Colton’s Secret Service

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Copyright

Marie Ferrarella has written more than one hundred and fifty books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Patience Smith,

who makes being an author

such a pleasure

Chapter 1

His neck was really beginning to ache.

It amazed him how these last ten years, after steadily climbing up the ladder, from cop to detective to Secret Service agent, Nick Sheffield found himself right back where he started: doing grunt work. There was no other accurate way to describe it: remaining stationary, hour after hour, waiting for a perpetrator to finally show up—provided he did show up, which was never a sure thing.

But, at least for now, Nick had no other recourse, no other trail to pursue. This lonely ranch was where the evidence had led him.

He’d always hated surveillance work. Ever since he’d been a young kid, patience had never been in his nature. He was much happier being active. Doing something instead of just standing as still as a statue, feeling his five o’clock shadow grow.

However, in this particular instance, it was unavoidably necessary. He had no other way to capture his quarry.

Nick supposed he should consider this a triumph. After all, less than twenty-four hours ago, he still hadn’t a clue where all those threatening letters and e-mails aimed at the man whose life he was to safeguard, Senator Joe Colton, came from. These days, it seemed like every crazy malcontent and his dog had access to a computer and the Internet, which made tracking down the right crazy malcontent one hell of a challenge. One that fortunately, he was more than up to—with a healthy dose of help from the reformed computer hacker, Steve Hennessey, who now worked for his security staff.

Technically, it was the Senator’s staff, but he ran it. Handpicked the people and ran the staff like a well-oiled, efficient machine ever since he’d been assigned to the Senator. He liked to think that he was doing his bit to help the Senator get elected to the highest post of the land.

There was no doubt in his mind that unless something unforeseen or drastic happened, the Senator would go on to become the next President of the United States. In his opinion, and he’d been around more than a little in his thirty years on earth, there was no other man even half as qualified to assume the position of President as Senator Joe Colton.

He didn’t just work for the Senator, he admired the man, admired what he stood for and what he hoped to accomplish once elected. In the last few months, he’d seen Senator Colton up close and under less-than-favorable conditions. In his opinion, they just did not come any more genuine—or charismatic—than the Senator.

Nick doubted very much if he would have spent the last eight hours standing behind a slightly open barn door, watching the front of an unoccupied, ramshackle ranch house for anyone else.

Damn it, where the hell was this creep? Was he going to show at all?

He didn’t want to have to do this for another hour, much less entertain the prospect of doing it for another day.

Nick’s temper was getting frayed. It was late and humid, and the mosquitoes kept trying to make a meal out of him. He waved another one away from his neck even as he felt sweat sliding down his spine, making the shirt beneath his black jacket stick to his skin. Talk about discomfort.

Nick blew out a frustrated breath.

Why couldn’t this crazy be located in one of the major cities, living in a high-rise apartment? Why did it have to be someone who lived the life of a hermit? The IP address that Steve had miraculously tracked down had brought him to a town that barely made the map. A blip of a town named Esperanza, Texas.

Esperanza. Now there was a misnomer. His Spanish wasn’t all that good, but he knew that esperanza was the Spanish word for “hope” and in this particular case, Nick had no doubt that the hope associated with the town was reserved for those who managed to escape from it. If it wasn’t for the fact that Esperanza was a sub-suburb of San Antonio, Nick doubted that he and his GPS system would have been able to even locate it.

And this person he was after didn’t even reside within the so-called city limits. He lived in an old, all-but-falling-down ranch house that stood five miles from the nearest neighbor, and was even farther away than five miles from the town.

Hell, Nick thought impatiently, this character could be cooking up bombs and nobody would ever be the wiser—until the explosion came.

Nobody but him, Nick thought. But that was his job, tracking down the crazies and keeping them away from the best man he’d met in a long, long time.

“You’re sure?” the Senator had asked him when he’d walked into his office with the news yesterday that his hacker had finally managed to isolate where the e-mails originated. He’d quickly given him the exact location.

For the most part, Nick didn’t even bother telling the Senator about the nuisance calls, e-mails and letters that had found their way into the campaign headquarters. Anyone in public office, or even the public eye, was a target for someone seeking to vent his or her discontent. It came with the territory.

But this was different. These e-mails and letters smacked of someone dangerous. Someone seeking to “take you out” as one of the last ranting communications had threatened.

Nick had learned a long time ago to take seriously anything that remotely resembled a threat. The risk was too great not to.

He’d just informed the Senator that the sender was someone living in or around Esperanza, Texas, and that he intended to confront the man face-to-face. It was against the law to threaten a presidential candidate.

“That it’s coming from there?” Nick asked, then went ahead as if he’d received a positive response. “I wouldn’t be coming to you with this if I wasn’t sure,” he told the Senator simply.

Between them, on the desk, was a thick pile of papers that Nick had emptied out of a manila folder. Letters that had arrived in the last few weeks, all from the same source. All progressively angrier in nature. It couldn’t be ignored any longer, even if he were so inclined.

“We’ve tracked him down,” Nick repeated. “And, unless you have something specific that only I can take care of here, I’d like to go down to this little two-bit hick place and make sure that this nut-job doesn’t decide to follow through with any of his threats.” He had no qualms about leaving the Senator. He was the head of the Secret Service detail, but by no means was he the only one assigned to the popular Senator. Hathaway and Davis were more than up to watching over the man until he got back.

“These are all from him?” Nick nodded in response to the Senator’s question. “Sure has spent a lot of time venting,” Joe commented. He picked up a sheet of paper only to have Nick stop him before he was able to begin to read it.

“No need to read any of it, Senator.” Nick wanted to spare the man the ugliness on some of the pages. “It’s pretty awful.”

Joe didn’t believe in isolating himself, but he saw no reason to immerse himself in distasteful lies and name-calling, either. He let the letter remain in Nick’s hand. “Then why did you bring it to me?”

