Marie Ferrarella - Colton Undercover

“I just bet he did,” Mac replied, doing his best to keep his anger in check. “You sure you don’t want me to track him down and beat him up for you?” This time, as Mac clenched his hands into fists beside him on the sofa, he was only half kidding.

“I don’t want you getting into trouble on my account,” Leonor told him.

“Might do us both some good,” he pointed out, coaxing her just the tiniest bit.

Leonor looked up at him quizzically. She knew why he thought it would do her some good, but Mac? She didn’t quite understand why he would say that.

“Why you?”

“Because I don’t like anyone hurting you,” he told her simply.

She felt her heart swell. She really needed to hear that, she thought.

“Thank you, Mac.” She returned his smile, wondering how she could possibly convey to the man how grateful she was to have him in her life. “Letting me stay here for a while is all I need.”

She sighed and put her arms around Mac—or tried to. There was more of the big man than her arms could possibly encompass.

Mac laughed softly—she’d always thought of his laugh as such a comforting sound—and embraced her.

“Like I said, stay as long as you like. I want you to think of this as your home,” he told her again without any fanfare.

That had been four days ago. So, here she was, Leonor thought, hiding out at Mac’s ranch, doing her best to pull herself together and regroup enough to be able to face each of her siblings, preferably individually, so she could field their questions and get them to hear her out and see her side.

She needed to have them forgive her, if not today, then eventually. Forgive her and see that she was as much of a victim in all this as they were, because they might be resentful to see their names and their lives shockingly dramatized online in a cheap effort at sensationalism. But David had used her to do this to them and she was not only suffering the same fate as they were, she was also suffering because someone she loved and believed loved her had done this, using her as a means to an end. And in the bargain, making her family look at her as a traitor. She’d reported him to the police, but he had hidden the money well and it was a case of her word against his. Things looked rather bleak from every standpoint.

She had trouble battling the hopelessness that kept insisting on encroaching on her state of mind. But if she hoped to ever win back her family, she had to keep that feeling at bay.

* * *

Well, this was unexpected, Josh thought, checking his email the moment he checked into the bed and breakfast when he arrived in Shadow Creek.

Leonor Colton had taken a leave of absence from the museum.

Josh frowned. He had gone undercover, taking on the identity of a billionaire with a keen interest in art and the museum, in order to become a person of interest to Leonor so that he could get closer to her, and now she’d taken a leave of absence. Josh shook his head. This was going to be trickier than he thought.

Well, it was too late to switch identities again because in this day and age everyone’s “backstory” could be checked out on the internet in a matter of minutes, and his was already a matter of record. That was thanks to Jeremy Bailey, the IT wizard in the San Antonio field office who had whipped up this identity for him. Jeremy had even created a Facebook page for him, cleverly backdated with photographs of an ex-wife and a number of parties and fund-raisers—all art-oriented—that he’d attended in the past.

Josh pulled up the page on his laptop now, wondering who the woman posing as his ex-wife was. Whoever Jeremy had used, the woman was a little too flashy for him, he mused. He preferred more classy women, women whose brains were stuffed to full capacity instead of just their closets.

So far, Josh hadn’t met anyone who could hold his interest for more than a few dates, but then, in defense of all the women he had ever gone out with, he’d never had the time to properly pursue a relationship.

For one thing, he had moved around a lot, transferring to different field offices whenever new opportunities arose. Single, with no family, he had nothing to keep him anchored to any one place.

With him, it was always the next case that piqued his interest.

But at the moment, it wasn’t the next one that did it. It was this one.

He had set his sights on bringing Livia Colton in, and to do that, he had already decided that he was going to have to get close to Leonor. Some of the circumstances might have changed, but the bottom line was still the same.

He just needed to do a little rewriting to make it ultimately work and he was nothing, he thought, smiling to himself, if not creatively flexible.

“You’re going down, Livia Colton,” he promised. “And so’s your daughter if she’s in on this.”

He got to work.

Chapter 2

“Just remember, you don’t have access to a bottomless expense account.” Andrew Arroyo’s voice crackled a little, thanks to a poor cell phone connection. “The budget’s been cut, so be sure you watch how you throw that money around, Howard,” the FBI assistant director in charge of the San Antonio field office warned him. “Just because you’re supposed to be this big shot billionaire doesn’t mean you have to spend money like one. As a matter of fact,” Arroyo hinted helpfully, “a lot of billionaires are known to be tight when it comes to their money.”

Josh was beginning to regret checking in with his superior so soon after arriving in Shadow Creek. He should have waited until he had something a little more solid by way of an alternate plan to offer the man.

Still, Josh felt he needed to say something defensively before he found his hands completely tied in this little undercover drama he’d found himself taking part in.

“I can’t exactly penny-pinch, Assistant Director Arroyo,” Josh told his boss matter-of-factly. “I am supposed to be a billionaire.”

“The operative word here being ‘supposed to be,’” Arroyo pointed out.

If he’d really liked Arroyo, he would have just kept quiet about this lecture. But he didn’t. Arroyo liked to micromanage everyone assigned to him and that wasn’t the way that Josh liked to operate.

“That’s three words, sir,” Josh replied matter-of-factly.

He could almost hear Arroyo scowling. The assistant director had the kind of scowl that took in every single part of his face. “Don’t nitpick, Howard.”

“I won’t if you won’t, sir,” Josh responded. And then he grew serious as he tried to explain his position. It was the only plan he could think of to make himself privy to Leonor’s movements without arousing her suspicions. “It’s a work in progress, but the plan is to have Leonor Colton try to get close to me so she can try to convince me to donate to the museum.”

“You can play hard to get,” Arroyo suggested. “Nothing makes a woman want a man more than if he acts as if he’s not interested.”

In his opinion, his superior would be the last person anyone would go to for advice on getting close to a member of the opposite sex.

“Which might explain why you’ve never been married,” Josh observed under his breath.

“I heard that,” Arroyo snapped. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and the Bureau’s rather limited expense account.”

Calling Arroyo had definitely been a mistake on his part, Josh thought. He was just going to have to work things out to his own satisfaction. “As stimulating as this conversation is, sir, I’ve got a plan to get into motion. I’ll check in with you later,” Josh promised vaguely.

Just before pigs begin to fly, he added silently.

The next minute, Josh terminated the call and put away his cell phone before his superior could protest or say anything else.