Well my birthday celebration sure was explosive! Itâs not every day that the guest of honor is the target for murder! Now Iâve hired the best there isâP.I. Austin McGrathâto investigate this atrocity. But I never imagined that Austinâs involvement would result in a budding romance with my fragile foster daughter, Rebecca. Sheâs had a real traumatic past and is afraid to let anyone get close. Especially a ladiesâ man like Austin. But heâs not as cavalier as he appears. I see the pain in his eyes. Heâs brooding over somethingâbut what? Maybe between the two of them, these lost souls will find solace in each otherâs arms. And though it wonât be easy, stranger things have happened. Speaking of strange, Meredith sure is acting more bizarre with each Pacific sunset. Iâm beginning to worry that thereâs something wrong with my wifeâand that the future of the entire Colton dynasty could be in jeopardyâ¦.
LINDA TURNER
was thrilled when she was asked to write the second book in THE COLTONS series. âI love these kinds of storiesâthe more complicated the better. And THE COLTONS series was of special interest because of Patsy and Meredith. I, too, have an identical twin sister, and in the not-too-distant past, we traded places, both at work and at school, and no one knew the difference until we identified ourselves. Of course, we never went so far as to trick boyfriends or husbands, and there wasnât a good twin and a bad one, but we still had fun.â She says that Patsy was especially interesting to write because sheâs so close to the edgeâsort of like Cruella DeVille, only worse. Linda loved the scenes with both her and Meredith.
As for her hero and heroine, Austin and Rebecca, whatâs not to love? They both had such tragic pasts. She really enjoyed helping them find happiness. She hopes you enjoy it, too.
Meet the Coltonsâa California dynasty with a legacy of privilege and power.
Austin McGrath: The passionate detective. Beneath his footloose facade, this bachelor would put his life on the line any day to see justice served. But did he have the courage to turn his fantasy of a wife and family into a reality?
Rebecca Powell: The oldest living virgin. Though the Coltons had provided a safe haven for the then-fourteen-year-old runaway, this schoolteacher is still haunted by her nightmarish childhood. Do the patient P.I.âs caresses offer more than just comfortâ¦? Perhaps the promise of a future together?
Meredith âPastyâ Colton: The scheming impostor. Her nerves worn to a frazzle by the police investigation into Joeâs attempted murder, the deranged sibling knows that after ten years itâs time to find the real âMeredithââ¦.
Someone had tried to kill him.
A week after the fact, Joe Colton still couldnât believe it. Heâd been surrounded by friends and family, his champagne glass lifted in a toast in honor of his sixtieth birthday, when a bullet had ripped through the party, shattered his glass and grazed his cheek. Even now he could still feel the heat of it, the shock.
For days, heâd been trying to convince himself and the police that this was all just some terrible accident. He couldnât imagine why anyone would bring a gun to his birthday party, but it must have discharged by accident and heâd just happened to be in the line of fire. It was the only logical explanation. No one had actually meant him any harm.
Thaddeus Law and the two other detectives handling the case, however, werenât quite so sure of that. A friend didnât bring a gun to a partyâit wasnât good etiquette. And when that same gun went off and just missed the guest of honor by a hairsbreadth, there could be no misunderstanding. This was no joke. Someone wanted him dead badly enough to try to kill him in front of three hundred witnesses.
The question wasâ¦who? Who hated him that much?
Joe wasnât stupid enough to think he had no enemies. Like every successful man, he had, no doubt, stepped on a few toes over the years, but heâd never deliberately hurt anyone to get ahead. He wasnât that kind of man. He was fair and hardworking and heâd never taken anything from anyone that didnât belong to him. So who had taken that shot at him?
The police thought it was someone in his family.
Oh, they hadnât come straight out and said as much, but their suspicions were pretty obvious. And he knew the statistics. People werenât usually killed by strangersâit was someone they knew, and often loved and trusted, who did them in.
Maybe that was true in a large percentage of cases, but not in his, dammit! His family was important to himâeveryone knew that! Heâd left the Senate to devote more time to his children and the foster children he and Meredith had welcomed into their home. He worked closely with his brother and foster brother, not to mention the friends heâd made over the years and brought into Colton Enterprises, and he refused to believe any of them wanted him dead.