The Coltons: Nick, Clay & Jericho
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That taken care of, Nick took hold of Georgie’s elbow and led her out of the small, dark room. Emmie hurried to follow.
“Let’s just say,” he told Georgie evenly, “for now, that I’m not a hundred percent convinced that that’s you on the surveillance tape.”
“Of course, it’s not me. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.” She shrugged out of his hold. Wanting to remain aloof, curiosity got the better of her. “What makes you think it isn’t me?”
“You walk differently.” That was what had bothered him while he was initially watching the tape.
Georgie stared at him. She wasn’t aware of there being anything unique about her gait. “What?”
Nick elaborated. “The woman on the tape was in a hurry, but she still walked like she knew everyone was watching her. She minced and put a little wiggle in her step. You walk like you’ve got somewhere else to be and you cut through that distance like a ranch hand. There’s nothing feminine about the way you move.” Other than her body, he added silently. But that was neither here nor there and certainly not something he was about to admit to her.
She wasn’t sure if she was clear about what was going on here. “Are you insulting me or finally coming to my rescue?”
He didn’t view it as either and he didn’t care for the tone she was using. “I’m making an observation. You want my help or not?”
In a perfect world, Georgie thought, she would have lifted her chin, told him what he could do with his help. She could handle the situation by herself. But this wasn’t a perfect world and without doing a single thing to bring about this awful chain of events, she knew she was in way over her head. Like it or not, she had no recourse but to accept his offer.
Still, the words had a bitter taste in her mouth and burned her tongue as she said them. “I want it.”
Nick felt something suddenly clutch his leg. Startled, he looked down to see that the woman’s daughter had all but wrapped herself around him.
Emmie smiled up at him gleefully. “I knew you weren’t as bad as you looked.”
He kept forgetting that she was there, a pint-sized recorder with ears, taking in everything and absorbing it rather than letting it go over her head like the average four-year-old.
“You sure she’s only four?” he asked Georgie.
“I’m almost five,” Emmie announced proudly as her mother gently removed her from the Secret Service agent’s leg and then protectively kept her hand on her shoulder. “Mama said we had to come back because Uncle Clay wants to help celebrate my birthday.”
“Uncle Clay,” Nick repeated, raising his eyes from the child to look at Georgie. “Is that what you have her call your boyfriends?” he asked mildly, giving no indication that her answer, one way or the other, meant anything to him. “‘Uncle?’”
“No, that’s what I have her call my older brother.” Overwrought, and stressed near to the breaking point, not to mention that she hadn’t had any sleep because she’d spent the night verbally sparring with Sheffield, she glared at him. “Don’t you pay attention? I said I didn’t have a boyfriend.”
As he looked at her, Nick found it hard to believe she was single. She was far more than passably pretty. Then again Georgie Grady could also slice any man to bloody ribbons with that sharp tongue of hers and he was fairly certain, given half a chance, that she would run over anyone who got in her way.
“Got that tape for you,” Collins called out, coming up behind Nick. He held the tape aloft as if it was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Georgie shifted uncomfortably. Sheffield had said that he thought the woman in the tape was an impostor, disguised to make people think it was her. What if he was only putting her on? What if he was just saying that to make her put down her guard?
“What are you going to do with that?” she asked Sheffield. “Use it at my trial?”
He’d never believed in putting all his cards on the table until the game was over. This was far from over. “Maybe, maybe not. Right now, I’m going to have it expressed back to Prosperino in California and have my tech support see if he can clean up the picture and magnify the image.”
The image. She noted that he didn’t refer to the person in question as her. Georgie supposed that it was a start. “Okay.”
He was going to need a padded envelope and postage. “This place have a post office?” He tossed out the question to both Collins and Georgie.
“A post office, two banks, a city hall and a sheriff’s department. Some people even think we’re close to civilized,” Georgie answered with a trace of resentment at the way he’d dismissed Esperanza. It was all right for her to feel hemmed in by the town once in a while because she lived here and for the most part, she loved it. But he had no right to look down his nose at it. Or her.
