Colton Undercover

by Marie Ferrarella

  The look on his face told her that Mac already knew the answer to that no matter what she might say to the contrary, so she made no attempt to pretend that she had no idea what he was talking about. But she did deny his perception of the situation.

  “I’m not babysitting him, Mac.”

  “Oh? Then what would you call it?” Mac wanted to know, amused.

  She took a long sip of the hot coffee, letting it wind itself through her veins and fortify her before she answered. “I’m showing him around Shadow Creek. And while I’m at it, I’m telling him the advantages of having his collection displayed at my museum.”

  Mac nodded, taking her words in. And then he asked, “Do you like him?”

  She almost choked.

  “Mac,” Leonor cried. She’d forgotten how very direct Mac could be. He wasn’t judgmental; he just didn’t waste any words.

  Mac was still waiting for an answer from her. “Well, do you?”

  She was not about to answer that question. Instead, she gave him an answer she felt they could both live with. “He’s a nice man.”

  It was obviously not enough. “Is he treating you well?”

  “Mac, it’s not that kind of relationship,” she protested.

  Mac looked at her in silence for a long moment. “Isn’t it?”

  She was about to flatly deny it, but then she thought of the other night, when Josh had brought her to her door after they’d gone out to dinner and spent the evening talking about what felt like everything under the sun. For just a moment there, right before she opened the door, she’d thought that he was going to kiss her, and she had to admit she would have let him.

  Happily.

  But just then, one of the other guests had walked by them, talking loudly on his cell phone and complaining about being late for something. The moment dissipated like a soap bubble in the wind and Josh had backed away, saying that he’d see her bright and early in the morning.

  She remembered how frustrated she’d felt, closing the door behind her.

  “Not yet, anyway,” she finally said.

  Mac nodded, as if taking it all in and digesting every nuance, spoken and otherwise. Leaning back in his chair, he look another sip of coffee, then told her, “Jade seems to like him.”

  She thought maybe she needed to fill in a few details for Mac. “I told Josh about her farm and he said he wanted to see it, so I brought him over there,” she explained.

  Her words seemed to nudge forward another thought in Mac’s mind. “That was a nice thing you did for Jade, buying those Thoroughbreds for her.”

  Leonor shrugged again. She wasn’t comfortable talking about her so-called “good deeds.”

  “Jade needed them, and they needed her. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  He could always read her like a book. “It’s okay to own up to doing good deeds, little girl. Nobody’s going to think you’re bragging. So,” he asked, setting down his empty coffee cup on the table in front of him, “when are you going to bring this Joshua around here so I can meet him?”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to happen for a while,” she told him.

  She didn’t want Josh thinking she was attempting to paint him into a corner, or presuming things that hadn’t been voiced out loud yet. Whatever was happening between Josh and her—if something was happening—was still in a very fragile, unformed state. Rushing it could prove to be fatal to it.

  Mac smiled, nodding. “As long as he makes you happy,” he said, “that’s all that counts.”

  While it was true that she did feel happy, happier than she had in a long while, she doubted that was what Josh was consciously trying to do. “I don’t think that’s his primary goal.”

  Mac wasn’t about to argue the point. Some things just were. “Still, it’s a pretty nice by-product if you ask me,” Mac told her.

  Leonor visited with Mac a little longer, then drove back to town.

  She caught herself humming as she drove.

  Mac was right, she admitted to herself. She was happier lately, and there was no denying that Josh was responsible for that, whether those were his intentions or not.

  Somehow, Josh had managed to penetrate the walls she had erected around herself, walls that were meant to keep her from being hurt again. Charming, attentive, not to mention so handsome that it almost hurt, Josh had gone from being hard to resist to being absolutely impossible to resist.

  Leonor had to admit that she kept waiting for something to go wrong, for Josh to attempt to get something from her, but all he seemed to want was the pleasure of her company.

  Could he actually be the genuine article? she couldn’t help wondering. Could he actually be as nice, as attentive, as kind as he seemed?

  She kept looking for flaws, but try as she might, Leonor couldn’t find any. And that in itself had her just a wee bit nervous.

  * * *

  “You’re too perfect,” she told Josh a couple of evenings later.

  As had become their habit these last few weeks, they went out for dinner and this time, he’d found a little club that featured a small band. Catching her completely off guard, Josh had extended his hand to her and asked her to dance.

  She hesitated, then gave in. It had been a long time since she’d gone out dancing. Part of her wasn’t sure if she even remembered how.

  It was a slow number, a song that had been popular several decades ago, and as they swayed to the music, she began to feel that she’d never experienced anything so intimate before. It was as if every part of him was melding with her.

  “Excuse me?” Josh asked, thinking he couldn’t have heard her correctly.

  “You’re too perfect,” Leonor repeated. “You’re kind, you’re attentive and you dance as if you’ve been doing it your whole life.”

