“Maybe your grandfather was smarter than we gave him credit for when he bought my services. A cattle drive in wild country…it’s got certain risks to it. Accidents can happen, maybe even fatal ones.”

Samantha faced him squarely. “Not to me, because I’ll be safe here in San Antonio. And I don’t appreciate your suggesting I might be in danger just so you can—”

“Collect a fee? I don’t operate that way, Ms. Howard.” Roark’s eyes narrowed in a flash of cold anger, and then, just as swiftly, they softened. “But it’s too bad you and I won’t be on that drive together.”

There it was again, she noticed. Something smoldering on his strong face and in the brazen gaze that made her breath quicken. She made an effort to steady her breathing, to respond carelessly. “Is it?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice low and disturbingly husky, almost seductive. “All those long nights under the stars. People share things in situations like that. Things that can get downright interesting.”

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

We wind up a great summer with a bang this month! Linda O. Johnston continues the hugely popular COLORADO CONFIDENTIAL series with Special Agent Nanny. Don’t forget to look for the Harlequin special-release anthology next month featuring USA TODAY bestselling author Jasmine Cresswell, our very own Amanda Stevens and Harlequin Historicals author Debra Lee Brown. And not to worry, the series continues with two more Harlequin Intrigue titles in November and December.

Joyce Sullivan concludes her companion series THE COLLINGWOOD HEIRS with Operation Bassinet. Find out how this family solves a fiendish plot and finds happiness in one fell swoop. Rounding out the month are two exciting stories. Rising star Delores Fossen takes a unique perspective on the classic secret-baby plot in Confiscated Conception, and a very sexy Cowboy PI is determined to get to the bottom of one woman’s mystery in an all-Western story by Jean Barrett.

Finally, in case you haven’t heard, next month Harlequin Intrigue is increasing its publishing schedule to include two more fantastic romantic suspense books. That’s six titles per month! More variety, more of your favorite authors and of course, more excitement.

It’s a thrilling time for us, and we want to thank all of our loyal readers for remaining true to Harlequin Intrigue. And if you are just learning about our brand of breathtaking romantic suspense, fasten your seat belts for an edge-of-your-seat reading experience. Welcome aboard!

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue

Cowboy PI
Jean Barrett

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

If setting has anything to do with it, Jean Barrett claims she has no reason not to be inspired. She and her husband live on Wisconsin’s scenic Door Peninsula in an antique-filled country cottage overlooking Lake Michigan. A teacher for many years, she left the classroom to write full-time. She is the author of a number of romance novels.

Write to Jean at P.O. Box 623, Sister Bay, WI 54234. SASE appreciated.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Samantha Howard—Spending days in the wilderness with a man who represents everything she hates—especially when he’s a virile cowboy—challenges her on every level.

Roark Hawke—The PI and part-time rancher is experienced in dealing with danger, but he never counted on falling for the alluring woman he has sworn to protect.

Joe Walker—He wants his granddaughter to inherit his ranch, but she has to be protected while she earns her spurs.

Wendell Oakes—Roark’s trainee is eager to make a success of his assignment.

Shep Thomas—Is it more than just his responsibility for the cattle drive that worries the trail boss?

Cappy Davis—The tough old man has been a fixture on the Walking W for more years than anyone remembers.

Ramona Chacon—Is the housekeeper hiding a secret?

Alex McKenzie—The young drover has a crush on Samantha.

Dick Brewster—The good-natured horse wrangler is in charge of the drive’s remuda.

Ernie Chacon—He has a bad reputation and a volatile temper.

To my brother-in-law, Ray,

my sister-in-law, Judy, and their family.

May the fish always bite for all of you.

Acknowledgment

My sincere appreciation

goes to Nancy and Lonnie Stellpflug for demonstrating how a front-end loader works and for so patiently answering all my questions about horses.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

Purgatory, Texas

Joe Walker was dying.

Roark had been warned the old man wouldn’t make it, but he hadn’t believed it. The rancher was a local legend, so tough and cantankerous that, in spite of his advanced age, it seemed he would go on forever. Now, standing over the hospital bed, Roark couldn’t deny the reality. Joe was dying.

As little as three, maybe four, years ago, he would have survived the broken hip he’d suffered. There would not have been any tubes connected to him supplying him with oxygen and liquid nourishment. No complications resulting from his accident. But not now. Now he was simply too old to withstand the pneumonia raging through his system.

When had that strong body become frail? Roark wondered, gazing with compassion at the shrunken figure on the bed, its face as seamed and desiccated as a Texas landscape.

The elderly rancher’s eyes were closed. Roark thought he was sleeping. But Joe must have been awake, and sensed his presence. The withered lids lifted, revealing a gaze that was steady and lucid.

“Took your time getting here,” he croaked. “And I got precious little of that to waste.” The effort caused him to wheeze painfully.

“I shouldn’t be here at all. Look, why don’t I come back when you’re feeling better?”

Joe Walker wasn’t a man of humor, never had been. But Roark’s suggestion must have amused him. He recovered enough wind to cackle softly. “There is no better, cowboy. This is as good as it gets. Sit,” he commanded.

No, Roark thought, time was something Joe didn’t have, and the rancher knew that better than his doctor. Roark drew up a chair beside the elevated bed and folded his rangy length in it.

There was one thing that was still vital about the dour old man: a pair of pewter-gray eyes that regarded Roark shrewdly. “That spread of yours over on the other side of the McKenzie place,” he rasped. “Not worth a cowpat. Not enough range for your beeves.”

Roark’s own small ranch suited him just fine, but he offered no objection. He simply waited, well aware that Joe’s opinion of his operation wasn’t why he had summoned him to his bedside.

“But you’re sticking to it, and you know your stuff,” Joe said. “Not bad for a weekend cowboy. Hear you also know what you’re doing with that PI agency of yours down in San Antonio. That combination makes you the man I need.”

The rancher paused, his inflamed lungs struggling for the oxygen that would permit him to continue.

“My lawyer explain the setup to you?” he whispered.

“Yes.” Roark had had his share of strange cases, but nothing as eccentric as this one. He probably wouldn’t have considered the proposal at all if he hadn’t grown up on John Wayne movies, and the chance to actually experience… Well, the offer was damn tempting.

“Then you know what I want. I won’t send her up there without protection. Made that a requirement in the will.”

The “her” was his granddaughter, Roark thought. Samantha Howard. He had never met the woman, but he was angry with her. Why wasn’t she here at Joe’s bedside?

The old man, still wheezing through the pain that must be stabbing his lungs with every breath, understood Roark’s tight-jawed, unspoken judgment. “No use for each other, Samantha and me,” he said. “Never had.” He paused, plucking at the sheet tucked around him. “But she’s the only family I got. And I don’t aim for the Walking W to leave the family, not if it can be helped. Want her to inherit everything. But if she stands any chance at all of running the ranch, she’s got to toughen up. Way I see it, and I thought about this carefully, I got no choice but to send her on this trek. It’s the best way to harden her.”

He stopped to regain enough strength to go on. There was a long silence interrupted by his fitful breathing. “Every man has his secrets,” he muttered.

Was he wandering? Roark wondered. Had that sharp old brain been dulled by illness and fatigue?

“Figure,” Joe said, “there’s maybe someone out there with a secret I don’t like. Maybe up to mischief. Maybe not. Even so, there’s always risks on a haul of this kind. Enough, cowboy, that you got to watch my granddaughter’s back while she’s earning her spurs.”

Understanding him now, Roark leaned earnestly toward the bed. “Joe, she doesn’t need a bodyguard. She’s not in danger. The fall you took from your horse was an accident. The sheriff’s investigation—”

“Didn’t mean squat!”

The old man’s sudden, obstinate anger resulted in a hacking cough that alarmed Roark. He started to get to his feet to call a nurse, but Joe clutched at him, pulling him back.

“Stay,” he gasped, managing to quiet himself after a moment.

“You sure?”

“Not sure of anything,” he said between shallow breaths, “except this damn ache in my chest that never goes away. But before I stop fighting it, you got to tell me you’ll look out for her. Could be there’s nothing to worry about. Probably isn’t, but I won’t send her to Colorado without easing my mind on the subject. Promise me, cowboy….”

