by Jean Barrett
Quitting the wide entrance hall, she crossed the shadowy double parlor into a tall bay that overlooked the side of the property. The bay, too, was dim because of the lowered blinds at its windows. Leaning over the window seat, she raised the blinds to permit cheerful sunlight to stream into the room, released the catches on the sashes and lifted the windows. Better, much better. Fresh air drifted through the openings.
Wrought-iron grilles had been fitted over the long windows on the outside of the bay. Samantha was admiring their delicate tracery when the deep silence behind her was ruptured by a sudden, ominous buzzing. Something electrical? A problem? That was what occurred to her, until she turned around to investigate.
She saw it at once. How could she not see it when it was coiled there on the floor less than three feet away? Threatened by her intrusion, it must have slithered out from its hiding place behind the folds of the velvet portieres that framed the bay.
A diamondback rattler! A very large and very deadly diamondback!
Samantha was instantly seized by the same heart-stopping terror she had experienced as a child whenever she’d encountered snakes at the Walking W. A paralyzing terror that had earned her her grandfather’s contempt. But snakes were expected on a ranch, not here in the city. Along with that shock was the mystery of how it could have gotten inside a closed house.
All this raced through her mind, together with the realization that she was in a serious position. Cornered, in fact, because the grilles over the windows behind her prevented any escape that way. And if she attempted to edge around the thing, or even tried to climb up on the window seat…uh-uh, no way. Any action at all, even the slightest movement, and it would strike.
Sick though she was with a cold fear, Samantha obeyed the lesson of her childhood and managed to remain perfectly still. Her only option, it seemed. And all the while the diamondback measured her, its thick, ugly head weaving slowly back and forth, its upraised rattles vibrating a steady warning.
Damn, how long was she supposed to stand here like this? She should be doing something. What?
Before she could decide, she heard the sound of the front door she’d left ajar opening and closing, followed by the tread of feet on the floor of the hall. The Mulroneys.
A risk, but she had to caution them. “Careful!” she called out. “There’s a snake loose in here! A poisonous one!”
Well, that should effectively spoil the chance of any sale.
Her warning was met by a brief silence. Then a figure appeared in the archway between hall and parlor, treating her to another shock. This was not one of the Mulroneys. Roark Hawke stood there asking no questions, his hard gaze swiftly assessing the situation.
Slowly, and with care, he advanced into the room. “Just keep still,” he instructed her. “Not a muscle, okay?”
Did trembling count? Samantha wondered. Because she was certain that by now she was quivering all over as she watched him withdraw a revolver from a shoulder holster inside his suit coat. What was he doing carrying a gun? Never mind, just be grateful he had one.
When he was several yards away from the bay, he stopped and took aim. “Don’t worry,” he assured her with what she could swear was nonchalance. “I’m a good shot.”
She took his word for it and prayed. The diamondback had detected his presence. Head lifted from its tight coil, it issued a sibilant alarm as it whipped around. In the next second it had no head at all. It was blown away by the bark of the revolver in Roark’s steady hand.
Samantha permitted herself to shudder in earnest before going limp with relief. “If that was a demonstration of your skills as a bodyguard, I’m impressed.”
“I don’t like to destroy nature,” he said, nodding solemnly toward the snake whose heavy body was still twisting in spasms, “but in this case…”
“Exactly.” She watched him tuck the revolver back inside the holster. “Do you always come prepared like that?”
“I’m a PI, remember?”
Samantha doubted that private investigators carried guns with them everywhere they went. On the other hand, he was no ordinary PI. Yesterday he had been clad in denim. Today he wore a trim business suit whose coat emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, making him no less potent than yesterday’s cowboy in jeans. The contrast was rather startling, reminding her that this was a man who inhabited two worlds.
Roark glanced around, discovering the marble fireplace with its tools still in place at the side of the hearth. He went and got the poker and shovel, returning with them to scrape up the remains of the snake.
“Big sucker,” he said. “Maybe not lethal if it had managed to sink its fangs in you, but you’d have suffered some serious consequences.”
Her silence must have made him realize his observation was not a welcome one. He looked up from his task, searching her face. “I’ll get rid of this thing. You okay?”
“Dandy.”
She wasn’t. She could see that for herself the moment he left, disappearing into the hallway. There was a pier glass directly opposite the bay, and even across the width of the parlor she could tell that the tall, slender woman in jacketed dress and low heels, long chestnut hair coiled at the back of her head, was badly shaken, shoulders sagging, legs looking like they were in danger of no longer supporting her.
Samantha lowered herself into the window seat. Roark found her huddled there when he returned to the parlor.
“Dumped it in the shrubbery outside,” he reported, replacing the poker and shovel.
She didn’t invite him to join her on the seat, but that was where he ended up, his big, solid body squeezed so close beside her that she could feel his heat, smell the clean, masculine scent of his soap. Quite a change from the unshaven, grimy Roark Hawke of yesterday but every bit as unsettling, though she couldn’t argue that his nearness was also comforting.
