Get a grip, he ordered.
“You’re ready,” he noted, walking up to her.
He watched her smile bloom across her face. “You sound surprised.”
He inclined his head, conceding the point. “Most women, when they say an hour, usually mean at least an hour and a half. Maybe two.”
Her eyes met his. “I’m not most women,” Leonor told him.
He looked at her and for a moment, the teasing humor was gone, replaced by something that felt suspiciously like affection.
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
Damn, there went her heart, Leonor thought.
Don’t get carried away, Lennie. Just because the man knows how to set fire to the sheets doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly going to be plighting your troth to one another in the near future. C’mon, stay real, stay focused.
But it was really hard to focus on anything other than Josh, feeling the way she did right now. It was as if her feet were just barely making contact with the ground as she walked. Any second, she was liable to be floating on air.
“In the mood for something different?” Josh asked her.
She pressed her lips together, keeping the almost-giddy laughter from slipping out. “I thought that was what last night was about.”
He was the one who laughed then, captivated by the unassuming way she had about her.
“No, I’m talking about breakfast,” he said.
“Unless it includes fried rattlesnake, I’m open to it,” she told him gamely. So far, his choice of restaurants hadn’t disappointed her.
“Good, because I know this quaint little hole-in-the-wall that serves the best breakfast burritos,” he told her, gesturing toward the B&B’s back door. “We could actually walk to it, but I think we might want to ride on the way back. These things are so good, people have a tendency to eat more than they should,” he warned her.
He turned around just in time to see it out of the corner of his eye. An unremarkable silver vehicle, not unlike countless others in the area. Except that this one was going rather fast.
And from the looks of it, it was headed straight for Leonor.
Quick reflexes honed with years of practice had him reacting automatically. He made a dive for Leonor and, bringing her down, he covered her with his body before she even fully realized just what was happening or that she was in danger.
The silver sedan wound up missing her by less than six inches. The driver never slowed down; he just kept right on going.
Josh quickly scrambled to his feet, reaching for the weapon he usually carried—the one that, just like the other cell phone, wasn’t there. He’d taken his service weapon and stored it in his vehicle, afraid that if Leonor saw it on him, it might make her suspicious.
The next second, time froze. His attention was completely centered on the woman he’d just saved. Nothing else mattered.
He looked her over as quickly as he could. To his relief, he didn’t see any blood.
Yet. That didn’t mean that she hadn’t been hit.
“Are you all right?” he asked Leonor.
“I am, thanks to you,” she answered, accepting the hand he offered her. Feeling shaken, she rose to her feet and brushed herself off. “I think you just saved me from becoming that guy’s hood ornament.” Trying to regain control over her shaky feelings, she blew out a breath. “Thank you,” she said in earnest.
“I’m just glad I was here.” He looked at her, concerned. “Are you sure you’re all right? No broken bones, no bruises—anything?” he asked tactfully, looking her over one more time.
She moved her shoulders, and then took a couple of steps forward. “No, everything seems to be in working order.”
“Hey, are you two all right?” the handyman from the B&B called out as he ran up to them. “I saw the whole thing. That driver was crazy, man! He had all that space and he almost mowed you down. You want me to call the police?” he offered, lowering his voice slightly.
Leonor immediately vetoed the idea. “No, nobody was hurt and that guy’s long gone.”
“I got the license plate!” the handyman announced proudly, looking at Josh. “Maybe the police can track the driver down.”
“No, that’s okay,” Leonor told him.
The last thing she wanted was the kind of publicity that this sort of an incident generated. She knew it would only cause the people in town to begin speculating about her and her family all over again. And then the rumors, old and unfounded, would begin again. She’d had enough of that to last a lifetime and was just beginning to enjoy the fact that it had finally died down. She didn’t need a new eruption.
“Why don’t you give it to me, just in case?” Josh told the handyman.
“Sure.” The man was more than happy to comply. He pulled out a small pad and wrote the license plate number down. Tearing off the page, he handed it to Josh.
Josh looked at it before he folded the paper. There was a fifty-fifty chance the car had been stolen or that different plates had been put on, but in case it hadn’t been, maybe he could get someone in the department to trace it back to the owner. This way, he could get a handle on who was trying to kill Leonor—because the driver definitely hadn’t been heading for him.
This near hit-and-run added a whole new twist to the case, he thought.
As he pocketed the paper with the license written on it, he saw Leonor looking at him strangely. It made him uneasy. Had she been hurt?
“You want to go back into the bed-and-breakfast?” he asked, thinking that maybe it was best for her if she lay down and rested after something like this.
But Leonor wasn’t thinking about resting. “No, but I would like to know why you just pocketed that idiot’s license.”
“Because walking around holding the paper is kind of awkward,” he answered flippantly.
Leonor frowned. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Maybe she just needed reassurance, he thought. After all, she had just been through an ordeal that would have reduced another woman to tears, or worse, hysteria. So he gave her as straight an answer as he could.