WHAT THE HELL had just happened? Roark asked himself as he came away from the hospital ten minutes later. But he knew exactly what had happened. He had gone and pledged his services to Joe Walker. Or, more precisely, to Joe’s granddaughter. He just didn’t know why he had been fool enough to guarantee his protection of the woman.

But that wasn’t true either, Roark thought as he paused in the parking lot, hand resting on the door of his pickup truck. Though he hated to admit it, he realized all too clearly why he had accepted the assignment. It was simple. He had been unable to refuse the urgent appeal of a dying man.

He would do it, Roark told himself as he climbed behind the wheel of the truck, but he didn’t like it. He’d decided by now that this condition Joe had insisted his granddaughter fulfill in order to inherit his estate was extreme, if not downright bizarre. That was one thing. And for another, he was dealing with an issue of his own. A personal conflict that had been tearing him up inside for weeks now. How was he supposed to come to grips with that while playing bodyguard in the wilderness for a woman he already resented?

No, he thought, speeding away from the hospital, he wasn’t looking forward to Samantha Howard.

Chapter One

San Antonio, Texas

What was the expression? Oh, yes, now she remembered. In the toilet.

Blunt but accurate, Samantha thought. Because that’s exactly where the real estate agency she had spent the past year and a half struggling to save had been headed. Battered by a slow market and tough competition from the national chains, the agency had been slowly sinking in spite of her every effort.

But not now. Now things were looking up. This afternoon she would be meeting with the buyer to sign the papers on a mansion in the King William District, an estate they’d carried for over six months without being able to move. The sale would earn her a sizable commission, money the agency badly needed.

Even better was the property she was examining this morning. Clipboard in hand to jot down particulars, she toured the facility to determine its value. A Tex-Mex restaurant had recently vacated the premises. Rather than leasing it to another occupant, the Houston-based landlord had decided to sell the building.

Samantha resisted the urge to celebrate. She didn’t have the property on her books yet, but the owner had practically guaranteed her the listing. He had a team of painters currently redoing the main dining room, giving it a fresh look that would appeal to the eye of a prospective buyer.

That was good, but not nearly as important as the location, which was clearly evident when she stepped through one of the open doors onto the balcony. The structure overlooked the city’s famed River Walk. This was prime real estate.

Samantha was enjoying the reason for that valuable advantage, gazing at a gondola gliding along the olive waters of the winding San Antonio River, when the serenity of the scene was destroyed by a deep male voice demanding loudly “Where is she?”

Twisting around from the railing at which she stood, she searched in the direction of the disturbance. The speaker, his back turned, had been addressing one of the painters on a scaffold in the dining room. His brusque inquiry was answered by a startled look and then a paintbrush pointed with hesitant slowness in the direction of the outdoor balcony.

With a muttered thanks, the tall visitor swung around and headed across the expanse of the dining room. She watched him moving purposefully toward her with a long-legged, confident gait. One glimpse of his lean, narrow-hipped figure was enough to stiffen Samantha’s spine.

Cowboys were far from rare in San Antonio, and occasionally they were the genuine article, sometimes even as sexy as legend promised. This one definitely qualified in that department, at least in appearance.

He had a mane of tousled black hair that had been crammed under a hastily removed Stetson, a dark stubble on his square jaw, stains on his faded jeans and denim shirt, and a coating of dust on a pair of well-worn boots. They were the collective result of a man who had been out wrestling steers, or at least herding them. And Samantha neither liked nor trusted any aspect of that image, and wouldn’t have liked it even if this cowboy had been one of the harmless urban variety.

She stood her ground as he strode out onto the balcony, a pair of disarming blue eyes colliding with hers. “Samantha Howard?”

The timbre of his voice was sensual, in keeping with all the rest of the cowboy package. But she didn’t care for his abrupt manner, though she tried to be pleasant. She couldn’t afford to offend someone who might turn out to be a client. “Yes, that’s right. What can I—”

She got no further. He stopped her by leaning over and slapping a small rectangle of cream-colored pasteboard onto the little wrought-iron table at her side. Samantha glanced down at his form of introduction: a business card with an emblem of a swooping golden hawk and the words Hawke Detective Agency. He was not a client.

When she looked up, the glacial blue eyes were still fastened on her. She was aware all over again that he was unshaven, sweaty and incredibly virile. Samantha had once been susceptible to that kind of masculine allure, but no more. These days she made it a habit to stay away from cowboys. Far away from them. And this one was standing much too close to her, so close that she could swear she felt the heat of his hard body.

Only, he wasn’t a cowboy, she reminded herself. Not entirely, anyway, though she’d been told he had a ranch near the Walking W. Roark Hawke. She should have guessed his identity the minute he’d asked for her.

How he’d gotten into the restaurant was no mystery. With all the doors left wide-open to vent the paint fumes, anyone could walk into the place. But his knowledge of her presence here was another matter. “How did you find me?”

A pair of broad shoulders lifted in a little shrug. “I’m a private investigator, which means it’s my business to find people. In this case, I didn’t have to search very hard. Your office manager told me you’d be here.”

Samantha reminded herself to speak to Gail about her habit of being entirely too receptive to persuasive callers. Particularly those who knew how to use a husky Texas drawl to their advantage.

“Why should you want to find me, Mr. Hawke? Didn’t my grandfather’s lawyer tell you that—”

“Oh, he told me all right. Caught me out at my ranch working on a stubborn windmill.”

Which meant his appearance was neither the result of wrestling steers nor herding them. “So, without stopping to clean up, you jump into your pickup—I’m assuming you do drive a pickup—”

“Don’t know of a rancher in Texas who doesn’t.”

“You jump into your pickup and tear down here to San Antonio to…what? What could be so urgent? Unless, of course, the lawyer didn’t make my decision clear to you.”

“Ebbersole is too thorough for that.”

There was another heavy table just behind him. He leaned his weight against it, long legs crossed at the ankle, and proceeded to measure her with those bold blue eyes. His scrutiny was both direct and speculative. Samantha found herself clutching the clipboard defensively against her breasts.

“Then why are you here?”

He was in no hurry to answer her. She watched him slowly, absently rub the brim of the Stetson against his muscular thigh. “See, I figured you and I would eventually run into each other at the hospital.”

While she was visiting her grandfather. That’s what he meant. Only, Samantha had never visited her grandfather.

“When that didn’t happen,” Roark said, “I thought for sure I’d meet you at the funeral.”

His tone was casual, nonjudgmental, but she could feel his anger. Roark Hawke was angry with her because she had failed to visit her dying grandfather, hadn’t even bothered to attend his funeral. He had probably liked and admired Joe Walker, thought him a wonderful old character and his granddaughter heartless for her neglect of him. He didn’t know the truth, and she had no intention of explaining it to him. Her anguish was none of his business.

“Now,” Roark said, “it looks like I won’t be getting to know you in Colorado, either.”

Samantha went rigid, resenting him for his anger with her. He had no right to it. “Is that why you chased down here from Purgatory? Just for the opportunity to meet me?”

“Guess so. On the other hand—” he paused to toss the Stetson into a chair “—maybe I just wanted to try to understand why a smart businesswoman would go and throw away a valuable inheritance. Kind of puzzles me.”

“And you hoped I would enlighten you. Or maybe you hoped to change my mind.”

“Can I?”

“Not a chance. I don’t want any part of my grandfather’s money. I know what that sounds like, but I have my reasons.” And Roark Hawke didn’t need to hear them, even though those thick black eyebrows of his had knit in a little frown of puzzlement.

“Looks like you and Joe shared something.”

“I don’t think so. We had nothing in common.”

There was a little smile now on his wide mouth. It was a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “How about obstinacy?”

“I like to think of it as being independent. I’ve worked very hard to be just that, and I intend to keep it that way.”

“Which you wouldn’t be if you were saddled with the responsibility of the Walking W, is that it?”

“Independence requires trust, Mr. Hawke. At least by my definition, it does. Would you say that’s what my grandfather was doing, trusting me, when his will specifies that in order to inherit, I have to go up to Colorado and play cowboy in the wilderness?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy. I like to play cowboy.”

“And this whole thing doesn’t strike you as…oh, I don’t know, a little peculiar? Slightly preposterous, maybe? A cattle drive? We’re talking about a cattle drive! Hasn’t anyone in Purgatory heard that the Chisholm Trail is now an interstate?”

“Think that rumor did reach us,” he said dryly. “But this is one of those cases where a drive is necessary. Joe bought the herd before his accident. Now the steers have to be moved out of there.”

