Coltons ultimate test, p.7
Colton's Ultimate Test, page 7
Gavin’s grin turned sheepish. “Well, since you asked...”
Morgan cuffed his shoulder. “I knew it.”
“I’ve got a draft of an epilogue to the latest podcast series on the wild mustangs that I wanted to run by someone for a set of fresh eyes.”
“Why not ask Jacqui? Wouldn’t her experience with the Colorado Bureau of Land Management make her a better resource for something like this?”
“Well, she’s helping me with the podcast in other ways.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and scrunched his face in a way Morgan had seen many times through the years that said he knew he was expecting a no. “What I need is a layman, someone who doesn’t know a lot about the topic, to be sure we’re explaining things well and have smooth transitions.”
“Hmm. Ordinarily I’d have to turn you down, much as I love to help my sibs when I can. Caleb and I have been slammed lately, and this business with Spence on top of the holidays and our normal office backlog...”
“Oh.”
“But—”
Gavin’s face brightened with anticipation. “Yes?”
“As luck would have it, I was just headed home. I’m too distracted thinking about a meeting tonight to get anything productive done here. So...follow me to my house and you can run it by me while I’m on the treadmill.”
“Thanks, Mor. I knew you were my favorite for a reason!”
She snorted. “Yeah, until you want to go horseback riding at the ranch and suddenly Aubrey will be your favorite.”
He pressed a hand over his heart. “You wound me.”
Morgan tugged on her knit hat and started out. “See you tomorrow, Rebekah. Come on, brat. If you’re good, I’ll make you a cup of your favorite cocoa.”
Having Gavin with her, getting a peek at his latest journalistic project, proved a welcome distraction from her upcoming date. At five thirty, when Gavin headed home with her feedback and a to-go cup of cocoa, she turned her attention to prepping for her dinner with Roman.
“Not a date,” she repeated to herself every time her stomach bunched in anxious anticipation. “Just dinner. Then a business meeting with an informant.”
At 6:58 p.m., when Roman’s Corvette pulled up in front of her house, she took a slow breath, let it out even more slowly and pressed her thumbs together in the technique she’d learned early in her career to stem pretrial jitters.
She counted to ten before answering her doorbell. You can’t look too eager or let him know you’ve been ready and watching for him for thirty minutes.
“So punctual. I like—” she quipped as she opened the door, then lost the rest of her jibe as she saw her date’s attire.
Roman wore an impeccable dark gray suit that fit him as if tailored for his broad shoulders and slim hips. His light blue dress shirt was wrinkle-free, and the perfectly coordinated silk tie sported a neat Windsor knot, more symmetrical than any she’d ever seen Caleb manage. His black dress shoes were polished, the scent of his aftershave subtle yet deliciously enticing. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like an attorney she might go up against in court. Or one of the accountants she used to date, except...better. So much better. Because while his suit hid his tattoos, he still wore a neat beard, still had a dark, dangerous intensity in his eyes, still twitched his full lips in a devilish grin that taunted and beguiled her.
“You like...what?” he prompted, when all she did for a stumbling heartbeat was gape like a dork at his transformation.
“I, uh... P-promptness.”
He tugged at his sleeve, straightening it. “I consider it rude to keep someone waiting if you have a set meeting time.”
She bobbed a stiff nod. “Um, r-right.”
He waved a hand toward her dress. “You look incredible, by the way.”
She looked down at the light blue, form-hugging sheath dress with an asymmetrical neckline and flesh-colored spike heels she’d dug from the back of her closet. “Oh, thanks.”
“I thought I told you office attire would suffice. Surely this isn’t what you wear for your clients.”
She fumbled with the diamond and pearl pendant she’d added at the last minute. “No. But I don’t get too many opportunities to wear this dress, so I thought, why not?” She paused and frowned. “Why? Is it too much? Too dressy?”
