Claudia Colton’s shine came from who she was and the life she’d built for herself, not the life she was born into.
How did someone like this come from a woman like Livia Colton? Although he was still in college when the infamous woman’s crimes had come to light, Hawk could remember the trial. The hunt for answers. And the relatively few details that had ultimately come to light for a woman purported to have such deep roots in criminal activity.
Those details had remained equally sketchy as he began investigating the Krupids’ case. The only reason he’d even connected the Krupid family and the death of their daughter to Livia Colton had been almost a sheer accident. But once he’d made the connection, every line he’d tugged started in the same spot.
Shadow Creek.
The small town nestled in the Texas Hill Country boasted acres of farmland and some of the prettiest land in the entire state. It was also where Livia Colton’s six children had been raised and often made their home.
He’d done his research on all of them. Six siblings, all seemingly fathered by different men. Children who’d grown up in the shadow of a powerful mother and her shady life. Heirs who’d been abandoned by the town, left to fend for themselves when the truth of their mother’s crimes came to light.
Claudia was a product of that. And, Hawk pulled her details from memory, she’d hightailed it out of Shadow Creek at the first opportunity. The moment she turned eighteen, Claudia headed for New York City, earning her degree before starting work in the fashion industry. Her return to Texas was recent and, from what he could see, something she’d embraced.
Yet something didn’t add up.
Why was she back? The young woman’s return to Shadow Creek coincided with her mother’s prison break earlier in the year. And her reunion with her family seemed to have a permanence, especially since she’d become the newest proprietor on the busiest street in Shadow Creek.
“I’m afraid I still don’t know how to help you, Mr. Huntley. Those crimes of my mother’s were put to bed over a decade ago.”
“Do you honestly think the police uncovered everything there was to find?”
“Maybe not, but I hardly have the answers on where they should look.”
“Maybe you do.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I’ve been working this case for the Krupid family for several months now. They want to find answers. They want closure and the chance to still provide for their daughter, Annalise.”
That gray gaze had shuttered, her voice brisk and businesslike. “But I still don’t see how that affects me. Nor, I’m afraid to say, do I understand how her parents can possibly provide for a woman who passed many years ago.”
“By taking care of her child.”
Claudia shook her head. “Now you’re talking in riddles. Whatever my mother was, she wasn’t someone who killed innocent babies, Mr. Huntley. I’m afraid your leads have gone cold.”
He moved in, just a few steps but it was enough to have her eyes going wide, her mouth dropping in a small O. He lowered his voice, unwilling to share every private detail in earshot of her employee.
“If I’m right, and I believe I am, Livia Colton didn’t kill the baby. She took her and told everyone she was hers.”
“I think we’d have known if my mother stole a baby.”
The words were pointed fact, but Hawk didn’t miss the thread of understanding beneath them. Nor did he miss the light quaver in her voice that ensured whatever he said next wasn’t going to be a complete surprise.
“You’re the baby, Ms. Colton. Your mother is Annalise Krupid.”
* * *
“I’m what?”
Claudia had seen her mother pull a fainting spell several times throughout her life. Always dramatic, it was an act sure to bring several people running toward the delicate-boned woman with the features of an angel. She’d marveled at each occurrence, always surprised by the effectiveness of her mother’s show.
And up until now, she’d never had the urge to do the same.
But if there was ever a time to get a case of the vapors, this would have to be it.
“If my suspicions are correct, you’re Annalise Krupid’s daughter, Ms. Colton.”
“That’s impossible.”
Was it impossible? The question whispered over her senses, even as she caught sight of herself in the framed mirror that took up space behind the checkout counter. She was a big woman—her five-foot-ten frame and solid bone structure at decided odds with the delicate frame of her mother.
Claudia loved her body, but that hadn’t come easy. She’d spent far too many of her teenage years comparing herself to her mother’s small, willowy frame. A frame that good, old-fashioned biology had embedded in the genes of her sisters, Leonor and Jade. Claudia had always been the outlier. And it hadn’t been until she’d discovered fashion, and all the ways to find clothes and makeup, shoes and accessories to highlight every body type, that she’d come to love who she was.
No, she’d never be a waif like her sisters. But she could strut herself with the best of them and she had come to adore the way clothing clung to her hips and rear like a lover’s caress.
It had been at the heart of her focus for Honeysuckle Road and the core sensibility of her designs while living in New York. Every woman was beautiful. True fashion and all its artistry was about making every woman shine.
“Is it really impossible, Ms. Colton?”
The tantalizing belief that she might be someone else—that all the times growing up she’d questioned if she fit into her family might have been for a reason—were thoughts she needed to shut down.
She was a Colton. She’d been one for twenty-six years and in a matter of moments she was ready to throw that all away?
“Of course it is. I’ve lived here my whole life. I have a family—brothers and sisters—and—” She broke off, suddenly aware those things had very little bearing on how she came to actually be a Colton.
“Look, Mr. Huntley, it’s just not possible. For all my mother was, or is,” she quickly corrected herself, “she’s not a kidnapper of infants. Besides, why kidnap one to then raise it on your own? My mother had four children before me and never had a problem carrying a baby to term.”
“Maybe she saw something in you?”
“Another mouth to feed?”
“She’s a wealthy woman,” Hawk shot back, smooth and easy. “I hardly think that would have been a deterrent, do you?”
Nothing was a deterrent to Livia Colton when the woman set her mind on something. Claudia had seen that enough times in her life to know it as fact. More the point, she’d always sensed her mother had led multiple lives, anyway. There was the mother who raised them all, rarely present. On the occasions when she had
