“Told you the boss wasn’t going to be happy.”
After another muttered curse, Ferdy’s voice came loud and clear through the door. “Looks like it’s our lucky day. Bastard wants to see both of us. Now.”
Those thick footfalls vanished nearly as quickly as they’d come, the door to his inner office slamming closed. Nova counted to a thousand, willing herself to stay right beside the toilet. It was her only defense in the event Ferdy came back and the only way she could brazen her way through a confrontation if he questioned what she might have heard.
Picking herself up off the marble tile, she reached for her purse and slung it over her shoulder. She forced herself to walk back out of the office with the same calm she’d walked in with, and offered a silent prayer of thanks as she passed his secretary’s desk. The woman had been out for lunch when Nova had arrived and was still gone.
Small miracles.
Pieces of a heavy crystal tumbler lay in a pile on the floor beside the credenza, further reinforcement of all she’d heard.
She kept her walk steady and easy, breezy even, as she walked to the elevator and on down to the lobby. Her purse swung from her fingertips as if
she had nothing to lose.
As if her entire world hadn’t just cratered.
It was only when she was outside once more, the fresh air blowing in her face, that Nova made her decision.
Whatever Ferdy was into, sticking around and trying to get to the bottom of it with him wasn’t going to end well. If it hadn’t been for the baby she might have tried it. Might have given him the slightest benefit of the doubt and brazened her way through a conversation, but not anymore. She had a child to look out for.
With that sole thought pounding through her mind, Nova made her decision.
And ran.
Chapter 1
Five months later
Mustang Valley, Arizona
Nikolas Slater rubbed the bridge of his nose as he reread his contract with Selina Barnes Colton. The woman had a temperament that would make a rattler turn tail and slither away, yet that hadn’t stopped him from making a deal with the she-devil.
Which meant he was either really good or miserably foolish.
He preferred smart over fool any day but knew that, in order to stay afloat, a PI with an expensive set of services needed to take the big fish when they knocked on his door.
And Selina Barnes Colton was a big fish.
Coldly beautiful, the second—and now ex—wife of Payne Colton was a piece of work. And while she might be seriously high maintenance, she wasn’t asking anything out of line.
Besides, the ink was well and dry on the contract and he’d already cashed Selina’s up-front payment, so really, he had nothing to worry about. Something he kept reminding himself of even as he went over the agreed-to work and considered how he was going to approach the case.
Things did not look good for Ace Colton. The man had had a solid, upstanding reputation, but recent events had seriously tarnished it. A gun discovered in his apartment—one definitively proven as the one used on his father—was bad enough. The fact the man fled when the cops went to charge him was just bad news all around.
And then Selina had come calling.
Selina had hired him to prove that Ace Colton had shot his father, former oil exec Payne Colton, in cold blood. While it was a handy story and one that had kept Mustang Valley talking since the January shooting, something didn’t fully play for Nikolas. Even if it had played for the local press like a well-tuned piano. The golden boy. The powerful father. And a family name that had plenty of notoriety. Hell, a distant cousin of Payne’s had served as president.
Nikolas suspected the recent escapades of the Arizona branch weren’t finding too much favor with such illustrious relatives, no matter how distant, but they didn’t call certain branches of families black sheep for nothing.
Even now, Payne remained in a coma over at Mustang Valley General Hospital, the victim of a gunshot wound late one night in his office at Colton Oil. A situation that had kept the local press busy for nearly nine months and that ebbed and flowed in and out of the national news, as well. While they might no longer be husband and wife, Selina was still a bigwig at Colton Oil. And while it wasn’t a secret she carried no soft feelings for Old Man Colton, she was also clearly not interested in losing her cash cow.
Despite the cynicism, Nikolas had played various angles in his mind. Was it so hard to believe she wanted to do right by him as well as the company? Or that she wanted a guilty man caught, especially if the whispers were true and it was Payne’s oldest son, Ace, who had done the deed?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Nikolas kept his ear to the ground and he knew there was more going on than even what Selina had briefed him on. The entire town had discovered over the past few months that Ace Colton wasn’t actually Payne’s son. Selina had confirmed that by showing him the result of a DNA test. The Mustang Valley rumor mill was working overtime, fixated on the notion that Ace had been switched at birth. If it was true, it gave Ace a possible motive for murdering the man who wasn’t really his father, after having been ousted as the CEO of Colton Oil when it was proven that he wasn’t really a Colton.