Colton Undercover

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You don’t believe me,” he guessed, neither annoyed nor disappointed.

  Leonor tempered her words. She had to admit that she did find the man entertaining. “Let’s just say I have a healthy skepticism.”

  “I can understand,” Josh replied. “A beautiful woman like you being approached by a total stranger would do well to be on her guard.” He leaned in over the table as if to share a secret with her. “There are a lot of unsavory people out there.”

  “You’re not going to try to convince me that you’re on the level?” she asked, rather surprised, even though she was doing her best not to show it.

  “I’ve always found that the harder someone pushes a point, the more that point is held to be highly suspect.” And he was not about to do anything to turn her off. “I’m just content to share a meal and a conversation with a lovely companion.”

  He saw that she was about to protest the word companion, and quickly said, “Speaking of sharing—” The words hung in the air as he put his hand inside his jacket, slipping it into his breast pocket. Josh extracted five photographs. “I wasn’t completely forthcoming with you earlier. I’m not here to take in the sights. I’m actually on a combination vacation/scouting trip—although my father questions how I can take a vacation if I don’t have a revenue-producing career to take a vacation from.” He flashed a grin. “That did sound rather awkward, didn’t it?”

  She pushed that observation aside, far more interested in the photographs that were in his hand. Leonor had to admit that as much as she was trying to remain above the exchange, or at least appear to be above it, the man she was sharing bread sticks with had managed to arouse her curiosity.

  Her eyes riveted to the photographs in his hand, she asked, “What’s the scouting part of it involve?”

  “I’m looking for the proper place to—let’s be honest—” he told her with a smile, “show off some of my collection.”

  At that point, Josh carefully spread out all five of the photographs on the side of the table, creating rather an interesting column.

  She didn’t want to look as if he had captured her attention, but he most definitely had.

  Giving up all pretense of disinterest, she drew one of the photographs closer to her and looked at it, then at him. It couldn’t be a photograph of what she thought it was.

  Could it?

  “Is that a—?” Leonor deliberately let her voice trail off, waiting for the man sitting across from her to fill in the artist’s name.

  Which he obliged.

  “A Jackson Pollock? Yes. I have to admit that I’m more willing to lend that one out than I would be, say, my Van Gogh. Or the Turner.” There was a fond expression on his face as he admitted, “I’m probably rather lowbrow in the opinion of a lot of the so-called ‘refined’ art critics but there’s just something about a seascape that moves me.”

  Leonor drew all five of the photographs closer to her and studied them, one by one, then raised her eyes to his. “And these are originals?” She didn’t bother hiding the note of skepticism in her voice.

  “They’d better be, considering the price I paid for them.” And then he laughed, lightening the moment. “Yes, they’re originals. I had two different art appraisers verify their authenticity.”

  “Two?” she questioned.

  He nodded. Picking up a bread stick, he broke it in half before biting into it. “One could have always been bought by the collector supposedly ‘selling’ the painting. Two different appraisers from different companies are far less likely to be in collusion.”

  “So, you’re a skeptic,” she noted. She felt herself softening despite her resolve. It wasn’t in her nature to constantly hold everyone at arm’s length.

  Josh nodded, although he looked as if he took no joy in admitting the fact. “I’m afraid that these days, you have to be. There are a lot of people out there who want to part you from whatever prize possessions they have their eye on.” And then he flashed a smile at her. “But I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “Why?” she wanted to know. He did recognize her, she thought. Why else would he have just said something like that to her? He was telling her that he knew she was aware of what he was referring to, namely, the blatant fickleness of her neighbors that she had had to endure when that scandal surrounding her mother had flared up.

  But that apparently wasn’t what he was telling her, she learned.

  “Because it’s obvious that you find me highly suspect,” Josh told her. “You wouldn’t be that way unless something had happened to you along the way to make you so suspicious of everyone.”

  It was her turn to shrug. “Maybe I’m just naturally suspicious.”

  “A woman as beautiful as you?” he questioned, shaking his head. “I doubt that.”

  She had no idea what being attractive had to do with it. “You’re pretty free with your compliments.”

  The look that he gave her could have melted a rock—and she wasn’t a rock, she thought, doing her best not to succumb.

  “Only when they’re merited,” Josh countered.

  He was being much too smooth. There had to be a way to get to him, to unravel all these pretty words before they completely undermined her defenses.

  “So if I had a face that could stop a clock—?” She left it up to him to finish.

  “I wouldn’t tell you that you were beautiful,” he said honestly. “I’d shine a spotlight on all your other assets.”

  “And flatter those,” Leonor guessed knowingly.

  He inclined his head, as if considering whether he would or not. “If they deserved it, yes.”

  She decided to reserve judgment on the man for another time. Right now, the photographs he had shown her had her attention.

