The Virgin Mistress

The Virgin Mistress
Linda Turner

Nothing will get in the way of my seduction.While investigating the attempted murder against beloved patriarch Joe Colton, hardened P.I. Austin McGrath made his own earth-shattering discovery–an undeniable attraction to elusive beauty Rebecca Powell. This world-weary widower thought he knew women. But little did he know that his impromptu partner was guarding a secret as closely as her virginity. What would it take to bring the Colton foster daughter out of her shell and into his arms? Well, dammit, he was about to find out! After all, secrets were his specialty!

JOE COLTON’S JOURNAL

Well my birthday celebration sure was explosive! It’s not every day that the guest of honor is the target for murder! Now I’ve hired the best there is—P.I. Austin McGrath—to investigate this atrocity. But I never imagined that Austin’s involvement would result in a budding romance with my fragile foster daughter, Rebecca. She’s had a real traumatic past and is afraid to let anyone get close. Especially a ladies’ man like Austin. But he’s not as cavalier as he appears. I see the pain in his eyes. He’s brooding over something—but what? Maybe between the two of them, these lost souls will find solace in each other’s arms. And though it won’t be easy, stranger things have happened. Speaking of strange, Meredith sure is acting more bizarre with each Pacific sunset. I’m beginning to worry that there’s something wrong with my wife—and that the future of the entire Colton dynasty could be in jeopardy….

About the Author

LINDA TURNER

was thrilled when she was asked to write the second book in THE COLTONS series. “I love these kinds of stories—the more complicated the better. And THE COLTONS series was of special interest because of Patsy and Meredith. I, too, have an identical twin sister, and in the not-too-distant past, we traded places, both at work and at school, and no one knew the difference until we identified ourselves. Of course, we never went so far as to trick boyfriends or husbands, and there wasn’t a good twin and a bad one, but we still had fun.” She says that Patsy was especially interesting to write because she’s so close to the edge—sort of like Cruella DeVille, only worse. Linda loved the scenes with both her and Meredith.

As for her hero and heroine, Austin and Rebecca, what’s not to love? They both had such tragic pasts. She really enjoyed helping them find happiness. She hopes you enjoy it, too.

The Virgin Mistress

Linda Turner

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Meet the Coltons—a California dynasty with a legacy of privilege and power.

Austin McGrath: The passionate detective. Beneath his footloose facade, this bachelor would put his life on the line any day to see justice served. But did he have the courage to turn his fantasy of a wife and family into a reality?

Rebecca Powell: The oldest living virgin. Though the Coltons had provided a safe haven for the then-fourteen-year-old runaway, this schoolteacher is still haunted by her nightmarish childhood. Do the patient P.I.’s caresses offer more than just comfort…? Perhaps the promise of a future together?

Meredith “Pasty” Colton: The scheming impostor. Her nerves worn to a frazzle by the police investigation into Joe’s attempted murder, the deranged sibling knows that after ten years it’s time to find the real “Meredith”….

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

One

Someone had tried to kill him.

A week after the fact, Joe Colton still couldn’t believe it. He’d been surrounded by friends and family, his champagne glass lifted in a toast in honor of his sixtieth birthday, when a bullet had ripped through the party, shattered his glass and grazed his cheek. Even now he could still feel the heat of it, the shock.

For days, he’d been trying to convince himself and the police that this was all just some terrible accident. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would bring a gun to his birthday party, but it must have discharged by accident and he’d just happened to be in the line of fire. It was the only logical explanation. No one had actually meant him any harm.

Thaddeus Law and the two other detectives handling the case, however, weren’t quite so sure of that. A friend didn’t bring a gun to a party—it wasn’t good etiquette. And when that same gun went off and just missed the guest of honor by a hairsbreadth, there could be no misunderstanding. This was no joke. Someone wanted him dead badly enough to try to kill him in front of three hundred witnesses.

The question was…who? Who hated him that much?

Joe wasn’t stupid enough to think he had no enemies. Like every successful man, he had, no doubt, stepped on a few toes over the years, but he’d never deliberately hurt anyone to get ahead. He wasn’t that kind of man. He was fair and hardworking and he’d never taken anything from anyone that didn’t belong to him. So who had taken that shot at him?