About to comment on her quip, he decided to keep it to himself. He hadn’t actually meant what he’d said as an insult, just that Esperanza felt so damn rural to him. He was accustomed to places like Los Angeles and New York where you could find whatever it was you needed within a very small radius.
“Show me” was all he said.
“Fine, I will.” Still numb and shaken, Georgie turned on her heel to lead the way out of the bank.
“We will, Mama. I know where the post office is, too,” Emmie reminded her.
The one bright spot in her life, Georgie thought, taking Emmie’s hand in hers. “Sorry,” she apologized. “We will,” she said, correcting herself. Emmie’s smile was positively beatific.
“Can we do anything else for you?” Collins called out after Nick.
“I’ll let you know,” Nick tossed over his shoulder without slowing his pace.
“Who are you calling?” he asked Georgie some twenty-five minutes later.
They’d gone to the post office and he’d gotten the tape off, sending it by overnight express. Once it was on its way, he’d called his tech to alert him to its arrival. Georgie had been unusually quiet through it all and he’d begun to think that maybe the events of the last day had her in a state of shock.
But now, sitting in the passenger seat in the dark sedan he’d rented, Georgie pressed a single button on her cell phone before placing it against her ear. Instead of answering him, she held up her finger, indicating that he’d have to wait his turn. It didn’t exactly make him very happy.
“Hi, it’s me,” she said as someone on the other end apparently picked up. Nick listened, trying to put things together from only half a conversation. “Last night. Look, can you come on up to the house? Something’s happened. No, not to Emmie, she’s fine.” He saw her turn and look over her shoulder at the little girl in the car seat as if to reassure herself. “No, I’m not hurt. Why do you always have to think the worst? Okay, okay, maybe I was a trifle melodramatic, but I really do need to see you.” She paused to listen to the person on the other end, then said, “Good.’ Bye.” She closed her phone again and slipped it into her front pocket.
“Who were you talking to?” Nick asked again.
Had she called for reinforcements? Was he making a mistake after all, giving her the benefit of the doubt about this? At the very least, he didn’t relish the fact that someone else would be nosing around at her house while he was there.
“My brother. One of my brothers,” Georgie amended.
These days, she tended to forget about Ryder. She didn’t like to dwell on her other brother because then she’d have to think about how Ryder was faring in prison and she didn’t like doing that. It made her worry about him despite the fact that he’d been found guilty by a jury of his peers and he had committed the offense that had landed him there. She couldn’t help it. He was still, after all, her brother and she could remember him in better days. Remember him with a great deal of affection. Ryder wasn’t bad, just misguided. Like her, he missed their mother. And, unlike her, he’d resented their older brother when Clay had taken over as the head of the family.
Nick spared her a look. “You’ve got more than one?”
He was going to make another call to Steve when he got the chance. He wanted to find out as much as he could about this woman.
“Two,” she told him. “Clay and Ryder. Both older.” And they both had the tendency to treat her like a child. At times, Clay still did, but then, he was the oldest and saw himself as more of a patriarch than a brother. “I was talking to Clay.”
“Where’s Ryder?”
She shrugged, deliberately looking out the window. “He’s not around right now.”
Nick picked up on the odd note in her voice. “Where is he?”
“Not here” was all she said.
It was bad enough that the people in town knew that her brother was in prison. She didn’t want Sheffield knowing it as well. He’d probably think of them as being white trash or something equally demeaning. For that matter, she didn’t want him to know anything about her family. Someone like Sheffield, with his black suit and his dark aviator sunglasses, would look down on the fact that her mother, a former rodeo star herself, had had an affair with a married man. And that he was a Colton.
In an act of self-defense, she leaned forward and turned up the radio a shade. He’d fiddled with the dials on the way over until he’d located an oldies station. She had nothing against old rock and roll songs, but when she was tense—and she was now and would remain so until everything was squared away again—nothing calmed her down like the familiar. In this case, that meant country and western songs.
She switched the dial over to one of several country and western stations broadcasted in the area. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sheffield’s shoulders stiffen. Georgie smiled to herself.
Deal with it, she ordered him silently.
