“There’s the lucky man,” said Ainsley, running around her desk to give Ace an exuberant hug when he stepped inside her office at Colton Oil the following afternoon. “I didn’t get to tell you in person before, with everyone else from the family gushing over the two of you, but I am so happy for you and Sierra. I knew there was something going on between the two of you!”
After giving his cheek a noisy kiss, she turned toward the doorway, where their blonde younger half sister, Marlowe, the current CEO, stood smiling, and offering her best wishes, too. “I’ve met her, and I think she’s perfect for you. So are you two planning a long engagement?”
“Depends on how long it takes her to negotiate a signed contract with everybody that, after Nova’s baby’s born, she’s not to be called Grandma before we get the chance to try for our own kids.”
The two of them laughed, and Ace grinned, wondering when he’d ever been so happy and excited for the future, despite the questions still hanging over them—and the fact that he had come to finally clean out his desk...and permanently walk away from a job he’d loved and taken pride in.
There was a tap at the door, and Ainsley’s assistant was shaking her head. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but—but there’s a woman here, Micheline Anderson, insisting that she see you. All of you. I sent her into the conference room to wait.”
Ace caught his sisters’ wide-eyed looks of alarm, but his own shock was wrapped up in a white-hot ball of emotion. Curiosity. Rage. Dread over why the self-help guru—the former nurse who was believed to be his own biological mother—had come. Did she mean to finally reveal her end game? Or could Ace at least force her to admit, at last, and even to explain why she had switched him so soon after birth for his parents’ true firstborn son?
Glancing anxiously from one face to the next, Ainsley’s assistant shook her head. “Did I do the wrong thing? Should I have called security? Or the police?”
The siblings exchanged uncertain looks before Ace shook his head. “No. You’re fine. We should hear her out, thanks.”
“But stay close, if you will,” Ainsley urged her. “If you hear raised voices from inside there, or anything alarming, don’t hesitate to call for help.” Looking from Marlowe to her brother, she added, “I don’t think she’s the type to get her own hands dirty with anything violent, but I definitely don’t trust that woman.”
As they walked past their father’s office—the same room where he had been shot—on the way to the smaller conference room, Marlowe pulled out her cell phone and showed them both that she was switching on an app that would make a voice recording of their meeting.
Ace nodded in approval and tried to mask his emotions before stepping into the richly paneled room, where a long, mahogany table sat surrounded by comfortable rolling chairs.
Exquisitely dressed as ever, the elegant, blonde cult leader had seated herself at the head of the table, her long fingers interlaced and her features arranged in the self-satisfied expression of a woman who owned the place.
“What is it that brings you here?” Ace demanded. Ever since that email had arrived, they’d all been waiting anxiously, desperate to know whether the sender’s true game would be money or some form of blackmail. Or was the real purpose of Micheline’s visit something even darker?
Clearly oblivious to his mood, she smiled broadly and clapped her hands together. “I have some wonderful news to share with you today.”
“Wonderful for whom?” asked Ainsley, perching on the edge of her seat as they all claimed chairs, each of the siblings keeping a safe distance from this uninvited guest.
Ignoring her, Micheline went on to say, “Finally, after that dreadful business with that horrible phony, Jace Smith, trying to cash in by pretending to be my son, I’ve found him. I’ve actually found my real son, my darling boy, Jake Anderson, and he’s coming home soon! Isn’t that fantastic?”
“Your real son?” Ace spat out. “Don’t you mean Payne and Tessa Colton’s stolen child?” Feeling sick, he knew then that he’d been holding out hope that Ainsley had been wrong about what she’d said back at the hospital about him having a biological connection to this woman.
“Well, you don’t—you can’t possibly understand.” Micheline’s painted nails splayed out to fan out over her chest.
“So you’re finally admitting it?” Marlowe erupted. “You’re confessing that you switched your own baby—” the mother of an infant son herself, she gave Ace a look brimming with emotion “—for a child that wasn’t yours?”
“I—I—”
“After what you’ve just said, you might as well admit it,” Ainsley said. “Anyway, we already had it figured out.”
Micheline hung her head, a tear trickling down her cheek, creating a thin rivulet of dark mascara. “Of course you have.” She sniffled. “And anyway, there’s no point in holding it back any longer. Not when—not when I’ve been diagnosed with stage three bone cancer. It’s why Jake’s coming. To see me off, in case this last-ditch treatment doesn’t offer the miracle I...”
She paused as if waiting for someone to offer the customary sympathy. But these weren’t customary circumstances.
Even so, Ace finally forced himself to say, “Sorry you’re ill,” because his mother—the real mother who had loved and raised him—would have expected it of him.
Nodding an acknowledgment, Micheline said, “That’s a good man, so I’ll be very honest now. I did switch you with my newborn. It was a low point in my life, when I didn’t feel up to motherhood. I was all alone, and you were a strapping boy, so vigorous. When I saw how sickly the real Ace Colton was, I was sure he wouldn’t survive more than a day or two, and then I’d have my life back again.”
“So you just—you just traded them?” Marlowe’s horror was written in her eyes.
Her eyes damp, Micheline nodded. “I switched him with my biological son so he’d have excellent parents to grow up with and all the advantages I could never give him. And then I took the dying baby. I thought... I was certain I was doing a good thing. The right thing...for—for everyone.”
She burst into sobs and buried her face into a handful of tissues from the box that Ainsley pushed in her direction.
While Micheline wept, the siblings stared at one another, shock rippling over them like blast waves from a bomb that had detonated forty years before. Holy hell, Ace thought, as the details of her story sank in.
Still, something didn’t feel right. As he watched his biological mother’s continuing performance, he knew it in his bones. Micheline was still up to something nefarious. Something he sensed would come back to bite them when the real Jake Anderson finally turned up. But at least he’d have his family—the ones he’d grown up with, his newfound daughter and grandchild on the way, and Sierra. With them by his side, he knew could handle anything.
Don’t miss previous installments in
The Coltons of Mustang Valley miniseries:
Colton Baby Conspiracy by Marie Ferrarella
Colton’s Lethal Reunion by Tara Taylor Quinn
Colton Family Bodyguard by Jennifer Morey
Colton First Responder by Linda O. Johnston
In Colton’s Custody by Dana Nussio
Colton Manhunt by Jane Godman
Colton’s Deadly Disguise by Geri Krotow
Colton Cowboy Jeopardy by Regan Black
Colton’s Undercover Reunion by Lara Lacombe
Deadly Colton Search by Addison Fox
And be sure to read the final volume in the series:
Colton’s Last Stand by Karen Whiddon
Also available in June 2020!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Colton’s Last Stand by Karen Whiddon.