  “I could yell at you, belch, and then step on your feet if you like,” he offered innocently. “Would that help?”

  He probably thought she was crazy, Leonor told herself.

  “Don’t mind me,” she told Josh with a dismissive laugh. “The last man in my life who treated me well turned out to be a con man and a hustler.” Leonor smiled ruefully. “I guess that I’m just waiting for another shoe to drop.”

  He smiled into her eyes as he continued dancing, all the while feeling the guilt eating away at his stomach lining. In a way, he was behaving like a con man himself. And he was definitely hustling her.

  You’re not doing it for any kind of personal gain; you’re doing it because it’s your job.

  Somehow, that didn’t seem to assuage his conscience. Josh blocked his thoughts, pushing them into the background. “The trick to that,” he told her, focusing all of his attention on Leonor, “is to make sure the shoes are both tightly laced,” he told her. “That’ll keep them from falling.”

  Leonor looked up at him. Was he warning her, or was she just being paranoid?

  Damn you, David. I wish I’d never met you. His shadow seemed to fall over everything.

  The music stopped.

  “It’s getting late,” Josh observed. “I can’t keep monopolizing you this way. Maybe I should get you back to your suite.”

  Maybe it would be safer that way after all, she thought, nodding.

  “Maybe.”

  Josh took care of their bill and they left the club. Escorting her back to his vehicle, he released the locks and held the passenger door open for her. Once she was seated, he pulled out the seat belt for her. When she took it, he closed her door and then rounded the trunk to his side of the car.

  Getting in, he secured his own belt, and then started up the vehicle.

  Definitely too good to be true, Leonor thought. She noticed the concerned expression on his face as he glanced up into the rearview mirror just before he pulled out.
r />   “Something wrong?” she asked him.

  “Hmm? No, nothing. Just thinking that guy’s following a little too close,” he commented. What he didn’t say was that he’d noticed that the moment he’d started his car, the driver of the other vehicle had started up his, as well.

  He didn’t care for coincidences.

  Let it go, Josh, he told himself. He’d been overthinking things lately. After a while, everything seemed suspicious to him.

  Except for Leonor, which, he knew, was odd in itself. He kept trying to find something on her, and so far, all he could find was that she was a good, decent person who just wanted to reconnect and get along with the members of her family.

  Checking into her background had turned up more of the same. She’d kept the bank from foreclosing on the Mackenzie ranch and used her own money to buy those Thoroughbreds for her younger sister’s farm. Both came under the heading of good deeds rather than a tit-for-tat arrangement.

  If there was a dark side to this woman, he hadn’t been able to find it yet.

  She talked highly of her mother’s foreman, who had taken care of her younger sisters. The man was obviously like a second father to her because he had recently taken her in when she felt the world was closing in on her.

  The only person Leonor didn’t mention at all was her mother. Not a word. He wondered if that was on purpose, or if it was because she just didn’t want to think about the woman.

  What could it have been like, growing up and having Livia Colton for a mother? he wondered. There had been no shortage of creature comforts, but there certainly hadn’t been any love in her childhood.

  Josh found himself feeling sorry for the woman in his passenger seat.

  “I’m not perfect, you know,” he told her out of the blue.

  She was still trying to shake off the effects that had been created when they’d danced together. It took her a moment to realize that he’d just said something. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Back at the club, when we were dancing. You told me that I was too perfect.” If you only knew, he couldn’t help thinking. “But I’m not. I’m not perfect at all.”

  So far, she hadn’t seen anything to contradict her impression. “Let me guess, you use the wrong fork when you eat salad.”

  “I’m serious,” Josh told her, pulling his vehicle into the parking lot.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. How are you not perfect?” Leonor asked, turning to look at him as she got out.

  “Sometimes,” Josh said as they walked into the B&B, “I find that my courage fails me.”

  She strongly doubted that, but maybe they weren’t talking about the same thing, Leonor thought.

  “You’re going to have to give me more of an explanation than that,” she told him.

  Making their way through the lobby, they went straight to the elevator.

  The car was waiting for them, opening its doors the second he pressed the up button.

  He’d already said too much and he knew that the more he talked, the greater the likelihood that he would say something to give himself away. But knowing he had to say something, he kept it vague.

  “Let’s just say that I don’t always follow through and do what I really want to do,” Josh said vaguely.

  That didn’t sound like much of a flaw to her, Leonor thought.

  Getting off the elevator, they walked to her suite. She used her key and opened her door, then turned toward him.

  Her heart was hammering so hard in her throat, she found it difficult to talk.

  “And just what is it that you really want to do—but don’t?” she asked him in a voice that had mysteriously gone down to just above a whisper.

  As it was, her voice sounded very close to husky—and he found it hopelessly seductive.

  Standing just inside her suite, Leonor waited for him to answer while her heart continued to imitate the rhythm of a spontaneous drum roll that only grew louder by the moment.