In Nick’s opinion, the volume of mail spoke for itself. No sane person invested this much time and effort in sending vicious missives, and the future actions of an insane person couldn’t be safely gauged. It would take very little to push a person like this to where he would become dangerous.

“To let you see that the man could be a threat and that I’d like the chance to stop him before he becomes one,” Nick stated simply.

In the short time they had been together, Joe had learned to both like and rely on the head of his Secret service detail. Nick Sheffield had impressed him as a hard-working, honorable man whose interest was in getting the job done, not in gathering attention or praise for his actions. He more than trusted the man’s instincts.

Joe liked the fact that Nick always looked him in the eye when he spoke. “When would you leave?” he asked.

“Tonight.” Nick saw a glint of surprise in the Senator’s eyes. “I should be back in a couple of days—a week at most,” he promised, although he was hoping that it wouldn’t take that long. He intended to locate the sender, take him into custody and bring him back. The federal authorities could take it from there.

Joe nodded. There had been mutual respect between the two men almost from the very first day. Their personalities complemented one another. Joe trusted Nick not only with his life, but, more importantly, the lives of his family who meant more to him than anything else in the world, including the bid for the presidency.

“All right,” the Senator agreed. “Go if you really think it’s necessary.”

There was no hesitation on Nick’s part. “I do.”

“That’s good enough for me,” the Senator replied. And then he smiled that smile that had a way of cutting across party affiliations and verbose rhetoric, burrowing into the heart of the recipient. “Just get back as soon as you can, Nick. I feel a whole lot better knowing that you’re on the job.”

Nick knew the man was not just giving voice to empty words, that praise from the Senator was always heartfelt and genuine. While exceedingly charming, with a manner that drew people to him, the Senator was not one to toss around words without thought or feeling behind them, like so many other politicians.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Nick had promised, taking his leave. At the time, he sincerely meant what he said.

Georgeann Grady, Georgie to everyone who knew her, struggled mightily to keep her eyes open. For the last twenty minutes, she’d debated pulling over to the side of the road in order to catch a few well-deserved winks before falling asleep at the wheel. But she was only five miles away from home. Five miles away from sleeping in her own bed and after months of being on the road, sleeping in her own bed sounded awfully good to her.

She told herself to keep driving.

Digging her nails into the palms of the hands that were wrapped around the steering wheel of her truck, Georgie tried to shake off the effects of sleepiness by tossing her head. It sent the single thick, red braid back over her shoulder. Squaring them, she glanced into the rear-view mirror to check on her pint-sized passenger.

Big, wide green eyes looked right back at her.

Georgie suppressed a sigh. She might have known that Emmie wasn’t asleep, even if her nonstop chatter had finally run its course. Ceasing about ten minutes ago.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked her precocious, almost-five-year-old daughter.

“Too excited,” Emmie told her solemnly in a voice that could have easily belonged to someone at least twice her age.

Emmie sounded almost happier to be getting back home than she was. Sometimes, Georgie thought, it was almost as if their roles were reversed and Emmie was the mother while she was the daughter. There was little more than eighteen years between them. They could have just as easily been sisters instead of mother and daughter.

And, as far as daughters went, she couldn’t have asked for a better one. Raising Emmie had been a dream, despite the unorthodox life they led. A good deal of Emmie’s life had been spent on the road, as a rodeo brat. It was out of necessity so that Georgie could earn money by competing in various rodeo events—just as her mother and her grandfather had before her.

At all times, her eye was on the prize. The final prize. Not winning some title that would be forgotten by the time the dust settled, but amassing as much money as she could so that she and her daughter could finally settle down and live a normal life.

She owed it to Emmie.

Her mother, Mary Lynn Grady, had quit the life, walking away with nothing more than medals and trophies, as she took up the reins of motherhood. But she intended to be far more prepared than that. It took money to make dreams come true.

Emmie was coming of age. She’d be turning five next week and five meant kindergarten, which in turn meant stability. That translated into living in a home that wasn’t on wheels, nestled in a place around people who loved her. That had been the plan for the last four-something years and Georgie was determined to make it a reality.

Every cent that hadn’t been used for clothing and feeding them, or for entrance fees, had faithfully been banked back in Esperanza. By her tally, at this point, thanks to her most recent winning streak, the account was exceedingly healthy now. There was finally more than enough for them to settle down and for her to figure out her next move: finding a career that didn’t involve performing tricks on a horse that was galloping at break-neck speed.

Any other career would seem tame in comparison, but right now, tame was looking awfully good. The accident that she’d had a few months ago could have been disastrous. It made her very aware that she, like so many other rodeo competitors, was living on borrowed time. She wanted to get out before time ran out on her—and now, she could.

Independence had a wonderful feel about it, she thought.

Emmie’s unbridled excitement about coming home just underscored her decision. There’d be no pulling over to the side of the road for her. Not when they were almost home.

Leaning forward, Georgie turned up the music. Tobey Keith’s newest song filled the inside of the cab. Behind her, in an enthusiastic, clear voice, Emmie began to sing along. With a laugh, Georgie joined in.

In the overall scheme of things, eight hours was nothing, but when those hours peeled away, second by second, moment by moment, it felt as if the time was endless.

He wanted to get back to the action, not feel as if his limbs were slowly slipping into paralysis. But he didn’t even dare get back to the car he’d hidden behind the barn. He might miss his quarry coming home. The man had to come home sometime. The e-mails had been coming fairly regularly, one or more almost every day now. Because there hadn’t been anything yesterday, the man was overdue.

Nick took out a candy bar he’d absently shoved into his pocket last night. It was just before leaving Prosperino, California, the Senator’s home base, to catch the red-eye flight to San Antonio. After checking in with his team to see if there were any further developments—there hadn’t been—he’d rented a car and then driven to this god-forsaken piece of property.