  “You’re really looking for someplace to display these paintings?” she asked, a wary note in her voice. She would hate to be taken in by the likes of this Joshua Pendergrass. She knew that the first thing anyone would think was that she had gotten swept off her feet and dazzled by the man’s overwhelming good looks rather than by his breathtaking collection.

  Josh nodded. “Yes.”

  She knew she would hate herself if he actually decided to go this route and she lost out, but she needed to know why he hadn’t thought of this himself.

  “Why don’t you just get in contact with the Museum of Modern Art in New York City? I’m sure that they would be more than happy to put your collection on display.”

  He finished off the second half of the bread stick before answering. “I’m sure they would.”

  She looked at him. It seemed rather clear to her. “So? Why don’t you?”

  “Because the entire museum is teeming with works of art,” he explained. “The people who come through those halls are almost anesthetized, accustomed to seeing the greats and near greats at every turn they take, every hall they walk through. I think my collection would be better appreciated displayed in a smaller venue. Someplace that isn’t quite as overwhelming.” His eyes met hers. “If you get my thinking.”

  “I do,” she told him.

  She was trying to play it cool, but she had to admit to herself that she was growing progressively more excited, with each passing moment, about the possibilities this man whose path she had crossed represented to her. To the art museum where she worked. She’d certainly had her share of bad luck, but this had to fall under the heading of the most fortuitous meeting she’d ever had.

  Deciding to stop being so morbidly cautious, Leonor broached the subject of where she worked to him to see his reaction.

  “You know, I work for an art museum.”

  She expected him to look delighted, or at least extremely pleased. She hadn’t expected him to look disappointed—in her.

  “Now you’re just having fun at my expense, Ms. Colton.”

&
nbsp; “No, really, I work at an art museum,” Leonor assured him. “And please, call me Leonor. When you say ‘Ms. Colton,’ I expect to turn around and see my mother standing there.”

  “All right,” he agreed, then tried her name out on his tongue. “Leonor.” It seemed to all but float between them. And then he got back to the subject under discussion. “I looked this town up before I came here. I don’t recall reading that there was an art museum in the vicinity. So, unless that guidebook is out-of-date—”

  “It’s not,” she admitted. “You didn’t read anything about there being an art museum in Shadow Creek is because there isn’t one.”

  Josh shook his head, his rather long dark brown hair moving ever so slightly. “I’m afraid you lost me. I thought you just told me that you worked for an art museum—”

  “I do, but I don’t work here,” Leonor clarified before he could get any further. “I work for an art museum in Austin.”

  “A museum, not a gallery?” he specified, watching her face intently.

  She was beginning to think that a lot of people had tried to put one over on this man at one time or another. He came across as smooth, gregarious and charming, but at the same time he seemed rather subtly alert, as if he was waiting for things to go wrong before they eventually went right.

  “It’s an art museum,” she assured him. “It’s not as large as some of the other ones in, say, the bigger cities like Los Angeles, and certainly nothing like the Museum of Modern Art in New York,” she allowed. Leonor looked down at the five photographs again. They were all truly beautiful works of art. “But we have several respectable collections on the premises, and I guarantee that we would do your collection complete justice if you wound up deciding that you wanted to display the paintings at our museum.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, appearing to carefully consider her words. “I’d have to think about it,” he told her.

  She’d expected nothing less and would have been suspicious if he had said otherwise. “Of course, I understand.”

  “Meanwhile, I do have to eat,” he said matter-of-factly. “And a bread stick only goes so far.” He looked around the premises. “Tell me, does the server ever come back after she brings over the lemonade or are we supposed to just fill up on bread sticks? Because, if that’s the case, she’s going to have to come back with more bread sticks.”

  “She’s supposed to come back,” Leonor told him.

  Scanning the area, she spotted the young woman who had brought over their lemonades. She appeared to be talking to the two men who were seated at another table across the way. It didn’t look as if order-taking was involved.

  Leonor was eager to be accommodating—yes, this man she was sharing a table with could still be a fraud, but if he wasn’t, the museum where she worked stood to gain a lot if Josh Pendergrass was kept happy.

  As long as all it takes is a full stomach, she silently qualified.

  Because if it took anything else, or if this was a case of something else being involved other than an art collector looking for a venue to display his collection, then she wasn’t interested in keeping this man content, no matter how exceptionally good-looking he was.

  A good-looking man was why she had come home to regroup in the first place. Maybe if David hadn’t been as handsome or as charming as he was, she would have seen through his ruse a lot sooner and been spared a lot of heartache.

  Well, she was never going to be that blind again, Leonor promised herself.

  But she was just as determined not to allow what David had done to jade her or color the way she looked at things. That, she knew, would be as much of a tragedy as her running blindly toward making another really stupid mistake.

  Catching the server’s eye, the next moment Leonor stood up. Raising her voice only slightly, she informed the young woman, “We’re ready to order now.”

