The Braddock Boys: Colton

“But we need to fix this today.” Panic bolted through her. “Now.”

Minerva shrugged. “We’re an itty bitty publication, honey, with a piss poor circulation. Sure, we deliver to the surrounding towns, but their populations are small. We can’t afford to put out more than one issue every Sunday.”

Which meant the paper would be out there for the world to see for five more days. Her stomach dropped and her eyes burned.

She blinked frantically because no way was she going to start bawling in front of Skull Creek’s biggest gossip. Talk about the kiss of death.

“In the meantime,” the woman went on, “I wouldn’t worry. Hardly anybody is reading print anymore what with that damned internet. Why, Henry Jenkins orders five copies just to line his parakeet cages. And if somebody does actually read it, I’m sure they’ll realize we made a mistake.” Minerva shook her head. “To think you placed an ad like that?” The woman shook her head. “Why, it’s plum crazy.”

“It’s not that crazy,” Shelly blurted before she could stop herself. “I mean, somebody obviously believed it, otherwise I wouldn’t have these.” She held up the handcuffs as if to say aha!

Minerva waved a hand. “There are always a few crazies in the bunch. Testimony to the fact that when men get horny enough, they start to lose brain function. Once those desperate souls open their eyes and realize who they’re dealing with, they’ll run the other way, honey. Guaranteed.”

Gee, thanks.

Shelly ignored the unexpected wiggle of regret and focused on the all-important fact that Minerva was right. No man in his right mind would believe the ad was for real. For the few who did, she would simply set them straight.

News of that would spread well before the newspaper could print a retraction.

A day or two and it would all be over.

She knew that. She just wished it didn’t bother her so much.

2

HE WAS WATCHING her again.

Not her, in particular, of course. It was the sheriff’s newly arrived prisoner that really got his blood pumping. He’d been hanging around the office for the past three nights now. Watching. Waiting. The female deputy was just an added bonus.

He eyed the beige SUV as it pulled up to the curb out front. The door opened and the driver slid out from behind the wheel. The now familiar brunette walked around the nose of a brown and white Ford Explorer and strode up the steps of the two-story brick building.

The sweet, succulent scent of ripe cherries drifted through the open window of his black Ford F250 pick-up parked across the street. His nostrils flared, his gut clenched and his stomach hollowed out. A wave of awareness rolled through him and he shifted on the leather seat.

It was a crazy-ass reaction considering she barely looked female with her hair stuffed up under a stiff cowboy hat and her body hidden beneath the drab beige uniform. Reacting to her was friggin’ certifiable.

If he’d been your average cowboy.

But Colton Braddock had stopped being a run-of-the-mill wrangler the day he’d drawn his last mortal breath. He was a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire who fed off both blood and sex, and he was hungry.

Starved.

He watched her pull open the door. Her trousers pushed and pulled, outlining her perfect ass for one delicious moment. His gut tightened. A shiver worked its way up his spine. The uniform, the hard facade, the back-the-hell-up attitude were all just a front for what lay beneath—a soft, curvaceous, passionate woman. Call it instinct. A sixth sense. A vampire’s prerogative. Whatever. He knew and damned if it didn’t work him into a frenzy.

Heat zig-zagged through his body and his heartbeat kicked up a notch. He drew a deep breath. Not that it helped, but old habits died hard, even after an entire century.

Easy.

The command echoed through his head and he drew another breath. And another. While the oxygen didn’t sustain him the way it once had, the repetitive motion helped draw his focus away from the demanding need. Watching her was one thing. Touching? Not a chance in hell.

He had plenty of bagged blood stashed back in his suitcase at the motel. More than enough to see him through the next few days while he was stuck in Skull Creek, Texas. While it didn’t taste half as good as the fresh stuff, he could make do. He would make do. The last thing he needed—the very last thing—was to get sidetracked by a woman. Even one that smelled better than a prize-winning cherry pie fresh from the oven.

Not no, but hell no.

He’d waited too long for this moment.

For revenge.

The door rocked shut behind her and he forced his attention to the plain brick building.

The jail was a throwback to the olden days with its steel bars on the windows and doors. Appearances aside, he wasn’t naive enough to think that the place hadn’t been modernized over the years. The sheriff himself was a good friend of Colton’s younger brother. The man was also a werewolf. While weres were few and far between and usually at odds with most vampires, Matt Keller was a good man. Trustworthy. He often joined forces with the handful of vampires in town when needed, just as he’d done now.

Once he’d heard the reason for Colton’s visit, he’d been more than happy to brief him on the security features that had been installed over the past decade. An automated lock system. Full camera set-up. Silent alarm. While the local jail wasn’t a long-term facility, it was more than adequate to house the average prisoner.

Career criminal Jimmy Holbrook was a completely different story.

The man had been convicted of armed robbery this time and was now sitting inside a cell awaiting transfer to a maximum security prison in El Paso to serve out his sentence.

But it wasn’t his crime that had him featured in every newspaper this side of the Rio Grande and a shitload of YouTube videos. It was the fact that he had a “knack” for escaping. At least that’s what the media called it.

Colton called it an accomplice.

The sun had set a half hour ago. The overhead spotlights had kicked on, bathing the steps in a soft yellow glow. The place seemed calm. Peaceful. Quiet.

Too quiet for a vampire hell-bent on rescuing her only kin.

While his three brothers felt certain Rose Braddock would come to help her one and only descendant, just as she had time and time again since his first arrest at the age of fifteen, Colton wasn’t so sure. She’d turned her back on family once before.

He could still see the billows of black smoke on the horizon and smell the putrid stench of ashes and burned cattle flesh. It had been one hell of a homecoming after four years raiding for the Confederacy. He and his brothers had given Quantrill and his boys a run for their money way back when, but the effort had been wasted. The South had lost and the Braddock boys had headed home to the Circle B to pick up where they’d left off.

He’d ridden up ahead of the others to find what was left of his beloved home, the buildings a smoldering pile of charred wood, the livestock either scattered or dead. And the people …

His throat tightened and bitterness worked its way up. A half-dozen ranch hands had died that night, burned beyond recognition. And the foreman. And his mother. His son. His wife.

Or so he’d thought.

But Rose was alive.

Guilty.

While he had no idea if she’d started the fire herself, he knew she’d played a part. Thanks to his younger brother Cody, they all knew the truth now. Rose hadn’t died that night. She’d fled the scene with another man and left them all to perish.

But Colton and his brothers hadn’t burned to death. They’d been saved by a vampire, turned just in the nick of time. Garrett Sawyer had happened on the scene by chance and given them another shot at life.

At revenge.

Ironically, he’d bestowed the same gift on Rose. Unknowingly, of course. The ancient vampire never would have turned her if he’d known that she’d practically murdered her family. When he’d run across her a few miles from the scene, he’d thought her and her partner an innocent couple ravaged by savage Indians.

He’d been wrong.