He’d found the front door unlocked and had let himself in, but while there were some signs here and there that the ranch house was lived in, the place had been empty.

So he’d set up surveillance. And here he’d been for the last interminable eight hours, fifteen minutes and God only knew how many seconds, waiting.

It would be nice, he thought irritably, if this character actually showed up soon so he could wrap this all up and go back to civilization before he started growing roots where he stood.

How the hell did people live in places like this? he wondered. If the moon hadn’t been full tonight, he wouldn’t even be able to see the house from here, much less the front door. Most likely, he’d probably have to crouch somewhere around the perimeter of the building as he laid in wait.

He supposed that things could always be worse.

Stripping the wrapper off a large-sized concoction of chocolate, peanuts and caramel, Nick had just taken his first bite of the candy bar when he heard it. A rumbling engine noise.

Nick froze, listening.

It was definitely a car. From the sound of it, not a small one. Or a particularly new one for that matter.

Damn, but it was noisy enough to wake the dead, he thought. Whoever it was certainly wasn’t trying for stealth, but then, the driver had no reason to expect anyone to be around for his entrance.

Because he was pretty close to starving before he remembered the candy bar, Nick took one more large bite, then shoved the remainder into his pocket.

All his senses were instantly on high alert.

He strained his eyes, trying to make out the approaching vehicle from his very limited vantage point. He didn’t dare open the door any wider, at least, not at this point. He couldn’t take a chance on the driver seeing the movement.

It suddenly occurred to him that if the driver decided to park his truck behind the barn, he was going to be out of luck. That was where he’d left his sedan.

Nick mentally crossed his fingers as he held his breath.

The next moment, he exhaled. Well, at least one thing was going right, he silently congratulated himself. The vehicle, an old, battered truck, came into view and was apparently going to park in front of the ranch house.

A minute later, he saw why the truck’s progress was so slow. The truck was towing an equally ancient trailer.

As he squinted for a better view, Nick tried to make out the driver, but there was no way he could see into the cab. He couldn’t tell if the man was young or old. The vague shadow he saw told him that the driver appeared to be slight and even that might have just been a trick of the moonlight.

Nick straightened his back, his ache miraculously gone. At least the ordeal was almost over, he told himself.

The truck finally came to a creaking stop before the ranch house, but not before emitting a cacophony. It almost sounded as if it exhaled. Straining his eyes, Nick still heard rather than saw the driver getting out of the truck’s cab.

Now or never, Nick thought.

“Stop right there,” he shouted, bursting out of the barn. He held up his wallet, opened to his ID. As if anyone could make out what was there, he thought ironically. To cover all bases, he identified himself loudly. “I’m with the Secret Service.”

In response, the driver turned and bolted back toward the truck.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Nick shouted.

A star on his high school track team, Nick took off, cutting the distance between them down to nothing in less than a heartbeat. The next moment, he tackled the driver, bringing him down.

“Get the hell off me!” the driver shouted.

Nick remembered thinking that the truck driver had a hell of a feminine voice just before he felt the back of his head explode, ushering in a curtain of darkness.

Chapter 2

It was only through sheer grit that Nick managed to hang on to the fringes of consciousness, gripping the sliver of light with his fingertips and holding on for all he was worth. He knew that if he surrendered to the darkness, there would be no telling what could happen. In his experience these last ten years, death could be hiding behind every conceivable corner. Even in tiny, off-the-beaten-path burgs that made no one’s top-ten list of places to visit.

Falling backward, Nick teetered, then managed to spring up, somehow still miraculously holding on to his wallet and displaying both his badge and ID.

Not that anyone was looking at it.

“Striking a Secret Service agent is a punishable offense that’ll land you in prison,” he barked at his assailant.

Swinging around to face the person who’d almost bashed in his head, Nick struggled to focus. Everything appeared blurred, with images multiplying themselves. This intense ringing in his ears jarred him down to the very bone. But even though it was wavy, the image of his assailant was legions away from what he had expected.

Was he hallucinating?

There, standing with her legs spread apart and firmly planted on the ground, clutching a tire iron that was close to being half as big as she was, was—

“A kid?” Nick demanded incredulously when he could finally find his voice. “I was almost brained by a little kid?”

“I’m not little! And you stay off my mama!” the tiny terror shouted. She held on to the tire iron so hard, her knuckles were white and she’d lifted her chin like a pint-sized, old-fashioned prize fighter, daring him to try to touch her.

His head throbbed and the headache mushrooming over his skull threatened to obliterate everything else.

Focus, Nick, focus!

“Your mama?” Nick echoed. Well, that explained it all right. His ears hadn’t been playing tricks on him. The driver he’d tackled had sounded like a woman for a very good reason. “He” was a “she.”

Even as he fought to clear his brain and try to keep the headache at bay, he saw the woman—and now that he looked, he could see that she was a petite, curvaceous woman whose body could not be mistaken for boyish—move swiftly to stand beside her daughter. She rested her hand on one of the little girl’s shoulders. The woman had lost the ridiculous, oversized cowboy hat she’d had on. Without it, he saw that she had red hair. It was pulled back and tucked into a long, thick braid that ran down to the small of her back.

The fiery-looking, petite hellcat didn’t look as if she could weigh a hundred pounds even with her daughter perched on her shoulders. He should have easily subdued both of them with no trouble, not find himself at their mercy.

This wasn’t going to look good in the report.

The woman took the tire iron from her daughter. But rather than drop it, the way he expected her to, she grasped it like a weapon while gently attempting to push the little hellion behind her. The girl didn’t stay put long. It reminded Nick of a painting he’d once seen in a Washington museum, something that had to do with the spirit of the pioneer women who helped settle the West.

For one unguarded moment, between the monumental headache, the intermittent confusion and the anger he felt at being caught off guard like this, the word magnificent came to mind.

The next moment, he realized this was no time for that kind of personal assessment.

