Marie Ferrarella - The Coltons - Nick, Clay & Jericho

He nodded slowly. It wasn’t something he was happy about, but this was going to take at least a day, if not more.

“For now.”

“I’ve got a guest room in the back.” She jerked her thumb toward the rear of the house.

He knew that. He’d done a very thorough surveillance of the house when he’d first gotten here, thinking he’d find the perpetrator at home.

The room in question was full of boxes filled with all kinds of things, none of them new. “You’re using it for storage.”

“There’s a bed in there,” she volunteered. The boxes were piled on top and all around it. “You’re welcomed to it.”

He could just see her trying to wall him in. “Here’s just fine.”

Here? Did he mean to stretch out on the sofa? She supposed she could move Emmie and hope the little girl went on sleeping. Unlike her brother Ryder, who could sleep while being tossed around in the funnel of a twister, Emmie was easily roused.

Moving over to the sofa, she began to pick up her daughter.

As with the flashlight, Nick caught her wrist and stopped her. “What are you doing?”

She wished he would stop touching her. “Moving Emmie so that you can have the sofa.”

“Leave her where she is,” he instructed, releasing her wrist. “I don’t want the sofa. I’ll take the chair.” He nodded toward it.

Toward the left of the sofa, the item under discussion was an overstuffed chair that had once belonged to her grandfather, the famous rodeo star she’d been named after and whose last name she’d taken when she began riding herself. George “Rattlesnake” Grady. He’d favored that chair for some fifteen years and it still retained his shape. She loved it dearly, but it was hardly comfortable enough for Sheffield to spend the night in.

Georgie eyed him dubiously. “You won’t get much sleep in it.”

“I don’t intend to sleep.”

Which meant that he intended to watch her, she thought, immediately suspicious. And that in turn put them back in two separate camps.

Still, he wasn’t slapping handcuffs on her and shouting that she was under arrest. She supposed that she could deal with anything short of that.

And come the morning, she promised herself, after she deposited her winnings into the bank, she’d find a way to set Mr. Secret Service agent straight.

Once that happened, her life as Georgie Grady, rancher, could finally begin.

Chapter 6

“What?”

Georgie stared across the counter at the bank teller as if he were babbling gibberish.

It was just a little after nine in the morning and Georgie stood in the center window of the First Western Bank. Of the two banks housed in Esperanza, First Western was the older, more established one. That was why she’d originally chosen it. Safety and stability had always been exceedingly important to her.

Getting here this morning was a semi-victory on her part. A victory because that Secret Service agent who’d invaded her life hadn’t wanted her to go into town. Semi because in order to leave the house at all, she’d had to accept that he was accompanying her. He’d told her in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t allow her to leave his line of sight for more than five minutes. Five minutes being the amount of time, according to the insufferable man, that a person should be able to take a shower and get dressed again. She hadn’t bothered pointing out how ridiculous that was because she’d been in a hurry to get to the bank to put her money away.

Because she’d been in a hurry, Georgie had given in to him and even agreed to let him drive Emmie and her in his sedan. All she’d wanted to do was to get to the bank to make this final deposit.

And now all she wanted was not to throw up. Within the last minute, her stomach had twisted into a knot and then risen up into her throat.

If only she could do the last few minutes over again. Walk in, nod at the teller and have the man take her deposit slip with a smile, and not say what he’d just said.

She just couldn’t have heard him correctly.

Javier Valdez looked at her over the tops of his small, rimless glasses. “I said I guess we’re going to have to open an account for you.”

That made absolutely no sense.

A feeling of impending doom tightened about her throat. She fought to ignore it.

“But I already have an account,” Georgie reminded him. To back her up, she pushed forward the bankbook she’d brought with her, along with her deposit slip and the money she’d won during the last five months. “This one. Trudy Miles opened it for me the day before she retired,” she remembered. “It was the same month that Emmie was born.”

The month she’d realized that she wasn’t a child anymore. Eighteen or not, she was a mother. A mother with responsibilities. Clay had given her the hundred dollars that she’d deposited that day. It was a gift for Emmie, her brother had told her. He was giving her money because he “wasn’t any good at buying stuff for babies.” Georgie could remember tearing up as she’d made that first deposit.

Now tears threatened to come for a completely different reason.

Javier frowned. “But you closed that account,” he told her gently. “Said you lost the bankbook so we had to match up your signature. Don’t you remember?”

That was impossible. She hadn’t been here in five months. She hadn’t .

“You saw me?” she challenged. Behind her, she heard Sheffield shifting his weight. Probably getting ready to handcuff her and lead her off, she thought. With all her heart, she wished the man was somewhere else. Preferably in hell.

“Everybody saw you,” Javier told her with a soft laugh. “That red hair of yours is hard to miss.” He smiled at her. A widower, it was obvious that he was a little smitten with her. “Nobody else around here’s got hair the color of a Texas sunset.”

“But that’s not possible,” Georgie insisted.

Listening to the exchange between the Grady woman and the bank teller, Nick found himself thinking that the distress and anguish in her voice sounded genuine. She was probably an accomplished actress. Most con artists were and this was beginning to take on the shape of a con.

But still, he couldn’t quite shake off the effect of her voice.

Moving forward so that he stood beside Georgie, Nick appraised the short, dark-haired teller. “Were you the one who closed the account for her?”

Javier’s black eyes darted toward Georgie, as if to silently ask if it was all right for him to answer the question. “Is he with you?”

Beads of sweat slid down her spine at the same time a chill took hold of her. Javier’s voice echoed in her head. It took her a second to make sense of the question. She was doing her best to block the onslaught of some very terrifying thoughts.

“For now, unfortunately, yes,” she reluctantly acknowledged.

Javier’s eyes shifted back to the tall man beside Georgie. “No, I didn’t. Mr. Welsh did.”

“Can you get him over here?” Under no circumstances could that be mistaken for a request. It was a tersely worded command.

One that clearly made Javier nervous. Sheffield probably got a lot of that, Georgie thought. And he probably reveled in it. Right now, she didn’t care what the Secret Service agent did as long as he got this mess untangled for her.

Clearing his throat, Javier shook his head. “No, I can’t.”

Georgie felt Sheffield take a half step closer. The very movement seemed intimidating to Javier. She saw the man’s eyes widen.

“And why’s that,” Nick’s eyes dipped down to the teller’s name tag. “Javier?”

“Mr. Welsh is on vacation,” Javier recited, never taking his eyes off the man beside Georgie. “His daughter’s getting married in Colorado, so he and Mrs. Welsh went there.”