Colton Undercover

by Marie Ferrarella

  “But not permanently.” It was more of a request than a question. He’d looked at her nervously, obviously afraid of the answer he might get.

  “No, not permanently,” Leonor replied.

  In all honesty, she didn’t know if she wouldn’t just turn around and return to Austin after a few days in Shadow Creek. She didn’t know how welcome—or unwelcome—she’d be turning up in Shadow Creek after all this time and in the wake of that lurid blog exposé.

  Oh, she knew that she could stay at Mac’s ranch, perhaps even indefinitely. Her former stepfather, Joseph Mackenzie, her mother’s former ranch foreman as well as the father of her half brother, Thorne, had made that perfectly clear, even before she had used some of her money to help him bail out his ranch a few years ago.

  Mac had always had a special relationship with all of her mother’s children, not just with her or with his own son. Mac was a kind, decent person and the kind of man she would have really loved to have for a father, even temporarily, as was her mother’s habit.

  He’d always been there for them, Leonor recalled. And he was the first one she thought of calling on when she found herself needing a place to stay while she regrouped.

  “Of course you can stay here, little girl,” Mac had told her when she’d turned up on his doorstep. “Stay for as long as you want. My home is your home. Hell, it wouldn’t even be my home if it hadn’t been for you,” he reminded her.

  He’d displayed no embarrassment over that admission, only extreme gratitude.

  Mac picked up her suitcase as he talked, doing it effortlessly as if finding her there when he opened his front door was no big deal.

  “Oh, Mac,” she cried as he put his large, still-muscular arm protectively about her shoulders and ushered her in, “I’ve made such a mess of things.”

  There was nothing but sympathy in his eyes and in his manner toward her.

  Even though she was going to be staying in the apartment over the stable, Mac led Livia’s daughter to the wide leather sofa in his living room and sat her down. Seeing the tears in her eyes, he pulled out his handkerchief from his back pocket and offered it to her.

  “There’s nothing but death that can’t be undone,” he told Leonor matter-of-factly. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”

  “No,” she’d said, quietly sobbing.

  She wiped away her tears, but it was futile. More tears came to take their place. She felt as if she was completely made up of water.

  “Then it can be fixed,” Mac had assured her. Studying her face quietly, he’d asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  At first, Leonor had remained silent.

  Mac wasn’t the kind of person to press.

  But then, after a few minutes, he’d heard her say, “I trusted the wrong man.”

  “Hardly anyone alive hasn’t done that at least once in their lives,” Mac told her, making it sound like a common occurrence. After a beat, Mac ventured a question. “How bad is it?”

  She pressed her lips together in an effort to keep a fresh onslaught of tears back. “Bad,” she’d finally answered.

  He’d smiled at her kindly. He had always viewed her first and foremost as a daughter, even if they didn’t share the same blood.

  “Would it help any if I tracked this guy down and beat the living daylights out of him?”

  “No.” She thought about the blog. The story, done in several vivid, lurid installments, had already been run. The rest of her siblings had probably already seen it. And probably hated her for it. Only traveling back in time could change that. “The damage has already been done.”

  “Oh,” Mac had said. His deep voice rumbled out the single word, putting a huge amount of meaning behind it. “You’re talking about that internet story, aren’t you?”

  Leonor’s eyes had widened as she looked at the man who had patiently taught her how to ride. The man she had always regarded as more than just her mother’s foreman, or even Thorne’s father. He had always been the single stable force in her life.

  Had she disappointed him?

  “You saw that?” she asked in a small, ashamed voice.

  Mac had surprised her by laughing. “I’m not quite as backward as you might think. I own a laptop and sometimes, I even turn it on.”

  Leonor flushed. “I didn’t mean to insult you—”

  His smile was wide and all encompassing, as well as very kind. “You didn’t, little girl. I’m just teasing you. But I did see the articles,” he said, referring to the tell-all that went into great detail about not just Livia before her empire had crumbled and she’d been sent to prison, but also about each of the woman’s six children and their lives, “and I thought to myself that whoever wrote it had to have a lot of inside information about the Coltons from someone.” The look on his face registered surprise, but not condemnation. “I just never thought that the ‘someone’ was you.”

  She was desperate to make Mac understand that she hadn’t revealed any of it for personal gain or, heaven forbid, for any sort of monetary reward. “He tricked me, Mac. He made me think that he cared about me. I would have never said a single word if I’d known that he was going to use it to spread it all over the internet.”

  Mac nodded understandingly. “I kinda figured that,” he told her.

  There was absolutely not a single iota of judgment in the man’s deep voice.

  Leonor pressed her lips together, and then raised her tear-filled eyes to his. “I thought he loved me,” she confessed, her voice almost trembling. “I thought I could tell him anything. He told me I could tell him anything.”

  “I just bet he did,” Mac replied, doing his best to keep his anger in check. “You sure you don’t want me to track him down and beat him up for you?” This time, as Mac clenched his hands into fists beside him on the sofa, he was only half kidding.