He found himself under fire from that rather pert set of lips.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded hotly, moving the tire iron as she shot off the words. “And what are you doing, sneaking around on my land, attacking defenseless women?”

“I already told you who I was,” he reminded her tersely, “and I’d hardly call you defenseless.”

As he said that, he rubbed his chin and realized belatedly that the woman he’d inadvertently tackled had actually landed a rather stinging right cross to his chin. Maybe he was damn lucky to be alive, although he probably wouldn’t feel quite that way if word of this incident ever really got out: Nick Sheffield, aspiring Secret Service agent to the President, taken down by two females who collectively weighed less than a well-fed male German shepherd.

He eyed the tire iron in her hand. “I feel sorry for your husband.”

“Don’t be,” Georgie snapped. “There isn’t one.”

Once upon a time, during the summer that she’d been seventeen and full of wonderful, naive dreams, she’d wanted a home, a husband, a family, the whole nine yards. And, equally naively, she’d thought that Jason Prentiss was the answer to all her prayers. Tall, intelligent and handsome, the Dartmouth College junior was spending the summer on his uncle’s farm. She’d lost her heart the first moment she’d seen him. He had eyes the color of heaven and a tongue that was dipped in honey.

Unfortunately, he also possessed a heart that was chiseled out of old bedrock. Once summer was over, he went back to college, back, she discovered, to his girlfriend. Finding out that their summer romance had created a third party only made Jason pack his bags that much faster. He left with a vague promise to write and quickly vanished from her life. In the months that followed, there wasn’t a single attempt to contact her. The two letters she wrote were returned, unopened.

Georgie had grown up in a hurry that summer, in more ways than one. Eighteen was a hell of an age to become an adult, but she had and in her opinion, she and Emmie were just fine—barring the occasional bump in the road.

Like the one standing in front of her now.

Sucking in his breath against the pain, Nick rubbed the back of his head where Emmie had made more than gentle contact.

It was a wonder she hadn’t fractured his skull, he thought. As it was, there would be one hell of a lump there. Probing, he could feel it starting to form.

No husband, huh? “Killed him, did you?” he asked sarcastically.

He saw the woman’s eyes flash like green lightning. Obviously, he’d struck a nerve. Had she really killed her husband?

“I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I want you to turn around and get the hell off my property or I’m going to call the sheriff,” she warned.

Nick held his ground even as he eyed the little devil the woman was vainly trying to keep behind her. He was more leery of the kid than the woman. The little girl looked as if she would bite.

“Call away,” he told the woman, unfazed. He saw that his answer annoyed her and he felt as if he’d scored a point for his side. “It’ll save me the trouble of looking up his number.”

“Right.” She drew the word out, indicating that she didn’t come close to believing him. Inclining her head slightly toward her daughter, she nonetheless kept her eyes trained on him. “Emmie, get my cell phone out of the truck.” Her eyes hardened as she turned her full attention back to him. “We don’t like people who trespass around here.”

Okay, he’d had just about enough of this grade B western clone.

“Look, I already told you that I’m a Secret Service agent—” Nick got no farther.

Georgie snorted contemptuously at what she perceived to be a whopper. Anyone could get a badge off the Internet and fake an ID these days. “And I’m Annie Oakley.”

“Well, Ms. Oakley,” Nick retorted sarcastically, “right now, you’re interfering with a federal matter.”

When it came to sarcasm, she could hold her own with the best of them. Growing up with no father and her lineage in question, the butt of more than one joke, she’d learned quickly to use the tools she had to deflect the hurtful words.

“And just what matter would that be?” she asked.

Although he rarely justified himself, he decided to give this woman the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she wasn’t playing dumb, maybe the more-than-mildly attractive hellcat really was dumb.

So he spelled it out for her. “Obstruction of justice, harboring a criminal—”

She stopped him cold. “What criminal?” Georgie demanded angrily.

This man was really getting under her skin. God, but she wished she had her shotgun with her instead of this hunk of metal. Wielding a tire iron didn’t make her feel very safe.

“Georgie Grady,” he answered. He had his doubts that she was innocent of the man’s activities. Not if she lived here as she claimed. Even so, Nick decided to cover his bases and give reasoning a try. “Look, your boyfriend or whoever Georgie Grady is to you is in a lot of trouble and if you try to hide him, it’ll only go hard on you as well.” Needing some kind of leverage, he hit her where he assumed it would hurt the most. “Do you want Social Services to take away your daughter?” He nodded at the returning child holding on to the cell phone she’d been sent to get. “I can make that happen.”

“Can you, now?” He was bluffing, Georgie thought. The man didn’t know his ass from his elbow, he’d just proven it. “Somehow, that doesn’t fill me full of fear,” she informed him coldly.

“Mama?”

There was fear in Emmie’s voice. Georgie’s protective mother instincts immediately stood at attention. She slipped one arm around her daughter’s small shoulders to give her a quick, comforting squeeze.

“But someone upsetting my daughter does fill me full of anger and I promise you, mister, when I’m angry, it’s not a pretty sight.” Her eyes became glinting, green slits as she narrowed them. “You’d do well to avoid it if you can.”

What the hell was he doing, standing in the middle of nowhere, going one-on-one with some misguided red-headed harpy? He’d had enough of this. “Just tell me where I can find this Georgie Grady and I’ll forget this whole incident.”

Emmie tugged on the bottom of her mother’s shirt to get her attention. “Is he simple, Mama?” she asked in what amounted to a stage whisper.

Georgie stifled a laugh. “It would appear so, honey.”

He was not here to entertain them, nor did he appreciate being the butt of someone’s joke, especially when he wasn’t in on it. “Look, call the damn sheriff so we can get this over with.”

To his surprise, she took a step toward him, lifting her chin exactly the way he’d seen her daughter do. “I will thank you not to use profanity in front of my daughter.”

Of all the hypocritical—“But you just cursed,” he pointed out.

