The Bodyguard’s Return
Carla Cassidy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

About The Author

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Copyright

Carla Cassidy is an award-winning author who has written over fifty novels. In 1995 she won Best Romance from Romantic Times BOOKreviews. In 1998 she also won a Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series from Romantic Times BOOKreviews.

Carla believes the only thing better than curling up with a good book to read is sitting down at the computer with a good story to write. She’s looking forward to writing many more books and bringing hours of pleasure to readers.

Chapter 1

She’d never meant to make Cotter Creek, Oklahoma, her home. Savannah Marie Clarion had been on her way to nowhere when the transmission in her car had decided to go wonky. She’d managed to pull it into Mechanic’s Mansion on Main Street before it had died completely.

She’d taken one look around the dusty small town and had decided Cotter Creek sure felt like nowhere to her.

That had been three months ago. She now hurried down Main Street toward the Sunny Side Up Café where she was meeting Meredith West for lunch. After that she had an interview to conduct for her job as a reporter for the Cotter Creek Chronicle, the daily newspaper.

“Good morning, Mr. Rhenquist.” She smiled at the old man who sat in a chair in front of the barbershop. His deeply weathered face looked like the cracked Oklahoma earth as he scowled at her.

“Somebody eat the bottom of your britches?” he asked.

She flashed him a bright smile. “It’s the latest style, Mr. Rhenquist. They’re cropped short on purpose.”

“Looks silly to me,” he replied. “No place for fashion in Cotter Creek.”

“If they ever ban grouchy old farts from Cotter Creek, you’d better pack your bags,” she retorted. She instantly bit her lower lip and hurried on, trying not to feel self-conscious in the short gray pants, sleek black boots and pink sweater that clashed cheerfully with her bright red curly hair.

She could almost hear her mother’s voice ringing in her ears as she hurried toward the café. “You’re brash, Savannah Marie. You’re outspoken and it’s quite unbecoming.”

She stuffed her mother’s voice in the mental box where she kept all the unpleasantness of her life as she entered the Sunny Side Up Café. She was greeted by the lingering breakfast scents of fried bacon and strong coffee now being overwhelmed by burgers and onions and the lunchtime fare.

Immediately she spied Meredith at a booth near the back of the busy café. At the sight of her friend, Savannah couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips.

Meredith West had been one of the first people Savannah had met when she’d settled into the upstairs of a house owned by Ms. Winnie Halifax. Meredith had been visiting the sweet old lady when Savannah had been moving in.

On the surface Savannah and Meredith couldn’t be more different. Meredith always looked like she’d dressed in the dark, pulling on whatever her hands managed to land on while still half-asleep. On the other hand, Savannah had been breast-fed fashion sense by a superficial mother who had believed physical beauty was the second most important thing to being rich.

“Don’t you look spiffy,” Meredith said as Savannah slid into the booth opposite her.

“Thanks. Rhenquist just asked me what happened to the bottom of my britches.”

Meredith’s full lips curved into a smile. “Rhenquist is an old boob.”

A young waitress appeared at their table to take their order, interrupting their conversation momentarily. “So, what’s up with you?” Savannah asked when the waitress had left their booth. “Are you off on another adventure?”

Meredith worked for the family business, Wild West Protective Services. Savannah had been intrigued when she’d learned her new friend worked as a bodyguard. “And when are you going to let me interview you for my column?”

“No, and never,” Meredith replied. “I’ve decided to take some time off.” She leaned forward, her green eyes sparkling. “My brother, Joshua is coming home. He should be here sometime today or tomorrow.”

“You have too many brothers. Which one is Joshua?”

“The baby. He’s been in New York for the past year and a half and we’ve all missed him desperately.” Her affection for her younger sibling was obvious in her voice.

“Is this a visit?”

“No, he’s decided to move back here. He says he’s had enough of the big city. He’d probably love for you to interview him. Joshua has never shied away from attention.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Savannah replied. “I’m interviewing Charlie Summit this afternoon.”

“Now that should be interesting. I can’t believe Cotter Creek’s epitome of crazy as a loon is going to talk to you.” Meredith shoved a strand of her long dark hair behind one ear.