Because the woman apparently didn’t seem to want to talk about her other brother, he let the subject drop. If he needed to know the whereabouts of this Ryder, he would. For now, he blocked out the tale of a brokenhearted cowboy, singing his tale of woe to the only dependable force in his life, his horse.
Nick sighed. Damn but he hated country music.
A tall, dark-haired, rangy-looking man sat on the front steps of the ranch house. The moment they pulled up in the yard, the man stood up, dusting off his jeans. Nick judged him to be in his mid-twenties. The set-in tan testified to his earning a living by working outdoors.
There was something self-assured about the cowboy. This was a man who led, not followed. Nick was on his guard instantly.
“Uncle Clay,” Emmie cried, squirming out of the car seat and leaping from the car. She sailed gleefully into the man’s arms as the latter squatted down, arms spread, just as she reached him.
“Man but I’ve missed you. You must’ve grown a foot since I last saw you. How’s my favorite girl?” he asked, rising and swinging her around.
“I’m fine,” Emmie declared. “But Mama’s got troubles,” she added solemnly.
Holding his niece to him, Clay turned to look at the stranger with his sister as they both got out of Nick’s sedan.
The man wasn’t her type, Clay judged. Georgie didn’t like men in suits and sunglasses. Too soft. As for him, he didn’t trust a man whose eyes he couldn’t see when he was talking to him.
“Is that the trouble right there?” he asked Emmie, nodded his head toward the stranger.
Emmie twisted around to see who her uncle was referring to. She giggled and shook her head. It was obvious to Georgie, who came to reclaim her, that her daughter had changed her mind about the man. “No, that’s Nick.”
Clay looked at the stranger grimly, his deep espresso-colored eyes growing hard. “What’s a Nick?” he asked.
Chapter 8
For the space of one moment, Georgie struggled with the very strong desire to just fling herself into Clay’s arms and tell him what had happened, starting with Sheffield tackling her in the front yard. Clay would take care of everything for her, the way he used to. The way he had when their mother died.
But she wasn’t that little girl anymore. Even back then, she’d had a tendency to resist Clay’s protective ways because to be taken care of carried a price tag. It meant surrendering her independence, and independence meant everything in the world to her. Hers had been hard won and it was a trophy she would fight to retain to her dying breath.
So rather than throw herself into her brother’s arms, she stood where she was, holding herself in check as she smiled and greeted him warmly.
“Hi, Clay.”
“Hi, yourself.” Clay nodded at her. His sister had never been the easiest woman to deal with. She only accepted help under loud protest. That was why he’d been surprised when she’d called, saying she needed to see him. This was more like her. “Nice to see you back, rodeo queen. You home for good now?”
Nick noted that Georgie seemed to bristle at the nickname. Or maybe it was the question and the unspoken implication behind it—that her brother didn’t want her out there, competing—that had her stiffening.
The laugh that passed her lips was short and rueful. “I was going to be.”
Clay’s dark eyes slanted toward the man with his sister before he asked, “But?”
Georgie blew out a breath. She was still struggling to get a grip, to stop feeling as if she’d been physically and emotionally violated. “There’ve been some nasty developments.”
Clay’s frown deepened. Again he looked at the man who’d gotten out of the driver’s side of a dark four-door sedan. His brother radar had gone up the second he saw that. “Like?” he asked.
She did her best to sound removed from what she was saying. The words came tumbling out with no preface, no preamble. “Somebody stole all my money, Clay. And broke into my place while I was gone. Whoever did was sending threatening e-mails to Joe Colton—on my computer.”
At the mention of the Senator’s name, Clay murmured an ambiguous sounding “Oh.”
There was a world of meaning hidden behind the single word, Nick thought. Something was going on here that he wasn’t getting—and he didn’t like it.
Never one to mince words, Clay figured he’d held his peace long enough. He nodded toward the stranger. “What’s he got to do with it?”
“I work for the Senator,” Nick told him before Georgie could say anything. “And I came to bring in the person sending those threatening e-mails.”