Georgie allowed a careless shrug to roll off her shoulders. “That’s different.”

Of course it was. “God, but I hate small towns.”

“And using the Lord’s name in vain’s pretty much frowned on around here as well,” Georgie told him, not bothering to hide her disdain.

Well, it was obvious that no matter what she said, she wasn’t calling the sheriff and he wanted this thing brought to a conclusion. “Fine, tell me the sheriff’s number.” He began to reach into his suit jacket pocket. “I’ll call him and we can get this over with.”

Alarmed that he might be reaching for a concealed weapon, Georgie raised the tire iron threateningly. “Put your hands up!” she ordered.

Abandoning his cell phone, Nick did as she said. “I can’t dial and put my hands up,” he protested. He was miles beyond annoyed now.

The woman seemed to relax, lowering the tire iron again. She raised her eyes to his and he could have sworn he saw a smirk. Her next words did nothing to dispel that impression.

“Don’t do your research very well, do you, Mr. Secret Service agent?”

No matter how he focused, he hadn’t a clue what she was driving at and he was very tired of these mind games. She was undoubtedly stalling for time. If he didn’t know better, he would have said she was trying to give her boyfriend time to escape—except that he already knew the man wasn’t in the ranch house.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

She debated stringing him along for a bit, then decided that more than wanting to get to him, she wanted him gone. There was only one way that was going to happen. “Well, for one thing, Mr. phony Secret Service agent—” she’d seen more convincing IDs in Howard Beasley’s Toy Emporium “—I’m Georgie Grady.”

“No, you’re not.” If ever he’d seen someone who didn’t look like a “Georgie” it was this woman in the tight, faded jeans and the checkered work shirt that seemed to be sticking to every inch of her upper torso like a second skin, thanks to the humidity.

Georgie shook her head. Talk about a blockhead. Too bad he was so damn annoying, because, all things considered, he was kind of cute—as long as he lost the black suit and stopped using so much of that styling goop on his hair.

“Then the people who put that name on the trophy I just won at the last rodeo competition are going to feel pretty stupid,” she told him.

Nick had to consciously keep his jaw from dropping. He eyed her incredulously. This was just outlandish enough to be true. “You’re Georgie Grady.”

“I’m Georgie Grady. I guess you’ve got a hearing problem as well as lacking any manners,” she surmised. She looked down at her daughter. “Gotta feel sorry for a man like that, Emmie. He doesn’t know any better.”

He was hot, he was tired and his head was splitting. He was in no mood to be talked about as if he wasn’t standing right there. Especially by his quarry if this woman really was Georgie Grady.

“Look,” he said waspishly, “this is all very entertaining, but I don’t have time for an episode of The Waltons—”

The woman watched him blankly. It was obvious that the title of the popular classic TV show meant nothing to her. “Must’ve been before my time,” she commented. She nodded over his shoulder. “The road’s that way. I suggest you take it.”

She still had him holding his hands up. “Can I put my hands down?”

She pretended to think his question over. “Only after you start walking.”

“Fair enough.”

As if complying, Nick turned away from her, took two steps, dropped his hands and then turned around again. This time, instead of his ID, he had his service revolver in his hand.

And he was pointing it at the woman.

Startled, Georgie took a firmer grip on the tire iron. Seeing the gun, Emmie screamed and this time, the little girl allowed herself to be pushed behind her mother’s back.

“Drop the tire iron,” Nick ordered. His tone brooked no nonsense. “Now!” he barked when she didn’t immediately comply.

Letting the tire iron fall, Georgie bit off a curse that would have curled the hair of the most hardened bronco buster had it made it past her lips. She should have known this was all a ruse. Served her right for taking pity on him because he was cute. When was she going to learn that cute men meant nothing but trouble in the long and short run?

“I don’t have anything worth stealing,” she told him between clenched teeth. She just wanted him gone. He was scaring Emmie and for that, she wanted to rip out his heart.

Nick took a step closer. Although small, the gun felt heavy in his hand. He didn’t like pulling his weapon on a woman and even though he found the child annoying, he definitely didn’t care for having to train a weapon around the little girl, but the firebrand who claimed to be her mother had left him no choice.

“As I was saying,” he went on as if nothing had happened, “I’m here to arrest Georgie Grady and take him—or her—into custody. Put your hands up,” he told her.

Georgie raised her hands. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Emmie mimic her action.

You’ll pay for this, mister, she silently promised. Her brain worked feverishly to figure a way out of this.

“So,” Georgie began slowly, “you really are a Secret Service agent.”

“That’s what I told you.”

Georgie nodded her head, as if finally believing him. “And why would a Secret Service agent want to take me into custody?” she queried, doing her best to hang on to her temper. He had the gun, shouting at him wouldn’t be advisable.

“Mama, is he going to shoot you?” Emmie cried, suddenly sounding like every one of her four years and no more.

Georgie’s heart almost broke. Barely holding up her hands, she bent down to Emmie’s level.

“No, honey, he’s not going to shoot me. He’s not that dumb,” she assured her daughter. Raising her eyes to his, she sought his back up. “Are you, Mr. Secret Service agent?”

He’d only discharged his weapon three times, and never in his present position. But saying so might sound weak to the woman. Who knew how these backwoods people thought?

“Not if you cooperate.”

She rose to her feet again, but this time she wasn’t holding up her hands. She was holding Emmie in her arms, determined to calm the child’s fears despite the fact that beneath her own anger was a solid band of fear. She had no idea who this crazy person was, only that she doubted very much that he was who he claimed to be. Secret Service agents didn’t come to places like Esperanza.

She wished now that she’d stopped at her brother’s place instead of coming here tonight. Clay’s ranch wasn’t home, but it did have electricity, something her house didn’t at the moment because she’d shut it off before she’d gone on the trail. And more importantly, Clay’s place didn’t have someone holding a dingy looking revolver that was pointed straight at her.

