The Coltons: Nick, Clay & Jericho

Nick looked to Georgie for guidance. “Are most kids her age like that?”

“Most kids any age aren’t like that,” Georgie told him. Draping her arm over the girl’s shoulders, she gave her a quick squeeze. “Emmie’s one of a kind.”

“Unique,” Emmie declared, gazing up at her mother. It was obvious that she liked the sound of the word.

Clay ruffled his niece’s hair. “That’s right, half-pint. Unique.” He paused for a moment to turn to his sister. His expression softened. “You sure I can’t talk you into coming over to my place and staying there for a few days?”

“I’m sure.” Maybe, if things got worse, she’d taken him up on his offer. But right now, she wanted to face this on her own. “You’re within hollering range, big brother,” she told him cheerfully. “I’ll holler if I need you.”

“Yeah, right.” She was too proud. He didn’t believe her for a minute. “When pigs fly.”

Georgie grinned, amused. “Definite right after that, I promise.”

Clay addressed Nick. “See that nothing happens to either of them, Secret Service agent. I’m holding you personally responsible if it does.” Not that there was much comfort in that, he thought.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Grady,” Nick assured him. “It won’t.”

Clay’s expression darkened instantly. “The name’s not Grady.”

Confused, Nick shifted his eyes to Georgie before looking back at her older brother. “Your sister said she wasn’t married, so I just assumed that Grady was the family name.”

“It is,” Clay told him, then added, “Our mother’s family.”

Taking pity on him, Georgie began to explain, “My grandfather was a rodeo star—”

“Like my grandma,” Emmie piped up with pride. George “Rattlesnake” Grady had died before she was born, but her mother’s stories had made the man seem vividly real to the little girl.

Clay doled out his words slowly. “Grady was their last name.”

Georgie picked up the thread. “I took it as my stage name.” Nick felt as if he was suddenly a spectator at a tennis match. “To keep the family tradition alive.” That was apparently as much as she was willing to share at the moment. Turning on her heel, she faced her brother. It was obvious that she was dismissing him even though she’d been the one to ask him to come over to begin with. Calling on a woman’s prerogative, she’d had a change of heart. “I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

Clay didn’t look as if he believed her for a moment. “Yeah.”

“I promise,” Georgie repeated earnestly. “You’ll be the first to know.”

Emmie tugged on her shirt, her lower lip stuck out like a little perch. “Not me, Mama?”

She grinned. No matter how awful she felt, Emmie always managed to cheer her up, just by being there. “All right, Uncle Clay will be the second to know.” She looked up at her brother. “Good enough?” she asked him.

Clay snorted. As if he had a say in this. It was like trying to win an argument with a rock. “Guess it’ll have to be.”

“Give your uncle a kiss, Emmie,” Georgie urged, gently pushing the girl toward Clay. “One of your butterfly specials. That’ll cheer him up.”

Okay, he’d bite, Nick thought. “What’s a butterfly special?”

Before Georgie could explain, Emmie turned toward him. “I’ll show you,” the little girl volunteered. She tugged on his jacket. “Well, c’mon. You’ve gotta bend down.”

Feeling awkward, Nick did as the little girl instructed and bent down to her level. She leaned forward and he felt the slight brush of her small, rosebud lips against his cheek. And then there was something more. Just the slightest sensation. He realized that Emmie had turned her face slightly and she was fluttering her eyelashes against his skin, just above where she’d kissed him.

Something warm and nameless materialized within his chest and spread.

Giggling, Emmie danced away on tiptoes, moving toward her next target: Clay. “Your turn, Uncle Clay. Bend down.”

He did and she repeated the brief performance. And then, backing away from her uncle, again on tiptoes, Emmie steepled her small fingers in front of her mouth to hold back another pleased giggle. It escaped anyway. Her laughter was infectious as it filled the air.

“Now I’m good to go,” Clay told her, straightening. The smile left his lips as he raised his head and regarded Nick one last time. “You call me if anything comes up,” he ordered. “She probably won’t.” He nodded his head toward his sister.

