Marie Ferrarella - Colton Undercover

“It’s an art museum,” she assured him. “It’s not as large as some of the other ones in, say, the bigger cities like Los Angeles, and certainly nothing like the Museum of Modern Art in New York,” she allowed. Leonor looked down at the five photographs again. They were all truly beautiful works of art. “But we have several respectable collections on the premises, and I guarantee that we would do your collection complete justice if you wound up deciding that you wanted to display the paintings at our museum.”

He nodded thoughtfully, appearing to carefully consider her words. “I’d have to think about it,” he told her.

She’d expected nothing less and would have been suspicious if he had said otherwise. “Of course, I understand.”

“Meanwhile, I do have to eat,” he said matter-of-factly. “And a bread stick only goes so far.” He looked around the premises. “Tell me, does the server ever come back after she brings over the lemonade or are we supposed to just fill up on bread sticks? Because, if that’s the case, she’s going to have to come back with more bread sticks.”

“She’s supposed to come back,” Leonor told him.

Scanning the area, she spotted the young woman who had brought over their lemonades. She appeared to be talking to the two men who were seated at another table across the way. It didn’t look as if order-taking was involved.

Leonor was eager to be accommodating—yes, this man she was sharing a table with could still be a fraud, but if he wasn’t, the museum where she worked stood to gain a lot if Josh Pendergrass was kept happy.

As long as all it takes is a full stomach, she silently qualified.

Because if it took anything else, or if this was a case of something else being involved other than an art collector looking for a venue to display his collection, then she wasn’t interested in keeping this man content, no matter how exceptionally good-looking he was.

A good-looking man was why she had come home to regroup in the first place. Maybe if David hadn’t been as handsome or as charming as he was, she would have seen through his ruse a lot sooner and been spared a lot of heartache.

Well, she was never going to be that blind again, Leonor promised herself.

But she was just as determined not to allow what David had done to jade her or color the way she looked at things. That, she knew, would be as much of a tragedy as her running blindly toward making another really stupid mistake.

Catching the server’s eye, the next moment Leonor stood up. Raising her voice only slightly, she informed the young woman, “We’re ready to order now.”

The server looked only moderately embarrassed to have to be summoned this way. She quickly approached their table.

“Very good, Ms. Colton,” the young woman said.

Josh pretended to look at her with a measure of surprise. “So that really is your name?” he asked, taking the server as the final authority on the matter.

Why would he think that she had lied to him earlier? What was the point of admitting that she was part of a family that had the stain of infamy on it if she didn’t have to?

“Yes, Colton really is my name,” she answered Josh, and for the first time in a long while, she didn’t sigh as she said it.

Chapter 4

“Well, you certainly look happy,” Mac said when she walked into the ranch house almost four hours later.

It was good to see her like this, the rancher thought. She’d been through a lot. More than her share. It was time for her to find something to smile about.

He crossed over to her. “I’m guessing that taking my advice turned out well for you.”

Leonor nodded. Since the outing had been his idea, she’d chosen to come into Mac’s house when she got back from town instead of going straight to the apartment over the stables.

Kicking off her shoes, she sank down on the sofa. It creaked slightly, like an old friend murmuring a familiar greeting as her body settled back against the creased leather.

“You were right, Mac,” she freely admitted. “It felt good to get out. And, surprisingly enough,” she added with a self-effacing smile, “no one felt compelled to throw rocks at me.”

That came as no surprise to him. “You were always the nice one, little girl,” Mac told her. “Nobody would throw rocks at you—any more than they’d throw rocks at me.”

Leonor laughed at his statement as Mac sat down in the far corner of the sofa. “That’s because you’re not related to Livia by blood,” she pointed out. “Besides, let’s face it,” she added, tongue in cheek, “you’re big and intimidating. People in town would be afraid to throw rocks at you. They’d be afraid of the consequences of something like that.”

His rich baritone laugh seemed to completely encircle her. “You might have a point,” he agreed. “Just remember,” he told her, becoming serious, “I have your back, little girl.”

His phrasing amused her, as did the nickname he had for her. Rather than bristle or take offense, thinking it played upon her helplessness, she found it endearing. “And any other part of me that needs protecting?” she wanted to know.

Mac nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Good to know.”

He looked a little closer at her. “You certainly are in a good mood,” Mac observed. “Did you run into some old friends?”

She sincerely doubted that anyone in town thought of themselves as belonging to that small, intimate group. To be completely honest, Leonor wasn’t so sure that any of the town’s locals thought of anyone in her family as a friend.

“That would be pretty hard to do,” she told Mac, “given the circumstances. But I did meet this man at that new restaurant across from the bed-and-breakfast...”

Mac was instantly alert. “Oh?”

She smiled. Mac was getting protective. She could tell. She knew the signs. She supposed old habits were hard to break.

Considering everything that had happened in the last few months, it was nice having someone looking out for her, Leonor thought. She could have used Mac when David was hovering around, making her completely stupid and blind until it was too late to undo the damage, she thought ruefully.

“Nothing to get excited about,” she warned Mac. “From what I could tell, the man’s just passing through. We shared a table at a restaurant.”

“The restaurant is that crowded?” Mac asked in amazement. He was always interested in how the other businesses in and around Shadow Creek were doing because, eventually, whatever happened to them had an effect on his own ranch. They were all interdependent in one way or another.

“No,” Leonor said, negating that and any other theory that Mac might come up with. “He just didn’t want to eat alone and asked if he could join me.”

“And you agreed?”

She saw that Mac was watching her carefully. What did he expect to see? “Well, I don’t exactly have leprosy.”

“No,” he readily agreed. “But what happened to being leery?” He would have thought after what she’d been through with this David character, she’d be highly suspicious of any man she hadn’t known for years. There was no arguing that Leonor was a very attractive young woman, but she was also a Colton and certain precautions always needed to be in place.

“He’s an art collector,” Leonor told him, as if that single attribute was capable of negating an entire host of sins.

Mac crossed his arms before his chest, looking exceedingly formidable. “And you know this how?” he asked patiently.

She knew how Mac was liable to take this, but all she had was the truth. “He told me.”

“And you believed him? Seriously?” Mac questioned. He frowned. He trusted her judgment, but this didn’t sound good. “I thought you were the suspicious one.”