“I just want to hang on to it in case something else happens. This way we might have a lead for the police to follow up on.” She was still looking at him rather oddly, forcing him to ask, “What?”
“Who are you?” she wanted to know.
Did she suspect? His stomach tightened for just a fraction of a moment before he got himself under control and answered, “Someone who wants to make sure that you’re kept safe.”
But she shook her head. That wasn’t what she was asking. “Besides that.”
Josh knew he had no option open but to brazen his way through this. He told himself his cover hadn’t been blown. He was too good at what he did for that to have happened.
Right, that’s why you made love with her last night until the cows came home.
The expression was something his grandmother used to say. The memory, coming out of the blue the way it did, rattled him.
It took him a second more to answer. “You know who I am. Your boss apparently vetted me. I’m the guy you’ve been after to share his art collection with you, remember?”
She didn’t address that. Instead, she focused on the one thing that was somehow bothering her—the one thing that had, ironically, saved her. “Your reflexes are very quick.”
His gut told him where this was headed. “I have a trainer. I also know how to drive defensively,” he told her, getting ahead of what she might ask next. “It’s something rich people either learn how to do or hire someone to do for them because sooner or later, a kidnapper is going to pop up in their lives and if they’re not ready for him, then it’s all over.”
She shivered, as if coming out of a trance. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “You
saved my life and I’m grilling you.”
“You’re rattled and you have every right to be,” he told her soothingly, then asked again, “You sure you don’t want to go back to your room? We could order room service.”
She shook her head. “No, I just want to go somewhere, get this out of my system,” she told him. She sounded agitated.
“Then let’s go,” he urged, opening the passenger door for her and waiting for her to get in.
He was being exceedingly nice, as well as thoughtful, not to mention that he’d just saved her, and she was acting as if she suspected him of doing something awful, Leonor upbraided herself.
She really was getting paranoid, she thought.
Leonor got into the vehicle and had buckled up by the time Josh rounded the hood and got in on his side. But rather than buckle up, he paused and looked at her face closely.
She shifted self-consciously. All those years with photographers snapping away at her and she still felt self-conscious.
“What’s the matter? Did my makeup get wiped off?”
“No, I’m just checking you for scratches—but it’s just as I suspected,” he told her.
“What?” she wanted to know.
“You’re perfect,” he told her, and then he lost the serious look and a grin came out. “Possibly even more perfect than before.”
She shook her head and laughed. He was good for her, she thought, feeling ashamed that just for a moment, she had begun to suspect him. Once burned, twice shy; wasn’t that how that old adage went?
“Just drive,” she told him, pointing to the road in front of their windshield.
“I hear and obey,” he answered with just enough whimsy in his voice to keep her fooled.
Or so he hoped.
Chapter 13
“Your hunch was right, Josh,” Jeremy Bailey, the computer tech he’d called at the San Antonio field office, told him later that afternoon. Even with a rush order, it had taken Bailey four hours to get back to him. “The license number you gave me belongs to a car that was reported stolen over a week ago. Sorry I don’t have any better news.”
Josh sighed. This was one of those times he would have preferred not being right.
“Not your fault,” he told Bailey.
This meant that he was back to square one, Josh thought, trying not to let that get to him. But after coming up against one dead end after another, it was getting progressively more difficult for him to remain upbeat.
He’d gone into this thinking that Leonor was the mastermind behind her mother’s escape, or at least one of them. He no longer thought that. Now it was beginning to look to him as if her mother was trying to eliminate Leonor. But it was just a hunch and he needed to find a way to prove that.
“So what are you going to do?” Bailey asked him, curious. They were not only colleagues, they were friends when time allowed.
“Same thing I’ve been doing all along—play it by ear,” Josh said, then added, “Except that now I also need to keep Leonor Colton out of harm’s way.”
“Good luck with that,” the computer tech told him before terminating the connection.
Josh’s next order of business was to report in to Arroyo and give his superior a quick update, emphasis on the word quick.
Or at least that was his plan. But Arroyo had a battery of questions.
“Sounds like there’s trouble in paradise,” Arroyo commented after he heard Josh out.
Josh wasn’t sure if the assistant director was referring to the fledgling relationship he was attempting to build with Leonor in order to gain her trust, or if Arroyo was talking about the state of the supposed relationship between Leonor and Livia.
Deciding to stay on the safe side and not read anything into the man’s words, Josh played dumb and asked, “How so?”
Arroyo huffed. “Any fool can see that the girl got Mama Bear angry and now Mama Bear’s looking to get rid of what she considers to be another loose end.”
Meaning Leonor, Josh thought. Wanting to make sure that he and the assistant director were on the same page, he felt Arroyo out a little further.
“What you’re saying is that Livia Colton hired someone to kill her daughter.”
“Hell, yes,” Arroyo cried. “From everything I’ve heard, in comparison to the Colton matriarch, Lizzie Borden was a warm, nurturing pussycat.”
