Marie Ferrarella - Colton's Secret Service

Georgie felt as if someone had just hit her over the head with a nine-pound skillet. “Senator Colton?” she echoed.

He saw the look of recognition flash in her eyes. She’d just given herself away. He was right. She was the one sending the threatening letters. The innocent act was just that, an act. While he felt vindicated, the slightest ribbon of disappointment weaved through him. He had no idea why, but chalked it up to the blow on the head he’d received.

“Yes.”

“Senator Joe Colton?” Georgie enunciated in disbelief.

Why was she belaboring this? What was she up to? He wondered suspiciously, never taking his eyes off her face. “Yes.”

“Well, that cinches it,” Georgie said with finality, unconsciously hugging Emmie closer to her. “You really are out of your mind.”

Chapter 3

Nick bristled at the insult. “My state of mind isn’t in question here.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he was crazy if he thought she would have anything to do with another Colton after her mother’s experience. But that would lead to questions she didn’t want to answer. “And mine is?”

His eyes met hers. “You’re the one sending the threatening e-mails.”

If she weren’t holding Emmie, she would have thrown up her hands. “ What threatening e-mails? I’ve been too damn busy working to pick up a phone, much less waste my time on the computer.”

When she came right down to it, Georgie didn’t care for the Internet. To her, it was just another way for people to lose the human touch and slip into a vague pea soup of anonymity. The only reason she kept a computer and maintained an Internet account was because she didn’t want to fall behind the rest of the world. Once Emmie started going to school, she knew that a computer would be a necessity. In no time at all, she was certain computers would take the place of loose-leaf binders, notebooks and textbooks. She wanted to be able to help her daughter, not have Emmie ashamed of her because she was electronically challenged.

But that didn’t mean she had to like the damn thing.

Her protests fell on deaf ears. The venom he’d seen spewed in those latest e-mails wouldn’t have taken much time to fire off. She hadn’t even bothered with spell-check, as he recalled. And the grammar in some of the messages had been pretty bad.

“My tech expert tracked it to your ranch house, your IP account.”

She had no idea what an IP account was, but wasn’t about to display her ignorance, especially not in front of her daughter. But she did know one thing. “Your tech expert is wrong.”

“He’s never wrong.” It was both the best and the worst thing about Steve because his results could never be challenged.

Georgie was unmoved and unintimidated. With her mother the butt of narrow-minded people’s jokes because all three of her children had been fathered by a man who was married to someone else, she’d had to stand up for herself at a very early age. That tended to either make or break a person. She’d always refused to be broken.

“Well, he just broke his streak because he is wrong and if the messages were traced to my ranch house, he’s doubly wrong because I haven’t been in my ranch house for the last five months.”

Something told him that he should have investigated Georgie Grady a little before catching the red-eye to San Antonio, but time had been at a premium last night and he’d wanted to wrap this up fast.

His eyes swept over her. “Is that so?”

She rocked forward on the balls of her boot-shod feet. “Yes, that’s ‘so,’ and I resent your attitude, you manner and your manhandling me.”

“Lady, you got in a right cross and your daughter almost cracked open my skull with that tire iron of hers. If anyone was manhandled, it was me.”

He saw a grin spread over otherwise pretty appealing lips. “Is that why you’re so angry? Because you were bested by a woman a foot shorter than you and her four-year-old daughter?”

Not only was she cocky, but she wasn’t observant either.

“You’re not a foot shorter than me, more like eight inches,” he estimated. “And I’m angry because I’m here in this one-horse town, wasting my time arguing with a pig-headed woman after waiting for the last eight hours for her to show up when I should be back in California, with the Senator.”

“Well, go.” Tucking Emmie against her hip, she waved him on his way with her temporarily free hand. “Nobody told you to come to Esperanza and harass innocent people.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Finally, we agree on something.” She blew out a breath. One of them would have to be the voice of reason and because he didn’t know the meaning of the word, it would have to be her. “You really a Secret Service Agent?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see that ID again?”

Reaching into his pocket, he took out his wallet. “Not very trusting, are you?” He’d always thought that people in a small town were supposed to be incredibly trusting, to the point of almost being simple-minded. Him, he trusted no one. When you grow up, not being able to trust your own parents, it set a precedent.

She raised her eyes to his. “Should I be?” He was a stranger, for all she knew, he could be some serial killer, making the rounds.

His eyes slid over her. Someone as attractive as this woman needed to be on her guard more than most. That body of hers could get her in a great deal of trouble.

“No, I guess not.” Opening his wallet to his badge and photo ID, he held it up for her to look over again.

Still keeping Emmie on her hip, Georgie leaned slightly in to peruse at length the ID he showed her.

As did Emmie. She stared at it so intently that Nick caught himself wondering if the annoying child could read. Wasn’t she too young for that?

Georgie stepped back and looked at him with an air of resignation. The ID appeared to be authentic after all.

“I guess you are what you say you are.” He felt her eyes slide over him. “You’ve got the black suit and those shades hanging out of your top pocket and all.” There was that smirk again, he thought. The way she described him made him feel like a caricature. “And your hair’s kind of slicked back, the part that’s not messed up,” she added.

Without realizing what he was doing, Nick ran his hand through his hair, smoothing down the section where the kid had hit him.

He saw the woman shake her head. “You’d look better with it all messed up. The other way looks like it’s been glued down.”

He knew what she was doing. She was trying to undermine him any way she could. Well, it wasn’t going to work.

“We’ll trade hairstyling tips some other time,” he told her sarcastically.

Rather than put her in her place, his response seemed to amuse her.

“Touchy son of a gun, aren’t you? Don’t take criticism well, I see,” she noted, as if to herself. She cocked her head, as if taking measure of him and trying to decide some things about him. You’d think he was the one in trouble, he thought, annoyed.

“You the one they used to make fun of when you were a kid?” she asked.

The exact opposite was true. He’d been more than half on his way to becoming a bully, threatening other kids at school. Smaller, bigger, it didn’t matter, he took them all on because he could. In school and on the streets, at least some things were in his control. Not like at home where an abusive father made his life, and his alcohol-anesthetized mother’s life, a living hell.

But then, one day, for reasons he had yet to completely understand, he suddenly saw himself through his victim’s eyes. Saw his father as Drake Sheffield must have been at his age. Sickened, Nick released the kid who’d come within a hair’s breadth of being pummeled to the ground because he’d mouthed off at him and just walked away. After that, his life had turned around and he put himself on the path of protecting the underdog rather than trying to humiliate and take advantage of him.