The Colton Ransom. Marie Ferrarella

he’d worked the streets as a police officer, he’d come across a lot of people in his time, but he could honestly say that he had never met anyone who just radiated supreme optimism and babbled incessantly about everything eventually being right in the world. Gabriella Colton did just this. Every bit of her seemed hell-bent on brightening her surroundings. For his part, he’d seen too much of life’s underbelly to dip into that well water the boss’s youngest daughter was drinking. People were either good or bad, and given a choice between the two, people usually went with the latter.

      He also believed that if anything could go wrong, it did. What that meant in this case was that most likely, Avery’s mother was not going to come back for her. Which, in turn, meant that he was going to be stuck with a baby unless he could figure a way out of this situation.

      Right now, he was thinking about giving her up for adoption. She stood a better chance with parents who wanted her and were willing to learn what it took to take care of her. He didn’t have the time or the patience—or the financial fortune—to raise a kid.

      It took Gabby a couple of moments to figure out what the man was saying to her.

      Rather than take offense at his tone, she smiled and said, “Yes, actually my ‘horses’ do come back to the stable,” she said, using his metaphor. “But then,” she continued, deliberately smiling as widely as she could, “I just take them out for another ride.”

      He shook his head. “It figures,” he snorted. The woman was clearly flighty. What did she know about life—or hardship? But then, he supposed there was something almost admirable about her rabid determination to remain so upbeat in the face of everything—including the self-centered, wounded-bear of a father she had. Living in the Colton family was no easy feat.

      “You put the kid to bed in my room?” he asked.

      Faye Frick, the Colton’s head nanny for the past couple of decades, had unearthed an extra crib for Avery and had it brought to his room.

      Faye had a way of looking out for all of them, he recalled fondly, though his expression never changed. He cared about Faye a great deal.

      Years ago, the widow had taken it upon herself to raise him when his own father, a former wrangler at Dead River, had dumped him and taken off for parts unknown. He’d been all of fourteen at the time and determined to live on his own, although the state had other ideas about the way he would spend his next four years. He would have been swallowed up by the system if it hadn’t been for Faye.

      Consequently, he had always had a soft spot in his heart for the older woman, but it still didn’t mellow his rather abrupt way of interacting with all the other people around him.

      “Actually, no, I didn’t put her in your room,” Gabby replied.

      His dark brows narrowed as his eyes bored into her. “Where did you put her to bed?” he asked, even as he told himself it really didn’t matter where the kid was sleeping, as long as she wasn’t here, hollering in his ear.

      Gabby couldn’t help looking rather pleased with herself for having thought of this. “I thought I’d treat your daughter to a nap in Cheyenne’s crib—in her nursery,” she specified, just in case Trevor didn’t make the connection right away.

      The man might be head of security, but she suspected that incidental details like cribs with canopies and specially decked-out nurseries were completely under his radar.

      “You didn’t think the one she has was good enough?” he asked.

      Trevor’s sharply worded question caught her completely by surprise. He was unnerving her again, she realized, and she’d almost stepped back, away from the scowl she saw looming over his brow.

      She had to stop that. Stop avoiding confrontation. She was a Colton and she would be running that center for troubled teens soon enough. They weren’t all going to tiptoe around her just because she was trying to do something decent and charitable for them. They would come on angry and resentful at times—just as this man was doing right now.

      If she didn’t learn how to stand up to him and stand up for herself, then she might as well pack it in right now, Gabby reasoned. She had to learn not to come across as a spineless wimp.

      Her voice quavered at first, but it took on strength as she continued to speak. “I meant no disrespect, Trevor. But Cheyenne’s nursery looks like something a princess would sleep in, and I thought it would be an uplifting change of scenery for Avery to take her nap in that room.”

      “And you really think she’s supposed to notice the difference?” he asked incredulously. “At three months?” Trevor pressed, emphasizing the ludicrousness of her thought process.

      Gabby refused to back down. “Maybe,” she countered, adding, “Subconsciously.”

      “Yeah, right,” he all but jeered.

      And then Trevor stopped abruptly, taking stock of what he was saying. He supposed, in her own way, the Colton woman meant no harm and probably thought she was doing a good deed. From what he knew of her—and had heard—it wasn’t in the youngest of the Colton women to thumb her nose at the difference in their stations in life.

      Handing over her niece, he murmured, “I didn’t mean to go off on you like that. I grew up not having much. There were those who liked to rub my nose in it. I guess that made me kind of thin-skinned when it comes to certain things.”

      Her heart instantly ached for the boy he had once been.

      “Well, I was not trying to rub your nose in anything,” she told him in a voice that all but throbbed with compassion, even as Gabby stated her case assertively.

      “Yeah, I know,” he told her in a low voice that was utterly devoid of any indications of emotion. “And if the kid could notice her surroundings, she’d probably not want to come back to the room she has,” he acknowledged. “Most likely it definitely isn’t anywhere near as fancy as your niece’s.”

      “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Gabby said in a firm voice he couldn’t remember ever hearing come out of her mouth. “There are a lot more important things in life than pretty bedrooms and fancy cribs. They certainly don’t make up for the lack of a parent’s love,” she maintained.

      Gabby was admittedly thinking of her own situation. Her mother had just taken off one day, abandoning her and her sisters without so much as a backward glance while her father, whom she stubbornly loved even though at times the man definitely did not deserve it, had a very hard time showing any of them so much as a thin sliver of affection.

      And while she, Catherine and Amanda didn’t lack for anything material, emotional connection with a parent was a whole different story. There were times when she felt almost starved for a display, no matter how small, of parental approval. It was, she felt, what a lot of kids strove for—and what they grew up missing. It was what made her so eager to help underprivileged kids.

      Belatedly, Gabby read between the lines. “Does this mean you’ve made up your mind to keep her?” she wondered out loud, asking the question with a degree of excitement that unsettled him.

      There she went, off on another tangent, he thought in barely restrained annoyance. Why couldn’t the woman just take things at face value instead of making mountains out of molehills?

      “It doesn’t mean anything at all,” he told her in a flat, distant voice. “I was trying to be polite and apologize. Don’t look for any hidden meanings in that—because there aren’t any. Why are you grinning?” he asked. Was she laughing at him?

      Her grin only grew wider, as if she were harboring a secret and he didn’t have the first clue what it was. “You come on all mean and tough,” she told him, “but deep down inside, there’s this other layer—”

      “—that’s just as mean and just as tough,” he concluded with finality. Placing a wide palm on each armrest, he pushed himself out of his chair and to his feet. “Now, if you’ll