the man.
Still, Josh felt he needed to say something defensively before he found his hands completely tied in this little undercover drama he’d found himself taking part in.
“I can’t exactly penny-pinch, Assistant Director Arroyo,” Josh told his boss matter-of-factly. “I am supposed to be a billionaire.”
“The operative word here being ‘supposed to be,’” Arroyo pointed out.
If he’d really liked Arroyo, he would have just kept quiet about this lecture. But he didn’t. Arroyo liked to micromanage everyone assigned to him and that wasn’t the way that Josh liked to operate.
“That’s three words, sir,” Josh replied matter-of-factly.
He could almost hear Arroyo scowling. The assistant director had the kind of scowl that took in every single part of his face. “Don’t nitpick, Howard.”
“I won’t if you won’t, sir,” Josh responded. And then he grew serious as he tried to explain his position. It was the only plan he could think of to make himself privy to Leonor’s movements without arousing her suspicions. “It’s a work in progress, but the plan is to have Leonor Colton try to get close to me so she can try to convince me to donate to the museum.”
“You can play hard to get,” Arroyo suggested. “Nothing makes a woman want a man more than if he acts as if he’s not interested.”
In his opinion, his superior would be the last person anyone would go to for advice on getting close to a member of the opposite sex.
“Which might explain why you’ve never been married,” Josh observed under his breath.
“I heard that,” Arroyo snapped. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and the Bureau’s rather limited expense account.”
Calling Arroyo had definitely been a mistake on his part, Josh thought. He was just going to have to work things out to his own satisfaction. “As stimulating as this conversation is, sir, I’ve got a plan to get into motion. I’ll check in with you later,” Josh promised vaguely.
Just before pigs begin to fly, he added silently.
The next minute, Josh terminated the call and put away his cell phone before his superior could protest or say anything else.
He was on his own, Josh thought, going back to the laptop he’d left open on the desk. Sitting down, he pulled up the site that had caught his eye. The one currently featuring the Everything’s Blogger in Texas story about the individual members of Livia Colton’s family.
It contained, he couldn’t help thinking, an amazing amount of information, the kind that families generally liked being kept private. At least some of it had to be true, right?
He went on reading.
* * *
Leonor opened the studio apartment door in response to the knock she’d heard. Mac was standing on the landing just beyond the wooden stairs that went down to the back of the stable. He looked just a little larger than life—the way he always did. Stepping back to give him access to the apartment, she looked at him curiously.
“Something wrong?” she wanted to know.
Mac crossed the threshold, but made no attempt to come in any farther. If she were to make a guess, she would have said that he looked a little uncomfortable, which was unusual for the man.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, little girl,” he began, “because you know I care about you and I always have.”
She didn’t think she liked the sound of this, but Mac had never been anything but kind to her. “What are you trying to tell me, Mac?”
His kindly expression didn’t match the words that came out of his mouth. “Get out.”
Stunned, she could only stare at the tall, strapping man. “What?”
“I don’t mean ‘get out’ get out,” he told her, tempering his tone. He didn’t want her to misunderstand what had motivated his words. “Just get out.”
This was only getting more muddled. There wasn’t much in her life that she was sure of these days, but she was sure that Mac wouldn’t deliberately hurt her or abandon her.
Taking a breath, she asked, “And the difference being?”
He wasn’t much for talking, more a man of deeds rather than words. He tried to make himself understood again.
“The difference being that you need to get out there, little girl. Get out there and mingle. You can’t just hide up here in this tiny space above the stable indefinitely. That’s not going to solve anything and the longer you hide, the harder it’s going to be for you to finally get out there.” His eyes met hers, hoping he was getting through to her. “Thirty-one is way too young to become a hermit.”
She sighed. Turning from him, she crossed back to the bed and sat down on the edge. “You’re right.”
Mac had no choice but to follow her in. “Of course I’m right. I’ve always been right.
“Well, almost always,” Mac corrected. “The point is, little girl—go out. Breathe some fresh air. Get in touch with yourself again. There’s a really nice person inside there,” he told her. “You might like her. I know that I do.”
She offered Mac a ghost of a smile. “You have to say that.”
“No, I don’t,” he informed her. “That’s not even in the fine print,” he added affectionately. “Now get out of here before I hitch you up and use you to plow the north forty,” he pretended to threaten.
Leonor laughed. She knew that, as usual, Mac only had her best interests at heart. And he was right. She couldn’t just hide here in this little studio apartment forever. Eventually, she had to get back to her life. Getting up off the bed, she said, “I’m gone.”
His brows drew together in a skeptical furrow. “I can still see you.”
“Then close your eyes,” she told him with a laugh. “I need a head start.” With that, Leonor left the apartment and hurried down the stairs.
Once in her car, Leonor drove into town. She decided to go get some lunch at the new restaurant that had just recently opened just across from the bed-and-breakfast.
Although she lived in Austin now, Leonor knew in her heart that Shadow Creek would always be home to her, and despite everything else that was going on in her life, she did take an interest in the town’s development and growth, slow though it was.
Leonor tried to tell herself that checking out the new restaurant would be a fun thing to do. Most of the people in the area, while not completely forgetting about her mother and the scandal attached to both Livia’s arrest and her trial, had for the most part moved on. At the very least, most of the locals had come to realize that the sins of the mother did not always necessarily come down on the offspring.
The town seemed to finally be coming around to the fact that none of them were anything like their mother.
Heaven knew that she certainly wasn’t, even though she had gone to visit her mother several times in prison. That was more out of a sense of filial obligation, more because she felt sorry for her mother than anything else. Everyone else in the family had abandoned Livia and turned their backs on her.
Leonor supposed that she was the most sensitive one in the family.
However, being sensitive didn’t mean that she was a pushover, she told herself fiercely, although there were some who undoubtedly thought she was.
Even so, she had to give herself a pep talk before she entered the restaurant. Because she was the daughter of the “notorious” Livia Colton and because she hadn’t really been around these last ten years, she knew there would be those who would be looking at her with unspoken curiosity. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t