“All right.” It was neither a promise nor lip service. Calling the other man was something he would consider doing or not doing when and if the time came. “By the way,” he began, remembering a lost thread of the conversation. He fell into step with the man as the latter headed toward his parked truck.

Georgie and Emmie stood where they were left, watching and, in Emmie’s case, waving.

Clay didn’t even bother turning around to look at the man addressing him. “Yeah?”

“What is your last name?” Nick asked. “Just for the record.”

Clay didn’t pause until he’d reached his truck. Then he turned and gave him one last long measuring glance. Clay laughed, shaking his head. There was very little humor in the sound. If Nick listened closely, he would have noted a touch of irony.

“You government types do like to keep your ‘records’ straight, don’t you?” Clay mocked. “Okay, ‘just for the record,’ Sheffield, it’s Colton. Clay Colton. Colton, in case you’re wondering, was the name of the no-good, worthless excuse of a man who thought my mother was good enough to warm his sheets, and have his bastards, but wasn’t good enough to marry.”

With that, Clay got into his truck, leaving Nick to stare after him in stunned silence. The name Clay had just uttered echoed over and over again inside Nick’s head.

Colton.

Chapter 9

Nick turned away from the road. Georgie and her daughter were on the steps of the front porch, about to enter the house. He addressed the back of her head.

“Why didn’t you tell me your last name was Colton?”

His question stopped her for a moment, but then she continued walking. She didn’t bother to turn around. “You never asked.”

He followed her into the house. This wasn’t some abstract conversation they were having, this had direct bearing on the reason he was down here and he meant to get to the bottom of it.

Had everything she’d told him up to now been a lie, after all?

“Don’t give me that. Seems to me that only a guilty person would have kept that kind of information back.”

Georgie kept going until she came to the kitchen. Although she knew the state of affairs within her refrigerator—empty—she opened it anyway, just to confirm that her mystery squatter hadn’t left behind any food.

“How about a person who doesn’t share things that are nobody else’s business but their own?” She closed the refrigerator door a little harder than she needed to and squared her shoulders in an unconscious, defensive movement. Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t see you telling me about your parents, or lack thereof.”

She added the latter as she thought of her absentee father. The one she’d never met or even heard from—until just recently. For some reason, out of the blue, Graham Colton had materialized, saying he wanted to make amends for his past behavior. Had her mother been alive, she would have tried to find the good in the man, but her mother was gone. The time for mending fences was long gone. She was doing just fine without having the man in her life at this stage. And she intended to continue that way.

Nick set his jaw hard as he pointed out the obvious. “I’m not the one sending threatening e-mails to a United States Senator.”

Georgie whirled around on her heel, her hands fisted at her waist to keep from taking a swing at this infuriating man.

“Well, funny you should say that because neither am I and the sooner you get that through your thick head, the sooner both of us will be happy and you can be on your way.”

Gleaning what she needed to from her mother’s words, Emmie turned her big green eyes up to the man in the black suit. “You’re not gonna help my mama?”

Nick had never spent much time dealing with children. Consequently, he had no idea what to make of them and it had been so long since he’d even had a childhood. But he knew hurt when he saw it. He knew an accusatory tone when he heard it, and Emmie Grady—or Colton—was wielding both like a well-trained samurai swinging his sword.

Georgie draped her arm protectively over the little girl’s slim shoulders. “He’s gonna help mama by leaving, baby,” she told her daughter. Looking at Nick, she said, “There’s your hat, there’s your car, what’s your hurry?” uttering the ironic line to usher him along on his way. She might have known better.

“No hurry,” he responded, then regarded Emmie, “And yes, I’m going to help your mama.” Because, he added silently, this all somehow went together.

To his surprise, Emmie took his hand and began to pull him toward the living room, her small face a wreath of smiles. “I knew you would.”

Georgie sighed. Maybe Emmie saw some good in him she was missing. At any rate, she seemed to be stuck with the man for a while. Yes, she’d told her brother that Sheffield could stay at her place, but that was just to restore her independence, her authority over herself in case Clay wanted to institute some form of martial law over her life. She’d silently hoped that Sheffield would leave once her brother did. No such luck, it seemed.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting lunch.”