The police thought it was someone in his family.

Oh, they hadn’t come straight out and said as much, but their suspicions were pretty obvious. And he knew the statistics. People weren’t usually killed by strangers—it was someone they knew, and often loved and trusted, who did them in.

Maybe that was true in a large percentage of cases, but not in his, dammit! His family was important to him—everyone knew that! He’d left the Senate to devote more time to his children and the foster children he and Meredith had welcomed into their home. He worked closely with his brother and foster brother, not to mention the friends he’d made over the years and brought into Colton Enterprises, and he refused to believe any of them wanted him dead.

Which meant that it had to be a stranger, maybe a crazy, disgruntled constituent who read about the party in the gossip columns and decided to sneak in with the party-goers to kill him. Or a psychopath who felt like Joe deserved to die just because the price of gas was going up and he owned oil wells. There were a lot of nuts walking around free.

He’d told the police that, but no one seemed to be listening. After the shooting, the detectives had gone over the estate with a fine-tooth comb, taking statements from everyone present, but it was obvious from the beginning who the authorities suspected—his family. And it infuriated him. Idiots! They were pressuring people he loved—even Meredith, for God’s sake!—and he wasn’t going to stand around with his hands in his pockets while the real culprit got away with attempted murder. If the police couldn’t track the bastard down, then he knew someone who could.

The decision made, he reached for the phone on his desk, punched in a number, and sighed in relief when the son of his foster brother, Peter, came on the line. “Austin McGrath, private investigator,” his nephew said brusquely. “May I help you?”

“I certainly hope so,” Joe growled. “Someone tried to kill me Saturday night.”

Leaning back in the old leather chair he’d bought at a secondhand store when he’d first opened his own office, Austin sat up straighter with a frown. “I know,” he said, recognizing his foster uncle’s voice immediately. “Dad told me about it. I’ve been meaning to call you, but I got tied up in a case and had to make a quick trip to Vancouver. How’s the investigation going? Dad said half of California was there, so there must have been plenty of witnesses. Have the police made an arrest yet?”

Joe snorted at that. “They’re a bunch of bumbling idiots. It’s been a week since the shooting and they still don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Which is why I’m calling. I need you to come down and find out who tried to kill me.”

Austin wasn’t crazy about going to California. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Joe or sympathize with his situation—he’d just never had much to do with the Colton side of the family. With their money and political clout, they were almost like the Kennedys of the West Coast. They even lived on an estate like the Hyannis Port compound, for God’s sake!

Austin grimaced just at the thought of it. He had little interest in living that kind of high-profile existence and much preferred his quiet lifestyle in Portland. Unfortunately, he couldn’t, in good conscience, refuse to come to Joe’s aid because he didn’t care for all the flash and glitter that went hand in hand with the Coltons. Joe and his father were brothers, though they shared no blood, and they’d always been there for each other. For his father’s sake—and the fact that he couldn’t stand by and let some bastard get away with trying to murder anyone, let alone his uncle—he, too, had to be there for him.

“I need to wrap up a few things here and arrange for a friend to take over the office for me for a couple of weeks,” he replied. “If everything goes all right, I should be able to fly down late tomorrow. How does that sound?”

Relieved, Joe sighed, and it was that, more than anything, that told Austin just how rattled his uncle was. “Great,” Joe said. “You don’t know how much I appreciate this. You’ll stay at the house, of course. I’ll have Meredith prepare the guest room for you—”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Austin said honestly.

He was more than willing to do whatever he could for Joe, but he drew the line at staying at the estate. From what his father had told him, there was no such thing as a quiet evening at home with the Coltons and he didn’t know how Joe stood it. There were always several guests for dinner, not to mention business dinners several times a week and the socializing that never seemed to end. And while he knew he would have to endure some of that in order to conduct his investigation, Austin had no intention of suffering through any more of it than he had to. At the end of a long, hard day, he preferred the peace and quiet of his own company, not polite chitchat with a house full of strangers.