  “I don’t want you getting into trouble on my account,” Leonor told him.

  “Might do us both some good,” he pointed out, coaxing her just the tiniest bit.

  Leonor looked up at him quizzically. She knew why he thought it would do her some good, but Mac? She didn’t quite understand why he would say that.

  “Why you?”

  “Because I don’t like anyone hurting you,” he told her simply.

  She felt her heart swell. She really needed to hear that, she thought.

  “Thank you, Mac.” She returned his smile, wondering how she could possibly convey to the man how grateful she was to have him in her life. “Letting me stay here for a while is all I need.”

  She sighed and put her arms around Mac—or tried to. There was more of the big man than her arms could possibly encompass.

  Mac laughed softly—she’d always thought of his laugh as such a comforting sound—and embraced her.

  “Like I said, stay as long as you like. I want you to think of this as your home,” he told her again without any fanfare.

  That had been four days ago. So, here she was, Leonor thought, hiding out at Mac’s ranch, doing her best to pull herself together and regroup enough to be able to face each of her siblings, preferably individually, so she could field their questions and get them to hear her out and see her side.

  She needed to have them forgive her, if not today, then eventually. Forgive her and see that she was as much of a victim in all this as they were, because they might be resentful to see their names and their lives shockingly dramatized online in a cheap effort at sensationalism. But David had used her to do this to them and she was not only suffering the same fate as they were, she was also suffering because someone she loved and believed loved her had done this, using her as a means to an end. And in the bargain, making her family look at her as a traitor. She’d reported him to the police, but he had hidden the money well and it was a case of her word against his. Things looked r
ather bleak from every standpoint.

  She had trouble battling the hopelessness that kept insisting on encroaching on her state of mind. But if she hoped to ever win back her family, she had to keep that feeling at bay.

  * * *

  Well, this was unexpected, Josh thought, checking his email the moment he checked into the bed and breakfast when he arrived in Shadow Creek.

  Leonor Colton had taken a leave of absence from the museum.

  Josh frowned. He had gone undercover, taking on the identity of a billionaire with a keen interest in art and the museum, in order to become a person of interest to Leonor so that he could get closer to her, and now she’d taken a leave of absence. Josh shook his head. This was going to be trickier than he thought.

  Well, it was too late to switch identities again because in this day and age everyone’s “backstory” could be checked out on the internet in a matter of minutes, and his was already a matter of record. That was thanks to Jeremy Bailey, the IT wizard in the San Antonio field office who had whipped up this identity for him. Jeremy had even created a Facebook page for him, cleverly backdated with photographs of an ex-wife and a number of parties and fund-raisers—all art-oriented—that he’d attended in the past.

  Josh pulled up the page on his laptop now, wondering who the woman posing as his ex-wife was. Whoever Jeremy had used, the woman was a little too flashy for him, he mused. He preferred more classy women, women whose brains were stuffed to full capacity instead of just their closets.

  So far, Josh hadn’t met anyone who could hold his interest for more than a few dates, but then, in defense of all the women he had ever gone out with, he’d never had the time to properly pursue a relationship.

  For one thing, he had moved around a lot, transferring to different field offices whenever new opportunities arose. Single, with no family, he had nothing to keep him anchored to any one place.

  With him, it was always the next case that piqued his interest.

  But at the moment, it wasn’t the next one that did it. It was this one.

  He had set his sights on bringing Livia Colton in, and to do that, he had already decided that he was going to have to get close to Leonor. Some of the circumstances might have changed, but the bottom line was still the same.

  He just needed to do a little rewriting to make it ultimately work and he was nothing, he thought, smiling to himself, if not creatively flexible.

  “You’re going down, Livia Colton,” he promised. “And so’s your daughter if she’s in on this.”

  He got to work.

  Chapter 2

  “Just remember, you don’t have access to a bottomless expense account.” Andrew Arroyo’s voice crackled a little, thanks to a poor cell phone connection. “The budget’s been cut, so be sure you watch how you throw that money around, Howard,” the FBI assistant director in charge of the San Antonio field office warned him. “Just because you’re supposed to be this big shot billionaire doesn’t mean you have to spend money like one. As a matter of fact,” Arroyo hinted helpfully, “a lot of billionaires are known to be tight when it comes to their money.”

  Josh was beginning to regret checking in with his superior so soon after arriving in Shadow Creek. He should have waited until he had something a little more solid by way of an alternate plan to offer the man.

  Still, Josh felt he needed to say something defensively before he found his hands completely tied in this little undercover drama he’d found himself taking part in.

  “I can’t exactly penny-pinch, Assistant Director Arroyo,” Josh told his boss matter-of-factly. “I am supposed to be a billionaire.”

  “The operative word here being ‘supposed to be,’” Arroyo pointed out.

  If he’d really liked Arroyo, he would have just kept quiet about this lecture. But he didn’t. Arroyo liked to micromanage everyone assigned to him and that wasn’t the way that Josh liked to operate.

