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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?”
