The Cowboy's Baby Surprise - A Billionaire Romance (Billionaire Cowboys Book 2) Read online

  Then I could come home, thought Colt.

  I could see Marissa again, without any threats hanging over our heads. We could put all of this behind us.

  But if I stay, who knows how long I’ll have to wait until Vance slips up.

  Who knows how long I’ll have to wait before I could see Marissa again, without putting her life in danger.

  He looked up at the faces of his security team. They all wanted the best for him, that was clear. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. Just tell me how.”

  Chapter 7

  Colt

  Charlie, along with the FBI agents, outlined the plan for Colt. After getting business arrangements in order for Bradley to oversee the company solo for a while in Colt’s absence, the plan went into effect. Colt packed a suitcase with some belongings and boarded a small private plane two days later. He tried to enjoy the steaming Macchiato coffee his flight attendant had brought him, but the espresso drink tasted sour on his tongue.

  My nervous system is all out of whack, he thought, as he pushed the drink away and looked out of the small plane window at the bank of clouds below.

  It was the thought of landing on the ocean that made him unsettled.

  He didn’t like the feeling of the waves.

  It reminded him of a time in his past that he didn’t want to think about.

  It was bad enough when the memory came back in his dreams at night when he lay safely in his bed. It was another thing altogether to relive the event while actually floating on the ocean’s surface.

  Charlie had informed him earlier that morning that the plane would land on floatation devices in the Gulf of Mexico, so the FBI could stage the plane crash.

  He dreaded that portion of the journey.

  Being in the sky was okay. Being on the water was not. When the waves rocked the small craft, he knew that the memory would flood him.

  I can’t let that happen, he thought.

  “Mr. Thorpe, buckle your seatbelt, please,” the pilot announced. “We’re about to start our descent to the ocean.”

  Colt reached for his seatbelt. It sounded all wrong. A plane shouldn’t descend into the ocean.

  Yet that was exactly what this mission entailed. In order to fake his own death, this part of the plan had to unfold.

  His palms started to sweat. His stomach clenched as the plane pitched forward. He hated reliving the memory.

  He didn’t fear death; he didn’t fear the possibility that the plane would crash, or that they might drown once they landed on the surface of the Gulf.

  He feared the images that would appear in his mind when the plane started rocking on the ocean surface like a boat.

  The lift and sway of the craft, as swelling waves carried it up, up, up, and then dropped it down.

  The swells were high that day, Colt recalled.

  “Isn’t there a storm coming in?” Mom said. She lifted a sandwich from the cooler and held it out to me with a smile. “Here, honey. I made you your favorite, ham and swiss.”

  I grabbed the sandwich. She kissed my cheek.

  She smelled like her usual sugar-plum perfume. Dad was peering at the sky. “The weather report said the storm isn’t supposed to hit us until two. Colt, buddy, what kind of bait did you pick up?”

  It was Sunday afternoon. We’d gone to church together that morning.

  I was so happy to be on spring break from college—so happy to be with Mom and Dad at the beach house. I thought we’d have a great day fishing on the boat.

  Dad smiled at me as I told him about the new kind of bait we’d try. I thought I’d see that smile a million more times. I thought I’d see him smile in his old age.

  The waves kept getting bigger… bigger… bigger… until the swells were so high that each drop made me nauseous.

  Dad and I put away the fishing poles, and he steered us toward home.

  But it was too late.

  The plane leveled out and jolted and jumped as it landed on the water.

  Colt gripped the armrests of his seat.

  He immediately sensed the deep, dark waters below him.

  Sometimes, at night, he woke up tangled in his sheets, his body still fighting against the dream waves that he’d been drowning in. Whenever that happened, it took him a few moments to realize he was safe in his bed.

  He was safe—but his parents were not.

  The image of their bodies, ravaged by the waves and wreckage, haunted him.

  He’d been in good shape, thanks to endless training for college football, and yet still, it had taken every ounce of strength that he’d had to fight for his survival that day.

  Though he’d tried to save his parents—to keep them above the water until the coast guard came—it was impossible. He still felt guilty about that, though he knew deep down that it wasn’t his fault.

  Now, as he sensed the vast ocean below him, his mind returned to that dark day. He imagined the cold wetness clinging to him, sucking him downward.

  He breathed in deeply and looked out the window. Don’t go there, he told himself. Just don’t go there. You’re on a plane. You’re thirty-six years old. That day is in the past… the distant past. He looked at the sky and it was clear blue, with puffy white clouds.

  His life had changed so much that day.

  What he’d gone through had yanked him from his blissful youth and deposited him abruptly in adulthood with an awareness of pain and loss.

  Marissa would understand, he thought.

  He recalled the way she had looked directly into his eyes, like she was staring right into his soul. She was so perceptive. So aware.

  I wonder what she’s doing now? Colt thought.

  I wonder when I’ll see her next?

  He looked out of the window. Several athletic-looking FBI agents worked on staging the plane crash that would be fed to the media, so the news of his death would eventually make its way to Vance. One agent tossed clothing items out, another scattered metal and other plane parts into the water, and a third snapped photographs.

  How long until I can see her? he wondered.

