Chapter 6 #2
He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “I got this,” he said. “I’ve carried it with me for years, looking for you. And then to find you here…” He pulled out a photograph and held it out to her.
Her fingers shook as she reached for it.
The colors had faded with age, leaving the photo in sepia tones, but the woman in it looked like Lakin.
Her dark hair was long and straight and parted in the middle, highlighting the same nose and mouth and cheekbones that Lakin had.
That woman held a toddler who had dark hair and chubby cheeks, and she wore a little dress.
The color was faded, but Lakin knew the dress was pink and came with ruffled underpants.
The dress was tucked into a box somewhere in her cabin, the one thing she had left from that time before the Coltons adopted her.
But it wasn’t just the woman and the child in the photograph.
A man stood next to them, almost towering over them, casting them even more in shadow.
He was tall and lean, and even in that photograph, he had a scar on one cheek.
In the picture his hair matched the dark color of his bushy black brows.
He looked younger but no happier. But then maybe he just didn’t smile in photographs.
Her brothers had gone through a phase where they had refused to smile, thinking they looked cooler with a scowl.
“That’s me, your mama and you,” he said, pointing a tobacco-stained fingertip at them. “Don’t you remember us, Lakin? Your parents? Your real family?”
She shook her head again, not just because she didn’t remember but because he was not her real family. The Coltons were. “No, I don’t remember you.”
“Well, that’s a damn shame,” he murmured. “Damn shame…”
She didn’t remember him, and she didn’t want to believe him although the family motto compelled her to. Her heart was beating fast and hard with fear. She didn’t know if she was scared of him or scared of what he might tell her.
She had the urge to escape. To get away from him as fast as she could.
“I… I have to go,” she said. “I’m going to be late for work.”
“You don’t want to talk to your daddy?” he asked with a slight smile as if he was more amused than offended. “You don’t want to get to know me better?”
“I don’t know you,” she said. And despite her family motto, she was struggling to believe him. But that picture… She couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Keep the photograph,” he said. “I wrote my cell number on the back. And when you’re not so busy, you give me a call, and we can catch up on each other’s lives since I lost you, little girl.”
He made it sound like he’d just misplaced her somewhere, not like he’d abandoned her.
Unless…
Unless what she’d always believed was true was not what had really happened. What had really happened? Part of her had always wanted to know. So why not ask him? Why not talk to him?
She tore her gaze from the photo to look up, but he was gone. She glanced around, but she didn’t see him anywhere. He’d left her again. Was that how he’d done it twenty-two years ago?
And what about her mother? Lakin glanced back at the picture. Where was she?
She flipped the photograph over and saw a phone number scrawled on the back of it along with a name: Jasper Whitlaw. Was that her father’s name?
Was that her last name before it became Colton? Her first name had always been Lakin. She’d been talking at three, and she’d been able to tell people that. “Me…” And she would press her thumb in her chest. “…Lakin.”
The Coltons often retold that story. But they’d never known her last name. Maybe she’d been too young to remember that.
“Whitlaw,” she whispered it aloud, but it didn’t sound familiar.
But the woman in the picture, she was definitely familiar. It was like looking in a mirror. Her mother. Where was she? What was her name?
Lakin could call Jasper Whitlaw and ask him. But she wasn’t sure she was ready yet for his answers. Or even to see him again. And at the moment, feeling as raw as she was, she wasn’t sure she was ready to see Troy again, either.
* * *
Troy jolted awake with such a start that a grunt of pain slipped through his lips. He closed his eyes and tensed, waiting to see if he’d awakened Lakin. But there was no other sound in the cabin.
Maybe she was still ignoring him. He opened his eyes and peered around. The bedroom door wasn’t locked anymore; it was wide open, so he could see that the bed was made. From the stillness of the cabin, he could tell that it was empty but for him.
She was gone.
He slowly sat upright and blinked to clear the sleep from his vision. The cabin was empty but bathed in sunshine. It wasn’t as if she’d sneaked off in the middle of the night. Or worse yet, that someone had sneaked in and taken her.
She’d probably just left for work.