He waved off her concern. “It’s perfect. And just as I suspected—” he stepped closer and carefully tucked a wisp of her hair behind her ear “—your hair should always be worn down and loose around your face. It’s stunning.”
A bit startled by his compliment, she chuckled awkwardly and, with a flick of her hand through her hair, said, “What, this old thing? I’ve had it for years.” Her mouth dried a bit as she sent another gaze over his sharply creased suit pants and snug jacket. “You, sir, have surprised me.”
“Thought I’d be in my good Rolling Stones T-shirt, huh?”
“I don’t mean that. I just—”
“I used to work on Wall Street. Remember? Or didn’t your digital snooping go back farther than my arrest and conviction? I used to dress like this every weekday for work and on some weekends, if I was wining and dining someone I wanted to impress.”
“Well, bravo, sir. You cut quite the dashing figure.”
His mouth twisted wryly. “So I clean up well. Is that what you’re saying?”
She took her coat from the tree behind the door. “It’s not. But you do.”
He reached for the wrap and helped her put it on. As she locked her front door, she asked, “Where are we going? I’m famished.”
That was a lie. In truth, she’d be surprised if she could eat anything at all.
He named a swanky restaurant in a neighboring town she’d heard of but never tried. She didn’t want to be impressed, but she was. When they arrived at the high-end establishment and were seated in a candle-lit corner booth, her nerves edged even higher. This was far cozier and more intimate than a mere business dinner. She opened the menu, saw the price of the meals and did a double take. “Roman, what if we split the—”
“If you even hint to the waiter that we are splitting the check, I will leave you standing on the side of the road and not even feel bad about it,” he said without looking up from his menu. “I knew what I was doing bringing you here. I am buying you a nice dinner, and that is the end of the discussion.”
“Then this is a date,” she countered accusingly, but without real heat.
“Did I ever say otherwise?” He snapped his menu closed with a flourish and flashed a cocky smile. “I recommend the redfish with dill sauce and the prime rib. I’ve had both in the past, and they’re excellent. Is red wine all right with you? They serve one of my favorites here, a Beaujolais I’d love for you to try.”
“I—Yes. That sounds...nice.”
He flagged the waiter, and while he ordered the wine and a stuffed mushroom appetizer, she stared at him, uncertain what to make of her dinner companion. He certainly didn’t jibe with the image she’d created of Roman DiMera. Was he trying to impress her? Mocking her for her earlier presumptions about him? The incongruity left her off balance. She liked having things fall in neat categories. Same-shaped pegs to fit in perfectly sized holes. Order. Predictability. Being caught off guard in court was tantamount to disaster. Planning and predictable routines were how she’d managed raising her siblings while finishing college and then law school.
This Roman DiMera didn’t match her earlier conceptions, and it caused an uneasy quaking at her core. “Tell me more about yourself,” she said, hoping to remedy the uneasiness with a better understanding of the man across from her. “Tell me something a Google search wouldn’t. Something about who you really are.”
Roman leaned back in the booth and flipped up a hand. “I’m an open book. What you see is what you get.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think so. I’d never have pegged the man who met with me in his bar yesterday or went with me to a north-side construction site to be a rare wine connoisseur or have a custom-fitted suit in his closet.”
His dark eyebrow arched. “Maybe that’s because you weren’t looking at the whole picture. Just the slim piece you’ve seen firsthand. I’ve never hidden the fact that I worked in finance, any more than I’ve hidden my stint in prison, my childhood in a rough Philly neighborhood or my college years at Penn State.”
She lifted her glass of ice water. “You’re right. I concede the point. But my question remains. Fill in some gaps for me. Philly, for example. You say your neighborhood was rough. How so?”
“Well, we didn’t have a picket fence or a snotty HOA to contend with. No grassy-lawn subdivision for the DiMeras.”
The waiter brought the wine for them to sample, and when they both nodded their approval, he filled their glasses and discreetly disappeared.
