Colton Undercover Read online

  “No, Leonor,” Sheffield corrected. “That sounds great. If Pendergrass gives the museum a generous donation, we can build another wing, attract more works of art and finally have the museum live up to its true potential.”

  The last part sounded as if he was talking more to himself than to her.

  “You didn’t call just to tell me all this, did you?” Leonor asked tactfully.

  It wasn’t really a question. She was trying to coax the director into getting to the point. She really liked Sheffield and he was easy to work for, but the man was given to talking in circles and she didn’t want to remain on the phone with him for the next hour or so, waiting for Sheffield to finally get to whatever it was that had made him call her in the first place.

  She heard Sheffield sigh and wondered if she’d offended the man by being too direct. It was a fine line and she knew it.

  To her relief, the next words out of his mouth told her that she hadn’t.

  “I want you to wine and dine the man, Leonor. Get him to loosen up. Get him to donate as much as possible. That’s it in a nutshell,” he told her.

  “That’s rather a big nutshell,” she couldn’t help commenting.

  “Not for you. Don’t forget,” he was quick to add, “I’ve seen you with our donors at the fund-raisers we have here at the museum. You could get anyone to loosen their purse strings, even if those purse strings are supposed to be sewn permanently shut.”

  She was willing to admit that she was persuasive, but she was hardly as good at the job as he was saying. “I think you’re giving me way too much credit.”

  “And I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough,” Sheffield countered. “We need this, Leonor,” he told her, trying to appeal to her sense of loyalty to the museum. “You know that museum attendance has gone down in the last nine months. A new wing, new artwork, all that could bring attendance up again.” He paused, as if to regroup. “You said you’ve already met him—”

  She was beginning to get an uncomfortable feeling about what he was asking her to do. “Yes, but I can’t just throw myself at the man,” she protested, thinking that was exactly what Sheffield wanted.

  “You’re an attractive young woman, Leonor,” Sheffield told her in his most cultured voice. “I’m sure no ‘throwing’ will be necessary.” He became impassioned. “Listen, this is practically kismet. He’s all but fallen into our laps—your lap,” the director corrected, then made another appeal by telling her again, “The museum could really use this boost.”

  The museum needed a “boost” and Pendergrass just happened to come along, looking for a venue to display some of his art collection. This sounded almost too good to be true. Something was wrong here, she thought. It felt, for lack of a better word, off. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she did know that her suspicions were multiplying at a really prodigious rate.

  “Mr. Sheffield, you said that this man’s a billionaire,” she began.

  “Yes, that’s because he is.”

  Other than what Josh had said to her during his lunch, she had never heard of him before. Had Sheffield? “How do you know that?” she wanted to know.

  “Mr. Pendergrass called here the other day, asking questions about the museum’s history, asking all sorts of questions about the employees I have working there. When I asked him why he was asking all these questions about the museum, he told me that he was looking into various art institutions in the state. He was trying to find the proper venue to display part of his rather extensive art collection.

  “He also said that he might even consider donating one or two paintings to the museum once he made up his mind which one to go with. I tried to get him to meet with me, but he said that he was currently headed out to your neck of the woods on business.”

  She heard Sheffield laugh, delighted with the scenario he was relating. She winced a little. The director was a tall man, but he had a high-pitched laugh that reminded her of a blue jay.

  “The second he said that, I felt like I’d stumbled across a leprechaun,” Sheffield told her. “Now I need you to get him to take you to where he’s hidden his pot of gold.”

  She was tempted to tell Sheffield that he was really getting carried away, but she knew that wouldn’t do any good, or change anything. Besides, the man had been good to her. He’d allowed her to work her way up and had been nothing if not encouraging. And there had been other candidates available whom he could have hired as curator, but he’d chosen her.

  She owed him.

  And, she supposed that “wining and dining” the man she’d had lunch with yesterday couldn’t exactly be termed as a hardship. She had enjoyed his company.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she told him.

  “And I’ll start putting together that budget for the new wing,” Sheffield told her happily.

  Talk about pressure, she thought. “Don’t start counting chickens before the eggs are even laid,” she warned.

  “I’ve got a lot of faith in you, Leonor,” Sheffield told her.

  He sounded as if he meant it. The next moment, he’d terminated the call.

  “That makes one of us,” Leonor murmured to herself as she put away her phone.

  * * *

  “You’re leaving?” Mac asked when he saw the suitcase on the front porch an hour later. He was clearly surprised. “I thought that you and Thorne had patched things up.”

  “Oh, we did,” she assured him.

  “Then you’re going back to Austin because your leave of absence is over?” Mac guessed, trying to determine why she was leaving so abruptly.

  She wasn’t about to lie to him. Besides, there was the possibility that they’d run into each other—or that one of her siblings would see her and report back to Mac that she was in town, not back in Austin.

