Colton Undercover Read online

  “What did he mean by ‘the way his collection was handled?’” Sheffield wanted to know, not quite clear on what was being implied.

  “Nothing serious,” she assured Sheffield. “He indicated that those would be just some minor details that would be ironed out once he makes the final selection as to which of his paintings he wants displayed at the museum.”

  Leonor patiently waited for more questions to come her way.

  Instead, she heard Sheffield enthusiastically declare, “You hit a grand slam, Leonor.”

  “Is that a good thing?” she finally asked when her boss didn’t say anything further to follow up his statement.

  She heard him chuckling to himself. “Don’t watch much baseball, do you, Leonor?”

  Sports of any kind, other than horse racing, had never captured her attention. She only watched horse racing because of the sheer grace and beauty exhibited by the animals when they ran. Their strides looked positively fluid to her.

  “No, sir,” Leonor was forced to admit, “I really don’t.”

  “Well, Leonor, for your edification, a grand slam in baseball is the best thing that a batter can hope for.” Praising her like this indicated that her boss was still counting chickens before the eggs were hatched, she thought uneasily.

  “He still might change his mind,” she reminded Sheffield.

  She heard the man blow out an impatient breath on the other end before issuing her an order. “Make sure he doesn’t. And let me know the second you’ve finalized the arrangement.” Appearing to lose a little of his trust in her, Sheffield began to say, “If you’d rather that I put in a call to Pendergrass myself—”

  “No, that’s all right, sir. I can handle this,” she said, quickly cutting him off. She knew that Sheffield could be extremely pushy at times and she had a feeling that if the director talked to Joshua, he just might just get him to decide against the deal after all. “I seem to have struck up a rapport with the man. If too many people come at him at the same time, Pendergrass might just shut down,” she warned.

  She was speaking from experience. Leonor vividly recalled the hordes of reporters—print media as well as blogs or vlogs—who had come after her and her family, trying to corner them in order to secure a few personal words regarding Livia’s trial, as well as the charges that she was said to be facing.

  The image that stuck with her was that it was like having a swarm of locusts suddenly swirling all around them.

  “All right, I’ll step back,” Sheffield willingly agreed. “But don’t hesitate to send up a flare if you find that you need help.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I will.”

  Saying a couple more words before saying good-bye, Leonor finally terminated the connection. She was relieved to have that over with.

  Next up, damage control, she told herself. Pendergrass had offered to take her dancing at an intimate little restaurant in the next town. That sounded exceedingly tempting, but she wanted to get started getting back into her family’s good graces. The longer she put off talking to the individual members of her family, the harder it was going to be to resolve the so-called problem.

  First up, she decided, was her younger sister Jade. The one who, like Thorne and herself, was living in Shadow Creek. She knew she should call Jade first, but that would be giving her sister a heads-up, especially if she indicated that she really didn’t want to see her.

  This way, she had the element of surprise on her side, Leonor thought. Especially since she intended to come bearing “gifts.”

  When the family had been torn apart because of their mother’s criminal misdeeds and they had all wound up being forced to fend for themselves, four of them had been eighteen or older. Only Claudia and Jade were underage.

  Knox, being the oldest, had volunteered to become their guardian, but that meant a lot of sacrifices on his part. He would have had to remain in Shadow Creek rather than uproot his two youngest sisters. It would also have meant that he had to give up his dream of becoming a Texas Ranger.

  That was when Mac had stepped up, telling Knox that he would look after the girls. They could remain on his ranch with him until they reached eighteen and could decide for themselves what they wanted to do with their lives.

  In Jade’s case, the decision turned out to be easy enough. If nothing else, she was her father’s daughter. Fabrizio Artero, Livia’s last husband, had been an Argentine horse breeder who had Jade on the back of a horse before she could walk.

  She adored her father and she took his death a great deal harder than she took her mother’s arrest and imprisonment. Being around horses made her feel as if she was somehow closer to her father, so eventually, she decided to open up a ranch for retired racehorses. Hill Country Farms was a place where kids could come to learn how to ride and racehorses were loved and rehabilitated.

  Ever the nurturing big sister, Leonor did her homework and found out how many more horses Jade needed at the farm. Then she placed a few calls to make arrangements to get what she wanted. Delivery was swift.

  Rather than the usual clothes she had gotten accustomed to wearing as a curator and also when she’d gone out with Josh, Leonor changed into something far more comfortable. Never one to fuss, she put on jeans and a light blue denim shirt, as well as boots, then drove out to her little sister’s ranch—whistling.

  There were seven years between Leonor and Jade. Added to the age difference, they hardly looked as if they were sisters. Jade had straight, dark brown hair and brown eyes. She stood at five feet six inches and she had what their other sister, Claudia, referred to as a petite frame.

  Just as slender as her sister, Leonor was two inches taller than Jade. Only the determined set of their chins gave them something in common physically.

  * * *

  Driving onto Jade’s ranch and pulling up in front of the house, Leonor parked her car and marched up the steps to the front door of the tidy little home. She did her best not to appear nervous.

