Chapter 6 #3
After focusing on the woman in the photo and then the man, he turned his attention to the child. With her dark hair and dark eyes and little chubby cheeks, she was adorable. She could have been Lakin twenty some years ago.
“I’ve pretty much forgotten you were adopted,” he admitted. She was so close to her family and so much a part of them that it didn’t matter if they shared no DNA; they shared love.
But back in school other kids remembered the story of the little girl in the grocery store, and they hadn’t let her forget about it…
until Troy and her brothers made certain they stopped taunting her.
Billy Hoover had taken a little longer to convince than the others, but eventually Troy had gotten through to him.
His knuckles ached a bit with the old memory.
“What does this Jasper Whitlaw want?” Troy asked.
The man had had years to come looking for the child he’d left in a grocery store. Why come back for her now, when she was an adult? When she was a Colton?
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What did he ask you for?” Troy asked. The guy had to have a reason for showing up now after all these years. He had to want something.
“He said that he just wants me to give him a call when I’m ready to talk to him.”
“So he just wants to talk?” Troy asked. He didn’t believe that for a minute. Believe was the Colton family motto, but it wasn’t his, especially not after someone had broken into her cabin the day before.
Lakin nodded. “That’s why he wrote his number on the back of the photograph and gave it to me,” she said.
Troy wanted to wad up the picture for some reason, and he wasn’t sure why. But something didn’t feel right about this. Maybe the timing.
“Do you think he’s the person who broke in here yesterday?” Troy asked.
She gasped. “Why would he do that? I doubt he needs food that desperately.”
The man in the picture looked hungry to Troy. Of course a lot could have changed since then. It occurred to Troy that the stolen food could have been a misdirection, someone wanting the break-in to look more innocent than it was.
“I don’t like this,” Troy admitted. “I don’t think you should call him.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I don’t think you should trust him,” Troy said. “I think he’s after something.”
“What?” she asked.
“Colton money.”
She stepped back and shook her head. “You are the one who is obsessed with money.”
“What? I don’t want any Colton money,” he assured her. He wanted desperately to pay his own way and hers; that was why he wanted to wait to propose and start their business until he had more money saved.
She flinched as if he’d slapped her and said, “But I’m a Colton.”
He moved closer to her and gently touched his fingertips to her cheek. “Yes, you are, and I don’t want your money.”
“If we were really a couple, it would be our money,” she said. She stepped back again so that his hand fell to his side.
“We are really a couple,” he said, but he felt the same panic from when he’d finally realized why she was mad at him. And that she had every reason to be.
“No, we’re not. You would have called me when you got hurt. You would have wanted me there for you, to support you, to comfort you.”
“Lakin…” Troy didn’t know what to say or how to make it up to her. He had wanted her there, but he’d been so afraid that the paralysis wouldn’t go away. He hadn’t wanted to stick her with someone as helpless and hopeless as he’d felt those weeks in the hospital bed.
Clearly she wasn’t interested in hearing his excuses. She took the photo back from him. “But this isn’t about money to me. It’s about information.”
“What kind of information?” he asked.
“I should know about my heritage, my genetics, what medical conditions I might pass onto kids someday.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes intent on his face. “The kids we talked about having someday.”
“We were kids ourselves when we talked about having kids,” he murmured, thinking of all their teenage dreams. But then his dad had died, and Troy had been consumed with grim reality rather than dreams.
“Did you outgrow me, Troy? Our relationship? Do you want different things now?” she asked, her voice cracking slightly with emotion.
He wanted the same things he always had. A life with her. But if his back got screwed up again… He didn’t want her to wind up like his mother, raising kids alone, struggling to make ends meet, crying from the stress after she thought they were all asleep.
“I can’t think about the future right now,” he said. “Not until I know how completely I’m going to heal.” He was starting physical therapy soon. How his body reacted to that would determine if he would be able to go back to work on the oil rigs. Or anywhere…
“It doesn’t matter to me how badly you’re hurt,” she said. “If you’d stayed paralyzed, it would have changed nothing for me. I love you.”
“You’re being naive, Lakin,” he said. “It would have changed everything.”
“Not my love,” she said. “But apparently it changed yours.” She stepped back again, drew in a shaky breath and pointed toward the door she’d left open when she stumbled in moments ago. “Just leave. I need some time alone.”
“Lakin, I do love you,” he insisted.
But she just shook her head, refusing to believe him.
He was tempted to remind her of her family motto: believe. She’d told him that once, but clearly she wasn’t thinking like a Colton right now. Was she a Whitlaw? Or was this Jasper person running some scam on her?
“Please, let me be here for you,” he said. He had a horrible feeling she was in danger.
“Why?” she asked. “You didn’t let me be there for you. Go.” She didn’t wait for him to leave before she went into her bedroom like she had the night before. And like the night before, she closed and locked that door, shutting him out like she must feel he’d shut her out.
Their future was in danger, but not for the reason he’d believed—not because of his injury but because of him.
Why couldn’t she see that he’d been thinking about her, that he hadn’t wanted her to make any sacrifices for him? He loved her so much that he wanted all her dreams to come true.
Even if those dreams no longer included him.
* * *
The hook was baited. Now the fisherman just had to wait for the right moment to reel her in.
Then, finally, after all these years of planning, he could be certain this part of his life was over.
And so was hers…