Page 21 of The Unknown Colton
“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’dleft. 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 thatwas 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.
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.Believewas 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.