  The plane tilted, and his stomach dropped. To prevent another traumatic flashback of the boating crash he had survived all those years ago, he focused on his breath and forced his mind to think of something else.

  In his mind, he traveled back to a memory that always seemed to be right on the surface of his awareness, just waiting to pop up into his thoughts.

  I went into the Thorpe Oil Austin headquarters early. There was a board meeting scheduled for eight, and I wanted a few hours before it to prepare.

  Sitting in my office, I pulled up the accounting software that was used company-wide and clicked into a report of profits versus loss, so I could print it out—only the numbers didn’t look right. Investigating further, I clicked into the company bank account and saw that the figures were significantly lower than they had been only days before. The account had been drained of several million dollars.

  We had billions in assets, of course, and the missing money wasn’t the end of the world—but still, it concerned me.

  I lifted the phone, called several employees, and together we’d filed a claim with the Austin police about the missing money. Within two weeks, the funds had been tracked down.

  Colt’s memory was interrupted as the pilot spoke again, asking Colt to prepare for takeoff.

  The fake-crash portion of the trip was over, thankfully.

  The small plane lifted into the air, pulling free from the surface-tension of the water, and once again soaring through the sky.

  Colt closed his eyes, and his mind immediately returned to the missing funds.

  If only I had known how much trouble it would cost, maybe I wouldn’t have even reported the missing money, he thought. It’s not worth all this.

  The stolen money was tracked to Keller Jenkins, the top criminal in the city. Keller was a weathered old man with only one good eye. He wore a patch over the other, which made him look like a pirate. He cursed
as if he was out at sea, too, so the patch was fitting. The feisty old man Keller wouldn’t go down easy, and months of tense legal battles ensued, culminating in a courthouse drama that dragged on for over a week.

  When the old pirate-like man was sentenced to twenty years behind bars, I felt relieved.

  But not for long.

  When he was sentenced to jail time, I thought that finally, the whole ordeal was over. I stepped outside into the wet, cool air outside of the courthouse. It had been drizzling that day, and the rain turned the sidewalk into a dark slate gray that matched the sky.

  I stood there, waiting for my driver to approach, when a hand gripped my shoulder. I flinched and turned slowly. The stink of Vance’s breath greeted me as he growled, “You’re going to pay for this, Colt.”

  Then, quickly, before I even had a chance to react, he was gone.

  That had all been back in January.

  Since then, Colt had tripled his security resources and had been fighting off constant death threats.

  How long will it be until I can put all of this behind me? he wondered.

  The plane banked right and soared toward Argentina.

  Colt leaned his head against the back of his seat, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep. He awoke as the plane once again started to descend.

  On land, everything was arranged. He was quickly whisked off to a small hotel in a crowded seaside town. The hotel was beautiful, and had he been in another state of mind, he might have enjoyed his surroundings more.

  However, all he felt was frustration. He wanted to be with Marissa, yet he was thousands of miles away from her.

  Chapter 8

  Marissa

  Marissa stepped into the teachers’ lounge. It smelled of tuna fish, so she immediately knew that Dulcett Elementary School’s physical education teacher was also in the room. Dave always had tuna for lunch, much to the chagrin of the rest of the staff.

  “Hi Dave,” she said, as she sat down at the round table in the middle of the lounge. Many teachers liked to take working lunches in their own classrooms, so she and Dave were the only ones in the lounge.

  “Marissa!” Dave said with a cheery grin on his bearded face. “Haven’t seen you since before spring break! Weren’t you headed off for your yearly getaway in Austin? How was it?”

  Marissa pulled a container of pasta salad from her lunch pack, and then another of rolled turkey slices and fresh veggies. As she peeled the lid off of the pasta salad, she said, “It was… interesting.” She reached for a fork.

  “Sounds like a story there,” Dave said, wiggling his bushy black brows and shoveling a forkful of his tuna salad into his mouth. “Hit me with it. I about died of boredom thanks to the state physical aptitude testing I had to do all morning.”

  Marissa pretended to be too busy chewing to talk.

  In truth, she wasn’t sure how to begin. Plenty of people had asked her about her trip to Austin, including the neighbor who had been feeding her goldfish. Marissa had been forced to explain her reasoning for cutting her trip short and returning home after just three days away. Each time she explained it, she worded the story differently according to who she was talking to.

  “I wasn’t feeling very well,” she told her mother.

  “I missed home,” she told her neighbor.

  “It wasn’t the same without you,” she told Jen.

  Now, she chewed and thought about how to explain things to Dave.

  She swallowed. “It started out great,” she said honestly. “Better than great, really. Which is odd, since my friend Jen couldn’t make it due to a death in the family.”

  “That’s too bad,” Dave said. “So you had to do the solo vacation thing, hm? I had to do that once when my wife got sick right before a trip we had planned. We had the tickets, so I figured what the heck? And I went. Surprised myself, actually, by having a blast. You did, too?”

  Marissa nodded. Before she could go on, her chatty coworker continued. “It’s kind of nice, being able to do whatever you want all day long—no ball and chain demanding that you go to the aquarium when all you really want to do is go surfing.” His face clouded over.