“Eventually,” Nick allowed. And then he realized what she was saying. He eyed her sharply. “Don’t bother yourself. I’ll go into town and grab something to eat. You do have a restaurant in Esperanza, right?”

She thought of the one where her mother had worked all those long hours after giving up her career on the rodeo circuit. The rodeo had been her mother’s first love, but she had given it all up for them, for Clay, Ryder and her, to give them a stable home life. Georgie couldn’t help wondering if her mother had ever regretted what she’d done.

She had a feeling she knew the answer.

“Yes, we have a restaurant in Esperanza, a damn decent one, too, but I’ve got to go back into town to get some food for Emmie and me. I might as well feed you, too,” she told him.

Georgie was annoyed with herself for not tending to that, too, when she’d gone into town earlier. But discovering that she was flat broke had made her forget the basics. Like the importance of stocking her pantry and refrigerator.

It was time she got a grip on herself and started functioning like the independent woman she was, not like some scatterbrained woman she wasn’t.

Grabbing the keys she’d left on the table, Georgie gestured toward her daughter. “C’mon, Emmie, we’ve got to go back into town.”

Emmie surprised both her mother and Nick with her next words. “Can I stay with Nick, Mama?”

“That’s Mr. Sheffield, honey,” Georgie corrected. Emmie called the cowboys on the circuit by their first names, but that was different. Those were men who doted on her. This was an agent of the government. “And I’m sure he’s got a whole bunch of things he wants to do that don’t include babysitting a little girl.”

Her request completely mystified Nick. “Why would you want to stay with me?”

“’Cause I’ve got questions to ask you,” Emmie told him solemnly.

Had Emmie been older, he would have suspected a setup, with Georgie putting words into the child’s mouth. But Emmie looked too young to be a shill, even for her mother. “Questions?”

Emmie nodded, her red curls bouncing like thin springs about her head. “Like how do those go on?” Before he could ask what she was referring to, Emmie pointed a small index finger at the handcuffs hanging off his belt. Usually hidden by his jacket, the garment had gotten stuck on them, exposing just enough steel to capture Emmie’s attention.

Georgie took hold of Emmie’s hand and began to lead her to the front door. “Careful what you wish for, honey. He just might show you,” she murmured under her breath, but loud enough for both Emmie and Nick to hear.

It suddenly occurred to him that there was an advantage to having the little girl remain. Moving quickly, he shifted himself in front of mother and daughter before they could reach the front door. “She can stay.”

Georgie looked up at him and read between the lines. The man was pretty transparent. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back. You don’t need a hostage,” she told him deliberately.

She took a step to get around him. He took one to keep in front of her. “If Emmie stays here, I’ll be sure of it.”

Did he think she was born yesterday? Or did he just think she was that stupid? “I’m not leaving my four-year-old daughter alone with a man I don’t know.”

“Five, Mama, I’m almost five,” Emmie reminded her, holding up five splayed fingers.

Nick ignored the little girl. “Fair enough,” he allowed. He’d set about as many wheels in motion as he could right now. This could come under the heading of surveillance work. “I guess we’re going grocery shopping then.”

The only one who seemed happy about the arrangement was Emmie, who suddenly threaded her tiny fingers through Nick’s while still holding on to her mother’s hand. Positioned between them, she gleefully proclaimed, “Just like a real family.”

It took everything Nick had not to yank his hand away.

The ache the words created within Georgie’s chest was immeasurable.

I can’t give you that now, Emmie. But maybe someday, she promised. Maybe someday.

“Careful, honey, or you’re going to give Mr. Sheffield a heart attack,” she said flippantly. “He’d probably got a wife and kids at home.”

Never one to hold back, Emmie took her question to the source. “Do you?” Emmie pressed, twisting around to get a better look at Nick’s face as he dropped back a step.

Reaching the truck, Georgie picked up her daughter and slipped her into the car seat, securing the belts. All the while Emmie craned her neck, watching Nick and waiting for an answer.