“It was just me, my younger sister and my mom,” Roman continued. “Dad left when I was five, and Mom worked two jobs to put food on the table and make rent. That was the case for most of the kids I knew, too. Absent or overworked parents. Not a lot of structure or guidance at home. Living paycheck to paycheck. Violence, drugs and crime lived all around us, and I brushed up against my share of it. Nothing too bad, but I did live hard and push the limits, like my friends did. I got away with too much, in fact. I think that was part of my downfall later, in my twenties.”
“Oh? How so?”
“I got cocky. I thought I was... I don’t know, smarter than the police, above the law, untouchable somehow. I’d gotten away with so many things as a kid—vandalism, trying pot, truancy, that sort of thing—that I was overconfident. I took chances that deep down, in my truest self, I knew were wrong. I knew were risky. I knew were a mistake. But I didn’t listen to my conscience. I rolled the dice with a stock purchase I knew better than to make. I was greedy and full of hubris, and I got caught.”
“Insider trading,” she said quietly, remembering what she’d read about his conviction.
“Yep.” He met her eyes evenly as he took a sip of his wine, and his matter-of-factness needled her.
“So you knew it was wrong, but did it anyway? Why?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, poor judgment, greed...and a coworker pressuring me to join him in the venture that backfired on us.”
Morgan had dealt with enough people accused of crimes, both justly and unjustly, that she could read facial expressions, body language, tone of voice quite well. She could usually tell when someone was lying, hear guilt in a denial, knew when someone was withholding critical information related to a case. So it bothered her that, in Roman, she sensed no remorse.
“Now,” he said, resting his forearms on the table as he leaned toward her, “tell me something about Morgan Colton that my Google search of you didn’t.”
She choked on the sip of wine she’d just taken. “You googled me?”
He grinned unrepentantly. “Did you really think I wouldn’t after you told me you’d researched my past?”
“But...that’s so...” She fumbled for the right word, aghast at how violated she felt, even though she understood why he’d done it.
“Yeah,” he said, giving her an expression of mock offense. “I know! Right?” His eyebrow quirked up, making his point, and she felt the sting of shame in her cheeks.
“Are you ever going to let me live that down?” she asked.
He made a finger gesture like he was dropping something. “Done. Forgotten.”
“Thank you.”
“But I still want to know you better. Obviously you come from a large family. What was that like, growing up?”
She chuckled. “Chaos.” The appetizer arrived, and once they’d placed their dinner orders, Morgan added, “Our father died when I was nineteen. But you probably knew that from Google, huh?”
He shook his head as he chewed a mushroom. “No, since I didn’t really google you.”
For the second—third?—time that evening, he’d surprised her. Something shifted inside as she tried to mentally keep up with the serpentine path the evening was taking. His unpredictability was maddening and flew in the face of her need for control and composure.
“Chaos, huh?” He pinned an incisive look on her. “You must have hated that.”
Her pulse jumped again. Having him so nearly echo her thoughts, as if she were transparent to him, rattled her further. She cleared her throat. “Sometimes. But the chaos was outweighed by the love and laughter. Despite sharing a bathroom, the TV remote, the best seat in the living room and dealing with constant noise and activity, having eleven siblings has been a blessing. I wouldn’t change anything about it.”
He smiled. “I only had to share a bathroom with one sister. It didn’t bother me much, but she hated it.” His expression grew more somber. “How did your father die? If I may ask.”
“Car accident on an icy road.” She exhaled as the memories of that night washed over her. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Our mother was so distraught. I knew right away I was going to have to do more, make sacrifices and play a bigger role in raising the youngest kids. Alexa and Naomi were only six. Gavin was eight. I had started college already at UCLA, but I transferred to CU Boulder and commuted to class. I took fewer hours each semester than most students and took longer to earn my degree, but Caleb and I wanted to be there for our mother, for the kids.”
“That...doesn’t surprise me about you.” He swirled the wine in his glass as he studied her speculatively. “Everything I’ve seen of you points to someone who’s hyperresponsible, concerned for her family and friends, and willing to go the extra mile to take care of those around her.”
