I wasn’t a jealous person by nature, but I couldn’t ignore the adrenaline spike in my body or the way I felt the heat creep up my chest and onto my neck and cheeks.

“It’s okay,” Rory said calmly as she tried to reach for my hand, which I immediately darted out of her grasp. “We’re all here for you.”

“I don’t believe he’s a two-timing jackass like your ex,” Aspen declared, only for our mom to shout, “Language,” from the opposite side of the room.

“Can I see it, please?”

“It’s okay if you need to take some time. I mean, you just got out of another bad relationship. Maybe you could give Colton a call and he could explain,” Rory said, trying to placate me with her calm demeanor. It was doing the opposite as my fingers bit into my palms and my eye twitched.

“Give me the damn laptop so I can look at the pictures.”

I knew from experience with some of the celebrity events I’d planned that you couldn’t always believe everything in the tabloids, if ever. They’d got the relationship claims regarding Colton and myself correct, but that was because my sleaze of an ex had sold them the images just to hurt me. It did the opposite. Last I’d heard from rumblings of ex-coworkers was that Regent Events had been blacklisted by every celebrity in the vicinity.

“Autumn, maybe you should grab yourself some water and take a few minutes before you-”

“I don’t want any damn water. Give me the freaking laptop!” I shouted, the room immediately growing silent.

Alex and Andrew released their grasps of the computer and I swiped it from the table, carrying it over to the kitchen island.

As I read the article, I noticed that Andrew and Alex had already pointed out what was written. Rolling my eyes, I clicked on the gallery of images, then held back my gasp.

Colton stared at me from the screen, that all-knowing smirk in place as the photographer captured the image. He pulled the brim of his hat down too low to see his eyes, but I knew him well enough to pick him out of a crowd. Whomever he was eating with in the picture had captured all of his devout attention.

I clicked on the arrow moving along to the next picture. It was of the back of Colton’s head and the woman’s he was with. She was tall and statuesque, with hair almost the same shade as Colton’s. That’s when things started clicking in place.

Sifting through the rest of the images, everything became clear to me, especially the last image of them leaving a smaller home with a clear view of their faces.

“You guys. You’re blowing this out of proportion. He’s not cheating.”

A gentle hand landed on my shoulder and I turned to find my father standing behind me, offering his support.

“Autumn. It’s okay to be upset,” Rory said.

“He’s not cheating!”

“Autumn. Are you blind? I mean, we want to believe he’s not, as well, but these pictures are pretty damning,” Aspen said, with Alex and Andrew agreeing with her statement.

“For goodness’ sake. It’s his sister, okay?”

“Psh, he doesn’t have any family. You’re seeing something that isn’t there,” Andrew replied, rolling his eyes in the process.

Slamming the laptop screen, I hopped down from the barstool and made my way toward the mudroom.

“Autumn!” they shouted.

Staring at them from over my shoulder, I narrowed my eyes. “Look at the pictures. Really look at them. If you can’t believe those, then believe me. He’s not cheating. Now, I want to be alone. I realize you all are just looking out for me and I love you for it, but I need a little bit of time,” I announced, then stomped back out of the house.

Before I knew it, I was flying in the UTV toward the western field where I’d started planning the barn expansion for the venue.

I knew my family meant well, but they weren’t giving Colton the benefit of the doubt. And as nice as they had been about finding the article, it meant they didn’t trust my instincts either.

I may have been cheated on before, but Colton was not the same slimy coward as Max.

And I knew my eyes weren’t deceiving me. That woman in the pictures had to be his sister. I believed that with every fiber of my being. And that meant that Colton had found his family.

Which left me both happy and confused. If he found some part of himself that he’d been searching for his entire life, then what place did he have for me?

Chapter Twenty – Colton

The truck took the turn like it was nothing. Weeks of driving this path was paying off and I didn’t need to creep around like a newbie, though I still felt like one.

“Is that it?” my passenger said as she leaned forward on the dashboard to get a closer look because a foot was going to make a difference.

I chuckled as she continued to sway from side to side to get a better view.

“Sit back, Sadie. We’ll be there in a minute,” I scolded but continued to laugh at her antics. The teen didn’t listen to me at all.

She jumped from the truck before I even had it in park and ran toward the front door. The crew was gone for the day, which meant most of the work was complete except for what the inspector had noted during his recent walkthrough. Furnishings would start to go in next week.

It impressed me with how quickly the house had come together. The team I hired was superb and I planned to let the world know. Because while in LA, I somehow found myself agreeing  to allow a popular home decorating show to come record the house during a walkthrough.

“Colton!” Sadie shouted from the threshold. “Get your ass out of the truck and show me around.”

Succumbing to her demands, I jumped down from the truck and dashed to the porch to unlock the door for her.

“This place is going to be amazing. I can just imagine sitting on this porch in a rocking chair watching the sunrise in the morning.”

Funny thing is, I had thought the exact same thing when I bought the house and already ordered two sets of rocking chairs for this porch and a swaying bed chair for the upper porch.

I held out my arm, gesturing for Sadie to enter before me, and said, “After you.”

I wasn’t surprised that in the time it took me to make it toward the kitchen, Sadie had already explored the first floor and was using the back stairwell to head toward the upper floors.

“Wow, Colton!” she shouted from the top of the stairs. “That attic space is amazing!”

“What do you mean?” I asked as I made my way toward her.

When I left, the attic was still mostly a barren space except for the skylights I’d had installed to get some more light in the rooms besides the two side windows. The contractor and I had tossed around the idea of dormer windows, but that was going to dig into our timeline and push out the date of the final inspection. The six skylights were a better option and I spared no expense for them. These had a lifetime warranty and claimed to be leakproof.

We would see.

“The attic was just stone and beams when I left.”

“Oh, it’s definitely not that any longer.”

Sadie stepped aside as we approached the hidden third-floor staircase, which clearly wasn’t that hidden if she had found it. I had to duck my head to pass through the threshold and then made my way up the almost completely vertical stairs. The contractor was surprised I didn’t want to change them.

“Holy shit,” I said on a gasp as I took the last step coming into a small hallway.