“No,” he answered in a monotone. “I don’t.” Getting into the cab of the truck, he waited for Georgie to climb in on her side and give him the keys. There was no way he was allowing the woman to drive. There’d be no telling where they would wind up if he did.

The shopping expedition into town took a little less than two hours, start to finish.

At the checkout counter, after everything had been tallied, Georgie reached for one of her credit cards, then remembered that she’d canceled them all. That left her dependent on cash until the companies issued her new cards and sent them.

Murmuring an apology, Georgie dug into her wallet for cash. Nick elbowed her out of the way and handed the checker a hundred dollar bill.

“That should cover it,” he said.

The young woman behind the counter looked barely out of high school. She regarded the bill with suspicion as she held it up to the light, angling it as if she expected to see the word “counterfeit’ written across the back.

So much for trust, Nick thought, mildly amused at another stereotype biting the dust. “It’s real,” he assured her.

The young blonde flushed. “We don’t see many of these,” she responded, handing him change with what could only be described as an inviting smile.

“You didn’t have to pay for it,” Georgie protested, pushing the cart out of the store.

“You don’t have to cook for me,” he countered, keeping step. Emmie had wound her fingers around his left hand again, all but skipping alongside him and her mother.

You’d think Emmie would have better judgment than that, Georgie thought. She was about to make a cryptic comment about cooking for him, then sighed. She had to think of Emmie and set a good example. So she nodded and said, “Fair enough, I guess.”

He surprised her by loading the grocery bags into the truck, then picking up Emmie and depositing her into her car seat. Allowing him to buckle in Emmie, she still checked to see that the belts were secure.

“Would you like to redo them?” he asked.

“Just making sure she’s secure. I don’t expect you’ve had much experience with kids’ car seats.”

“A seat belt’s a seat belt,” he responded. “You want to drive?” he asked, holding out the keys.

She was about to snatch them away. The keys and the truck that went with them represented her independence. But then she shrugged. She didn’t want to do what he expected her to do.

“You can drive,” she told him, climbing into the passenger seat.

She missed the smile that curved the corners of his mouth just before he got in.

After he’d helped Georgie and Emmie bring in the grocery bags, it dawned on him. Power had been restored to the house, just as Georgie had foretold last night. That meant that he could get back to working on her computer in an effort to see if he had missed something the first time around, before the power from the portable generator had given out.

“I’m going to get back to working on your computer,” he told her as he began to leave the kitchen. “Whoever stole your identity might have been using it to do their ‘shopping’ with your credit cards.”

“What do you hope to find?” she asked. She couldn’t begin to fathom using the machine as a tracking device, but then, she’d be the first to admit that she was naive in the ways of computers.

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted.

“Well, that’s not very encouraging.”

“Most clues turn up by accident,” he told her, leaving the room.

“Definitely not encouraging,” she murmured under her breath. Pushing everything else out of her mind, she turned her attention to making lunch. Specifically, to making burritos. Mexican food always made her feel better and she really needed something to make her feel better.

Left to her own devices, Emmie decided that now would be as good a time as any for “Mr. Sheffield” to answer those questions buzzing in her head. Slipping out of the kitchen, she came bounding into her mother’s bedroom.

“Hi,” she declared cheerfully. Not standing on ceremony, or hanging back, she planted herself beside him at the card table.

Nick looked up. Lost in thought for a moment, he’d forgotten about the little girl.

“Hi,” he murmured and, inadvertently, opened the door for her. The questions came, fast and furious, as to how his handcuffs worked. Why did he need them? Did he see many bad people? What did he do when he saw them? And on and on. There seemed to be no end in sight, her fertile mind coming up with question after question.

Emmie only stopped to draw breath when he chose to answer a question. She distracted him to the point that he eventually placed what he was doing on hold. He’d found what he was looking for, at least to some extent. Unearthing user history, he found a score of places that had been hit, all online stores. Unlike Georgie, whoever had used this computer had a logon user name and password for each site. He was going to have to get Steve hooked up to the computer in order to ascertain them. He had a feeling that if he found the names, he’d find the person sending the threatening e-mails as well.

God, he hoped he wasn’t being taken for a ride—by two redheads.