“What happened to cattle trucks?”

“Too costly for a herd that size, even if a fleet of trucks could get in there, which they can’t. They tell me the only road into this ranch is under construction. It’s rugged country. Of course, once the drive reaches the rail line, stock cars will ship the steers to Purgatory.”

“Oh, of course. Just a matter of— How far did the lawyer say the rail line was? I’m afraid at that point in my conversation with him I wasn’t listening too carefully.”

“A hundred miles. More or less.”

“That little?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Through rough country?”

“Yeah.”

She stared at him. He stared back, a clear challenge in those potent blue eyes. What was she doing, standing here crossing swords with him? The man was brash, almost to the point of being rude. Not only had he made it his business—which it wasn’t—to track her here, he actually expected her to explain herself.

Samantha didn’t like this, defending her decision to a stranger to whom she owed absolutely nothing. She didn’t care for the gaze that remained locked with hers and was so intense it positively sizzled. She was unprepared for the impact of that gaze on her senses, and in the end her courage deserted her. She looked down at the tiles on the floor of the balcony, pretending to be very thoughtful.

“Why?” she asked.

“Come again?”

“Why add more cattle to the Walking W when there must be plenty of cows already on the ranch?” She didn’t care to know why. She’d simply needed to end the silence that had stretched between them so tautly. “You seem to have made it your business to learn all the particulars, so why would my grandfather have acquired another herd?”

“They’re special. Longhorns.”

She found it safe enough now to look up again, though she avoided meeting those compelling blue eyes. “Even I know that longhorns aren’t special. They’re back on the scene, including right here in Texas where they started.”

“They tell me this herd is special. Took years for the Colorado ranch to develop the strain. They’ve got more meat on them than the traditional longhorns, plus they’re able to withstand the extremes of both heat and cold, and they can graze on what other cattle won’t touch. Interested?”

“Fascinated. But not enough to chase longhorns through the Rocky Mountains so I can be tested to see if I’m fit enough to inherit Joe Walker’s kingdom. Because that, Mr. Hawke, is really what this cattle drive is all about.”

“And you want nothing to do with it.”

“I want nothing to do with it. And even if I did, I wouldn’t need the services of a bodyguard.”

“Guess Ebbersole didn’t explain that part of it.”

“Oh, he made it very clear. How my grandfather’s broken hip was the result of a fall from his horse, which he shouldn’t have been riding at all at his age, and certainly not on his own through a ravine that, if I remember correctly, is in an isolated corner of the ranch. And how he insisted it was no accident and that gunfire spooked his horse. Deliberate is the word I think he used to the sheriff.”

“And you don’t buy that.”

“I have no reason to, not when his faculties were probably no longer reliable. Not when the sheriff looked into it, found not a single spent bullet in the area, and was satisfied that if someone had been shooting out there, it was probably a hunter after rabbits.”

“And not after Joe, you mean?”

Samantha gestured impatiently with the clipboard. “My grandfather must have had his share of enemies. He was ornery enough. But I can’t imagine any of them would have tried to kill him. Or have any reason to be a threat to his granddaughter.”

“You’re probably right,” Roark said casually, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “More than likely, the whole thing was just the paranoia of an old man. On the other hand…”

She set the clipboard on the table and faced him squarely again. “What? You’re determined to say it, so go ahead.”

“Maybe that old man was smarter than we gave him credit for when he bought my services. A thing like a cattle drive in wild country…well, it’s got to have certain risks to it, doesn’t it? Accidents can happen, maybe even fatal ones.”

“Not to me, because I’ll be right here, safe in San Antonio. And I don’t appreciate your suggesting I might be in any danger just so you can—”

“Collect a fee? I don’t operate that way, Ms. Howard.” His eyes narrowed in a flash of cold anger, and then just as swiftly they softened. “But all else aside, it’s too bad you and I won’t be on that drive together.”

There it was again, she noticed. Something smoldering on his strong face and in the brazen gaze that made her breath quicken. To avoid it, she lowered her own eyes again. But just slightly this time, to prevent him from thinking she was in any way intimidated by him. Only, this was worse. She found her eyes fastened on his deeply tanned throat where his Adam’s apple bobbed slowly as he swallowed. The action was like a pulse, both mesmerizing and arousing.

She made an effort to steady her breathing, to respond carelessly. “Is it?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice slow and disturbingly husky, almost seductive. “I think it would have been some experience all right. All those long nights under the stars. People share things in situations like that. Things that can get downright interesting.”

Intimate things. That’s what he was saying. This had gone far enough. “Sounds like fun,” she said with a lightness she was far from feeling. “It’s a shame I’ll have to miss it.”

He was silent for a few seconds, taking her measure again. This time she managed to hold his gaze. “Then your decision is definite?”

“Very,” she said with emphasis.

“Guess I’m wasting my time here.”

To her relief, he leaned down and collected his Stetson from the chair. When he turned to go, she reminded him quickly, “You’re forgetting your business card.”

“Keep it,” he said, tugging the hat over his dark hair. “You never know.”

Watching his tall form stride away through the dining room, Samantha felt as though she had just escaped from something potentially dangerous to her. Roark Hawke had had that kind of effect on her, and she wasn’t happy about it.

Since the scene below the balcony was much safer than the sight of his departing figure, she turned to it. Looking down through the feathery foliage of an ancient cypress, she watched the tourists strolling along the cobbled, sun-dappled walkways on both sides of the stream. She saw them wander in and out of the souvenir shops, or focus their cameras on flower beds vibrant with color.

Only, it wasn’t a safer scene, because the image of Roark Hawke intruded on it. His lean face with its sensual mouth called up memories of another cowboy. Unwanted memories carrying a pain that was connected with her grandfather. She hadn’t thought about Hank Barrie in ages, and she didn’t want to think about him now. She had put all that suffering behind her long ago, and she meant to keep it in the past.

No, she wasn’t going there. And she was going to forget all about Roark Hawke and how he had made her pulse accelerate. But when Samantha turned resolutely away from the railing, her eye fell on the business card he’d left on the table.

You never know.

But she did know. She had absolutely no intention of ever calling the number on that card.

WHAT THE HELL had he been thinking? Roark asked himself as he moved swiftly along the River Walk, needing to vent his anger with some form of action, even if it was no more than stretching his legs among the tourists.

Racing down here from Purgatory like that! Storming into the restaurant and cornering Samantha Howard in order to—what?

Throw her over his shoulder and haul her shapely little backside all the way to Colorado and that cattle drive?

Okay, so he’d been tempted to do just that and instead had tried to convince her to change her mind. Which was bad enough. Why hadn’t he anticipated that maybe Joe Walker’s granddaughter wouldn’t want his protection? And why hadn’t he just dropped the whole thing when the lawyer had informed him of her refusal?

Because she was right. She didn’t need his services. Samantha was in no more danger from some unknown enemy than Joe had been. Who would want to harm her, particularly when she intended to surrender all claim to her grandfather’s estate?

Roark didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. Not why he had so explosively charged into the restaurant or, even worse than that, why he had actually come on to the woman.

Well, yeah, he guessed he did know the answer to the last question. She’d been dynamite waiting for a match in that sexy little power suit. The abbreviated skirt had afforded him a clear view of long legs in heels and a tantalizing glimpse of silken thighs.

There were also the attractions of a luscious mouth, a pair of beguiling brown eyes, and a mass of gleaming chestnut hair—not to mention the sparks they’d rubbed off each other throughout their whole brief encounter, all of which would have meant trouble for him on a cattle drive.

Passing under one of the bridges, Roark unconsciously slowed his steps. He paid no attention to the street player strumming his guitar for the benefit of the tourists. He was far too occupied with the heat that gripped him over the image of Samantha Howard’s lush body.

Damn, what was he doing? She had turned him down. He was off the hook. He should be congratulating himself that she was no longer his problem, that he could concentrate now on his own troubling issue.

Right. Let it go.

Determined to do exactly that, Roark swung around and headed toward the city garage where he had parked his truck.

Except he couldn’t let it go. There was still his promise to a dying old man who had trusted him. It nagged at him all the way back to his pickup.

Chapter Two

“Tell me they absolutely loved it,” Gail pleaded. “Tell me they’ve already made an offer on it.”