She shifted her body so that she was between the gun and Emmie. “And just how do you expect me to ‘cooperate’?” she asked.

“By letting me take you into custody.” He began to feel as if he was trapped in some sort of time loop, endlessly repeating the same words.

He’d already said that, and it was just as ridiculous now as when he’d first said it. “Why, for God’s sakes?” she demanded.

“I thought you didn’t believe in taking the Lord’s name in vain,” Nick mocked, throwing her words back at her.

“It’s okay when I do it,” she informed him coolly, tossing her head in a dismissive movement. “God likes me. I don’t point guns at little girls.”

Damn, how the hell did this woman manage to keep putting him on the defensive? She was the criminal here, not him.

“I’m pointing the gun at you, not her.” He saw the little girl thread her arms around the woman’s neck in what could only be seen as a protective action. They were some pair, these two. “And I’m doing it because you left me no choice.”

All right, she’d played along long enough. She wanted answers now. “What is it that I’m supposed to have done that has gotten your Secret Service agent shorts all twisted up in a knot?” she demanded.

She knew damn well what she’d done. He had the utmost faith that the hacker on his team had given him the right information. Steve’d had one hell of a reputation before he’d gotten caught.

“Don’t act so innocent,” he accused.

“Sorry,” she retorted sarcastically, “but it’s a habit I have when I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I wouldn’t call sending threatening letters to Senator Colton not doing anything wrong,” Nick informed her.

Georgie felt as if someone had just hit her over the head with a nine-pound skillet. “Senator Colton?” she echoed.

He saw the look of recognition flash in her eyes. She’d just given herself away. He was right. She was the one sending the threatening letters. The innocent act was just that, an act. While he felt vindicated, the slightest ribbon of disappointment weaved through him. He had no idea why, but chalked it up to the blow on the head he’d received.

“Yes.”

“Senator Joe Colton?” Georgie enunciated in disbelief.

Why was she belaboring this? What was she up to? He wondered suspiciously, never taking his eyes off her face. “Yes.”

“Well, that cinches it,” Georgie said with finality, unconsciously hugging Emmie closer to her. “You really are out of your mind.”

Chapter 3

Nick bristled at the insult. “My state of mind isn’t in question here.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he was crazy if he thought she would have anything to do with another Colton after her mother’s experience. But that would lead to questions she didn’t want to answer. “And mine is?”

His eyes met hers. “You’re the one sending the threatening e-mails.”

If she weren’t holding Emmie, she would have thrown up her hands. “What threatening e-mails? I’ve been too damn busy working to pick up a phone, much less waste my time on the computer.”

When she came right down to it, Georgie didn’t care for the Internet. To her, it was just another way for people to lose the human touch and slip into a vague pea soup of anonymity. The only reason she kept a computer and maintained an Internet account was because she didn’t want to fall behind the rest of the world. Once Emmie started going to school, she knew that a computer would be a necessity. In no time at all, she was certain computers would take the place of loose-leaf binders, notebooks and textbooks. She wanted to be able to help her daughter, not have Emmie ashamed of her because she was electronically challenged.

But that didn’t mean she had to like the damn thing.

Her protests fell on deaf ears. The venom he’d seen spewed in those latest e-mails wouldn’t have taken much time to fire off. She hadn’t even bothered with spell-check, as he recalled. And the grammar in some of the messages had been pretty bad.

“My tech expert tracked it to your ranch house, your IP account.”

She had no idea what an IP account was, but wasn’t about to display her ignorance, especially not in front of her daughter. But she did know one thing. “Your tech expert is wrong.”

“He’s never wrong.” It was both the best and the worst thing about Steve because his results could never be challenged.

Georgie was unmoved and unintimidated. With her mother the butt of narrow-minded people’s jokes because all three of her children had been fathered by a man who was married to someone else, she’d had to stand up for herself at a very early age. That tended to either make or break a person. She’d always refused to be broken.

“Well, he just broke his streak because he is wrong and if the messages were traced to my ranch house, he’s doubly wrong because I haven’t been in my ranch house for the last five months.”

Something told him that he should have investigated Georgie Grady a little before catching the red-eye to San Antonio, but time had been at a premium last night and he’d wanted to wrap this up fast.

His eyes swept over her. “Is that so?”

She rocked forward on the balls of her boot-shod feet. “Yes, that’s ‘so,’ and I resent your attitude, you manner and your manhandling me.”

“Lady, you got in a right cross and your daughter almost cracked open my skull with that tire iron of hers. If anyone was manhandled, it was me.”

He saw a grin spread over otherwise pretty appealing lips. “Is that why you’re so angry? Because you were bested by a woman a foot shorter than you and her four-year-old daughter?”

Not only was she cocky, but she wasn’t observant either.

“You’re not a foot shorter than me, more like eight inches,” he estimated. “And I’m angry because I’m here in this one-horse town, wasting my time arguing with a pig-headed woman after waiting for the last eight hours for her to show up when I should be back in California, with the Senator.”

“Well, go.” Tucking Emmie against her hip, she waved him on his way with her temporarily free hand. “Nobody told you to come to Esperanza and harass innocent people.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Finally, we agree on something.” She blew out a breath. One of them would have to be the voice of reason and because he didn’t know the meaning of the word, it would have to be her. “You really a Secret Service Agent?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see that ID again?”

Reaching into his pocket, he took out his wallet. “Not very trusting, are you?” He’d always thought that people in a small town were supposed to be incredibly trusting, to the point of almost being simple-minded. Him, he trusted no one. When you grow up, not being able to trust your own parents, it set a precedent.

She raised her eyes to his. “Should I be?” He was a stranger, for all she knew, he could be some serial killer, making the rounds.

His eyes slid over her. Someone as attractive as this woman needed to be on her guard more than most. That body of hers could get her in a great deal of trouble.