  “No, not yet,” Leonor answered. “I’m just going to be moving into a bed-and-breakfast for a few days.”

  Mac was obviously confused. “I don’t understand. Unless you needed to get back to your job, I thought you understood that you were welcome to stay here at the ranch for as long as you want while you’re in Shadow Creek.”

  “And I appreciate that,” she was quick to tell him, “but I don’t want to wear out my welcome and I don’t want to get underfoot.” She felt guilty about taking the easy way out since neither one of those excuses she was giving him were the real reason why she was moving.

  Mac was quick to shoot down the excuses. “That’s not going to happen and you know it.” He could tell that she was hiding something. He could always read her better than he could any of the others. “What’s really behind this move of yours?”

  If she told him that she was doing it to get closer to Pendergrass in order to facilitate getting a donation from the man, it sounded as if she was allowing herself to be pimped out by the museum director, and that really wasn’t the case.

  She tried again.

  “Let’s just say I need to stand up on my own two feet and I need to take baby steps in order to do it. This way,” she added with a warm smile, “you’re right here if I need you.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, not completely convinced by her story, but willing, for now, to allow the excuse she was giving him to stand. “Okay, little girl, I won’t argue with that. As long as you remember that you can always come back to the ranch. Day or night,” he underscored.

  “I know that.” She brushed her lips against the man’s rough cheek. “And I really appreciate knowing that I can. You’re one in a million, Mac.

  “I’ll give you a call once I’m all checked in,” she promised.

  About to leave, she stopped, doubled back and gave Mac a quick hug. “Thank you for everything.”

  Mac brushed off Leonor’s words. “There’s nothing to thank me for, little girl. We’re family, remember?” he asked
simply.

  For some reason, hearing him say that, especially when the rest of the family had practically gone into hiding at one point or another, made her teary.

  Leonor left quickly before she started to cry.

  She would have preferred staying on Mac’s ranch until she was ready to return to Austin and work, but with this “assignment” that Sheffield had given her, she knew that she would have more of a chance of crossing paths with Joshua Pendergrass if they were staying at the same bed-and-breakfast At least this way she had an excuse for being on the premises, sitting in the lobby or at poolside, watching for him. Coming into town from the ranch every day was difficult without a concrete reason.

  She didn’t need a reason if she was registered at the bed-and-breakfast.

  Admittedly, Leonor still felt somewhat uneasy about having to play up to the man and trying to influence him. However, she reminded herself as she drove into town, at bottom, it was really all part of her job. Her main function was to keep the museum running and for that to happen it needed both funds and displays that would keep the public coming back for more.

  A great deal factored into that, not the least of which was generous donations. And, she had to admit that she’d gotten the distinct impression from Pendergrass over the lunch they’d shared, that he was more than willing to open up his wallet if he felt that the museum doing the asking was worthy of a donation.

  As she approached town, she murmured under her breath, “Time for you to earn your keep, Colton, and show Mr. Sheffield that he was right in having enough faith in your abilities to hire you.”

  If she were her mother, Leonor thought, this sort of thing—getting money out of people—would be second nature to her. One way or another, Livia Colton had been separating people from their money all her life without any qualms.

  But she wasn’t her mother and she was proud that she wasn’t, Leonor thought. She just had to stop comparing herself to the woman. What she was doing was legal—and necessary. None of those factors had ever really concerned Livia.

  * * *

  He spotted Leonor Colton the second she walked into the bed-and-breakfast.

  Josh had been sitting in the small lobby, covertly watching the comings and goings of both the guests and the people they were meeting. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was that he was waiting for—he knew that there was no chance in the world that Livia Colton would come sauntering into the establishment, neither larger-than-life, nor swaddled in a disguise.

  But he had this feeling that if he watched long enough—and was patient enough—Leonor Colton might just put in another appearance. After all, she’d already been here once. And he had certainly put out enough bait regarding his so-called art collection to at least capture her attention, if not the woman herself. That, and the call he’d placed to the art director at the museum where she still had a job waiting for her, had planted enough seeds to get her to eventually turn up in his court.

  That was what he’d been saying to himself since early this morning when he had positioned himself in this chair in the lobby, facing the B&B’s front door, an untouched newspaper on his lap.

  And now she was here.

  Finally.

  Patience, he thought, obviously paid off.

  And she was carrying a suitcase, he noted happily. That could only mean one thing. She would be in close proximity.

  This made things easier.

  Josh congratulated himself on getting one step closer to his target. He would have ordered a drink to celebrate, but things came up and he needed to be thinking clearly at all times.

  He was certain that Livia Colton’s daughter was here because of his call to her boss. He guessed that she didn’t want to be overly obvious, but she was here to get close to him.

  He smiled to himself just before he got up from his chair. They both obviously had the same goal: to get close to one another.

  But only he was aware of that shared goal. Knowing that both amused and heartened him.