Samantha, cell phone pressed to her ear, hesitated before answering. What could she report to her anxious officer manager about the high-rise condo she had just finished showing? What could she say to Gail that wouldn’t sound too dismal?

“They said they would think about it.”

What the elderly couple had actually told her was that they wanted to shop around a bit more before deciding, which meant they weren’t interested. Samantha didn’t blame them. The price on the condo was too high, and it was in need of updating.

“Well, that’s encouraging,” Gail said brightly. “Isn’t that encouraging?”

“I’m hopeful,” Samantha lied, wondering how in a span of less than twenty-four hours everything that had been so promising could end up being so bleak.

Yet it had, starting with yesterday afternoon when her buyer for the mansion in the King William District had backed out of the sale. Something about a deal going sour on him and his software company being in trouble. Okay, so she had lost that one, but she still had the hot property on the River Walk. Only, she didn’t. The owner had called this morning to tell her he was listing with her chief rival, the Van Nugent Agency.

She hated this! All right, so she hadn’t gone into the business to become rich. She’d opened her agency primarily for the joy of putting people into their dream houses. But she had expected to make a living out of it and to provide decent incomes for her employees. Like Gail, a widow in her fifties supporting an ailing mother. And the young woman who worked for her part-time and needed her salary to pay for the college degree she was earning. And her other agent, a handicapped father raising two kids. The job market wasn’t good for any of them. They were depending on Samantha. As was the bank, who expected regular payments on that business loan she had secured from them last month.

Bad, but she wasn’t sunk yet. Another potential buyer for the mansion had surfaced this morning, which was why she was calling her office manager at the agency.

“Where are you?” Gail asked.

“In my car and ready to head over to King William. I’m just checking in to make sure this guy hasn’t canceled the appointment. Please tell me he hasn’t canceled.” The way things were going, it wouldn’t have surprised her.

“He hasn’t canceled.”

“Then there still is a real estate fairy. Tell me the name again. Is it Mulroony or Mulroney? I don’t want to risk any errors on this.”

“Mulroney.”

“Anything else you can tell me about him that would help?”

“Just what you already know, that his wife will be accompanying him and they prefer to meet you at the property. Like I said earlier, I didn’t meet him. He made the appointment by phone after seeing our ad.”

Samantha didn’t like going blind into a showing, but it couldn’t be helped. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

“If it helps, I’ll cross my toes as well.”

Samantha rang off and eased out into the flow of traffic, passing the Tower of the Americas in Hemisfair Plaza as she headed away from the downtown area. The soaring structure, along with the more famous Alamo, was the pride of San Antonio.

Samantha seldom failed to take pleasure in her city. Only, not today. Today her attention was focused on saving her agency.

There is a solution, you know. It’s right there in front of you, waiting to solve all your problems. All you have to do is—

No! Tempting though that inheritance from her grandfather was, really tempting now, she was going to make it on her own. She wasn’t going to play Joe Walker’s game. If she could nail this sale, the commission would be enough to keep her going until—what? Something else came along? Yes, why not.

There was something else holding her back from calling the lawyer and telling him she had changed her mind. Something that, in spite of her best efforts, had been stealing into her consciousness since yesterday morning on the River Walk. The memory of a tall, black-haired figure who, according to her grandfather’s instructions, must accompany her on the cattle drive. Roark Hawke, with fire in his cobalt-blue eyes and a bold mouth that didn’t bear thinking about.

So don’t think about him, because you need to concentrate on making the best impression possible on the Mulroneys. These people could be your salvation.

Leaving the main stream of traffic, she turned into the King William District, a twenty-five-block area of fabulous Victorian mansions built by prominent German merchants over a century ago. The house listed by her agency, the last one on a dead-end street, was a brick Queen Anne sheltered by live oaks.

There was no car waiting out front when Samantha arrived. But then she was a few minutes early for the appointment. Sliding out of her car, she went and stood by the iron gate that led to the front door. There was no one else around, the street quiet except for the thunder overhead of a jet from one of the nearby air force bases.

The house was unoccupied, its owner moved away. A vacant property never made the most desirable showing. However, it would seem less empty if she opened up the place and waited inside to welcome them. Removing the keys from her purse, she followed the brick walk to the deep porch and unlocked the front door, leaving it ajar by way of invitation to the Mulroneys.

The interior she entered was spacious and handsome, many of the period furnishings still in place. All the same, it had a hollow, somewhat gloomy aspect and, with the air-conditioning turned off, it felt stuffy. She could do something about that.

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 ear, 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?”

“I’m training a replacement.”

“But not family. It won’t be the same.”

No, Roark silently agreed after ending the call a moment later, it wouldn’t be the same. He regretted that. If it happened. He still had that tough decision to make, and he figured that a cattle drive, out there away from everything, would be a good place to deal with it. He promised himself that by the end of the drive he would have the answers, both for himself and his client. Providing, that is, he wasn’t too distracted on a personal level.

Samantha Howard. Oh, yeah, she definitely qualified as a distraction, a risky one for a man who needed to concentrate on what might be his last case.

Getting to his feet, Roark went to the window behind his desk. The agency’s fourth-floor location offered an appealing view of the city, but it wasn’t San Antonio that interested him as he stood there unconsciously exercising the fingers of his right hand. His mind was entirely occupied with the image of the woman he had escorted back to her office less than an hour ago. He couldn’t get her out of his head.

Not beautiful, he decided. Not in the conventional sense, anyway, but eye-catching all the same with her mane of burnished chestnut hair. The kind of hair a man longed to release from that tight coil so that it tumbled into his hands, his fingers sifting through its mass while those velvet-brown eyes stroked him with her gaze. Eyes that were vulnerable but at the same time wore a strength of character.

He tried to remember her face, and all he could picture was pride and a composure that he wanted to believe concealed hot emotions. The wild fires that challenged a man.

Careful, Hawke. You’re letting an imagination you can’t afford control your senses. You’re being hired to protect her, not seduce her.

Damn, he was getting himself all aroused. There were problems enough in this case without involving himself in that direction. He reminded himself that he needed to be concerned not with those long, silky legs and a pair of tantalizing breasts but with the welfare of the woman behind them. He had guessed almost from the start she was hiding some painful secret and that maybe it was connected with her resentment of him.

Issues from the past were bound to complicate things on this fool cattle drive. Yeah, he could count on it. And why, in the first place, had he ever urged her to accept the terms of her grandfather’s will, particularly now when they knew the threat to her was real? So real that he had a man watching out for her while he made preparations for his absence from the agency.

Roark thought about the snake. Someone was playing a deadly game, and he’d have his work cut out for him safeguarding her. But it was too late to retreat. Not when he’d promised the old man, not when his granddaughter was determined now to win that inheritance.

He was still absently clenching and unclenching his hand, still thinking about Samantha when the door opened behind him. He swung away from the window, one eyebrow climbing in amusement as Wendell entered the office huffing like a wounded bull, his flushed face nearly the color of the hair that flamed on his head.

“That stinking elevator!” he gasped.

“Not working again?”

“The next time we lease office space, can it please be at ground level?”

Roark’s young trainee dumped his load of parcels on the surface of the desk. Roark came around the desk to inspect them. “Are we in business?”

“Managed to get everything you wanted. The map was the hardest. You have any idea how tough it is to locate a simple thing like a detailed map of Colorado? Bet I went into three stores before I found it.”

“Necessary, Wendell. I should be able to keep in contact with you by cell phone, but we’ll need to locate and agree on any places along the route where I stand a chance of picking up your e-mails.”

“I’ll be sending them,” his eager young trainee promised.

“This is your chance, Wendell. While I’m investigating on my end, you’re going to be investigating for me on this end, which makes you my eyes and ears back here while I’m on that trail.”

“And your legs.”

“And my legs,” Roark conceded, knowing the trainee was thinking of the three destinations he had assigned him to look into. “Just be careful how and where they carry you. Remember, Wendell, until we know otherwise, we assume we’re dealing here with someone who’s desperate enough to kill. And maybe he’s not alone.”

Because if there is more than one of them, Roark thought, Wendell could be as much at risk back here in Texas as he and his client were in Colorado.

Samantha Howard. The thought of sharing anything with her on the long trail, even danger, already had his blood racing. With that kind of temptation to be resisted, it was going to be one hell of a cattle drive.