Reading between the lines wasn’t difficult. “It’s not Georgie, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Clay informed him. There wasn’t so much as an inch of room left for an argument. That settled, Clay shifted his attention back to his sister. “Who stole your money?” he inquired.
It was obvious that whoever it was, the man or woman was going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble once Clay tracked him or her down. Clay did not take kindly to anyone messing with his family. And since he’d washed his hands of Ryder when his younger brother had been sent to prison for sneaking illegal aliens over the border, that left only Georgie—and Emmie.
“I don’t know,” Georgie answered, doing her best not to let the distress show in her voice. She glanced at Nick as she spoke. “But they think it’s me. On both counts.”
“You?” he retorted incredulously. “You been traipsing around, following that damn rodeo for the last five months, living out of your trailer like some gypsy.” He looked over at the stranger to make sure he’d gotten all that. “Just when the hell were you supposed to have done all this?”
Georgie looked at Nick again. “You have the dates the e-mails were sent, right?”
The petite, incredibly feisty woman had succeeded in doing what no one else had in recent memory. She’d made him feel foolish even though he was just doing his job.
“On every one of the e-mails,” he replied without a shred of emotion.
“My sister doesn’t have the time for that kind of stupid nonsense,” Clay told him tersely. “I don’t think she even knows how to send an e-mail. For the last five months she was too busy trying to win trophies.”
“Prize money, Clay,” Georgie corrected, annoyed.
How many times did she have to tell him she didn’t care about the accolades, the glory part? There was a very practical reason why she’d done what she had. Because competing in rodeo events was all she knew. She’d been put on a horse before she could walk and both her grandfather and her mother had been rodeo legends in their time. Rodeoing was in her genes.
Besides, it was the fastest way she knew to make money. Hell, it was the only way she knew how to make money.
“I was trying to win prize money so that Emmie and I could stay put here and she could go to school like a regular little girl come the fall.” She glanced down fondly at her daughter.
“I’m not a regular little girl,” Emmie interjected with protest, wrinkling her nose with disdain. Fisting her hands, she dug them into her hips the way she’d seen her mother do countless times.
“I know that, sweetie,” Georgie told her, kissing the top of her daughter’s head, “but we don’t want the other kids to hear that. They’ll be jealous.”
Emmie nodded, understanding. Georgie bit her tongue to not laugh.
“You could have done that without risking breaking every bone in your body,” Clay told her. He’d been after her to quit the moment she’d told him she was going to compete. A lot of things could happen to a woman on the road with only a kid. “I would have been happy to give you the money.”
They’d been through all this before. More than once. “I don’t want to take your money, Clay.”
Clay threw up his hands in frustration. “A loan, then. Damn it all, Georgie, what’s my money good for if I can’t do what I want with it?” he demanded.
Georgie patted him on the shoulder, the way she used to when she’d tried to calm him down and keep his sun-tanned complexion from turning a bright red.
“I’m sure that you’ll find something else to do with it, big brother,” she answered. And then she eyed him squarely, her lighter tone changing. “I don’t want to be beholden to anyone, Clay, not even you. I’m my own person. If I take money from you, that changes everything.”
He didn’t see how. Damn it all, Georgie could still frustrate him the way no other woman could. “I’m not buying you, Georgie. I’m not even renting you. I just want to help.”
“You can help by coming to Emmie’s birthday party next week,” she told him brightly, winking at her daughter.
Finding an in, Emmie was quick to try to further her own agenda. “You can buy me a pony, Uncle Clay. I won’t give it back.”
Again he laughed, this time the sound was softer. “Nice to know one of the women in the family has some sense,” Clay told the little girl with affection. His eyes shifted toward Nick and the warmth abruptly evaporated. Clay looked the man up and down. “You some kind of government man?” he inquired.
“He’s a Secret Service agent,” Emmie was quick to inform him, enunciating the occupation carefully so as not to get it wrong.
Clay’s eyes swept over the other man again. He would have pegged him for a member of the FBI or CIA instead. “Oh. You’re a long way from home, Secret Service agent. Aren’t you supposed to be guarding the President or something?”