  Josh weighed his options for a moment. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, he couldn’t help thinking. And then he answered her.

  “Kiss you,” he told Leonor, saying the words softly, his breath caressing the skin on her face.

  She felt her stomach muscles quickening.

  “Maybe you should go ahead and do that,” she told him. “I promise I won’t stop you.”

  The drum roll kept growing louder, multiplying to an almost deafening crescendo when he put his arms around her and drew her closer to him.

  So close that even a sliver of air couldn’t wedge in between their bodies.

  It happened in slow motion.

  Everything around her faded into a darkening abyss, leaving only the two of them standing within her suite. At the last second, she had the presence of mind to push the door closed.

  Somewhere a thousand miles away, she managed to make out the faint click of the lock finding its other half, securing itself into place.

  And then, as she both saw and felt him lowering his mouth to hers, Leonor realized that the earth had come to a complete standstill as a wave of heat rose up and engulfed her.

  And then his lips finally touched hers—and set off a wildfire right inside of her chest. At the same time, she could feel this wild, exhilarating rush consuming her, stealing her breath, stealing absolutely everything else and making her feel as if she was suddenly flying, unfettered, along a serpentine path, going down, then up, then down again, blindly following an uncharted course that had been mysteriously carved out by a runaway roller coaster eons ago.

  Her heart was pounding so hard, she was sure it was going to burst and all she could do was hang on, winding her arms tightly around Josh’s neck, praying that he—and this feeling—wouldn’t ever stop.

  Chapter 11

  He shouldn’t be doing this.

  The thought echoed over and over again in Josh’s brain even as he went on kissing her.

  It wasn’t that he wasn’t attracted to Leonor. If he was really being honest with himself, he was way too attracted to her. What bothered him was that this was all happening under false pretenses.

  He was lying to her, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, and that was the person she was doing this with. She was kissing Joshua Pendergrass, billionaire art collector, not Josh Howard, FBI agent.

  When he’d started this assignment, he had been convinced that Leonor was the one who had paved the way for her mother’s escape from prison. Delving into her finances, he found that Leonor had made a large withdrawal a couple of months ago. He’d been certain the money was to bribe guards to look the other way, as well as to arrange for her mother’s getaway once she had gotten beyond prison walls.

  But now, given what he’d seen of her generous nature—the bailout for Mackenzie Ranch, the Thoroughbreds she’d bought for her sister and who knows what else she’d financed for her other siblings—Josh was really beginning to doubt that this same woman had anything to do with her mother’s escape.

  From everything he had learned about her, Leonor Colton was one of the good ones.

  Which made what was happening here in her room all wrong.

  He didn’t want to mislead her, to make love with Leonor under false pretenses. But he knew that if he abruptly stopped, if he found the strength to actually push her away before things went any further, then that would arouse her suspicions and make Leonor begin to suspect that he wasn’t who he was pretending to be.

  He couldn’t blow this assignment; there was too much riding on it. Livia Colton was everything that he and countless other people viewed as despicable. She dealt in human trafficking, in drugs and she was a murderer as well as a self-centered, narcissistic sociopath.

  She had to be caught and stopped.

  As for him, damn but he was already caught. Caught and held fas
t by this feisty redhead with the hypnotic green eyes and the mouth that made him want to sit up and beg.

  Deep down in his soul, Josh knew it wasn’t right. But he just didn’t have it in his power to resist this attraction between them any longer. The best he could do, as they stumbled into her suite and wound up on her king-size bed, their limbs tangled together, was draw his head back just a fraction of an inch and give her one last chance to get away.

  There was just enough space between them for him to ask Leonor, “Are you sure?”

  Had he given her a bouquet comprised of diamonds, he couldn’t have won her heart any more securely. Leonor knew that this man she had already allowed past so many barriers wanted her, could feel him wanting her, and yet his first thought was about how she felt about this relationship moving forward to the next level.

  His thoughtfulness touched her.

  Tears came dangerously close to spilling from her eyes as she answered, “Yes,” in a low, husky voice.

  It was all he needed.

  The last barrier was gone, the last stronghold for him to hang on to. Framing Leonor’s face with his hands, he kissed her.

  Over and over again.

  Each time he did, it was more passionate than the last, because each time he kissed her he found himself wanting her more than he had a mere second ago.

  He had no idea desire could swell to these proportions.

  Still, Josh did his best to resist, to hold off, thinking that at the last moment, her cell phone would ring and she would have to take it, or that someone would knock on her door and it would be one of her siblings, needing her to come with them for some sudden emergency.

  But there was no ringing phone, no knock on the door, no one to save Leonor from him at the very last minute.

  This overwhelming, burning desire was all there was. A desire that had him peeling away her clothing, covering each newly denuded area with a tapestry of kisses that he wove along her entire, smooth and oh-so-enticing body.