HE CAME HERE whenever he was in town. It wasn’t just because he admired the structure, though the Tower of the Americas was a marvelous feat of engineering. Like a gigantic, long-stemmmed mushroom, it soared above the humble and the mundane.

What he relished was standing here like this, all alone on the observation deck hundreds of feet above the sprawling city, gazing out at the far horizon. It represented the pinnacle of success he was striving for, and he wasn’t going to be cheated of it. Not this time.

He’d failed before, and the reminder of that failure, the crushing sense of disappointment, made him feel sick all over again. Made him grip the rail of the lofty deck with rage and frustration.

But he was going to correct all that. He had already begun. He’d hoped to scare her off with the snake, but it wasn’t enough. He’d have to get serious now. Only, he had to be careful, not risk anything that would direct suspicion at him.

She had to be stopped, though, before someone learned of the secret he was protecting. The timing was critical, and she stood in his way. He promised himself that before it was all over, she would no longer be an obstacle.

“You can count on it, Samantha,” he whispered into the wind.

And then he smiled. Yeah, he liked being here on top of the world. The height exhilarated him, made him feel tall and powerful. Made him feel he could do whatever he had to do.

Chapter Three

It’s a long way to fall.

She would go and tell herself that, Samantha thought wryly. It was something she wouldn’t have done if the bridge under here had been solid, because heights didn’t ordinarily bother her.

There were no guardrails, and the planks over which they bumped felt about as secure as toothpicks. She supposed that’s why the gorge they were crossing seemed much wider than it probably was and the river at its bottom an unnerving distance below them.

“Don’t worry, folks,” their young driver assured them from the front seat. “There’s a brand-new steel structure supporting us. The boards are just temporary until the crews get around to pouring the floor and installing the rails. Now, the old bridge this one replaced…that was something to worry about.”

He had been cheerfully informing them of the progress of the road’s reconstruction ever since he had collected them from the airport in his sturdy SUV. That had been miles ago. Long miles through a spectacular mountain wilderness of dizzy ascents and breathless turns.

The Morning Star Ranch, where the other drovers were waiting for them, was their destination. It had been purchased by a company that was developing the property into Colorado’s next ski resort. The company was responsible for the new road and this hellish bridge that was making her giddy, Samantha thought. Would they never finish crawling across its length?

“You okay?” Roark asked beside her. He had to have noticed how rigid she was.

“Couldn’t be better.”

Oh, you’re just great. If you can’t handle this, what are you going to be like piloting a couple of hundred longhorns?

But she didn’t want to think about that. Not until she had to. Anyway, it wasn’t just the condition of the route that had her on edge. Her companion squeezed in beside her was partly to blame for that.

With every jolt in the road, every sharp bend, his solid bulk had come bumping up against her side. Making her far too aware of the heat of his hard body, of the distinctive scent that she already associated with him—a masculine blend of faint musk and the stronger odor of a woodsy soap. Heady stuff, and on him far too arousing.

“Sorry,” he kept apologizing, though she wondered if those contacts were sometimes deliberate.

She might have challenged them, except the SUV was carrying so many supplies from town, along with their own gear piled beside the driver, that she and Roark had a minimum of space on the back seat. And with so little room for them to occupy, she could scarcely blame him for his closeness, even if it did leave her light-headed.

Samantha was able to breathe easier when the vehicle reached the other side of the gorge. The bridge behind them, they traveled another half mile along the rough gravel and then were halted where the crew was working with heavy equipment that blocked the road.

“Looks like we’ll be sitting here for a few minutes,” their driver indicated.

“Care to stretch your legs?” Roark asked Samantha.

She welcomed his suggestion. It would be a relief to escape the disturbing intimacy of their position on the crowded back seat. They left the driver with the car and strolled back along the road, away from the dust and roar of the machinery.

There was a gap in the evergreens, and they stopped at an overlook that commanded a view of the mountains. Along the lower slopes were groves of aspen, their thick ranks so golden with autumn tints that the sight was almost blinding.

For a moment they were silent, their attention focused on the dazzling display, and then Roark turned to her and said quietly, “Want to talk about it?”

Stretching their legs had been just an excuse then, Samantha realized. He had sensed she was worried, that the closer they got to the ranch the more troubled she became.

“What’s bothering you?” he persisted. “Besides this god-awful road, I mean? It’s the risk of the cattle drive, isn’t it? The fear that someone wants you out of the way and that this drive could give him an opportunity to strike? Look, I know that’s a very real possibility, that the threat is there, but I want you to know I’m going to stick close to you. I’m going to see to it that, whoever he is, he doesn’t touch you.”

It would be easy to lie, to let him think this was exactly what had her so unhappy. But why bother when tomorrow he would see the truth anyway? All right, so her pride was going to suffer, but it was better to get it out in the open now.

“That should be what’s worrying me, but it isn’t.” Samantha drew a slow breath, released it and confessed her fear. “It’s the horse.”

He was clearly perplexed. “Are we talking about a particular horse?”

“Yes, the one I’m going to be expected to mount tomorrow morning when we move those cattle out.”

He stared at her. “Are you telling me you don’t ride? That you’re about to join a cattle drive, and you have no experience in the saddle?”

“Let’s just say I’m not comfortable in the saddle. That I hate being in the saddle and that the horse, any horse, knows it.”

“How can that be when you grew up on the Walking W? Or was I misinformed about that?”

“Yes, I was raised on the ranch, and I was taught to ride. I wasn’t given any choice about that. But there was never a moment when I wasn’t plain scared up there in those stirrups. You can imagine how my grandfather liked that.”

“Yeah, Joe Walker wouldn’t have appreciated a granddaughter who wasn’t at home in the saddle. I guess that explains why the two of you ended up being alienated, why you didn’t visit him in the hospital or attend his funeral. Or does it?”

It didn’t begin to explain Samantha’s estrangement from her grandfather, barely touched on the reasons for her intense dislike of everything connected with ranching. But those wounds were too deep, too personal to discuss with Roark Hawke. She avoided the subject by giving him another truth. One she shared in an angry voice.

“I did try to visit him when I learned he was ill. But he made it clear through his lawyer that he didn’t want me there. I shouldn’t have been surprised. To the end he was too stubborn to want anything from me, especially my sympathy. That’s how it was with us.”

“I didn’t know that.”

No, and you didn’t know that I was at his funeral. Or as close anyway, Samantha remembered, as she could bring herself to go. Unnoticed by the mourners, she had watched her grandfather’s burial from a hill overlooking the cemetery before fleeing from a scene she could no longer handle. The memories had simply been too painful. But Roark didn’t have to hear this either.

“A real joke, isn’t it?” she said grimly. “I’ve got to climb up on a horse—a horse, mind you, that isn’t going to like me being on his back any more than I want to be there—and pretend I know what I’m doing while I escort two hundred unwilling cows through a howling wilderness. Now that qualifies as funny, don’t you think?”

“You’ll manage.”

“You sound very sure about that.”

“Why not?” His gaze traveled from her face down the entire length of her figure, his appraisal so slow and thorough that Samantha could feel herself flushing. “You have a body built for the saddle.”

And other things. That’s what his hot eyes seemed to be telling her. Before she could stop him, he reached out and captured her hands, imprisoning them in his own big hands as he bent his head to inspect them.

“And you have a pair of hands meant for holding reins. Strong hands, I’d say.”

His touch was warm and steady and far too provocative.

“What you learned as a girl will come back to you. You won’t have forgotten those lessons, whether you liked them or not. And if this time around you have a little patience with yourself…yeah, you’ll manage just fine.”

His easy confidence in her was hard to resist, his husky voice and deep, blue-eyed gaze even harder.

“Besides…”

“What?”

“You won’t be alone out there in that howling wilderness. I’ll be riding beside you.”

Not as close as he was now, Samantha hoped, which was too close. She could smell his scent again, and she swore that this time she detected more than just musk and soap. That he bore the odors of leather and horses. Aromas that had poignant associations for her. They set off a warning inside her head.

He’s not just a PI and a bodyguard. He’s also a cowboy who was your grandfather’s friend. Stay away from him.

Their driver sounded the horn of the SUV, signaling them that the road was clear again. It wasn’t necessary to snatch her hands away. To her relief, Roark released them. The cattle drive was waiting for her, Samantha remembered as they walked back to the car. She was still nervous about it, but determined. She could do it. She had to do it. If for no other reason, she needed to overcome the ghosts of her past.

