Colton Undercover

by Marie Ferrarella

  He was good at his job, good at being able to walk into a room and see all the possible ways someone could either break in or make an escape. There wasn’t anyone he felt he could entrust Leonor’s safety to outside of himself.

  And she wouldn’t allow him into her life until she had the truth.

  “Finish checking out,” he told her. “And then come for a ride with me.” He saw the leery, guarded look that immediately entered her eyes. “Please,” he added, then offered her what he knew she’d been waiting for. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know then.”

  It was her turn to examine her options. “How do I know you’re not going to try to kidnap me?”

  He laughed drily. “If I was going to do that, I would have done it long before now. I had the opportunity,” he reminded her.

  She knew he was talking about when they’d made love in her suite. She certainly hadn’t been in any position to offer resistance.

  Inclining her head, she gave in—sort of. “All right, but we’ll go for a drive in my car.”

  He nodded. “No problem.”

  She had one final condition. “And I drive,” she told him.

  He looked as if he had been expecting her to say that. “Fine.”

  Leonor still couldn’t help thinking that she was going to regret this. Josh was taller and a great deal stronger than she was. She knew he could easily overpower her and if it came down to that, she really had nothing to defend herself with.

  But there was a part of her that wanted to trust him and that part knew that if she turned her back on all this, if she stormed away without hearing him out, she would wind up regretting it. Maybe not now or even very soon, but eventually—and very possibly for the rest of her life.

  She capitulated.

  “All right,” she told Josh stiffly, “let’s go. And believe me, this had better be good.”

  “I don’t know how ‘good’ you’re going to think it is,” Josh told her honestly. “But I promise it will be the truth.”

  Still frustrated, Leonor momentarily surrendered. “I guess I can’t ask for more than that.”

  He knew a lot of women who could. He was grateful that she wasn’t among them.

  Josh pressed for the elevator.

  They got out on the ground floor a moment later and she proceeded to the registration desk to check out. Josh did the same.

  Leonor kept one eye on him throughout the entire procedure and he was well aware of it. He couldn’t really say that he blamed her. But he fervently hoped that by the time he was finished explaining things to her, she would understand why he had lied to her. Understand and eventually forgive him because he didn’t think he could come to terms with living in a world without her being a part of it. Without being a part of his life.

  Once they checked out, Leonor had the attendant bring her car around.

  “And yours, sir?” the attendant asked Josh once he brought out her vehicle.

  “I’ll have someone make arrangements for it later,” he told the man, giving him a tip to cover both. The attendant was grinning broadly as he tucked it away in his pocket.

  Leonor put her suitcases into the trunk of her car, then closed it. Keeping the vehicle between them, she made her way to the driver’s side and got in. She watched Josh’s every move as he got in on the passenger side. Her eyes never left him as she buckled up.

  “You realize you’re going to have to look at the road once you start up the car,” Josh pointed out, mild amusement curving his generous mouth.

  She was in no mood for his humor. “You let me worry about the road. You just worry about you,” she informed him sharply.

  He really couldn’t blame Leonor for looking at him like that, but she was making him a little uneasy because her attention was so divided. She was ripe for an accident.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he suggested.

  “What?” she bit off.

  “Why don’t you pull over to the shoulder of the road so you can keep an eye on me while I tell you what you want to know?” He could see that she was still suspicious of every word coming out of his mouth. “I just wanted to be able to talk to you someplace where we wouldn’t be overheard.”

  Saying something unintelligible under her breath, Leonor made a sharp right and pulled over the way he had suggested.

  Turning off the engine, she removed the key from the ignition, closing her hand over it. He took that as a sign that she still didn’t trust him. For now, he knew he had to accept that.

  “All right, I’m listening.” She saw him move his hand toward his pocket and immediately became alert. “What are you doing?”

  “Reaching for my wallet,” he told her. “I want to show you my ID. My real ID,” he emphasized before she could ask about it. Withdrawing it slowly from his pocket, he flipped open his wallet. “I’m an FBI agent. Special Agent Josh Howard,” he said, introducing himself even though it said so on his photo ID.

  “I see,” she said numbly. The FBI. This was even worse than she had thought. Someone had told him to spy on her. Why? She wasn’t important in the scheme of things. “And I’m what?” she demanded. “Your assignment?”

  “Actually,” Josh corrected, “your mother is. I just assumed, after I saw those bank withdrawals that you made, that you were my best shot at finding where Livia Colton was.”

  In a matter of seconds, it all became clear. Leonor put two and two together. “You thought I bribed the guards.”

  “It looked that way,” he admitted. “But after checking into things further, I know what you used the money for.”

  She resented him looking into her finances, even though apparently doing that had exonerated her. “So now you don’t think I helped Livia escape.” She waited for him to walk back his words, or come up with something equally as infuriating to her.

  But he didn’t. “No, I don’t,” he told her.

  “All right.” She’d go along with that, although she wasn’t 100 percent convinced he was telling her the truth. “So if you don’t think I got her out of jail, what are you still doing here?”