Usually when he came home from a long while away, she would take some personal days to spend time with him. The bed never got made because they rarely left it. Last night she hadn’t even wanted him to touch her to comfort her, let alone kiss and make love with her.
He hadn’t realized she would be so angry with him for not calling her when he was hurt. But if the situation was reversed…
He grimaced over a twinge of pain, but it was in his heart, not his back. If the situation was reversed, he would have been hurt, too, that she hadn’t needed him and turned to him.
“Dammit,” he murmured with sudden understanding of how badly he’d screwed up.
She was probably at the office by now, or maybe still at Roasters getting her morning coffee.
He slid his feet into his boots and stood to head to the door, but before he got there, the knob rattled.
The door opened, and Lakin stumbled across the threshold as if someone had pushed her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked because she was clearly shaken. He glanced behind her to see if someone had chased her back to the cabin.
She shook her head.
“Where were you?” he asked.
She blinked at him as if she hadn’t realized he was there, or maybe she didn’t realize where she was. “I… I was at…at Roasters…”
He glanced at her hands. She wasn’t holding the bright blue coffee mugs. Instead she clutched what looked like an old photograph in one hand.
“You don’t have coffee, Lakin,” he pointed out, keeping his voice soft and calm since she seemed so rattled.
Her dark eyes went wide. “I must have left the mugs on the roof of the SUV…”
“Is that why you look so stunned? You haven’t had your caffeine fix yet?” he asked, trying to tease her a bit. Maybe she was still just really mad at him—and he understood now why.
She continued to stare at him with that blank expression, like she was in shock. She must have been to drive off with the mugs on the roof of her vehicle.
He was getting scared. “Lakin, what’s wrong? What happened that you look so…” Devastated. He stepped close and put his hands on her shoulders.
This time she didn’t jump back and shake off his touch like she had last night. It was as if she didn’t even feel or see him. Her blank stare was unnerving.
“Lakin, I know you’re still mad at me, but you have to talk to me,” he persisted. “Or I’m going to call your parents or Eli—”
“No! Don’t call my parents,” she said, her voice cracking. Tears rushed to her eyes.
“Then talk to me,” he said, his heart aching over the look on her beautiful face. He hated to see her cry. “Tell me why you’re so shaken up right now. What happened? Did somebody bother you? Scare you?”
God, a serial killer was on the loose in Shelby.
That scared the hell out of Troy. How had he fallen asleep last night?
He hadn’t done a very damn good job of protecting her when she’d managed to slip right past him this morning.
He hadn’t even realized she’d left. What if someone else had slipped past him and hurt her?
He would never forgive himself if something happened to her whether he was here or not.
“Did you see the intruder again?” he asked when she still didn’t answer. Maybe the person had tried getting into her vehicle and that was why she’d driven off like she had.
Her forehead furrowed as if she was trying to remember. “I… I don’t think it was him…” she murmured.
“Him?” So she had seen someone. “Who are you talking about?”
She held out the photograph she’d been clutching. “Him…”
At first glance, Troy thought the woman in the picture was Lakin.
They had the same hair, the same facial features that suggested Inuit heritage, but the snapshot was old, the colors faded.
He turned it over to see if there was a date on it.
Instead he saw a name and what must be a phone number scrawled across the back of it. “Jasper Whitlaw. Who is he?”
“He says he’s my father,” she whispered, as if she didn’t want anyone to overhear what she said.
Troy thought immediately of her father, of Will Colton, with his tall, lean build and dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. He was probably pushing sixty, but he looked like he was in his forties.
Troy flipped the photograph back over and studied the man standing next to the woman who looked like Lakin.
That man was lean, too, but in a way that was more hungry than fit.
The scar on his cheek and the coldness in his dark eyes were nothing like the warmth in Will Colton’s face, especially when Will was with his family.
He loved them all so much, but Troy suspected he loved Lakin even a little more, maybe because he knew she needed more love.
Maybe Troy wasn’t giving her enough love or time or attention.
Hell, there was no maybe about it; he’d been neglecting the woman he loved.
But that was because he was trying so hard to save for their future, so that he could buy her the ring she deserved to have, so he could help her finance the business she wanted to start.