After an hour of daring each other, taking foolish, behind-the-back shots, acting like they thought they were pros, Ezra had met his goal, thrice over.

  Clearly, Dom had his head still too filled with thoughts of Sami, his newfound life love, to fully concentrate and had come in last all three times.

  Ezra, who was starving by that point, told him he had to buy food. Dom obliged, bringing a huge tray of unhealthy and delicious bar munchies back to the table. Cue sticks resting up against their small high-top, with balls already racked and ready on the table, they leaned butts to stools and dug in. Except that Oliver was keeping up appearances with a wing in his hand, rather than gorging himself as usual.

  “What’s up?” Ezra asked, as Dom looked at the wing and raised an eyebrow.

  With a shrug, and an odd look of...feeling...Oliver took a bite, and then another, put the wing down and said, “I had dinner before I came.”

  “Let me guess—at the Atria,” Dom said.

  To which Ezra frowned, looking between the two of them. “What gives?” he asked.

  “A certain waitress is working in her family’s restaurant,” Dom said, then ate half a potato skin in one bite.

  Ezra’s gaze shot to his clearly-cynical-about-women financial wizard brother. “Seriously?”

  “It’s nothing,” Oliver said, swigging from his beer like he did it all day, every day. And that was the end of that.

  “You notice Mom dancing with Chief Lawson at the wedding?” Dom asked then, obviously reading, as Ezra had, their brother’s lack of amusement regarding the waitress.

  “I noticed.”

  “I actually called the chief yesterday,” Ezra told them, though he maintained Theresa’s privacy on the issue. “Had him check into something private, unrelated to any of us, that I kind of walked into at the Sunshine Senior Home the other day.”

  “I don’t want him pressuring Mom,” Dom said. “I’m keeping my eye on things.”

  “She didn’t look unhappy,” Ezra admitted, but he was glad to know that Dom, who lived in Denver, would be around.

  “She needs to sell that house,” Oliver piped up, helping himself to a jalapeño popper. “It’s too big.”

  Ezra nodded. “I just talked to her about it this morning. She’s hanging on to it because it’s where we all grew up, but there’s no way we’re all twelve going to be staying with her at the same time, not with some of us having places here in town. It just doesn’t make sense for her to be rambling alone in all that space so much of the time.”

  “Agreed.” Dom said the word. All three of them were nodding in unison. “I hear you kind of walked into something else at the Sunshine Senior Home,” Dom continued then. “Or should I say someone?”

  Ezra shook his head. He wasn’t getting into that.

  “Who?” Oliver, looking between the two of them, appeared completely interested all of a sudden, until Dom filled him in on Ezra inviting a widow and her twin daughters to the Colton barbecue on Saturday. “Taking up with a widow with kids? That’s not like you, man,” Oliver said then, holding his beer in both hands, his expression concerned. “You can’t just have a quick fling with a family. What happens to them when you leave in a few weeks?”

  Dom was clearly waiting for an answer as well—which was probably why his brother had brought up Theresa to begin with.

  “Cool it, guys.” He gave them each a stern, I’m-not-fooling-around look. “Theresa’s still grieving her ex-husband and isn’t interested in dating. She made that very clear. The barbecue is a chance for the girls to be at the ranch and ride horses, that’s all. Just something nice.”

  And when they heard, as they surely would from some family member or another, that he was painting the widow’s house? “Anyway, did you hear about Naomi filming some reality TV thing at the Gemini this summer?” he asked to change the subject. “Can you believe the baby is really a TV producer?”

  “Here’s to the Coltons making good,” Oliver said, raising his beer mug.

  Dom and Ezra clinked heartily, ate a bit more and got back to the real feature of the evening. Finding out which one of them most had his eye on the ball that evening.

  Ezra needed it to be him.

  He had to know that Theresa Fitzgerald, her daughters and their problems were only ships passing in the night. They were not personally meaningful to him and absorbing his focus.

  * * *

  Theresa waited until the kids’ bedtime to have a “talk.” She’d been thinking about it on and off all day, wondering if, like with the Fitzgeralds, she was overreacting to Ezra Colton’s effect on the girls. Seeing more than was there about the potential for heartache that an association with Ezra Colton would bring her girls. He was only in town for another three weeks or so. How attached could they really get in that time?

  But when Neve had started to cry earlier that evening when Theresa had been ready to hang up without giving the six-year-old a chance to tell Ezra about her newly discovered arm bumps, and Claire had corrected her that they were muscles, with a bit of an attitude, after looking sad that she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Ezra, either, Theresa knew an Ezra conversation had to happen.

  The only way she could allow any further interaction with the man at all—including Saturday’s scheduled barbecue and horseback riding—was if the twins understood, clearly, that they were not making a new friend for life.

  “Remember when we went on vacation right before Daddy got sick?” she asked them as, snuggled in their double bed in the room they shared, they both lay, heads on their pillows, looking up at her.