  There was a fifty-fifty chance that Jade was home rather than somewhere out on the range or in the stables, so she decided to try there first before she started to drive around.

  She lucked out.

  Sort of.

  Jade swung open the front door in response to her knock, but whatever greeting she was about to offer instantly faded before she could say a word of it.

  Not bothering to hide her surprise, Jade looked at her sister and in a less than a friendly voice, asked, “What are you doing here?”

  It wasn’t exactly the welcome she’d hoped for, but she could make do, Leonor told herself. “I’m here to explain.”

  Jade started to close the front door. “Nothing to explain,” she said coolly. “We all have our own way of surviving.”

  But Leonor was quick to brace her hand against the door, keeping her youngest sister from shutting it. She expected Jade to be upset, but not this angry. “Jade, please, I didn’t do what you think I did.”

  “You mean sell out the family for thirty pieces of silver?” Jade shot back. “Then how much was it for? What is the going rate for betrayal these days anyway?”

  Still trying to keep the door in place, Jade’s eyes darted back and forth, uneasily scanning the area directly behind her sister, looking for reporters lurking about. Some of her anger seemed to abate.

  “Look, I’m no one to judge,” she relented, then said, “Just please leave.”

  “No,” Leonor retorted, digging in. “I’m here now and I want to talk to you.”

  Jade sighed, appearing to give in. Suddenly, she pulled her sister inside and firmly shut the door behind her, then secured the lock. Leonor thought her sister’s behavior was a little strange, but for the time being, she said nothing.

  “All right, talk,” Jade ordered. Turning on her heel, she led the way into the living roo
m.

  Leonor started doing just that. “Whatever you might believe to the contrary, I didn’t sell us out, Jade. I was tricked.”

  Reaching the small living room, Jade swung around to face her.

  “How?” she demanded. “Did that guy who wrote those articles tell you that you were playing a word association game?” she asked sarcastically, something that was totally out of character for her.

  Leonor felt angry and hurt, but this wasn’t the time to display either emotion. Instead, she forced herself to remain calm and rational. She knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

  “First, he won me over, made me think he cared about me, cared about my feelings.” She looked at Jade, trying to make her little sister understand how she felt. “I was really alone after the family broke up. I missed having someone to talk to, to confide in.”

  I missed you and Claudia, she silently added. But she couldn’t reach out to them because, at the time, they were dealing with their own set of problems and she knew that.

  “So you picked a blogger?” Jade asked her in disbelief.

  Leonor shook her head. “I didn’t know what he was at the time. I was vulnerable,” she admitted none too happily. “And, he tricked me into thinking he loved me, and that we were going to get married—and then he just took off without a trace—but not before he managed to steal my money.”

  The words sank in. Jade stared at her, stunned. “You’re poor?”

  “Poorer,” Leonor corrected, adding, “In a lot of ways. But not poor,” she assured Jade. “He couldn’t get his hands on all of it.”

  Leonor abruptly stopped talking and took a closer look at Jade. It wasn’t her imagination. There was something off here. Her sister looked nervous, as if she was waiting for a bomb to go off. Why?

  “Jade, is something wrong?” she asked her sister, her voice softening.

  “Other than seeing my life and my family’s life smeared all over the internet like some poorly written soap opera?” Jade questioned.

  “Yes,” Leonor said patiently, “other than that.”

  Jade’s chin rose a little bit as she answered with a stoic, “No.”

  She didn’t believe Jade, but she was hardly in a position to accuse her of lying. There was definitely something off here.

  Leonor needed to get her little sister to trust her. That, she was willing to admit, very possibly was going to be a slow process.

  But there was one thing she could ask Jade right off the bat. Something that was in the back of all their minds, she imagined. “Are you afraid because Mother escaped?”

  That was it, Leonor thought. A look had flashed through Jade’s eyes, a wary look just like her sister was waiting for that bomb to go off. Their mother was the closest thing to a bomb that either one of them had ever known.

  “Aren’t you?” Jade asked.

  “Yes,” Leonor answered truthfully. The admission seemed to clear a little of the tension between them. Leonor decided to move forward. “How’s the ranch going?” she asked.

  Jade shrugged. “Pretty well.”

  That was less than enthusiastic, Leonor thought. She knew how much her sister loved being around horses and working with them. There was definitely something off here. She sincerely hoped that her idea would help bring Jade back around to the happy, carefree girl she’d been before the scandal had struck and everything systematically began falling apart.

  “Would it be better if you had more horses on the ranch?” Leonor wanted to know.

  Seeing that her sister was serious, Jade considered her questions. “Well, we’re a pretty small operation at the moment, but I’ve got plans to expand the ranch,” Jade admitted. “As soon as I can raise the funds, the first thing that I intend to do is acquire more retired racehorses.”

  None of the Coltons had ever had to live on a budget before. But the federal government had swooped in and confiscated all of their mother’s land holdings. That had left them all scrambling and trying to make do.