“Feeling better?” he asked, turning to her.
There it was again, that Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, hypnotizing her with its slow action that shouldn’t have been in any way alluring but somehow was.
“Much,” she lied. “Thank you for playing knight to the rescue and slaying the—well, I guess it would be serpent in this case and not dragon.” She tilted her head to one side, favoring him with a grateful smile. “And now would you please tell me just what the hell you think you’re doing?”
“Care to clarify that?”
“Turning up here like this. It’s not by chance that you happened to walk through that front door.”
“Ah, that. It’s because of the watering hole I visited last night. Some interesting people hang out there, and sometimes they provide me with useful bits of information. Seems to be a favorite haunt of one of your competitors. It only took him a couple of drinks before he was bragging to anyone who would listen that you’d just lost a major sale, that he’d taken another important listing away from you and that your agency was on the ropes.”
Van Nugent! Bad news traveled fast in the business, particularly when vipers like Nugent got hold of it. Apparently, he’d learned before she did that she wouldn’t get the River Walk property.
“So you decided I’d be desperate enough by now to change my mind about my grandfather’s inheritance.”
“It did occur to me to look you up again.”
“And I suppose it was Gail again who told you where to find me.”
“Nice lady, your office manager. Very helpful. Remind me to send her flowers.”
“Did Gail also tell you to be sure to pack a gun when you came looking for me?”
“Now, see, that was my idea. I kind of had this uncomfortable feeling by then that, if you did go and change your mind, maybe you weren’t as safe in San Antonio as you figured. Looks like I was right, huh?”
“Are you suggesting the snake was—”
“Deliberate? Why not? You think that thing just happened to crawl in here? I bet if you looked through the house you’d find a window or door somewhere that’s been forced open.”
He turned his head, sweeping his gaze around the parlor. “So where are they?”
“Who?”
“The couple Gail told me you were scheduled to meet here.”
His shifts in topics were so abrupt that Samantha had trouble following them, particularly when she was feeling limp again. And vulnerable. Decidedly vulnerable. She glanced at her watch. “I guess they’re late.”
“You ever meet them?”
“No, they arranged the appointment by phone through Gail.”
“Wanna bet they never turn up? That they don’t even exist?”
She stared at him. “But that would mean—”
“Oh, yeah, a setup, because your office manager must have mentioned the house was unoccupied, and you go and walk into it with a diamondback rattler waiting for you in the parlor.”
“If that’s true,” she said, feeling weaker by the moment, “then it’s also possible…” She couldn’t name it, didn’t want to believe that anything so fantastic could be a reality.
Roark, however, had no hesitation about putting it into words. “That Joe Walker wasn’t imagining someone was after him. The same someone who wants to prevent you from qualifying for your grandfather’s estate.”
“But I told the lawyer that I intend to sign away any claim to the estate.”
“Either this guy hasn’t learned that yet, or he’s trying to make sure you don’t change your mind. Because, even though he must have realized it was unlikely the rattler would have killed you if it had managed to sting you, there was a good chance it would land you in the hospital or, if not that, scare you into not joining the cattle drive.”
“Well, his threat was an effective one.” She was silent for a moment, absorbing his conjecture and not liking it one bit. “Oh, this is crazy. Who could possibly have a motive for wanting either my grandfather or me out of the way?”
“Someone who benefits, of course. Did Ebbersole explain the contents of your grandfather’s will?”
“In more detail than I wanted to know.”
“So, who inherits if you default?”
Samantha frowned, trying to remember all that the lawyer had shared with her. “There are some cash legacies to my grandfather’s employees at the ranch. None of the legacies are all that large. In any case, they’re guaranteed no matter who inherits.”
“No motive there, then. What about the big stuff?”
“It’s to be divided. The investments would go to St. James Monastery and the ranch itself and all its contents to the Western Museum in Purgatory. But you can’t think—”
“That either a community of Catholic brothers or a nonprofit public museum would go to any lengths to inherit Joe Walker’s estate?” He shook his head. “Not likely.”
“Then, if they’re above suspicion—and they must be—none of it makes sense.”
Roark didn’t respond. She eyed him as he sat there, slowly flexing the fingers of his right hand as he pondered the problem. Was the action an unconscious habit that permitted him to deliberate, or some form of exercise?
The hand captivated her. It was large and tanned from the sun, the fingers that repeatedly curled into a fist and opened again were long and with an obvious strength. Fingers that were capable of being both tough or stroking a woman’s sensitive flesh.
The sudden image of such a seduction was so arousing that it alarmed Samantha. Catching her breath, she inched away from him on the window seat. She didn’t think he was aware of her hasty retreat until his hand went still. He turned his head and looked at her, a smile of amusement hovering on his wide mouth.
It was a smile that, like everything else about him, unnerved her. She made an effort to remedy her unwanted state as she said quickly, “Shouldn’t I be calling the police?”