  The server looked only moderately embarrassed to have to be summoned this way. She quickly approached their table.

  “Very good, Ms. Colton,” the young woman said.

  Josh pretended to look at her with a measure of surprise. “So that really is your name?” he asked, taking the server as the final authority on the matter.

  Why would he think that she had lied to him earlier? What was the point of admitting that she was part of a family that had the stain of infamy on it if she didn’t have to?

  “Yes, Colton really is my name,” she answered Josh, and for the first time in a long while, she didn’t sigh as she said it.

  Chapter 4

  “Well, you certainly look happy,” Mac said when she walked into the ranch house almost four hours later.

  It was good to see her like this, the rancher thought. She’d been through a lot. More than her share. It was time for her to find something to smile about.

  He crossed over to her. “I’m guessing that taking my advice turned out well for you.”

  Leonor nodded. Since the outing had been his idea, she’d chosen to come into Mac’s house when she got back from town instead of going straight to the apartment over the stables.

  Kicking off her shoes, she sank down on the sofa. It creaked slightly, like an old friend murmuring a familiar greeting as her body settled back against the creased leather.

  “You were right, Mac,” she freely admitted. “It felt good to get out. And, surprisingly enough,” she added with a self-effacing smile, “no one felt compelled to throw rocks at me.”

  That came as no surprise to him. “You were always the nice one, little girl,” Mac told her. “Nobody would throw rocks at you—any more than they’d throw rocks at me.”

  Leonor laughed at his statement as Mac sat down in the far corner of the sofa. “That’s because you’re not related to Livia by blood,” she pointed out. “Besides, let’s face it,” she added, tongue in cheek, “you’re big and intimidating. People in town would be afraid to throw rocks at you. They’d be afraid of the consequences of something like that.”

  His rich baritone laugh seemed to completely encircle her. “You might have a point,” he agreed. “Just remember,” he told her, becoming serious, “I have your back, little girl.”

  His phrasing amused her, as did the nickname he had for her. Rather than bristle or take offense, thinking it played upon her helplessness, she found it endearing. “And any other part of me that needs protecting?” she wanted to know.

  Mac nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Good to know.”

  He looked a little closer at her. “You certainly are in a good mood,” Mac observed. “Did you run into some old friends?”

  She sincerely doubted that anyone in town thought of themselves as belonging to that small, intimate group. To be completely honest, Leonor wasn’t so sure that any of the town’s locals thought of anyone in her family as a friend.

  “That would be pretty hard to do,” she told Mac, “given the circumstances. But I did meet this man at that new restaurant across from the bed-and-breakfast...”

  Mac was instantly alert. “Oh?”

  She smiled. Mac was getting protective. She could tell. She knew the signs. She supposed old habits were hard to break.

  Considering everything that had happened in the last few months, it was nice having someone looking out for her, Leonor thought. She could have used Mac when David was hovering around, making her completely stupid and blind until it was too late to undo the damage, she thought ruefully.

  “Nothing to get excited about,” she warned Mac. “From what I could tell, the man’s just passing through. We shared a table at a restaurant.”

  “The restaurant is that crowded?” Mac asked in amazement. He was always interested in how the other businesses in and around Shadow Creek were doing because, eventually, whatever happened to them had an effect on his own ranch. They were all interdependent in one way
or another.

  “No,” Leonor said, negating that and any other theory that Mac might come up with. “He just didn’t want to eat alone and asked if he could join me.”

  “And you agreed?”

  She saw that Mac was watching her carefully. What did he expect to see? “Well, I don’t exactly have leprosy.”

  “No,” he readily agreed. “But what happened to being leery?” He would have thought after what she’d been through with this David character, she’d be highly suspicious of any man she hadn’t known for years. There was no arguing that Leonor was a very attractive young woman, but she was also a Colton and certain precautions always needed to be in place.

  “He’s an art collector,” Leonor told him, as if that single attribute was capable of negating an entire host of sins.

  Mac crossed his arms before his chest, looking exceedingly formidable. “And you know this how?” he asked patiently.

  She knew how Mac was liable to take this, but all she had was the truth. “He told me.”

  “And you believed him? Seriously?” Mac questioned. He frowned. He trusted her judgment, but this didn’t sound good. “I thought you were the suspicious one.”

  She made no comment about that. Instead, she explained what had won her over. “He showed me photographs of some of his paintings. He’s looking for somewhere to display them.”

  “So naturally he thought of Shadow Creek?” The dubious look on Mac’s face grew more pronounced.

  “No, the Austin Art Museum,” she answered a bit too sharply.

  This wasn’t sounding as good to him as it apparently did to her, Mac thought. “In other words, he’s stalking you?”

  “No,” she insisted. “We just kind of ran into one another.”

  He highly doubted that, but Leonor was a grown woman, capable of taking care of herself—he supposed. If he suggested otherwise, he knew that was liable to blow up on him.