“No, I guess not.” Opening his wallet to his badge and photo ID, he held it up for her to look over again.

Still keeping Emmie on her hip, Georgie leaned slightly in to peruse at length the ID he showed her.

As did Emmie. She stared at it so intently that Nick caught himself wondering if the annoying child could read. Wasn’t she too young for that?

Georgie stepped back and looked at him with an air of resignation. The ID appeared to be authentic after all.

“I guess you are what you say you are.” He felt her eyes slide over him. “You’ve got the black suit and those shades hanging out of your top pocket and all.” There was that smirk again, he thought. The way she described him made him feel like a caricature. “And your hair’s kind of slicked back, the part that’s not messed up,” she added.

Without realizing what he was doing, Nick ran his hand through his hair, smoothing down the section where the kid had hit him.

He saw the woman shake her head. “You’d look better with it all messed up. The other way looks like it’s been glued down.”

He knew what she was doing. She was trying to undermine him any way she could. Well, it wasn’t going to work.

“We’ll trade hairstyling tips some other time,” he told her sarcastically.

Rather than put her in her place, his response seemed to amuse her.

“Touchy son of a gun, aren’t you? Don’t take criticism well, I see,” she noted, as if to herself. She cocked her head, as if taking measure of him and trying to decide some things about him. You’d think he was the one in trouble, he thought, annoyed.

“You the one they used to make fun of when you were a kid?” she asked.

The exact opposite was true. He’d been more than half on his way to becoming a bully, threatening other kids at school. Smaller, bigger, it didn’t matter, he took them all on because he could. In school and on the streets, at least some things were in his control. Not like at home where an abusive father made his life, and his alcohol-anesthetized mother’s life, a living hell.

But then, one day, for reasons he had yet to completely understand, he suddenly saw himself through his victim’s eyes. Saw his father as Drake Sheffield must have been at his age. Sickened, Nick released the kid who’d come within a hair’s breadth of being pummeled to the ground because he’d mouthed off at him and just walked away. After that, his life had turned around and he put himself on the path of protecting the underdog rather than trying to humiliate and take advantage of him.

“Well, were you?” Georgie queried, although, she couldn’t quite see him as a classic ninety-eight-pound weakling.

“No” was all Nick said.

Her arms began to ache, reminding her that until this man had jumped out of the shadows, tackling her and causing her adrenaline to register off the charts, she’d been dead tired. It was getting really late.

Georgie decided to appeal to his sense of decency—if he had any. “Look, would you mind if I put my daughter to bed? It’s been one back-breaking long day.”

“I’m not tired,” Emmie protested.

It was obvious that she didn’t want to miss a second of what was going on. Because of the life she led, a child thrust into a world populated predominately by adults, Emmie thought like a miniature adult. Georgie was positive that if she’d elected to remain on the rodeo circuit, Emmie would have been thrilled to death. The little girl would have loved nothing better than to live in the run-down trailer amid her beloved cowboys forever. Especially because so many of them doted on her.

“That’s okay,” Georgie told her, “I am, pumpkin.”

Emmie pulled her small features into a solemn expression. “Then you go to bed,” the little girl advised her.

Georgie glanced at the dark-haired stranger. Yes, she was exhausted, but she was also agitated. There was no way she could have closed her eyes with this man around.

“Not hardly.” She raised her eyebrows, silently indicating that she was still waiting for him to respond to her question. She didn’t expect him to say no.

Nick gestured toward the door. “Go ahead.”

Setting Emmie down, Georgie fished her house key out of her front pocket.

As she raised it to the keyhole, he said, “It’s not locked.”

She looked at him accusingly. Secret Service Agent or not, the man had some nerve. “You broke in?”

“No,” Nick corrected patiently, “I found it unlocked.”

The hell he did, she thought. “I locked up before I left,” she informed him. In her absence, no one would have broken in. Everyone around here knew she had nothing worth stealing. He had to have been the one jimmying open her lock. How dumb did he think she was?

Pushing the door open, Georgie took Emmie’s hand in hers and walked inside.

Nick followed in her wake. “Aren’t you going to turn on the light?” he asked when she walked right by the switch at the front door.

“No light to turn on,” she answered. The shadows in the room began to lengthen, swallowing up the pools of moonlight on the floor. She turned to see he was automatically closing the front door. “Keep the door open until I get the fire going,” she instructed. Georgie quickly crossed to the fireplace.

Obliging her, Nick pushed the door opened again. He saw her squatting down in front of the fireplace, bunching up newspapers and sticking them strategically between the logs.

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s June,” he protested. A damn sticky June at that. “Isn’t it too hot for a fire?”

“Not if you want coffee.”

Finished, she glanced over her shoulder at him. The Secret Service agent was still standing in the doorway. The moonlight outlined his frame, making him seem a little surreal. He was a powerful-looking man, even in that suit. She supposed she should have counted herself lucky that he hadn’t broken any of her bones when he tackled her in the yard.

“Don’t you law enforcement types always want coffee?” she asked, trying her best to maintain a friendly atmosphere. Her mother always said that honey worked better than vinegar. “Or is that against some Secret Service agent code?”

Another dig. Still, after standing there for eight hours, he was hungry enough to eat a post. Coffee would help fill the hole in his stomach for the time being. “Coffee’ll be fine” Nick heard himself saying.

With the fire illuminating the living room, he shut the door behind him. As he did so, he flipped the light switch.

Nothing happened.

Rising to her feet, Georgie paused, one hand fisted at her hip. Rather than be angry, she found herself mildly amused at this overdressed, albeit fine specimen of manhood.

“You want to play with the other switches, too?” she asked. She pointed to the kitchen and then down the hall. “There’re about six more. None of them will turn on the lights either.”

This was just getting weirder and weirder. “Why isn’t there any electricity?”