  “Yeah, we went to Disney World, and I peed my pants,” Neve said, giggling. They’d had to wait in line for a couple of hours, and though Theresa and Mark had continually questioned the girls regarding their bathroom needs, they’d both shaken their heads every time they were asked. That was, until right before they boarded the boat that would take them on a ride through a tunnel into a world of fantasy, song and color. Neve said she had to go. But when told that they’d have to get out of line, she’d insisted she could hold it.

  And, of course, the excitement of seeing the magnificent, larger-than-life moving figures, and hearing the music, the boat ride, had been too much for her...

  The memory of the girls enjoying the ride, even with the peeing, was sweet. But not where she could hang out at that moment.

  “You remember the princess you had lunch with?”

  “She was so pretty!” Neve said.

  “I liked her hair,” Claire added, nodding, her young eyes bearing a bit of her sister’s sparkle.

  “Remember how she was ours just for a little while and then we had to go away and we’d never see her again?”

  “Yeah, and remember her lips? They were so red, even when she drinked,” Neve continued.

  Okay, this probably wasn’t the best analogy.

  “Our time with the princess is like our time with Mr. Colton,” she pressed on.

  “Mr. Giant’s not a princess!” Neve giggled.

  “Shhh, Neve, you should call him Mr. Colton ’less you make a mistake and say that in front of him, right, Mom?” Claire, her hair still in braids and brown eyes big, was looking at Theresa for support.

  “Right, but it’s not going to matter what we call him for long, because he can’t be our friend forever. He’s just like the princess having lunch with us, and then he will be gone.”

  “You said he was the one who made the front part of the house so pretty, Mom,” Claire replied. “And he’s taking us horseback riding. That’s way more than lunch with the princess was.”

  “Yeah, horseback riding,” Neve repeated, nodding. Her loose, long dark strands lay like a halo around her on the pillow, and Theresa had to hold back tears.

  God, she loved them so much.

  “You’re right,” she acknowledged, refusing to give up. “It’s more than just eating one lunch with someone, but the going-away-forever part is exactly the same as what happened with the princess. Mr. Colton is only in Blue Larkspur for a vacation, like the time we were in Disney World, and then he has a home and a job that he will go back to.”

  She didn’t actually know about the home part. Isa had said Ezra traveled all the time. From one assignment to the next. She’d never mentioned Ezra having a home base. But surely he at least had permanent barracks someplace where he kept whatever personal stuff he had. Or an apartment.

  For all she knew, he could have a girlfriend tucked away there, too.

  “He’s going away like Daddy did?” Neve asked, frowning.

  Life shouldn’t be so complicated—not at six.

  “Sort of,” she told them. “He will still be living, like the princess is, but he’ll be too far away for us to likely ever see him.”

  “Why?” Neve asked.

  “Because his job is far away, and he’s very good at it.”

  “People have to work their jobs to earn money,” Claire announced to the room in general.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why can’t his job be here?” Neve asked then, no hint of levity in her tone this time.

  “Because he works for our country, Neve, and has to go where the president sends him. He keeps the whole United States safe, like our policemen here keep us safe.” She was winging it, and not doing a very good job. Had no idea if the girls would get the concept of a much bigger world, of which Blue Larkspur was a part.

  Not sure she wanted them to, at this age.

  “Is the president nice to him?” Claire wanted to know.

  “Very,” she said, but then had to be clearer because she and Mark had determined, when he’d gotten sick, that they’d always be honest with their girls. “The president doesn’t actually know Mr. Colton to talk to him, but he sends the thousands of people who do jobs like Mr. Colton all over the world.”

  Neve yawned, and Theresa took that as her cue to kiss the girls’ cheeks one more time, tell them she loved them, wish them sweet dreams and head for the door.

  “Mom?”

  Claire’s voice called her back.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we talk to Mr. Colton the whole time he’s here on vacation?”

  “We’ll see. Now, go to sleep. We have to be up early in the morning.” Disappointed in her total cop-out response, she flipped the switch in the hall, plunging herself into near darkness, heading toward her room.

  A flash of light caught her eye through the door of the playroom, from the street outside the window. Heart pounding, she moved along the wall to get a better look, and she relaxed when she noticed the police car passing through the neighborhood.

  If she wasn’t careful, she was going to be jumping at her own shadow like some kind of helpless woman.

  And helpless she was not.

  She couldn’t afford to be.

  On her way to a full-out pull-on-your-big-girl-panties talk, her mental tirade was interrupted by the sound of a text coming through on her phone. She bet it was from Eric and Jennifer; she hadn’t thanked them for the box of the twins’ favorite cookies that had been waiting for them when they got home. Sent via a respected and well-known shipping courier, not delivered in person.

  Jennifer trying to be a grandma without disrespecting Theresa’s wishes.

  The text was from Ezra, wanting to know if she’d be up in an hour or so. He was with his brothers but would like to speak with her that night if he could.

  No way she’d be going to sleep after that—not that she’d intended to go to bed anytime soon, at any rate. She’d brought work home with her—accounts to go over—and was too het up to sleep.

  She texted back a simple Yes and then pretended that she wasn’t feeling a new burst of energy coursing through her as she watched the clock, waiting for the hour to pass.