NONE OF THEM QUESTIONED his presence. And Roark wondered about that. Asked himself if any of them around the table suspected his real reason for being here. That he’d been hired to protect Samantha on the drive because of a threat to her. That there was someone who might want her eliminated.

Just how had the lawyer explained him to the others who had arrived here from Texas ahead of Samantha and him? Had he told them Roark Hawke was joining the outfit simply to help out? Well, that wasn’t so improbable. He was a rancher himself, a neighbor of Joe Walker’s. After all, another neighbor, who was caring for the Walking W in their absence, had sent his son for that same purpose. The young Alex McKenzie was seated on the other side of Samantha.

Whatever the members of the company supposed, Roark had no intention of enlightening them. They would understand soon enough. For now, it was enough they accepted him as one of them. This they’d readily done when he’d been introduced to them. It had occurred as they’d gathered at the picnic table under the cottonwoods for the last kitchen-prepared supper they would enjoy before they reached Alamo Junction a hundred miles south of here.

The faces around the table were familiar to Samantha. She had known these people from the Walking W and could share their easy camaraderie. But for Roark, who had been too busy every weekend on his own spread to meet more than a handful of his neighbors, they had yet to emerge as distinct individuals. Observant, which he had to be as a PI, he worked now on their identities as he listened to their exchanges.

“How much trail you reckon we can cover per day?”

The question was issued around a chunk of steak, which had replaced the wad of chewing tobacco that had earlier been parked in a corner of the speaker’s mouth. It came from Cappy Davis, whose face was as seamed as bark. He’d been a fixture on the Walking W since his boyhood, which, if his tough old frame was any indication, must have been before the Flood.

Shep Thomas, the Walking W’s earnest ranch foreman who was serving as the drive’s trail boss, considered the question that had been directed at him. “Anywhere from ten to twenty miles a day. Depends on what we encounter. Most of it is public land, and we have permission to cross that, as well as the private stuff. But I won’t kid you. This country is some of the meanest in the Rockies.”

Cappy grunted and went back to his steak.

“Problem is,” Shep continued, cradling his mug of coffee, “we got us a time line. A crucial one. We either deliver the cows to Alamo Junction by the contract date, or those stock cars don’t wait for us. It will call for some hard driving.”

The man across from Shep, as jocular as the trail boss was sober, treated the outfit to a long, slow whistle. Roark knew he was the Walking W’s horse wrangler in charge of the drive’s remuda, but for a moment he couldn’t recall his name. Brewster? That was it. Dick Brewster.

“I know what that means. Our butts will be in slings from all that riding.”

Samantha was silent, but Roark could see that Brewster’s comment had her worried all over again. Not that she needed any reminders of tomorrow’s ordeal.

Morning Star’s ranch house, whose golden sandstone walls were just behind them, was situated on the brow of a hill that overlooked a valley. The longhorns were down there. Restless from being rounded up from the open range, they milled about in the lingering twilight, lowing their objections. Roark was aware that Samantha had been nervously eyeing the herd since the meal had been served.

He was not the only one who sensed her discomfort. Alex McKenzie, that friendly young puppy on the other side of her, tried to come to her rescue. “If it’s going to be all that rugged, Samantha shouldn’t have to put up with it. Not on horseback. She can ride in the chuck wagon with Ramona.”

Dick Brewster hooted with laughter. “That old heap? She’d be jounced to a jelly before noontime of our first day out. That is, if the thing makes it that far.”

All eyes at the table slid in the direction of a sturdy but battered pickup truck parked under a ponderosa pine several yards away. The vehicle’s back end had been fitted up as a rolling pantry. The only gaze that didn’t turn toward the truck belonged to Ramona Chacon, the Walking W’s round-faced cook. Her eyes were busy glaring at the horse wrangler.

“My baby can go anywhere your horses and cows can go, Dick Brewster. And you’d better start having a little respect for her if you expect to keep your belly full on this drive.”

Roark could see that the woman wasn’t genuinely offended. He had already decided that Ramona was too sweet tempered to mind Brewster’s teasing.

Alex returned to the subject of Samantha’s uneasiness.

“Rules don’t say Sam has to be in the saddle, just that she has to finish the drive.”

Roark wasn’t sure he appreciated McKenzie’s concern for Samantha, even though she had explained to him at the start of the meal that Alex’s interest in her welfare was the innocent result of a boyhood crush he’d had on her when he was a teenager. Fine. Except McKenzie was no longer a teenager, and Samantha looked as if she was enjoying his attention too much. And, damn it, why should he care?

Ramona added her invitation to Alex’s plan. “I’d be pleased to have your company in the chuck wagon, Sam.” Wise or not, Roark could no longer keep silent. “Good suggestion. The only thing is, Samantha has already decided she intends to make this drive on horseback along with the rest of us. Isn’t that what you told me on the trip up here, Samantha?”

She turned to him, meeting his challenge. For a moment she said nothing. He’d noticed she had an unconscious habit—whenever she was particularly tense about something—of catching the lobe of her right ear between her forefinger and her middle finger and tugging on it slowly. She was doing that now.

Roark was experiencing his own tension, wondering if she was about to tell him she’d didn’t appreciate his veto on her behalf, that she would express her own decisions. He knew she would be right if she did blast him, but he hoped instead she would agree with him. That she would have the courage to conquer her fear.

Her fingers dropped from the lobe of her ear. “Roark is right,” she said quietly. “I promised myself I would do this on horseback. I’ll stick with that.”

“Then it’s settled,” Roark said, wondering if she had any idea how much he admired her for her resolve. A resolve that he knew couldn’t have been easy for her.

One of the staff at the ranch appeared from the kitchen with a loaded tray. The outfit turned their attentions to the desserts she served them. Roark used the opportunity to study the faces around the table.

The expressions were cheerfully eager as they anticipated tomorrow’s drive. But Roark wondered, Did one of them have another agenda? Could one of this pleasant company be dangerous?

AFTER MAKING SURE that Samantha had safely locked herself in the bedroom that had been assigned to her for the night, Roark went back to his own room next door.

The old ranch house had no electricity. Hard to believe in this day and age, but its last owner, a contemporary of Joe Walker’s, had preferred it this way. Roark had to use a flashlight to find his way across the room to the oil lamp that had been provided for him on his bedside table.

There were matches beside the lamp. He struck one of them and lit the lamp. Its soft, flickering glow permitted him to perform one last, essential task before he turned in for the night. Reaching for his cell phone, he perched on the edge of the bed and punched in the digits for the number he wanted at a condo back in San Antonio.

As instructed, Wendell was waiting for his call. The young trainee answered on the first ring. “How’s it going?” he asked after Roark identified himself.

He knew Wendell was hoping to hear about some exciting development. Too bad he had to disappoint him. “Fine. We’re all one big, happy family here.” So far, Roark thought. “How about your end? Did you get out to the Walking W?”

“Visited that gulch just like you wanted,” Wendell reported, referring to the deep ravine where Joe Walker had been thrown from his horse. “I was careful not to be seen. Not much chance I would be. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Heck of a long hike out there.”

“Find anything?”

“I think maybe I did. There was a lot of wall to cover down in there, some of it pretty high. But I found this spot where the rocks looked like they’d been freshly chipped off by bullets. And if they were, that means the old man’s horse was spooked by gunfire and someone could have been shooting at him.”

Wendell was so enthusiastic about his discovery Roark hadn’t the heart to tell him that chipped rocks weren’t necessarily evidence of gunfire. “Could you tell whether the rock was scored? You know, as if bullets had left channels in it?”

“The marks weren’t clear. Maybe you’ll be able to tell something. I took a bunch of photographs. As soon as they’re developed, I’ll e-mail them for you to study. They should be waiting for you at your first stop.”

“That’s fine.” Roark would examine those photographs, but he doubted they would give him anything useful. But Wendell, being Wendell, was so eager to succeed that, again, Roark didn’t want to discourage the overly zealous trainee.

“Tomorrow I’ll tackle the monastery and the Western Museum,” Wendell continued, referring to the institutions that would receive Joe Walker’s estate if Samantha failed to meet the terms of her grandfather’s will. “I’ll let you know what I learn.”

