Colton Christmas Protector (The Coltons of Texas #12)(38)

And his family. She had to remember that. Reid had a stake in all this. He’d been set up as the fall guy in Andrew’s death. His father was missing, presumed dead, and her father had taken untold millions from the Coltons through deceit and malpractice.

She would offer him the benefit of the doubt. She would allow him some leeway, give him more time. She would trust him. And not because she had to.

Because she wanted to.

She gave him a small nod, and the tension in his face melted away.

“Thank you.” He reached for her cheek again, as he had moments earlier, but this time, instead of pulling away, she closed her eyes and savored the contact. “I won’t let you down.”

She startled when his warm lips placed a feathery kiss on her forehead. She blinked, raising her chin to meet his eyes. This seduction he seemed bent on felt dangerous to her. Because she enjoyed his caresses, his nearness more than she should. Was her fascination with him simply a factor of her teenage crush? Was it misplaced gratitude for his heroism and kindness yesterday surrounding the shooting? If that were all it was, how did she explain the warmth and desire that simmered in his expression?

The tenderness in his gaze held her in thrall, until a whimper from the back room broke the spell.

“I need to get Nicholas.”

“Yeah,” he rasped and stepped back. When she returned, carrying her sleepy toddler on her hip a few moments later, Reid was back at the computer with his head down, working hard.

She fixed Nicholas a cup of Cheerios and settled him in front of Reid’s large-screen TV to watch a children’s DVD that he’d bought the night before.

As with every time she used a screen to entertain her son, she experienced a pang of mommy guilt. But she needed something to keep Nicholas occupied while she and Reid worked.

“Holy cow!” Reid said, his tone saying he’d have used a much darker expression of amazement if not for Nicholas’s impressionable ears. “Pen, come take a look at this.”

She crossed the room and studied the screen over his shoulder. Reid was scrolling through a list of URLs. “What is that?”

“Your father’s internet history for the last few weeks.”

A rock of dread settled in her stomach, and she gripped the back of his chair to brace herself. “Tell me.”

He rolled the cursor and clicked a link, bringing up a web page titled, “How to Stage Your Own Death.” The next website he opened was a discussion of autopsies, primarily on burned bodies. What little breakfast she’d had curdled in her stomach at the sight of the charred human remains. With a gasp, Pen averted her gaze. “What else?”

“More of the same. It appears he was researching how to fake a murder and pass off a burned body as the victim.” He angled his head to look up at her, his jaw rigid. “I think we now know who paid off the medical examiner last month to lie about the identity of that burned corpse they found.”

“So m-my father killed your father? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly. But he certainly wanted us to believe my father was dead. I told you, didn’t I, that my father’s will gives Hugh controlling interest in Colton Incorporated?”

“Seriously? Why would your father leave my dad—”

“I’m not at all sure he did. If your dad went to such lengths to fake Eldridge’s death, he could certainly have faked the will, as well. He had the only copy of Eldridge’s will anyone knows about.”

Pen’s mouth gaped open. “The only copy? That’s...insane. That’s—”

“One more reason I doubt the veracity of the document.” Reid turned back to the screen and clicked another link.

Pen paced a short open space between the couch where Nicholas slouched watching TV and the desk where Reid continued working. Her restless pace meant her coffee sloshed onto her hand, and she lifted her fingers to suck clean the drips. “Give me something to do, Reid. I’ll go stir-crazy just sitting around here with all this hanging over our heads. I need to keep busy. For sanity if nothing else.”

He eyed her for a minute, chewing the inside of his cheek as he thought. “Okay.” Leaning forward, he pecked on the keyboard a bit, then tapped a final key with a flourish. Across the room a printer sprang to life, beeping and chugging as pages started spitting out.

The device’s activity caught Nicholas’s attention and her curious toddler slid off the sofa and trotted over to grab at the pages feeding out to the tray.

“Is it?” Nicholas asked in his toddler way of wanting to know what something was.

She hurried over to pry the pages from his sticky hands. “That’s not for you, Nicholas.”

“Mine!” His chubby hands reached for the sheets, opening and closing in “gimme” fashion.

“No. Mommy’s.” She took a blank sheet from the paper tray and handed it to him. “Here’s yours.”

Satisfied to have something to crumple, Nicholas carried the sheet back to the sofa and started shredding the blank page.

Pen faced Reid with a shake of her head. “Distraction. A key technique for handling toddlers.”

“Good to know.” He aimed a finger at the papers when she tried to hand them to him. “Those are for you. Look through those. See if anything stands out.”

“Such as?”