  Luckily for Leonor, she thought, her father had left her a trust fund that was entirely separate from Livia’s assets.

  “Why don’t we skip that step?” Leonor suggested. “The one in which you have to wait until you can raise the funds?”

  Jade looked at her, thoroughly confused. “I don’t understand.”

  Leonor tried to contain herself, and explain it to her sister slowly. “I was able to secure several more of those retired racehorses,” she told Jade. “I thought maybe you could give them a good home here.”

  “You brought me horses?” Jade asked, still somewhat dazed.

  “Well, I couldn’t figure out how to gift wrap them,” Leonor told her, “but yes, that’s the general gist of it. I brought you horses. Oh, you should see them,” she said, her enthusiasm growing with each word. “They’re all beautiful animals, and now that they can’t go on to win races anymore, their owners have just written them off. Their fates were kind of bleak—you know what they do with horses that can’t ‘earn their keep’—so I thought of you and knew that you could help them.”

  “How many?” Jade asked uncertainly.

  “Five more. To start,” Leonor added in case Jade needed more.

  “Five,” Jade repeated. She shook her head. “I can’t pay you.”

  Leonor felt as if she was making headway. She certainly wasn’t going to allow money to get in the way. “I don’t remember asking for money.”

  Jade’s eyes met hers. They were full of pride. “I don’t take charity.”

  “Not offering charity,” Leonor told her. “The way I see it, you’re doing me—and these horses I seem to have acquired—a favor. If you want to give me some sort of payback for them—” Leonor summoned her courage, and then said, “I could use a hug.”

  Jade laughed softly. “That I can do.”

  Leonor put her arms out. “I’m waiting.”

  The two embraced. Leonor blinked back tears. “I didn’t sell us out,” she murmured against Jade’s shoulder.

  “I know,” Jade finally said, holding on to Leonor for an extra moment.

  Jade couldn’t help wondering what Leonor would say if she only knew what she had done. For a second, Jade was tempted to share, to tell her sister about why she was so very nervous these days. But the moment passed. Secrets were only safe when only one person knew them.

  Releasing Jade, Leonor stepped back. “There was still something in Jade’s eyes that worried her. Hopefully seeing the horses would change that. “You up to seeing them?”

  Jade’s eyes widened, not knowing whether or not to believe her sister.

  “They’re here?” she cried. There was just the slightest note of doubt in her voice.

  “They’re being delivered here at your stable even as we speak.” Leonor grinned. “You know me. I get an idea, I act on it.”

  “Yes, I guess that I do know you,” Jade said with affection, an easy smile fleetingly curving her mouth.

  Her sister’s smile, temporary though it might be, made everything worth it.

  Leonor couldn’t resist hugging Jade one more time before they went to greet the farm’s newest residents.

  Chapter 9

  She spent the better part of the afternoon with Jade, and it felt like old times. A time when, despite the fact that their mother was still playing musical husbands and conducting her secret dealings with shady individuals, which allowed her and her siblings to live upscale lives, the Coltons still found a way to make the most of their lives together.

  Leonor was happy to see that for a little while, as Jade looked over all five new additions to her stable and acquainted herself with them, she was her old self again. Not the way she was just before Livia was arrested and charged with a whole host of crimes, because at that point Jade had already become almost reclusive and
uncommunicative. But the happy, lighthearted way she’d been before her father had died, having been kicked in the head by one of his horses.

  “This is really way too much. You’re being much too generous, Leonor,” Jade protested once the excitement of the new animals’ arrival had settled down and the horses had been placed in their new stalls.

  “There’s nothing generous about it,” Leonor told her matter-of-factly. Seeing that her sister wasn’t about to accept that, she went on to explain her logic. “You needed more horses and they needed a home. If you have to put a label on it, you can call it matchmaking,” she told Jade with a whimsical grin.

  “How did you know I needed horses?” Jade wanted to know. Except for a few words, they hadn’t really spoken to one another for years now. And all communication had been shut down in the last few months.

  Leonor only smiled at her sister. “I have my sources,” she told Jade.

  The nebulous answer wasn’t good enough for her and Jade was about to demand a better explanation than that when it suddenly came to her. And then she understood.

  “Mac.”

  But Leonor pretended to press her lips together, as if sealing in any words she might be tempted to allow to escape. Mac was indeed her main source, but not the only one. She’d been thorough in securing her information.

  Leonor shook her head stoically.

  “Sorry, Jade, but I’ve learned my lesson. I know what happens when I accidentally share too much.”

  Jade looked offended. “Hey, I’m not going to talk to some sleazy blogger.”

  Leonor’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she “surrendered.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re my little sister and I want to do this for you. Let me,” Leonor requested with sincerity.

  Jade sighed. “Well, I guess if it makes you happy...” Jade said, her voice trailing off.

  “It does. Very,” Leonor responded firmly. She looked toward the horizon. Judging by the sun’s position in the sky, it was getting late. “I’d better be getting back to the bed-and-breakfast.”