  He probably just had a question about the house, the paint job he’d be working on again the following day. Maybe he’d found some dry rot and she’d have a bigger problem on her hands than getting through a couple of weeks without throwing herself at a visiting soldier.

  Maybe he had another function he wanted her to attend. With just her. Like a date.

  Her stomach flipped at the thought. And then flopped.

  She prepared herself.

  If Ezra asked her out again, she had no choice but to tell him no.

  Chapter 6

  “I’m sorry to be calling so late,” Ezra said as soon as Theresa picked up the phone. Sitting in his car in the parking lot of The Corner Pocket, he’d dialed her as soon as he’d seen the taillights of both of his brothers’ cars turn out of sight. “Oliver’s leaving tomorrow to head back to Malaysia...” he started in, then stopped, Oliver’s words ringing in his mind. What happens to them when you leave in a few weeks?

  A question followed by his own... Even if he wasn’t leaving for good, or she was willing to be hooked up with a career soldier, he worked a dangerous job. How could he ever ask a woman who’d already buried one love prematurely, or those precious little ones who’d suffered far too much in their young lives, to chance their hearts with a man who faced the possibility of death as a regular part of his job?

  His personal business was no concern of hers...

  “No, no, it’s fine.” Theresa’s tone sounded stilted—because it was coming over the car’s audio system? Or because she wasn’t “fine” with him calling so late?

  Which brought him back to business.

  “I heard from Chief Lawson,” he jumped right in. “He didn’t find any immediate cause for worry. There are no police reports on the Fitzgeralds, period, anywhere in the state. Not even a speeding ticket for either one of them. If they own a bunker, that’s not something that would show up, but a surprising number of government officials have them, too. He found nothing at all that could lead to any sign of criminal behavior. But he didn’t like what I told him you’d said, and so, just to be safe, he’s putting extra patrol around your home, the day camp and the nursing home.”

  It was overkill, and he knew it. He also knew that he was probably getting special treatment because he was Isa’s son. He didn’t care why. He’d use whatever influence he had if it meant keeping a widow and her two daughters safe. Any widow.

  “I had a package at the house today.”

  He started his Jeep and put it in Reverse with one hand, ready to back up and get to her house. “You didn’t open it yet, did you? Why didn’t you call sooner? That’s the kind of thing that warrants...” He’d made it out of the parking spot, and with the Jeep in Drive, foot on the gas, he shot forward.

  “I opened it,” she interrupted. “It was just Jennifer’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Mark used to talk about them. And every time they saw the girls, both with me and that one time alone, she sent some home.”

  He still didn’t like it. He turned toward her part of town—the opposite direction of home.

  “Have they already consumed some?” Maybe he spent too much time living on guard, ready to go up against the worst of the worst...

  “No.”

  “I’d like to pick them up, if you don’t mind. Take them to have them analyzed. Just to be sure. We can do it on the down-low. No one needs to know...”

  “I can leave them for you in the morning,” she said. “I don’t want them here, anyway.”

  Right. The morning. It wasn’t like forensics would be called in that night, or even that the job would be top priority, if he collected them that night. They’d sit until early the next day, no matter what.

  Slowing, he turned his vehicle toward his mother’s house. “I’ll get them to the chief first thing,” he assured her.

  “I don’t know how to thank you...”

  “For what? Making a few-minute phone call and taking a ten-minute drive out of my way to deliver a box?” She might make more of it. He knew better. He couldn’t have either of them making more of his interest than was there. “Look, for what it’s worth...the one thing my siblings and I have in common, other than our name and growing up in the same household, is a need to make up for what our father did to people in this county and beyond. Before my dad got greedy, to keep his huge family with all of the creature comforts and monetary security he’d wanted to provide, he was a good guy. I was in the second batch of births and remember him back then. He ruined his own legacy, but we’re determined to right as many wrongs as we can. To help where he hurt. We started The Truth Foundation ten years ago, to exonerate everyone he wrongfully imprisoned and to help others in similar straits. We’re the new Colton legacy...”

  What the hell? Him, part of the legacy? Where had that come from him? Ezra had skipped town at eighteen by joining the army and had never looked back. Oliver and Dom...pretty much the same.

  “The painting...and the riding... I’m not one who takes charity,” she said, her voice soft. “We’re doing nothing in return.”

  Slowing, he took a detour down by the river. Parked and looked out over the moonlit water. “Aunt Alice is my great-aunt, but I was closer to her than most of my other relatives. She was on Mom’s side, not a Colton, and she was where I went to escape being a Colton. You’re doing things for me in return every single day that you’re at work, making sure that my aunt has loving care, offered with patience and respect, at a time when she can’t possibly look out for or speak up for herself. If anyone’s in debt, it’s me, not you.”

  All true. And maybe too personal, which he sought quickly to correct. “I wasn’t kidding about the painting being something I enjoy, which also gets me out of sitting at my mom’s, the unwilling recipient of nosy drop-in visits all day long. Most people have to pay for their vacation entertainment.”

  And if painting as entertainment made him a dull guy, all the better.