“Lunch is ready, you two.” Standing in the doorway to her bedroom, Georgie repeated what she’d first called out from the kitchen, getting no response. It seemed that her daughter and her uninvited “guest” hadn’t heard her so rather than call again, she decided to just fetch them and be done with it.

She hadn’t expected to find them kneeling on the floor on opposite sides of her bed. Especially not Sheffield.

Georgie looked from her daughter to the man who had summarily invaded her life and turned everything within it upside down. She decided that she’d get a better answer from Emmie than from Sheffield.

“Just what in the name of all that’s sacred are you doing, Emmie?” she asked, addressing the top of the little girl’s head—it was all that was peeking out from the far side of her bed.

Emmie popped up, grinning and looking very pleased with herself. “Playing cops and robbers, Mama. I’m the cop.”

Georgie turned to see the Secret Service agent on his knees, handcuffs securely on his wrists and an exceedingly sheepish look on his face. “I guess that must make you the robber.” She didn’t bother struggling to keep the amused expression from her face.

Silently declaring the game to be over, he rose to his feet. “Yeah.” He thrust his bound hands before him and at Georgie. “Get these off me.” The widening grin on her face did not fill him full of confidence.

“Not so fast,” Georgie drawled. “I think I like having you handcuffed.”

But Emmie was already making her way to her new playmate. “But he can’t eat if he’s handcuffed, Mama,” she said, the soul of logic. Taking the key she’d placed in her pocket, Emmie inserted it into the lock and turned it.

Handcuffs unlocked, Nick quickly removed them from his wrists, still not entirely sure how he’d allowed himself to get “captured” in the first place.

“I know,” Georgie agreed, “But he’d be a lot less trouble that way.”

Rubbing his wrists, Nick temporarily deposited the handcuffs into his pocket. “You know the penalty for falsely imprisoning a Secret Service Agent?” he asked Georgie.

Georgie turned her face up to his innocently. “Peace and quiet?” she ventured.

He had no idea why, but he had this overwhelming urge to kiss the grin off her lips. Had to be all this fresh air, he theorized. It was obviously doing strange things to his head.

“Get a move on,” Georgie ordered. He wasn’t sure if it was aimed at him, or her daughter, or both. “The food’s getting cold.” She led the way back. Nick did his best to keep his eyes fixed on the back of Georgie’s head rather than on the way her hips swayed in her tight jeans as she walked.

The rest of the day was spent less pleasantly, spinning his wheels, making very little headway, although Steve told him that he would do his best to hack into Georgie’s computer and get past the encrypted passwords. Nightfall came before he knew it.

Emmie seemed to finally run out of energy and had to be carried off to bed, sound asleep. Something stirred within him as he watched Georgie carry her daughter to her room. For some reason, the extremely domestic scene got to him and started him thinking. Wondering about the road not taken.

And then he shook off those thoughts. He wasn’t interested in that road, he reminded himself. He would have been bored within the first day.

But watching Georgie Grady/Colton now, he had to admit that there was something going on. It was the “what” that remained unidentified to him.

Careful, Nicky, he warned himself. You don’t want to be making any mistakes now.

He was human and he’d been conned before. But never by anyone nearly so attractive. Never by anyone he’d felt so attracted to.

In her defense, Nick supposed that Georgie could actually be telling him the truth. That she was a victim in all this. He had Steve checking all that out for him, checking her out, to make sure she was who she said she was and had, as she claimed, not even been near a computer these last few months.

In the meantime, he thought cryptically, he was doing his own checking out. Up close and exceedingly personal. So personal, he could feel his blood stirring.

It had been a long time since he’d thought of himself as anything other than a law enforcement agent of one type or other. But Georgeann Grady made him remember that beneath the oaths he had taken and the extreme devotion to duty he felt, there beat the heart of a man.

A man who’d been far too long without the touch of a woman.

The power was on, but she seemed to prefer having the fire in the fireplace lit. He watched now as the light from the fireplace caressed the outline of Georgie’s small, trim, jean-clad body. She moved about the rustic living room that could have easily come off the set of a Hollywood western. Except that it was genuine.