  “That’s three words, sir,” Josh replied matter-of-factly.

  He could almost hear Arroyo scowling. The assistant director had the kind of scowl that took in every single part of his face. “Don’t nitpick, Howard.”

  “I won’t if you won’t, sir,” Josh responded. And then he grew serious as he tried to explain his position. It was the only plan he could think of to make himself privy to Leonor’s movements without arousing her suspicions. “It’s a work in progress, but the plan is to have Leonor Colton try to get close to me so she can try to convince me to donate to the museum.”

  “You can play hard to get,” Arroyo suggested. “Nothing makes a woman want a man more than if he acts as if he’s not interested.”

  In his opinion, his superior would be the last person anyone would go to for advice on getting close to a member of the opposite sex.

  “Which might explain why you’ve never been married,” Josh observed under his breath.

  “I heard that,” Arroyo snapped. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and the Bureau’s rather limited expense account.”

  Calling Arroyo had definitely been a mistake on his part, Josh thought. He was just going to have to work things out to his own satisfaction. “As stimulating as this conversation is, sir, I’ve got a plan to get into motion. I’ll check in with you later,” Josh promised vaguely.

  Just before pigs begin to fly, he added silently.

  The next minute, Josh terminated the call and put away his cell phone before his superior could protest or say anything else.

  He was on his own, Josh thought, going back to the laptop he’d left open on the desk. Sitting down, he pulled up the site that had caught his eye. The one currently featuring the Everything’s Blogger in Texas story about the individual members of Livia Colton’s family.

  It contained, he couldn’t help thinking, an amazing amount of information, the kind that families generally liked being kept private. At least some of it had to be true, right?

  He went on reading.

  * * *

  Leonor opened the studio apartment door in response to the knock she’d heard. Mac was standing on the landing just beyond the wooden stairs that went down to the back of the stable. He looked just a little larger than life—the way he always did. Stepping back to give him access to the apartment, she looked at him curiously.

  “Something wrong?” she wanted to know.

  Mac crossed the threshold, but made no attempt to come in any farther. If she were to make a guess, she would have said that he looked a little uncomfortable, which was unusual for the man.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, little girl,” he began, “because you know I care about you and I always have.”

  She didn’t think she liked the sound of this, but Mac had never been anything but kind to her. “What are you trying to tell me, Mac?”

  His kindly expression didn’t match the words that came out of his mouth. “Get out.”

  Stunned, she could only stare at the tall, strapping man. “What?”

  “I don’t mean ‘get out’ get out,” he told her, tempering his tone. He didn’t want her to misunderstand what had motivated his words. “Just get out.”

  This was only getting more muddled. There wasn’t much in her life that she was sure of these days, but she was sure that Mac wouldn’t deliberately hurt her or abandon her.

  Taking a breath, she asked, “And the difference being?”

  He wasn’t much for talking, more a man of deeds rather than words. He tried to make himself understood again.

  “The difference being that you need to get out there, little girl. Get out there and mingle. You can’t just hide up here in this tiny space above the stable indefinitely. That’s not going to solve anything and the longer you hide, the harder it’s going to be for you to finally get out there.” His eyes met hers, hoping he was getting th
rough to her. “Thirty-one is way too young to become a hermit.”

  She sighed. Turning from him, she crossed back to the bed and sat down on the edge. “You’re right.”

  Mac had no choice but to follow her in. “Of course I’m right. I’ve always been right.

  “Well, almost always,” Mac corrected. “The point is, little girl—go out. Breathe some fresh air. Get in touch with yourself again. There’s a really nice person inside there,” he told her. “You might like her. I know that I do.”

  She offered Mac a ghost of a smile. “You have to say that.”

  “No, I don’t,” he informed her. “That’s not even in the fine print,” he added affectionately. “Now get out of here before I hitch you up and use you to plow the north forty,” he pretended to threaten.

  Leonor laughed. She knew that, as usual, Mac only had her best interests at heart. And he was right. She couldn’t just hide here in this little studio apartment forever. Eventually, she had to get back to her life. Getting up off the bed, she said, “I’m gone.”

  His brows drew together in a skeptical furrow. “I can still see you.”

  “Then close your eyes,” she told him with a laugh. “I need a head start.” With that, Leonor left the apartment and hurried down the stairs.

  Once in her car, Leonor drove into town. She decided to go get some lunch at the new restaurant that had just recently opened just across from the bed-and-breakfast.

  Although she lived in Austin now, Leonor knew in her heart that Shadow Creek would always be home to her, and despite everything else that was going on in her life, she did take an interest in the town’s development and growth, slow though it was.

  Leonor tried to tell herself that checking out the new restaurant would be a fun thing to do. Most of the people in the area, while not completely forgetting about her mother and the scandal attached to both Livia’s arrest and her trial, had for the most part moved on. At the very least, most of the locals had come to realize that the sins of the mother did not always necessarily come down on the offspring.