“You get that from our—what? Two, three meetings?”
He nodded. “In January, even when you were drunk as a skunk yourself, you didn’t leave the bar until you saw that all of your friends had a safe ride. And I heard you warning one of your friends about the risks of a one-night stand with a stranger.”
“Oh...yeah. Stacy,” she said remembering. She toyed with the stem of her wineglass. “Do you know that Stacy and Dan, the guy she took home that night, are still seeing each other and happy as clams?”
Roman chuffed a laugh. “No kidding?”
“No kidding.” As happy as she was for her friend, Morgan felt a twinge of jealousy. She, it seemed was the only one Cupid’s arrows seemed to have missed. She sighed. Maybe she should get a dog. No, she stayed too busy to keep up with the needs of a dog. A cat, then. Didn’t old spinster aunts always have a cat?
“You don’t look happy about it. You don’t like Dan?” Roman asked.
“Oh.” She pushed the smile back on her face. “I am. I do. I was just...” She waved him off. “Off down a depressing rabbit hole. But I’m back.” She sat taller, determined not to dwell on anything negative tonight. She had a handsome date, good food and a possible lead on Spence. The sooner she and the family wrapped up that loose end, the sooner she could relax into the cheer of the holidays.
“Do you have plans for Christmas?” he asked, again spookily echoing her thoughts.
“Um, dinner and gift opening with the family. If it snows—I know, a gosh-awful thing to even mention after that blizzard earlier this month—we might pull out the old sleigh someone found in an auction a few years back. Aubrey, maybe? Anyway, there will be more children around the tree this year, and so I can see the family dusting off old Colton traditions. Cookie baking. Hot cocoa. Snowball fights and singing carols...which can turn into singing some very un-Christmassy tunes as the grown-ups get deeper into their cups, as it were.”
“Sounds like a good time.” His mouth quirked up but appeared edged with melancholy.
A pang of something—sympathy? Curiosity? Compassion?—tugged in her chest. “What are your plans?” she asked as her head whispered, Don’t you dare invite him to join your family!
“Working. I’ll be closed on Christmas Day so the crew can have the day off, but I’ll spend the time getting files ready for tax season or doing a deep clean of the grill or something equally useful but uncelebratory.”
A harder tug. Don’t do it!
She curled her hand in a fist on the tabletop. “Why would you do that? What about your mom and sister?”
“My sister lives in London now. She manages an art gallery there. My mom will be in London with her, because that’s where the grandson is.” He emphasized the words with a comically impassioned expression, relaying the universal significance of grandchildren to which his mother clearly ascribed.
Morgan brightened. “You’re an uncle!”
This new revelation, piled on the other surprises of the evening, left her head reeling.
“I am.” Warmth sparked in his eyes. “I can bring out the pictures if you like, but it feels so...cliché.”
“We’ll save that for the next date,” she said with a laugh, and when his eyebrows lifted, she realized what she’d said and backpedaled. “Not that this is a date or...that there will be another...”
He wrapped his fingers around her clenched hand and squeezed, a low, throaty chuckle rolling from him. “Geez, Colton, don’t hurt yourself backing up there.”
Realizing how she’d balled her hand, she relaxed her fingers and flattened her palm on the table. “Sorry. I’m still a little nervous, and all the...unexpected things I’m learning about you have my head spinning.”
“Not the one-dimensional ex-con you imagined?”
Was that defensiveness she heard in his tone? Or...hurt?
Morgan sat back in her chair and studied Roman while she did a mental accounting of her own prejudice and preconceptions. She had been rough on him based on nothing more than her unwarranted biases.
Chastened, she focused on what was beneath the surface. The fine creases beside his eyes that told of hard work and hard times. The stubborn set of his mouth and square jaw hinted he had more unsavory secrets, while the intensity of his dark gaze hinted at a depth of emotion and character that trumped any past misdeeds.