Josh knew that by no stretch of the imagination could the word loving be applied to Livia Colton, but he was beginning to harbor some doubts that she would actually have her own flesh and blood killed.
“Still,” Josh theorized, “going from cold, unapproachable witch to murderous mother is a pretty big leap.”
“Not so big,” Arroyo countered. “The woman’s a sociopath. But if you think that you’ve got a better theory, let’s hear it,” he urged.
Josh paused, reviewing the facts of the case in his mind. “Well, to be honest, I think you might be right in thinking that Leonor’s mother is trying to kill her—”
“So we’re on the same page,” Arroyo declared, obviously pleased that his senior agent was agreeing with him.
Josh cut in before Arroyo could continue. “But we disagree as to why Livia’s trying to get rid of her oldest daughter.”
He heard Arroyo’s stifled exasperated sigh. The man was close to uttering some very choice words but he refrained—for now. “Go ahead.”
“I think that Livia’s out for revenge because Leonor didn’t help her. The woman somehow still managed to pull off an escape and now she’s out to get even with everyone who might have turned their back on her.”
Arroyo didn’t even pause to reflect on his agent’s theory. “So, in other words, you think that witch is out to get all her kids?”
Although as far as he knew, there hadn’t been any attempts made on any of the other Coltons yet, Josh had a feeling that it was only a matter of time. Right now, Leonor was apparently the first on her mother’s hit list.
“Why not?” Josh said. “Livia Colton belongs to the old ‘if you’re not with me, you’re against me’ school of thought.”
“You’re probably right,” Arroyo conceded. “But somebody had to have helped that witch escape and it’s a matter of record that Leonor was the only one of Livia’s kids who came to visit her.”
“What can I tell you?” The phrase slipped out before he realized he’d said it. Josh braced himself for fallout as he added, “Leonor Colton’s got a soft heart.”
“I don’t care if she’s a walking bowl of mush. In my book, that woman’s guilty until proven innocent.” And then Arroyo remembered a damning piece of evidence. “What about that big chunk of money Leonor withdrew a few months ago? Those prison guards were bribed to look the other way and Livia’s getaway was clean, going off without a hitch. That all costs big bucks.”
“I’m aware of that, but the money had to come from somewhere else. Leonor used her money to keep her mother’s old foreman from losing his ranch and she also just bought several Thoroughbreds for her sister Jade’s farm after a couple of the original horses she had there died.”
Arroyo blew out a disgusted sigh. “And at Christmas time she flies around in a sled, distributing toys to all the good little girls and boys and going, ‘Ho, ho, ho,’” the assistant director mocked.
Taking offense on Leonor’s behalf, Josh was barely holding on to his temper, but he knew he couldn’t afford to lose it. Arroyo would have him removed in a heartbeat and he could do Leonor more good right where he was.
“I couldn’t speak to that, sir,” he managed to say calmly. “I can only speak to what I can personally verify.”
Irritated, Arroyo said, “Yeah, yeah, just keep your eyes open. I want that woman’s hide nailed to the barn door.”
He wasn’t 100 percent certain that the assistant
director was talking about the escaped fugitive. “You are talking about Livia Colton, right, sir?”
Arroyo sighed. “She’s the main target, yeah. If you can find her—and exonerate your girlfriend while you’re at it—then by all means, go for it.”
Josh felt he needed to correct the assistant director, just for the record. “She’s not my girlfriend, sir.”
“Yeah, well I’m not a hundred percent convinced of that, Special Agent Howard. And in case it’s slipped your mind with all this wining and dining you’ve been doing,” Arroyo said sarcastically, “the brass wants to see results.”
That brought something else to mind. “Speaking of results, sir, the museum that Leonor works for is waiting for those paintings I’m supposedly ‘loaning’ to them to arrive.”
“Well, then I guess you’d better hurry and wrap this thing up,” Arroyo snapped.
Josh could envision the whole thing blowing up on him. He’d already caught Leonor looking at him oddly a couple of times since the near hit-and-run incident. He knew something was bothering her and he definitely didn’t want to arouse her suspicions any further.
“I thought the head of the department had an arrangement going with the real owner of those paintings that I showed to Leonor.”
If the sigh coming from Arroyo had been any louder, Josh had a feeling it would have blown out his ear. He sounded far from happy as he said, “I’ll see what can be done.”
“Good.” Josh leveled with him. “Because I don’t think I can keep stalling them much longer.”
Arroyo laughed drily. “From where I’m standing, I think you’re a master at it. I’ll get back to you,” he told Josh, and then the connection went dead.
Josh frowned at his phone. This was definitely not going well.
* * *
Leonor was conflicted. On the one hand, Joshua Pendergrass was just as perfect as she’d said he was. Everything a woman could wish for—and more. He was kind, considerate, handsome, rich and an absolutely incredible lover.
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