  Josh approached her from the front, thinking that a far better method than just startling her by popping up behind her.

  “Hello, Leonor,” he said, greeting her. “Do you need help with your suitcase?”

  Chapter 6

  The whole reason Leonor had left Mac’s ranch and gotten a room at the bed-and-breakfast was so that she could “accidentally” run into Joshua Pendergrass without appearing to have orchestrated that accident. But she hadn’t counted on that happening the second that she came through the front door into the small lobby. She was still working on her excuse for suddenly changing her location like this. Running into the friendly billionaire the moment she’d arrived had her drawing a temporary and complete blank.

  It took her a second to find her tongue. When she did, Leonor realized that Joshua was about to take her suitcase from her and carry it to the reservation desk. She found that highly unusual for a man of his privileged background. She was certain that he had to have people fetching and carrying for him.

  “I can carry my own suitcase,” she told him, still holding on to her luggage.

  He gave her that easy smile she felt had to have been the undoing of every woman who had crossed his path.

  “I’m sure you can, but this allows me to practice a little chivalry. Besides,” he went on to tell her, “carrying your suitcase brings back memories. I worked in a hotel one summer.”

  Leonor looked at him, clearly puzzled. Was he making all this up? “Your father let you work in a hotel?”

  Josh nodded. “He wanted me to learn about business the hard way, from the ground on up. He’d put me to work in one of his buildings. It happened to be a hotel,” he told her.

  The first thing he had been taught about going undercover was to stick to the truth as much as possible if he had to go into detail. What he’d just said to Leonor was true—to an extent. He had worked as a bellhop one summer, but it was hardly his father’s building. A family friend had gotten him the position. That was the summer when he discovered that the wealthiest people usually were the stingiest tippers.

  “My father wasn’t an easy man to please,” Josh went on to tell her. “I think that was the summer I stopped trying.”

  “Well, at least you had a father to try to please,” she commented. Hers had died not long after she’d been born.

  She put her suitcase down and the reservation clerk came up to the desk.

  The tall man greeted her with a friendly smile. “We have your room all ready for you, Ms. Colton.” Waiting for her to sign in, the clerk handed Leonor the key to her room. “Second floor suite, just like you requested.”

  “Second floor?” Josh echoed. He found that rather an unusual request. “This place has three floors. I would have thought you would have wanted a room at the top. The view is better.”

  “Not me,” she told him with feeling. “I like being closer to the first floor. If there was a room available on the ground floor, I would have asked to be put in one of those.”

  “Fear of heights?” he guessed, curious what the motivation behind her choice was.

  Taking possession of the keycard, Leonor turned away from the reservation clerk and lowered her voice so that only Josh was privy to her answer. “Actually, it’s a fear of fire.”

  His eyebrows drew together, forming a perplexed furrow. “Come again?”

  She saw no harm in explaining her reasons. “I saw this old, classic movie when I was very young and unfortunately, very impressionable. It was about a fire that broke out in this incredibly tall skyscraper. It absolutely terrified me and kept me up for nights, remembering that awful crackling noise. I even begged my older brother, Knox, to get a fire extinguisher for me. I think he thought I was crazy, but he still managed to get me one.” A rueful, embarrassed smile curved the corners of her mouth. “I slept with i
t next to my bed for the next six months.”

  “Well, that’s a new one to me,” Josh told her with a laugh. “When most beautiful women talk about their first bedmate, it usually isn’t a fire extinguisher.”

  There was a slight, vague shrug of her shoulders as she said. “My family’s very unique.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about your family.” He glanced down at her suitcase, then picked it up before the clerk could dispatch a bellhop to do it. “Since I’ve got your suitcase, would you mind if I accompanied you to your room? You can leave me at your door if you’d like,” he told her.

  Leonor smiled at him in response, wondering why there were suddenly butterflies doing field exercises in her stomach. She was thirty-one years old, she silently argued, and the last time she’d felt butterflies fluttering in her stomach, she’d just turned fifteen and had a crush on one of Knox’s friends.

  “I’m sure you’ll be on your best behavior,” she said. “And if you’re not, you know I could always take you to court for one of the paintings in your art collection as restitution. I’m sure that’s a great incentive to behave.”

  “You never know.” His eyes met hers momentarily. “It just might be worth it,” he said as he got into the elevator with her.

  Because of the time of day, they had the elevator to themselves. The butterflies in her stomach seemed to grow a little larger, their wings crashing into one another.

  Josh noted the color rising along her throat, spreading to her cheeks. Watching, he found himself fascinated. He had no idea that there were females over the age of five who blushed anymore. At least none of the women he had known ever did. “Sorry,” he told her, “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “You didn’t,” she protested.

  And then she caught sight of her reflection in the stainless-steel elevator door just before the doors parted. Their eyes met in the reflection for a split second before they found themselves on the second floor.