“Why?”
“If there was a break-in here, I ought to report it.”
“Then that much is probably a good idea.”
But not the rest. That’s what he was saying, that the police would be able to offer her no more answers than he could at the moment. Or, without either a suspect or evidence, their help, either. She knew he was right.
“So, are you?” he wanted to know.
Out of nowhere he had changed the subject again, because she realized he wasn’t talking about phoning the police. “What?”
“Desperate enough by now to go after that inheritance?”
Samantha looked away from him, her gaze traveling around the parlor. The Mulroneys didn’t exist. She wouldn’t be selling the house to them today. That hope had evaporated along with all her other prospects. All she had now was a debt to the bank, employees who were depending on her, and an agency she couldn’t bear to lose. She had no choice but to swallow her pride and accept the terms of her grandfather’s will.
“I suppose I am,” she said.
“Scared?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Then maybe it isn’t worth it.”
“That wasn’t your argument yesterday.”
“Yesterday I wasn’t convinced there was any danger out there.”
“I’ll have to risk it, because I need the money. Besides—” she was angry suddenly, an anger that fueled her decision, turning it into a fierce resolve “—I don’t like it that someone thinks he can frighten me into giving him what he wants.”
Roark nodded, seeming to understand her determination without needing any further explanation, even admiring her for it, if the gleam in his eyes was any indication. “Then it looks like you and I are going on a cattle drive, Samantha Howard.”
She stared at him, chagrined. She had momentarily forgotten that the terms of her grandfather’s will required her to accept the protection of Roark Hawke. There was no choice about it, and she didn’t like it. Why? Certainly not because he was a private investigator.
Then what? Because he’s a cowboy. But how can you mind that when there will be others like him on the drive?
Oh, but they would be essential, with impersonal identities. She could distance herself from them, at least emotionally. But this man was something else altogether. She wasn’t even sure she liked him. No, she probably didn’t, despite his provocative effect on her. And she wouldn’t be able to distance herself from him. He would be close and constant, forever at her side through the long days and nights they spent out there in the wilderness.
He had to know what she was thinking. She could see that in the way those compelling blue eyes of his devoured her in the intense silence that stretched between them as they sat there regarding each other.
Roark finally ended the silence in a low, husky tone. “You’ll have to go all the way with me, you know.”
She swallowed, her mouth dry. “I will what?”
He chuckled. “The cattle drive, Samantha. You have to stick with it all the way to the rail line or lose the inheritance. That’s the stipulation, remember?”
Damn him. He’d gone and put a deliberate spin on his words and was now enjoying the result.
“You and I together,” he said softly.
A cowboy. Maybe only by avocation, but in soul and spirit Roark Hawke was a cowboy with all the raw, sensual appeal of his breed, along with a wicked smile and a sinful body that did things to her insides. And she had promised herself long ago that, no matter how susceptible she was to this combination, she would never permit it to hurt her again.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Samantha said in a steady voice.
That’s what she said, facing him with a cool, calm detachment, but all the while she feared more than the perils of a cattle drive. Roark Hawke was another kind of jeopardy. How was she ever going to survive him?
HER CRY OF DISBELIEF was so piercing that Roark held the phone away from his ear.
“You can’t be serious!” She rushed on with barely a pause to recover from her shock. “Being a PI is who you are, who we all are, and to give that up…”
He sat there in his swivel chair, one hand curled around the phone he’d restored to his ea
r, the other flipping through the day’s mail on his office desk as he listened to her. No use in attempting to explain himself until she had exhausted all of her arguments.
Roark had already shared his announcement with the other members of his family. He’d saved the most difficult call for the last, knowing that his youngest sister, Christy, was likely to treat it as a bombshell. He wasn’t wrong.
She finally came up for air after one last, mournful “Rory, why are you doing this?”
Christy wouldn’t understand his dilemma. She had always loved being a private investigator, had never wanted to be anything else, and couldn’t imagine any member of the family thinking about another career. But he tried.
“Honey, I’m a frustrated rancher who needs to devote time and energy to his spread. I can’t do that if I’ve got clients to serve here in the city.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?”
It wasn’t. There was another issue in the picture, and the guilt related to it that had been eating at him for weeks now. Making him wonder how he could bear to go being a PI after his fatal mistake, whether he even deserved to be. But he couldn’t bring himself to talk about that.
“Very,” he lied. “Look, it’s not final yet.”
“It sounds like it is. What do Ma and Pop say? Have you told Devlin and Mitch yet? Talked to Eden about it?”
Christy was referring to their parents, who managed the home office of Hawke Detective Agency in Chicago, and their brothers and sister who, like them, operated branches of the agency in various parts of the country.
“They’ll support me in whatever I decide.”
Christy issued a sigh of reluctant resignation. “All right. I don’t like it, but you have my support, too.” He had known she would come around in the end. They were that kind of loyal, loving family. “What about the San Antonio office? Will you just shut it down?”