Marie Ferrarella - Colton Undercover

Or so she thought.

But everything fell into place when one day she’d opened up her computer, logged onto the internet and saw that her family’s story was splashed all over the home page of Everything’s Blogger in Texas, a local gossip site.

Reading the first installment—she couldn’t pull her eyes away—Leonor felt like such a fool.

She still felt that way. All those things David had said to her—he had just been playing her, lying to her so that she would trust him and learn to confide in him, telling him all of her family’s secrets. Secrets he then turned around and sold to the blog.

Leonor felt incredibly stupid and used. And horribly crushed.

In its own way, this was as devastating to her as her mother’s arrest had been that awful, awful day over ten years ago when the law enforcement officers had descended on the sprawling mansion that she and her brothers and sisters called home.

At first, after David’s disappearance and bitter betrayal, she had sought refuge in her position at the museum. But it didn’t help her keep her mind off what a fool she had been. So she’d gone to her boss and asked Sheffield for a leave of absence in the hopes that if she went somewhere else, she’d be able to somehow pull herself together.

“I’m not losing you, am I, Leonor?” Adam Sheffield had asked, concerned as he sat with her in his office, looking at her across his cluttered desk. “Because, I don’t mind telling you, in all my years here, you’re the best curator I’ve ever had.” He’d leaned forward, lowering his voice and creating an air of privacy. “If it’s a matter of more money—”

She’d been quick to shoot that supposition down. “No, it’s not that, Mr. Sheffield. I don’t want more money.”

“Shorter hours, then,” he proposed, guessing at the reason behind her unanticipated request. “I know I’ve been relying on you a great deal—maybe too much—but you’re so damn good at this that—”

She’d stopped the director mid-sentence again. “Thank you, sir, but it’s not the hours, either, Mr. Sheffield.” Leonor went on to appeal to his kinder side. “I just need to get away for a while, pull myself together. I haven’t seen my family for a long time and I think it might be time to go back home for a little while.”

“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.”