  “I told you,” he said patiently. “Trying to protect you. You might not have had anything to do with your mother’s prison escape, but someone is after you.” He laid his cards on the table, at least for this aspect of the case. “You don’t seem to think it’s your mother. I’m not convinced that it isn’t, but either way, someone is after you and I intend to find out who it is, and then put them away for it.”

  It sounded so simple when he said it that way. Simple and gallant. She didn’t want to be won over. Struggling to hold on to her anger, she gave him a penetrating look. “And that’s it?”

  He spread his hands wide, the way someone who had nothing to hide, nothing up his sleeve, might. “Yes, that’s it.”

  “And I’m just supposed to believe you?” she challenged. She couldn’t shake her feelings of frustration, hurt and confusion.

  “Well,” Josh began philosophically, “I just blew my cover and very possibly put my ten-year career with the department in jeopardy, so yes, I’m asking you to believe me.” Pausing for a moment, he went for broke. “And I’m also asking you to let me go back to Austin with you, to that gala.”

  The man had an incredible amount of gall; she’d give him that. “What am I supposed to tell Sheffield? You don’t have an art collection and he’s not exactly going to get all excited about some fake copies you’re going to try to pass off as the real thing if that’s what you have in mind.”

  He supposed he couldn’t blame her for feeling that way. “Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “The Bureau is not run by amateurs.”

  What was that supposed to mean? She took a stab interpreting his words. “There are paintings?”

  He nodded and responded in a mild voice, “There are paintings.�
��

  Her eyes widened. Did he mean what she thought he meant? “The ones in the photographs you showed me the other day?”

  “The very same.” He could see that Leonor was still exceedingly skeptical about what he was telling her. “The head of my department is friends with the real collector and the collector graciously agreed to lend out his paintings—after all the proper documents were signed and the insurance company was assured that the proper precautions would be taken.” He smiled at her. “The paintings are being lent to an upscale art museum, not to a crime syndicate. Your boss will be none the wiser.”

  “He’s also hoping for a sizable donation from you to the museum,” she reminded him.

  “Well, there he might be a little disappointed,” Josh admitted. “But who knows, when all this is finally over, the real collector might be persuaded to make some sort of donation to the museum.”

  She wasn’t taking a single word for granted. She wanted it all spelled out. “And by ‘finally over’ you mean—?”

  He obliged her by playing along and making things clear. “Your mother returned to prison and whoever is after you taken down.”

  Right, like that was going to happen. He had no idea who he was dealing with if he thought that Livia could be brought in just like that. Livia might have been taken once, but that was not going to happen again, except over her mother’s dead body. He had to know that, Leonor thought.

  “So,” she sighed, “in other words, never.”

  “You need to have more faith than that,” he told Leonor.

  And then, suddenly leaning over toward her, Josh allowed himself just one quick kiss, brushing his lips against hers. It succeeded in vividly bringing back the other night in all its glory. And made him want things he wasn’t about to put into words at the moment.

  “I know I do,” he told her.

  The look in her eyes when she raised them to his told him that maybe she would get there.

  Eventually.

  Chapter 16

  Adam Sheffield seemed to light up like an airport runway turned on for a plane landing in the dead of night the moment he saw his curator entering the art museum with Joshua Pendergrass. While talking to several members of the museum crew, he stopped in midsentence and made straight for Leonor and her companion.

  After one quick, welcoming smile thrown in Leonor’s direction, the silver-haired, well-dressed museum director focused his entire attention on the man she had brought in with her.

  “Mr. Sheffield,” Leonor began, “This is—” She got no further.

  “No introductions are necessary,” Sheffield told her effusively. As luck would have it, they were standing right in front of the paintings that had been loaned to the museum in Josh’s name. Sheffield caught up Josh’s hand in both of his and held it fast. “I can’t tell you how excited we are to have these wonderful paintings on display here in our humble little museum.”

  Josh spared him just the barest of distant smiles, indicating that they were both aware that the museum they were in was neither little nor humble and that he knew that Sheffield was only attempting to play the part of a self-effacing museum director.

  “It’s my pleasure, Mr. Sheffield,” he told the older man.

  “Call me Adam, please,” Sheffield instructed, baring two rows of gleaming white teeth that would have made any cosmetic dentist beam with pride.

  “Well, Adam,” Josh continued obligingly, “I only have one request.”

  “Name it,” Sheffield instantly responded with marked enthusiasm.

  “This plaque you have beside the paintings—” Josh began, pointing to the one that had been hung up just this morning in preparation for the gala. It cited that the paintings were on loan from his private art collection. His name was written in rather large letters.

  “Not big enough?” Sheffield guessed. “I can have them make a bigger one. It’ll be touch and go getting it done before tomorrow’s gala, but I’m sure that it can be arranged—”

  Josh raised his voice in order to stop the onslaught of words coming from the director. “No! I would rather you just had the word Anonymous written on it instead of my name.”