“Because I don’t have money to throw around,” she suggested “helpfully.” “There’s no phone service either, so don’t bother picking up the receiver.” She nodded toward the phone on the kitchen wall. “If it makes you feel any better, they’ll both be on in the morning. I got home ahead of schedule.”

Ahead of schedule. That meant that he would have gone on waiting for her to arrive all night until the next morning.

The very thought of that intensified the ache in his shoulder muscles.

Of course, she could just be making the whole thing up and she and the pint-sized terror could have been coming back from visiting someone. “So you’re sticking to your story about being out of town?”

“It’s not a story, it’s the truth,” Emmie insisted angrily, stomping over to him, her hands on her hips, her head tilted back like a miniature Fury. “Mama doesn’t lie. She says only bad people lie.”

Georgie had her back to him. He watched the way her long braid moved as she arranged something in the hearth.

“No,” he told the child while watching the mother, “sometimes good people lie, too.”

Georgie straightened to go get the coffee pot from the cabinet in the kitchen. He was trying to trip her up, and he was just wasting his time. Because he had the wrong person. The sooner she convinced him of that, the sooner she could get down to the business of settling in.

“Ask anyone in town,” Georgie urged him. The warm glow from the fireplace cast itself over her, coloring her cheeks, lightly glancing along her frame. “They’ll all tell you the same thing. That I was out on the rodeo circuit. Around here, everybody knows everybody else’s business.” That used to annoy her. It didn’t anymore. Now it just gave her a feeling of belonging.

“And what is it you do on the rodeo circuit?” Nick asked, not that he really believed her. Men who wore oversized hats and walked as if born on a horse hit the rodeo circuit, not a little bit of a woman with a big mouth and a child in tow.

“Win,” Georgie answered tersely. “You’d better like your coffee black,” she informed him, raising her voice as she walked into the small, functional kitchen and poured water into the battered coffee pot. “Because I don’t have any milk handy. The last of it was used to drown a few chocolate chip cookies who were minding their own business about five hours ago.”

Georgie looked at her daughter and grinned, remembering the snack they’d shared during the impromptu picnic she’d arranged for the little girl. She’d done it to lift Emmie’s spirits because her daughter had been so sad about leaving the rodeo circuit. Georgie had talked at length about the ranch in glowing terms, reminding her daughter about all the people who loved her and were looking forward to celebrating her fifth birthday next week right here in Esperanza. By the time the cookies were gone, Emmie couldn’t wait to get home.

“Black’ll do fine,” he told her.

As he watched, he saw Georgie stretch up on her toes, trying to reach the two white mugs on the top shelf. Crossing over to her, he took the mugs down and placed them on the counter. Georgie scooped them up and made her way back to the hearth.

He found himself following her.

Nick could feel Emmie’s eyes boring into him, suspiciously watching his every move like some stunted hawk.

“This doesn’t change anything,” he warned Georgie, referring to her effort at hospitality by making him something to drink.

“It’s coffee, not a magic elixir,” she responded. “I didn’t think it was going to turn you into a prince. I’m just being neighborly.”

“I’m not your neighbor.”

“And for that, I am eternally grateful,” Georgie told him. With the coffee brewing, she turned her attention to the center of her universe, her daughter. “Okay, Miss Emmie,” she took Emmie’s hand, “time to get you ready for bed.”

But Emmie wiggled her hand out of her mother’s grasp. Her large green eyes darted toward the stranger in their house, then back at her mother. “Mama, please?” Emmie pleaded.

In tune with her daughter, Georgie didn’t need Emmie to spell it out for her. She could all but read her mind. Tired or not, there was no way the little girl was going to fall asleep a full three rooms away from here. Emmie was far too agitated about what was going on. She stood a better chance of having her daughter nodding off here, safely in her company.

Georgie surrendered without firing a shot. “Okay, pumpkin, take the sofa.”

Relief highlighted the thousand-watt smile. Emmie wiggled onto the leather couch. “Thank you, Mama,” she said happily.

Other than his own horrific childhood, Nick hadn’t been around kids for more than a minute here or there. He had absolutely no experience when it came to dealing with them. Nor did he really want any. Kids had their own kind of logic and he had no time to unscramble that.

But his gut told him that what had just transpired was wrong from a discipline point of view. “You always let her win?” he asked Georgie.

Georgie watched him for a long moment, debating whether to tell him to butt out. But saying so wouldn’t be setting a good example for her daughter. “I pick my battles,” she told him. And, to be honest, she felt better being able to watch over Emmie right now. She didn’t fully trust this character, Secret Service agent or not. “Arguing over everything never gets you anywhere.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I have no desire to fool you, Mr. Secret Service agent—”

“My name’s Nick Sheffield.” He knew he was telling her needlessly. After all, she’d read as much on his ID—if she bothered reading it.

Georgie started again from the top. “I have no desire to fool you, Nick Sheffield,” she told him. “I just want you to go away.”

That made two of them, but under a different set of circumstances. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen right now,” he informed her tersely.

Georgie sighed. “So much for my lucky streak continuing.”

Behind her, the coffee pot had stopped percolating. She turned toward it, and, taking the two mugs she’d brought with her from the kitchen, she poured thick, black liquid into both. She set the pot back on its perch and brought the mugs over to him. Georgie offered him one.

He took it from her a bit leerily and she laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to pour it onto your lap.” She couldn’t resist a quick glance in that area. “Although the thought did cross my mind.”

Thank God for small favors, he thought. But she’d stirred his curiosity. “Why not?”

“Because if I did that,” she said only after she’d paused to swallow a mouthful, “then you’d think I was guilty. And I’m not,” she pointed out.

“What if I think it anyway?”

“Then you’re dumb,” she told him simply. “Because that means that you’re either not looking at the evidence—or ignoring it.”

No, he thought, wrapping his hands around the mug, he had to admit that he wasn’t looking at the evidence at the moment. He was looking at her. And God help him, he did like what he saw.

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