Cautioning him to be careful about how he handled those interviews, Roark promised to keep in touch and ended the call. He hoped he would be able to maintain regular contact with Wendell. He’d had no problem tonight, but a cell phone might not be dependable in a remote mountain area like this. There was also the matter of power, though Ramona Chacon had told him he could keep the instrument recharged using the lighter in her truck.

Roark went on sitting there for a moment on the edge of the bed, listening. Although it wasn’t all that late, a silence had settled over the house. The members of the outfit, knowing that the drive would be underway at first light, had retired early. Which, Roark told himself, was what he needed to do.

Shedding his clothes, he blew out the lamp and crawled under the covers. His phone call to Wendell hadn’t produced anything worthwhile. Not that he had expected it to, but a PI overlooked nothing. It was a beginning, and on the drive he would seize every opportunity to advance his investigation.

His last thoughts before he drifted off were for Samantha next door. He hoped she was sleeping peacefully, not worrying about tomorrow. He also wished he could think of her as nothing but a client who needed his protection instead of a woman he wanted beside him in this bed. Damn.

SAMANTHA DIDN’T BOTHER switching on the flashlight on her bedside table to check her watch, but she knew it was late. Probably close to midnight, if not after.

She had managed to drowse for a couple of hours, though fitfully, but now she was wide-awake. The moon had risen, its light streaming through the uncurtained windows. She might have blamed its brightness for her sleeplessness, except that wouldn’t be true.

Nor could she blame the cattle in the valley below, at least not entirely. Although if their occasional bawling was any indication, they continued to be as restless as she was, reminding her of what tomorrow would demand of her. And tonight?

She had to face it. The fundamental reason for her waking was a physical one—she needed a bathroom. In any other circumstances, this wouldn’t have been a problem. In this place it was. The ranch house had neither bathrooms nor electricity and only rudimentary plumbing in the kitchen. Relieving herself meant a trip to an old-fashioned privy out back. Not something she wanted to risk in the middle of the night.

You can wait until morning.

That’s what she told herself, and she believed it. For a while. But the more she tried not to think about it, the more she wanted that privy. When her need became urgent, she gave in.

This is ridiculous. You have to go, so go.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she shoved her feet into her slippers, scooped up the flashlight and, after putting a coat on over her pajamas, headed for the door.

The lock was as outdated as the rest of the house, the kind that came equipped with a key. It had to be persuaded before it would turn and let Samantha out into the passage.

There were doors along both sides of the corridor, all of them closed, the rooms behind them silent. She looked at the door next to hers, knowing she had to rouse Roark and ask him to accompany her. He would have her head if she didn’t. She had raised her hand to knock when the door directly across the hall opened. Ramona emerged, surprised to find her there.

“I need a trip out to the privy,” Samantha whispered.

“Me, too,” Ramona whispered back, securing the sash on her bathrobe. “I’d welcome the company. I wasn’t looking forward to going out there alone.”

Samantha decided that as long as Ramona was with her she needn’t disturb Roark. She didn’t know Ramona well, but she knew enough to trust her.

The gleam of the flashlight led them into Morning Star’s living room where Samantha could make out the shapes of a stone fireplace, Navajo rugs on the floor, heavy pottery and dark oil paintings on the walls, the kind of Western scenes her grandfather had favored. In fact, the whole place reminded her of the Walking W’s ranch house, and she found that depressing. Still, it would be a shame when all this was pulled down and replaced with a ski lodge and condos, which was scheduled to happen when the new road was finished.

Crossing the room, they let themselves out of the house through a French door, which they left ajar for their return. A gibbous moon swam in the night sky, casting a glow strong enough to permit Samantha to make out the forms of the longhorns in the valley below. They were hushed now, as if waiting for something.

For a quick moment she experienced a sense of uneasiness. It was her imagination. She was letting her imagination get the best of her, seeing an enemy lurking in the thick shadows under the trees where there was none. Besides, Ramona was close at her side.

Samantha remembered the way from an earlier daylight visit. With the flashlight to guide them, they went around the house and along the path. Samantha was thankful for the coat over her pajamas. The day had been almost balmy, but a sharp chill had set in after twilight. It was the autumn weather that made her shiver. Or nerves. Whatever the explanation, she was relieved when they reached the facility at the end of the path.

“You go first,” Samantha instructed her companion, handing her the flashlight.

Ramona disappeared inside the privy. Samantha waited outside, wishing she would hurry. When the woman finally reappeared, she returned the flashlight with a warning.

“The batteries must be weakening. I’m afraid it’s getting kind of dim.”

So dim, Samantha discovered, that managing the privy was a challenge once she was inside and with the door closed. After making use of the facility, she was able to wash her hands using the basin and a can of water one of the staff had provided on a shelf.

By this time the flashlight was worthless. She switched it off and tucked it into a pocket of her coat. They didn’t really need it, anyway. The glow from the moon would be more than adequate enough to light their way back to the house.

That’s what she thought until she stepped out of the privy and found Ramona nowhere in sight. What had become of her? Had she returned to the house without her?

“Ramona,” she called softly, “are you there?”

There was no answer. And Samantha suddenly missed the reassuring beam of the flashlight. She also decided that the night seemed much too quiet, so quiet that she could hear nothing but the sound of her own breathing. She didn’t like it. Didn’t like how heavy the shadows were in that grove of trees off to her right, shadows that could conceal a menace lurking in their depths.

She was being silly again. But she couldn’t shake her sense of uneasiness, the eerie feeling that she was being watched, that she was no longer alone out here. The feeling became a certainty when one of those dark shadows moved, detaching itself from the others.

Samantha didn’t pause to learn the identity of that furtive shadow or why Ramona hadn’t waited for her. Swinging around, she fled up the path as if every nightmare from her childhood were at her heels. She was so fearful of the thing behind her that she didn’t concern herself with what might be in front of her. Until she flew around the corner of the house and smacked into a wall that hadn’t been there before. A towering wall of living, breathing flesh.

She knew it was flesh, because when she raised her hands to defend herself against her attacker, they encountered a chest. A hard, totally bare male chest. She was dragged up against its heat when a pair of strong hands gripped her upper arms to steady her. Gasping, she struggled against his hold.

“Easy,” he said.

Samantha went still. She recognized his voice.

“What were you running from?”

“Something back there under the trees.”

“What?” Roark demanded sharply.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was human, maybe not.”

Her relief that Roark was here had been both enormous and sweet, but, aware now that she was still pressed against his naked chest, Samantha experienced another kind of danger. One from which she needed to disengage herself. “I’m all right now,” she insisted. “It was probably just an animal. You can let me go.”

He released her. “What in hell are you doing out here, anyway?”

“I needed to visit the privy.”

“Then you should have had me go with you. That’s what I’m here for, remember?”

“I didn’t go out alone. Ramona was with me.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. She seems to have dis—”

“Here I am,” Ramona said, trotting around the corner of the house.

“Where on earth have you been? Didn’t you hear me call you?”

“I’m sorry. There was a nightjar singing in one of the trees, and I stepped around the other side of the house to see if I could catch a glimpse of—” She broke off, as if she realized that Samantha was upset and that Roark had arrived on the scene and was looking far too rigid standing there. “Is something wrong?”

“Samantha spotted something she didn’t like under the trees. Did you see anyone back there? Or maybe an animal?”

“No, nothing.”

Roark nodded, and then before Samantha could prevent it, he grabbed her hand and hauled her in the direction of the open French door. “What are you—”

“I’m taking you back inside. Putting you behind a locked door where you belong.”

He must have the eyes of an owl, she thought. He needed no flashlight to aid him as he swiftly conducted her through the door and across the living room into the corridor, pausing only long enough to make certain that Ramona was close behind them. Samantha waited until the bemused cook was safely back inside her room before she confronted her rescuer.

“Why are you so angry with me? I told you I’m all right now.”

“You’re not all right. You’re shaking all over. And Ramona or no Ramona, you had no business being out there without me. Or are you forgetting what happened back in Texas? That threat could have followed you here to Colorado.”

“How did you know Ramona and I were—”

“I caught a glimpse of your flashlight passing under my window so I left my room to investigate and saw the French door open.”

The light must have awakened him, which demonstrated an alertness on her behalf she had no choice but to be grateful for. She expressed her appreciation with a meek thank-you.

By then he had steered her back into her bedroom. Or what she assumed was her bedroom until he lighted the oil lamp, and she learned that it was his room.