  Sheffield looked at him blankly for a moment. He dealt in a world filled with a great many inflated egos. But then the director managed to collect himself. “Now you’re being much too modest, Mr. Pendergrass,” Sheffield chided with a laugh.

  “Call it a quirk,” Josh allowed. “But I would rather that my name didn’t get around.”

  Sheffield looked completely bewildered by the request. “But why—?”

  Before Josh could come up with an excuse, Leonor came to his rescue by telling her boss, “If his name is made public, Mr. Pendergrass feels that he might be bombarded with appeals and requests from other museums and galleries. He’d rather be in a position to pick and choose just who he allows to display his collections rather than have to deal with all those annoying requests.”

  “Oh, I see.” Sheffield nodded his head several times. He grew solemn for a moment before saying, “I get it. Of course, I do think you should get some credit for this, but I totally understand you wanting to stay out of the spotlight. Of course we can remove the plaque and have it changed to Anonymous. Consider it done!” Sheffield declared obsequiously. He looked at the younger man almost shyly as he asked, “But you will come to the gala, won’t you?”

  Josh glanced at the woman at his side, then smiled broadly at the director. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Adam.”

  “Splendid!” Sheffield enthused. He turned his attention toward his curator for a moment. “You did an excellent job, Leonor, recruiting Mr. Pendergrass’s paintings for us.” He fairly beamed at her. He obviously wanted to cull Pendergrass’s favor further and said to Leonor, “Why don’t you take the rest of today off and show Mr. Pendergrass around our fair city?”

  She was about to protest that the very reason she had come back today was to help prepare things for tomorrow’s reopening and gala, but she decided to go along with Sheffield’s suggestion. Not because she wanted to show Josh around Austin—she had a feeling that the man knew his way around the city just fine—but because she could use the time to pay a visit to her half brother, Robert, her late father’s son, and his family. It had been a long time since she’d seen any of them and she was feeling particularly nostalgic about reconnecting to her past.

  So she inclined her head, acquiescing, and replied, “Very good, Mr. Sheffield.”

  “I’m game,” Josh announced, slipping his arm around her as he ushered Leonor toward the exit. Lowering his voice, he told her, “That was pretty quick back there. I have to say that I was impressed.”

  “By what, exactly?” she asked. She’d done her best not to stiffen when he put his arm around her, but now that they had cleared the room and left Sheffield behind, she immediately shrugged off his arm.

  “Your explanation to your boss about why I didn’t want my name posted on that plaque next to those paintings.”

  She walked next to Josh as they left the museum and went out into the street. “I’m assuming that you didn’t want to have art experts coming after you, brandishing torches and pitchforks once they realized the paintings were fakes.”

  “They’re not fakes,” he corrected mildly. “They’re the real thing.”

  Leonor stopped walking and looked at him incredulously, wondering if he was being truthful. She wanted him to be, but at the same time she was afraid of getting burned. “You’re serious.”

  He made an elaborate cross over his heart, as if that was enough to bear him out. “Completely. I told you the department would come through.”

  She didn’t understand, then. “If they’re real, then what’s the big deal about not having you identified as the donor whose collection those paintings came from?”

  �
��Because,” he explained patiently, “I’m not the donor and if he can’t have the credit—because it would jeopardize the operation if he did—then I don’t think it’s right to have my name up there so that I steal his thunder.”

  Leonor shook her head. “You are a strange man, Joshua ‘Pendergrass.’”

  He smiled because she had remembered to use his alias even though he had told her his real surname. “I prefer the word complicated to strange,” Josh replied whimsically.

  “Well, I call them as I see them,” Leonor replied only to hear him laugh.

  She really wished she didn’t find herself responding to that sound, and she really wished that she could completely divorce herself from reacting to Josh in any way.

  But that wasn’t about to happen, especially since, at least until the gala was over, she was going to have to interact with him for almost the entire time. Sheffield had all but told her to babysit the man.

  So, for at least the next forty-eight hours, she was stuck.

  “So, what ‘sights’ are you going to show me?” Josh asked gamely as he led her over to his car.

  She frowned. “I’m sure that there’s nothing here that you haven’t seen before,” she told him.

  As he stopped by his vehicle, Josh’s eyes swept over her body languidly and with a familiarity that had her feeling almost itchy. She was still angry at him—so why did she want him so much?

  “True,” Josh agreed. “But I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing some things again.”

  His meaning immediately hit her and Leonor could feel herself reddening even as she desperately tried not to react.

  “I was talking about Austin,” she said between clenched teeth.

  “Oh.” His smile widened as he allowed himself to think back to the other night in her suite. “I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, I figured that part out,” she informed him curtly.

  “Anyway,” he continued as if there was no tension building on her side, “where would you like to take me?” He opened the passenger door for her.

  Leonor pushed it shut with a quick movement of her wrist. “Nowhere. I’m going to visit my half brother.”