Colton Baby Conspiracy. Marie Ferrarella

deeply imbedded work ethic trumped her survival instinct, and Marlowe looked down at her phone screen, bracing herself.

      The text was from her administrative assistant, Karen. Marlowe didn’t even bother reading it. Karen was not the type to bother her unless it involved something important.

      Taking a deep breath, Marlowe pressed the number that directly connected her to Karen. The second her assistant picked up, she told the woman, “I’m kind of busy right now, Karen. Can this wait?”

      “I don’t think he wants to wait, Ms. Colton,” the assistant whispered nervously into her phone.

      “He?” Marlowe questioned. But even as she asked, her sixth sense, ever alert for the next pending disaster, caused her stomach to suddenly plummet to her knees.

      Still, she told herself that she could be wrong, which was why she asked, “Just what ‘he’ are you referring to, Karen?”

      The next second, rather than hearing Karen’s voice giving her an answer, Marlowe saw her door being slammed open. Bowie Robertson came barging into her office, loaded for bear. He had no sooner entered than the door banged shut behind him, the sound reverberating throughout the office and echoing menacingly in her head.

      “Me, Marlowe. Your assistant is referring to me,” Bowie declared angrily.

      A beat behind, Karen appeared directly behind the man who was currently behaving like a raging bull. Her normally efficient assistant looked extremely fearful and was all but quaking in her shoes.

      “Do you want me to call Security, Ms. Colton?” she asked, her eyes furtively glancing in Bowie’s direction, then looking away again.

      Yes, I want you to call Security, Marlowe silently answered her assistant. But saying that out loud would make Bowie think that she was afraid of him, and she would rather die than have him believe that. She wasn’t afraid of anyone, she thought fiercely.

      So instead Marlowe tossed back her head, sending her blond hair flying over her shoulder. Her brown eyes, shooting daggers, met Bowie’s green gaze dead-on.

      “No, not yet, Karen,” she told her assistant. “You can go. But stay close to your phone,” she cautioned the young woman.

      Looking somewhat uneasy, Karen never took her eyes off the back of the intruder’s dark head as she slipped out Marlowe’s office. She eased the door closed behind her.

      The second her assistant had left, Marlowe turned her attention back to the man she regarded as a detestable, unwanted invader. She was now all but shooting bullets at him.

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing, barging into my office like this? Who the hell do you think you are?” Marlowe demanded hotly of the man she held responsible for the personal minidrama she was going through.

      Bowie clearly was in absolutely no mood to back away, no matter how much she yelled. “I’m a man who’s done hiding!” he shouted right back at her.

      Marlowe stared at him. That made absolutely no sense to her. Bowie was just tossing about meaningless words. Why would he be in hiding?

      “Hiding?” she repeated. “Hiding from what?” Marlowe demanded, both confused and enraged.

      Bowie’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t play dumb with me, Marlowe. It doesn’t suit you,” he said bitingly. Then, because she continued to look like she didn’t understand what he was saying, he snapped, “Hiding from your goons.” Like she didn’t know that, he thought.

      “Goons?” she repeated, still just as lost as she had been a moment ago. “What goons? Did you fall on your head, Robertson? What are you talking about?” she asked, growing angrier by the second.

      So she was going to play it dumb, was she? Okay, he’d spell it out for her, even though he was certain that she wasn’t ignorant of the reason that he had come looking for her.

      “The goons that tried to run me over and who shot at me—twice,” he emphasized. “The second time they went target shooting, they killed my bodyguard and, incidentally, just narrowly missed me. Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

      This had to be an act, Marlowe thought. Nothing more than an attempt to throw up a smoke screen for some unknown reason. The man was crazy.

      Furious, she shouted at him, “You are totally delusional!”

      “Yeah, well, there’s a body lying on a slab at the morgue who begs to differ with you,” Bowie told her in disgust. “Why don’t you have one of your minions call up the medical examiner at the morgue and ask if he just did an autopsy on a Miles Patterson?” he suggested. “I bet the answer’s going to be yes.”

      He looked absolutely serious, Marlowe realized, beginning to feel uncertain. But how in heaven’s name could he be? She hadn’t sent anyone to shoot at him or threaten him in any way.

      Marlowe glared at the impertinent man. If anyone was going to do something to this raving lunatic, it would be her, she promised herself.

      And she’d do it with her fists, Marlowe thought.

      “You are insane,” she accused.

      “No,” he contradicted, “I was insane to ever allow what happened between us to go as far as it did. But what’s done is done,” he snapped. “It’s in the past, and I’ll be regretting it for the rest of my natural life.

      “But I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to worry. I don’t know what kind of people you’re used to dealing with, but I’m not about to take something that was told to me in confidence and spill it to anyone willing to listen. You said it was a secret when you told me, and unlike you people,” he said, encompassing her entire family, “when I make a promise, I keep it. So call off your hired guns, Marlowe, and just let me go on with my life in peace.”

      She looked at him as if he were babbling in some foreign language she couldn’t begin to identify.

      “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, growing steadily angrier and more frustrated with every second that went by.

      Bowie stared at her, incredulous. How far did she intend to carry this charade?

      “So what?” he asked. “You’re telling me that you’re going to continue playing dumb?”

      “I am telling you that I don’t have the faintest idea what you are carrying on about,” Marlowe informed him, exasperated. She was not buying into this act of his, and she was insulted that Bowie would even think that she would.

      His eyes pinned her where she sat. “You mean to tell me that you don’t know that someone’s been trying to kill me ever since I left your hotel room at the Dales Inn six weeks ago?” Bowie questioned angrily.

      Marlowe looked at him, stunned and momentarily speechless that Bowie could actually believe she was some sort of black widow, femme fatale capable of “mating” and then killing the man she’d just had sex with.

      That was totally bizarre.

      Of all the images she’d ever had of herself, that wasn’t one she’d even remotely ever entertained. She’d never thought herself capable of doing something like that. She knew she wasn’t glamorous enough to pull it off.

      Nor would she want to. Behavior like that was vapid and empty, and completely devoid of any sort of moral scruples. None of that would ever come even close to describing her.

      Pulling herself together, Marlowe found her tongue. “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about. None,” she emphasized. “I don’t even remember what this ‘secret’ was that I was supposed to have told you.”

      The second the words were out of her mouth, Marlowe’s eyes grew large as it occurred to her that she had another problem on top of the one she was already aware of. Oh God, what was