She also discovered, turning to him, that he was a riveting sight in nothing but a pair of snug jeans. In his haste he hadn’t bothered to don anything else, unless she counted the gun tucked into his waistband. Samantha wasn’t sure whether her slight wooziness was the result of the terror she had just experienced or the slabs of hard muscle above the waistband of his jeans.

“Uh, I assume you have a reason for bringing me here instead of next door. A good one.”

“I want you on that bed.”

“I said I was grateful for your rescue, but I’m not that grateful.”

“Sitting there, Samantha, not lying there. If someone happens to be prowling around looking for you, maybe even knows which room is yours, then you’re safer waiting here while I check outside. I want to find out what you saw in that grove of trees. Try to relax, huh? I’ll only be a few minutes.”

He was gone then, taking the key with him. She heard him locking the door from the hallway outside. Eyeing the bed, Samantha decided that his command was probably a sensible one. She was feeling just weak enough to need a support, and there was no chair in the small room.

That was better, she thought when she’d lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress. What didn’t feel so comfortable was the memory of Roark Hawke’s high-handed treatment of her. All right, so she had made a mistake, but he didn’t have to be so brusque about it. It was bad enough having a bodyguard without his expecting her to ask permission every time she went to the bathroom.

She didn’t like any of it, but she had her resentment under control when he returned a short while later. “Nothing,” he reported. “Whatever was out there is gone. It was probably nothing more sinister than an animal.”

“A big one, by the size of that shadow.”

“Well, it is bear country.”

“Is that supposed to be reassuring? Though, come to think of it, I guess a bear would be more friendly than a two-legged stalker. It doesn’t make sense, you know.”

“What doesn’t?”

“That someone should want me out of the way. I talked to the lawyer again before we left Texas. He told me that my grandfather’s investments were still sound but nowhere near what they’d been worth a few years ago when the market was high. The value of the ranch itself is solid, but there are debts against it that will have to be paid off by whoever inherits. What it all comes down to is that the estate is important to me because of my situation, but to someone else—”

“It doesn’t represent the kind of fortune they’d go to extreme lengths to get their hands on.”

“Exactly. So what’s the explanation?”

Roark shook his head, as much at a loss for a motive as she was.

Samantha stared at him. Though she hadn’t been aware of it happening, he was seated beside her on the bed…too close. She was conscious again of all that expanse of naked chest. “How can you go around like that? Aren’t you freezing?”

“I’m warm enough.”

“I’m bundled in a coat, and I’m still like ice. My hands are, anyway.”

By the time she realized her admission was a mistake, it was too late. He had already captured her hands between his own.

“So let me share some of my heat.”

His strong fingers began to massage her hands, briskly at first and then more slowly and deeply. She should have stopped him, but his treatment felt too good, as soothing as a warm bath.

“Better?”

“Mmm.”

Another error probably, because he must have read her languid acknowledgment as an invitation. His performance became decidedly sensual, his hands stroking hers with a series of caresses that could only be defined as seductive. Her gaze met his, searching his eyes that had become so dark a blue they were like midnight, intense with his unmistakable arousal.

“What are you thinking?” she challenged him nervously.

“That I’d like to share more than just the heat of my hands.” He leaned toward her, his mouth mere inches from hers, his voice low and raspy. “What are you thinking, Samantha?”

He was so close now she could feel the male heat radiating from the sleek flesh of his naked chest, searing her with his desire. In another moment his mouth would cover hers, their breaths mingling as he devoured her with his lips and tongue. She had never been so tempted, nor so terrified of the consequences.

“I’m thinking,” she answered him firmly, removing her hands from his and pulling away from his potent nearness, “that I’m not going to risk getting burned.”

He stared at her for a long minute, frowning. She could see he was trying to understand. “What just happened? Because I’ve got to tell you, I thought you were as interested as I was in getting—”

“Intimate?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You’re a cowboy, Roark. You may be a PI, but at heart and in soul you’re a cowboy.”

“What’s wrong with cowboys?”

“I don’t get involved with them. Ever.”

“Why? Why do you have this resistance to everything connected with ranching? And don’t tell me it’s because of the sour relationship you had with your grandfather. I don’t buy it. There’s a better explanation than that.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s the only explanation I have.” She got to her feet, needing to get away, needing to escape from her treacherous susceptibility to him. “I’m going back to my room. I think we should both try to get some sleep with what’s left of the night.”

And that wouldn’t be easy, Samantha realized. Not with her emotions threatening to betray her every time she came within touching distance of Roark Hawke.

CONCEALED IN THE SHADOWS, he stood on the slope above the ranch house and watched the light go out in her window.

He had missed an easy opportunity tonight. If the PI hadn’t rushed to her rescue…

Hawke was a frustration all right. Always there, guarding her. A definite problem. Never mind, there would be other opportunities. He would wait for them, and he would get to her in the end. But he had to be careful. No one must guess. An accident would be best. If he could arrange an accident…

Whatever it took. Because she had to be eliminated before the end of the drive. Everything depended on that.

Chapter Four

There was a mist in the valley where they gathered in the chill dawn.

“It’ll burn off when the sun clears the horizon,” Roark said, studying the sky. “We should have clear weather for our first day.”

Samantha, standing beside him, nodded. She knew he was no more interested in the weather at this moment than she was. He was merely trying to keep her distracted. She silently blessed him for that, and for making no mention of what had happened between them last night…or, what had almost happened.

Roark’s effort, however, was a wasted one. Nothing could divert her attention from the longhorns milling restlessly behind the barbed wire barricade that kept them in the valley. Close up like this, they weren’t a sight that encouraged her with their long legs, mottled hides in a variety of colors and patterns, and wicked-looking horns. They seemed to be watching her as unhappily as she eyed them.

“They sense they’re about to be moved out,” Roark explained. “Cattle are resistant to leaving their home range.”

She didn’t blame them. Given a choice, she would have remained here herself.

“They’ll settle down after an hour or two on the trail.”

Samantha seriously doubted that she would accept the situation in a similar fashion. She was certain of it when their horse wrangler rode toward them where they waited. The bony-faced Dick Brewster was leading the two mounts he had cut out of his remuda for their use. One of them was a big, handsome roan, the other a dainty mare. Both were already saddled.

Dick wore his usual carefree grin when he reached them and dismounted. “This here is Dolly,” he introduced Samantha to the mare. “Don’t worry, Sam, she’s as gentle as she looks. She won’t give you any trouble.”

“You ready?” Roark asked her quietly.

The morning air had a sharp bite to it, but Samantha’s hands were perspiring. Nerves, of course. She wore a lady’s low-crowned Stetson tied under her chin. She’d left it hanging down over the single thick braid that swung from the back of her head. But now, catching the brim in her hand, she pulled the hat forward and settled it firmly in place at a jaunty angle. A gesture of determination. She hoped.

“Ready,” she said.

“Want a boost up?”

Shaking her head, Samantha placed her foot in the stirrup, gripped the saddle horn, and swung her leg up and over the mare’s back. To her relief, Dolly accepted her presence without an objection. She prayed that all those detestable lessons of her childhood wouldn’t desert her as she gathered the reins loosely in her hand and tried to act as if she knew what she was doing.

“Looking good,” Roark congratulated her.

She watched him mount his own horse with an ease she could never duplicate. Whatever the accident of his urban birth, his rangy body had been designed by nature for the saddle. And no matter how she felt about cowboys, it was a sight she couldn’t help admiring.

The others had joined them by then, their quarter horses moving in close so that the riders could receive their orders from the trail boss.

“Here’s the plan,” Shep Thomas instructed them in his somber manner. “Ramona is going on ahead with the chuck wagon. Come midmorning, she’ll be set up and waiting for us with coffee and goodies. But don’t count on coffee stops after this. We won’t have the time for them. It’s just that, this being the first day and all, I figure we’ll be more than ready for a morning break.”

“Ramona know the route?” Cappy Davis asked, his jaws working on a chaw of tobacco.

“I’ve given her a map. She’ll find the way. Dick,” the trail boss continued, turning to the horse wrangler, “you’ll be out front, of course, with the remuda. I’ll ride point. Cappy, you take left flank, and, Alex, you handle right flank. Roark and Samantha will ride drag.”

The young Alex McKenzie, mindful of Samantha’s comfort, expressed his concern. “But that leaves Sam swallowing the dust.”

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