sympathetic smile. “I’ll just step outside and give you a little time alone with him.” As quiet as a mouse, Linetta slid out of the room and into the sitting room.
Catherine pulled a green-and-gold patterned chair closer to the side of the bed, ignoring the IV and medical equipment hooked up to the sick man in the bed.
“Hi, Daddy. It’s me, Cath.” For a moment she merely sat quietly. Jethro Colton was a complicated man and he’d been a difficult man to love, as a man and as a father. He’d always loved the women and women loved him back, a reality that usually placed his daughters on the back burner of his life.
Still, there had been moments in her childhood when she’d seen him be the kind of father she yearned for, the daddy she could love with all her heart, and it was the memory of those rare moments that kept her loving him now.
“I’ve gone and done something stupid, Daddy,” she finally said. “I was hoodwinked by a man I thought I could love but I discovered all he was after was my inheritance. When he found out I wouldn’t get it for another four years, he dropped me like a hot potato. Unfortunately, he left a little something of himself behind. I’m pregnant, Daddy. You’re going to be a grandfather again and you need to wake up and get well.”
Her eyes blurred with tears as she realized the futility of the conversation. The cancer was draining the very life from Jethro. He’d probably never live to see his new grandchild.
If only they could find Cole. Surely being reunited with his firstborn son who’d been kidnapped so many years ago would rally Jethro to aggressively fight the disease that was eating away at him.
Her mind drifted from her father and his missing son to Gray Stark and that moment in front of the petting barn fence when she’d opened her eyes and had been in his strong arms.
His sandy blond hair had gleamed in the dusk light of day creating a halo effect around his head. In the depths of his brown eyes she’d imagined the soft, sweet emotions she’d believed he’d once felt for her.
Reality had slapped her in the face as he’d quickly released her and she realized his eyes were dark, assessing. No illusion of evening sunshine could turn Gray Stark into a loving, caring angel of a man.
The few times they encountered each other all she got from him was dark eyes, fathomless stares and few words. The boy she’d loved was gone, replaced by a man she didn’t know, a man who made no pretense that he didn’t want to know anything about the woman she had become.
She wondered if he’d loved somebody in the five years he’d been gone from Dead River Ranch. She wondered even more why she cared. In the four years he’d been back she’d never heard any gossip about him and any woman.
What little gossip she had heard about him was that he was all work and little play, a tough but fair taskmaster who kept a keen eye on the wranglers who worked beneath him.
She returned her gaze to the man on the bed. “Daddy, you need to fight this.” She gently picked up one of his hands that lay on top of the bedspread. Calloused from hard work, yet thin and cold, it lay lifeless in hers. She rubbed his hand with both of hers, trying to warm his, but it didn’t work.
She returned his hand to the top of the spread and then stood, unsure what she was hoping to gain from being here, but knowing she’d gained nothing.
* * *
Dinner had just finished up in the employee dining room when kitchen helper Lucinda Garcia reentered the room, her brown eyes sparkling with excitement. “Looks like there is going to be another Colton heir,” she announced.
“Miss Gabby going to give the little princess a baby brother or sister?” George Jeffries, one of the ranch hands, asked.
“Nope, it’s Miss Catherine,” Lucinda replied.
Gray’s blood turned cold as he shoved back from the large, rough-hewn wooden table. What in the hell had she done? Made an official announcement over dinner?
Hadn’t he warned her to keep the information about her pregnancy to herself for her own safety? Now everyone in the entire house would know...all the family...all the staff and Gray was positive that the evil that had created such havoc in the past couple of months had come from within, not from some outside source.
It was with a head full of steam that he left the employee dining room and went in search of Catherine. He knew her habit was often to visit Jethro’s suite right after dinner and that was where he headed.
He stalked the long hallways toward the master suite, unsure what he intended to say to Catherine, even more uncertain why he felt the need to discuss the matter with her at all.
What he wanted to do was take her by her slender shoulders and shake her for telling everyone. What he wanted to do was forget that for just a moment at the petting barn as he’d held her in his arms and she’d smiled up at him he’d wanted to lower his lips to hers and plant a kiss that would possess her completely. He’d wanted to brand her as his own in a way he’d obviously been unable to do as a teenager.
He clenched his hands into fists at his side. The fact that he’d entertained any notion of kissing her ticked him off. He was now ranch foreman, but that didn’t mean he would ever be good enough for Catherine Colton.
This simmering old anger mixed with the aggravation he felt for her over spilling her secret. When he reached Jethro’s suite he stood just outside the door, able to hear Catherine’s soft voice murmuring from the bedroom.
He leaned against the wall, unwilling to interrupt her time with her dying father, but determined to have his say to her. In the distance he could hear others in the house moving around, going to their own suites or gathering in the great room for some conversation before heading their separate ways. He easily imagined he could hear the whispering of deadly secrets, the plotting of evil, the suppressed air of danger ready to spring at any moment.
The problem was he wasn’t sure where the danger might come from or who it might be directed at, he only knew that Catherine, with her surprising news, had just placed herself in a potential place of extreme vulnerability and she had absolutely nobody to watch her back.
It didn’t take long for Catherine to leave the