  Marissa had a feeling that Dave wasn’t speaking hypothetically.

  Dave continued. “Hey! What am I saying… you’re not married. You don’t have a ball and chain around dragging you to aquariums and art galleries.”

  Marissa nodded. “Yep, I get to do what I please most days, except for when I’m here at work. One of the perks of being single, I suppose.”

  “I envy you,” Dave said. Then he grinned and whispered, “Don’t tell my wife I said that, though. Boy, I’d be in the doghouse for sure if she heard me say that.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Anyway, you were saying about your trip that it was a really good time, right? I need details. I stayed home all week with the kids while the wife went on a work trip. Entertain me. How was the rodeo you were so excited about?”

  “It was fun,” Marissa said. “A little strange, being there without Jen, but I managed to have a good time.” Her cheeks flushed at the memory of meeting Colt, and the night they’d spent together. She hurried on before Dave could pick up on her blush and ask her for details that she wasn’t prepared to share.

  She’d barely even told Jen about her night with Colt. Instead, she’d only mentioned that she’d hung out with a nice guy, and left it at that.

  Her time with Colt was too precious. Too sacred. She didn’t want to risk having the memory of her night with him marred by words that might depreciate its importance.

  So instead she kept the memory to herself.

  “I ended up getting there right as the evening’s events started up,” she told Dave, “and I met this really nice guy outside at one of the vending booths. You should see this McFarlin Arena. You’d love it. The whole area around the arena is decked out to be almost like a fair. It’s incredible.”

  “Sounds like it,” Dave agreed. “I’ve got to get the wife to go to Texas one day with me. Maybe we’ll see the rodeo. So this guy you met—he was nice?”

  Marissa averted her eyes from Dave’s, so she didn’t give away the depth of her feelings for Colt. She tried to keep her tone casual as she said, “Yeah, super friendly. He ended up taking me to a special viewing area that was off-limits to the rest of the public. We watched the different events, and he explained everything to me—how the riders earn points, what the top-scorers do that sets them apart, and what to watch for with the animals. He knew even more than Jen, and that’s saying a lot, since Jen is obsessed with horses.”

  “Sounds like he was the right guy to spend the night with, then,” Dave said.

  Marissa felt her cheeks burn brighter. Dave had no idea how accurate his statement was. She knew he was only referring to her time spent with Colt at the rodeo—there was no way Dave knew that she’d actually spent the night at Colt’s penthouse—but still, his turn of phrase made her burn with memories.

  Colt truly had been the right guy to spend the night with.

  Memories of her steamy night with him still made her blush, even though it had been more than a week since she last saw him.

  This time, she couldn’t keep her emotional response from Dave. He caught sight of her pink cheeks and said, “What is it? Oh! Lordy, girl, you have a crush on this guy, don’t you? We’re not talking about some old gray-haired cowboy here, are we? Your nice rodeo tutor was a man your age… a handsome man, I’d guess, by the way you’re blushing right about now.”

  She nodded, polished off her pasta salad, and moved on to her turkey roll-ups.

  “You got me,” she said. “He was handsome, all right. We had a great time at the rodeo, and then we went out for another outing the next day.”

  “When is he going to visit Dulcett?” Dave asked. “I’ve got to meet the man that has swept our Marissa off of her planted-firm-on-the-ground feet. I’ve never seen you look so giddy before! You’re the last to ever gush over a man.”

  “I know,�
� she said. “I don’t know when he’ll visit—or if he will. He’s tied up with a pretty serious business issue.”

  “I know the drill,” Dave said. “I guess most of us poor old adults these days have work stress hanging over our heads. My buddy, who owns a futon store downtown, just had to file for bankruptcy, you know. No one’s buying futons anymore. Everyone’s going for those fancy foam mattresses. People are buying them up online.”

  Marissa thought about Colt’s oil company and his troubles with the mafia. A bankrupt futon store in downtown Dulcett was nothing compared to what Colt was dealing with, but Marissa didn’t say that aloud.

  Instead she said, “Yeah, it’s tough these days to get by without some kind of work stress or another. Anyways, he’s going to take some time to get it figured out, and then, I’m hoping he’ll call.”

  For the first time, she realized she never gave Colt her number.

  Or her last name, for that matter.

  He’ll find me, she thought as she bit into a carrot. He has plenty of resources at his fingertips. If he wants to get in touch with me, he will figure out a way.

  “That’s too bad it didn’t work out,” Dave said. “Well, hopefully he’ll get his work stuff all straightened out, and you two can make a go at a long-distance thing. My wife and I had to do the long-distance deal for a while when I was deployed, five years back. Thank goodness it was only for a short while.”

  The door to the lounge opened, and the school art teacher, a young woman by the name of Kelly, stepped in.

  She poured herself a coffee from the machine by the sink as Dave continued. “I’m sorry; I don’t mean to be discouraging,” he said. “If you two really care for each other, it really doesn’t matter how far apart you are. Isn’t that right?”

  “Oh!” Kelly said, wandering toward the table with her steaming mug cupped in her hands. “This sounds like a juicy conversation over here. Who’s caring for who, no matter the miles between them?” She grinned with anticipation, and then slurped up some coffee.