Colton Baby Conspiracy. Marie Ferrarella

      “You don’t remember telling me anything,” Bowie said in a mocking tone. “You honestly expect me to believe that?”

      “I can’t help what you believe or don’t believe, but that’s the truth,” she insisted angrily.

      “No, you’re lying,” he accused, standing firm. “It’s too much of a coincidence that right after you told me your precious secret, people started aiming their cars at me and shooting at me.” His eyes darkened. “Our families have been rivals practically since the beginning of time, and I should have had my head examined for going against everything that made sense and thinking that I could have misjudged you. I should have kept my distance from a viper like you the way I always have.”

      Marlowe glared at him, furious at what Bowie was insinuating. Furious with herself for ever letting her own guard down and allowing him to get close enough to really complicate her world.

      Furious with herself for ever thinking that he could be capable of being a decent human being...even though he was the father of her child.

      Staring at the ruggedly good-looking man now, Marlowe couldn’t help wondering if he—or maybe someone in his family, if not the entire lot of them—could be behind that awful email that had thrown her own family into such turmoil.

      “Well, you didn’t keep your damn distance, did you?” she all but spat out. “And pretty soon everyone’s going to know that.”

      He stared at her, completely at a loss as to what she was saying to him. The woman certainly spent a lot of time babbling, he thought, irritated.

      “Now what are you talking about?” he demanded. “I don’t speak gibberish.”

      Marlowe glared at him. “Neither do I,” she shot back at this interloper.

      “Then what the hell are you saying?” he asked.

      He wanted it spelled out? All right, she’d spell it out for him. She was through being patient. “I’m saying that our families are going to have to find a way to tolerate one another.”

      “And why, pray tell, would they want to do that?” he asked, really wishing that in the middle of all these hot words that were flying back and forth between them he didn’t find this woman so damn attractive that his toes all but curled.

      Why couldn’t he find her the least little bit repulsive, or ugly or even off-putting? Hell, he’d really settle for off-putting.

      Instead, while shouting at this woman he was convinced was trying to have him killed, all he could think of was the way her mouth had tasted that fateful night. How soft her skin had felt beneath his hands and how much he still wanted to make love with her.

      He had to be out of his mind, Bowie thought. That was the only explanation he could come up with. Maybe she had slipped him something that night, something that was now making him behave like a mindless, lovesick loon.

      At least he was managing to cover that part up, he thought thankfully.

      His question rang in Marlowe’s ears. If she had an iota of sense, she would have just let the subject drop, or answered him with some mindless bit of trivia that said nothing. She could just accuse his family for being underhanded and causing all this havoc in her own family.

      She could say anything but what she knew she’d wind up saying in response to his question.

      “Our families are going to have to figure things out, because in seven and a half months there’s going to be a little human being with both Colton and Robertson blood running through his or her veins,” she said from between gritted teeth.

      Dumbstruck, Bowie stared at Marlowe. When he finally recovered the use of his tongue, he could only inanely echo, “What are you saying?”

      “What I’m saying, Einstein,” she answered sarcastically, “is that our temporary truce that night resulted in a permanent baby. I’m pregnant, you idiot!” she shouted at him.

      She felt angry that she was trapped in this situation. Angry that it had ever happened. And most of all, angry that out of all the men in the world who could have been the father of her child, it had to be this Neanderthal.

      “You’re lying,” Bowie accused numbly. She had to be lying, he told himself. She couldn’t be telling him the truth.

      But the expression on Marlowe’s face gave him very little hope.

      “I really, really wish I was,” she told him, meaning her words from the bottom of her heart.

      Bowie’s stomach twisted in a knot, coming perilously close to making him throw up.

      “You’re pregnant,” he repeated.

      She blew out a frustrated breath. “That’s what I just said.”

      It wasn’t sinking in. He felt like a drowning man fighting like crazy to keep his head above water. “And it’s mine?”

      “Yes, it’s yours, damn it.”

      He didn’t remember forming the words until they finally emerged. “How can you be sure?”

      There was fury in her eyes, and for a moment, he was certain she was going to really blow up. But somehow, she managed to keep herself under control.

      “Count yourself lucky that the handgun my father gave me for my fourteenth birthday is in a lockbox and not in a drawer in my desk because I have a license to use it and if it was the latter, right now I would be sorely tempted to use it on you. In the long run that would be preferable to having you as the father of my baby, but there you have it. You are the father of my unborn child, and that’s a horrible fact we’re both stuck with.”

      Her eyes grew very, very dark as she added, “And to answer your question as to how I know you’re the father of this child, I know because I haven’t had the time or the inclination to sleep with anyone in months, so unless this baby is the result of some sort of spontaneous generation, you, Bowie Robertson, are the father.” Her eyes narrowed as she concluded, “Deal with it!”

       Chapter 4

      Marlowe looked at the silent man sitting directly opposite her.

      Tall, dark and handsome by anyone’s standards, Bowie Robertson’s complexion had suddenly turned very, very pale right before her eyes. If it hadn’t been for the change in his color, she would have thought she was witnessing, up close and personal, one of the finest acting performances of her life. But to her knowledge, no one could turn that pale at will. Which meant that her news had caught Bowie totally by surprise.

      Well, that makes two of us, Robertson, Marlowe thought.

      She almost felt sorry for him, considering what he was probably going through—the key word here being almost, Marlowe thought, because she was the one who was pregnant, not him. “Wow,” Bowie murmured, more to himself than to Marlowe. The thought of having fathered a child left him numb. He had no idea how to deal with it. He had never even thought of himself as a father. Unable to deal with it, he pushed the thought into the background for the time being.

      “I believe that sums it up as good as any word.” She agreed sarcastically, then switched gears as she demanded, “Now what was that secret I told you?”

      Bowie blinked, scrutinizing her more closely. She was being serious, he realized. “You mean you really don’t remember what you told me?”

      Marlowe liked to think of herself as a patient woman, but after all the things that had happened today, she was utterly out of patience and dangerously close to another out-and-out display of pure, unadulterated anger.

      “No, I really don’t know what I told you,” she snapped, enunciating each syllable.