“During an election year, we’re assigned to the presidential candidates,” Nick explained patiently, even though it was against his nature to explain himself at all. But being a stranger and alone here, he began to think he needed all the support he could get. “And someone’s been sending threatening letters from your sister’s house to the Senator.” How many times was he going to have to repeat that story before he could finally leave? he wondered in frustration.
“You got somebody house-sitting?” he asked his sister. Georgie shook her head. “Then someone broke in.”
She rolled her eyes. Didn’t any man ever listen? “I already told you that.”
Clay made up his mind. “That does it. You’re getting your things and staying with me, both of you.” For his money, they didn’t even have to bother to pack. He could send one of hands to do the packing for her. “I’ve got the bigger place, anyway.”
“You’ve got the much bigger place,” Georgie acknowledged, “But that’s not the point.”
He might have known she was going to argue about this. Nothing came easy when it came to Georgie. “And what is the point, Georgie? Besides the one on top of your head, of course?”
She ignored the dig. Clay was just being frustrated because he knew he couldn’t win. “The point is my home is here and nobody is going to run me off it.”
He could admire bravery—when it came to someone else, not his sister, not his niece. “You’ve got Emmie to think of,” he pointed out. “What if whoever broke in decides to come back?”
“Then I’ll apprehend them,” Nick told him, wedging himself into the conversation.
Clay looked at him coldly, as if he’d forgotten about his existence. “And just how to do you intend to do that?”
“By staying here until I can get to the bottom of this,” Nick told Georgie’s brother. It was obvious that the answer was not to the other man’s liking.
Indignation blazed in Clay’s dark eyes. “You’re not staying here,” he informed Nick.
Okay, enough with the big protector, Georgie thought. She got in between the two men. “This is my place, Clay,” she reminded him. “I get to say who stays and who goes. And if I want Sheffield to stay here, then he stays here. My decision, not yours.”
Judging by the other man’s expression, Nick wouldn’t have been able to say who was more surprised by her statement, her brother or him. He was tempted to ask her just when he had become part of the home team instead of someone she wanted to get rid of, but he knew to leave well enough alone.
Because of the present complexity of the situation and the doubts that had arisen in his own mind as to her culpability, he had planned to remain here, at the apparent starting point of the e-mails, until this was all resolved—or until he managed to catch Georgie Grady in a glaring lie—he wasn’t completely convinced of her innocence. But one way or the other, he intended to get some answers.
Clay sighed. “You always were pig-headed.”
Georgie flashed a particularly wide smile for Clay’s benefit. “Nice to know that you can count on some things staying the same, right?”
Clay didn’t answer. He didn’t like the idea of some D.C. government spook watching over his sister. After all, she was nothing to the man. Besides, what if the other man started getting ideas about Georgie? Ideas that had nothing to do with e-mails and everything to do with the fact that his sister was a damn pretty woman.
Clay slipped his hands into his front pockets, rocking back on his boot heels. “I can hang around for a while if you want,” he offered.
“You’ve got a ranch to run,” she answered. “A successful ranch,” she added. They might have their differences and she resisted his taking charge of her life, but she was proud of her brother and what he had accomplished despite the odds against him. “And I’m a little old to be needing a babysitter.”
Clay didn’t bother to hide his scorn of Nick. He trusted the Secret Service agent about as far as he could throw him. Less. “I wasn’t thinking of you just now.”
Since Sheffield had said he was going to try to help her, Georgie felt the need to apologize for Clay’s behavior. “You’ve got to excuse my brother. He’s used to being in charge of everything, whether we wanted him to be or not.”
Clay took instant umbrage. “You don’t have to make excuses for me to a stranger.”
The last thing Nick wanted was to be in the middle of a family fight. “I assure you, all I’m interested in is finding out who sent those e-mails.”
“And in getting back Mama’s money,” Emmie reminded him. When he looked down at her, she continued, “Remember? You said that in the bank, that you were going to get back her money.”
Even Clay had to laugh at Emmie’s interjection. “Don’t say anything around half-pint you don’t want coming back to haunt you. She doesn’t forget a thing. And I mean nothing.”