Colton Undercover. Marie FerrarellaЧитать онлайн книгу.
Leonor questioned.
“That’s easy,” he assured her. “By the way your pupils dilated just now when I mentioned my art collection. I definitely got your attention. Let me guess—you’re a collector yourself.”
Eventually, she wanted to be. But that wasn’t in the cards just yet. For now, she was content to soak up knowledge and experience. “Not exactly.”
Leonor paused just then as the server approached their table with a basket of bread sticks.
“Would you like to order something to drink?” the woman asked.
The idea of having something stronger than the water that was already on the table was highly appealing to Josh, but he knew he couldn’t afford to be anything but sharp right now. He looked at Leonor, waiting for her to go first.
“Just a lemonade,” she told the server.
“Make that two,” Josh said.
“You can’t like lemonade,” Leonor protested, thinking the man was just trying to be polite.
“I can’t?” Josh asked. He looked at her, puzzled. “Why not?”
“Seriously?” she questioned.
“Why? Does liking lemonade make me less of...an art collector?” Josh finally asked, although that wasn’t the first thought that came to his mind.
His question made her laugh and he silently congratulated himself on managing to peel away the first protective layer that Leonor Colton had wrapped around herself.
“Being an art collector has nothing to do with it,” she told him. “No, it’s just that I don’t know of any men who would admit to actually liking lemonade, say, over an alcoholic beverage.”
His smile was easy, engaging and almost incredibly guileless, Leonor thought as he told her, “Then consider me your first.”
Your first.
The way he said the words had her catching her breath just for a second. She had no idea why she was putting a far more sensual interpretation on them, but just for a moment, she had.
And then she forced herself to shake it off.
Collecting herself, Leonor searched for something to say. “What are you doing in Shadow Creek, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t mind,” he assured her. He broke off a piece of his bread stick before saying, “I’m just taking in the sights.”
She gave him a dubious look. He was trying to pull her leg.
“Shadow Creek doesn’t have any ‘sights.’” She supposed that to some, that wasn’t entirely true. But there was nothing here that would make it to the pages of a “must see” section of any reputable guidebook. “At least not the kind that would be of any interest to you.”
Josh deliberately looked at her for a long moment. Long enough to make her shift in her seat ever so slightly.
And then he said, “You’d be surprised.”
Josh shifted the focus of the conversation away from him and back to her. “You know, you still haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.
She wasn’t convinced that this was just an accidental meeting and that he didn’t know who she was. Looking up from her menu, her eyes met his.
“No, I haven’t.”
He proceeded carefully. “Oh, a lady of mystery, is that it?”
Amusement highlighted his rather rugged features. Leonor couldn’t make up her mind if the sexy stranger was having fun at her expense, or if he was just talking. Obviously he hadn’t heard the hostess call her “Ms. Colton.”
“Why don’t I call you ‘Kate’?” he suggested gamely. “I’ve always been partial to ‘Kate.’ It’s my mother’s name,” Josh explained.
“It’s Colton,” Leonor said out of the blue. She watched his expression carefully.
It didn’t change. There was no enlightenment evident on his face.
“First or last?” Josh asked casually.
This being Texas and an era given to unique names, she supposed it might have been reasonable for him to assume that Colton could be a first name—but she still doubted it.
“Last,” she told him. Pausing, she took a breath, mentally bracing herself for the reaction she expected to come, then said, “Leonor Colton.”
There was no telltale smirk, no sign of recognition, no change in his expression whatsoever. Had the man been living in a cave? Her mother had made news in every sort of medium with her escape.
“Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” she wanted to know.
There was just the slightest regretful rise and fall of his shoulders as Josh apologized for his ignorance. “I’m sorry, should it?”
She didn’t believe him. This had to be an act. “You’ve never heard of Livia Colton?” Leonor almost demanded.
Looking just a touch embarrassed, Josh shrugged again. “There was something on the news the other day, but I have to confess that unless it concerns something of international importance—or the art world—I really don’t pay much attention to it.”
“The art world,” Leonor repeated, still highly skeptical that the man she was sharing a table with was on the level. Granted, there were people who lived and breathed nothing but art, but they were men with forgettable faces, not men who infiltrated women’s dreams, the way this one surely had to have been ever since he had first started attending school.
“I’m afraid so,” Josh told her. “I told you, I’m a collector and an art buff of sorts.” His smile widened in direct proportion to his warming up to his subject. “I find that there are amazing displays of discipline evident in the art world. Discipline that can’t be found in society these days.” And then he flushed, as if Leonor had caught him in an awkward moment. “I’m sorry. I probably sound like a nerd to you.”
“No.” She quickly discounted his negative assessment of himself. “But you do sound too good to be true,” she admitted in a moment of fleeting weakness.
His smile was almost dazzling as he said, “Why, Ms. Colton, are you flirting with me?”
“No!”
Realizing that she had almost shouted out the word, Leonor lowered her voice as she covertly glanced around to see if anyone was looking in their direction, watching them. She’d been trying really hard to maintain a low profile.
No one seemed to be looking in their direction. It was as if they recognized her, but were giving her space anyway. Maybe there was a truce in place between the town and her mother’s offspring.
She certainly hoped so.
“No,” Leonor repeated in a much lower tone. “I’m not. I’m just saying that I never met anyone who proclaimed themselves to be an art lover—outside of the program at the college I attended,” she qualified.
Josh laughed softly, amused at the way she had worded her statement. “It’s been a long while since I was in college.”
“Where did you attend?” Leonor asked. She reasoned that if she asked him enough questions—and this man was lying to her—she could gather together enough ammunition to trip him up.
His photographic memory pulled up the bio that had been worked up for him.
“College of William & Mary,” he told her in the same matter-of-fact tone he might have used if he were telling her that he had attended