“Actually, beneath his gruff exterior and eccentricities, Charlie is a very nice man. I sometimes go over to his place in the evenings and we play chess together. He’s lonely and he was thrilled when I told him I wanted to talk to him for one of my ‘People and Personality’ columns.”

“When we were kids he used to scare the hell out of us,” Meredith said after the waitress had returned to serve their orders. “He lived all alone out there in the middle of nowhere and looked like Grizzly Adams on a bad day. There was a rumor that his root cellar was filled with children who had disobeyed their parents.”

Savannah laughed. “I wonder who started that particular rumor?”

“Probably some parent with disobedient children.”

Meredith paused to take a sip of her iced tea, then continued. “Actually, Joshua became good friends with him when Joshua was about fifteen years old. You know that weather vane that Charlie has stuck in the ground next to his house?”

“You mean that copper monstrosity with the rooster?”

Meredith nodded. “One night a bunch of Joshua’s friends dared him to steal it. Joshua sneaked up and Charlie was waiting for him with a shotgun in hand.”

“So, what happened?”

“Charlie made Joshua go inside the house and call my father. As punishment Joshua had to go over to Charlie’s twice a week after school and work. I think he’s kept in touch with Charlie even while he’s been in New York.”

“If your brother is his friend, that makes two friends for Charlie. I’m hoping my article on him will humanize him and make people look beyond the scruffy beard and gruff exterior.”

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Meredith opened her purse and pulled out a cream-colored envelope and handed it across the table to Savannah.

“What’s this?”

“A wedding invitation. Clay and Libby are getting married a week from next Saturday.”

“Wow, that’s kind of fast, isn’t it?” Savannah knew a little about the romance between Meredith’s brother Clay and the beautiful blonde from Hollywood.

Clay had been sent to Hollywood to play bodyguard to Libby’s daughter, Gracie, who was a little movie star and had been receiving threatening notes in the mail. Clay and Libby had fallen in love, and Libby and her daughter had moved to Cotter Creek a couple of weeks ago.

Meredith smiled, a touch of wistfulness in her eyes. “Yes, it’s fast, but, according to Clay and Libby, when you know something is right you don’t waste any time.”

The two women continued to visit as they ate their lunch, then all too quickly it was time for Savannah to head to her interview with Charlie.

It was almost one o’clock as Savannah drove down Main Street, headed to the outskirts of town and the small ranch house where Charlie Summit lived.

Every morning for the past three months she had awakened and been vaguely surprised to discover herself for the most part content with her new life. And content was something she couldn’t ever remember feeling in her twenty-four years of life.

Savannah had awakened one morning in her beautiful bedroom in her parents’ beautiful house and had realized if she didn’t get away from the criticism and unrealistic expectations she’d never know who she was and what she was capable of being.

And so she’d headed for the biggest adventure of her life…finding her life.

It had been that faulty transmission that had brought her to Cotter Creek and a further stroke of luck that Raymond Buchannan, the owner of the local newspaper, was getting old and tired. When she’d approached him with her journalism degree in one hand and an idea for profiling the locals in a column each week in the other, he’d hired her.

In the time she’d been here, she’d grown to love Cotter Creek, but she’d begun to think something bad was happening here. There had been too many accidental deaths of local ranchers lately. On a whim she’d done some research and the results were troubling, to say the least.

She shoved away thoughts of those deaths and rolled down her window to allow in the crisp early-October air, so different from the desert heat in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she’d grown up.

She was looking forward to the interview with Charlie. All her teachers in her journalism classes had told her that she was particularly good at the art of interviewing.

She always managed to glean one little nugget of information that exposed the very center of a person. It was one of her strengths. Her mother had spent her lifetime cataloging Savannah’s weaknesses.

Charlie Summit lived, as most of the ranchers in the area did, in the middle of nowhere. But, unlike most of the flat pastures of his neighbors, Charlie’s little two-bedroom ranch house was surrounded by woods and a yard that hadn’t seen the blade of a lawnmower in the past twenty years.

A rusted-out pickup truck body sat on cinder blocks on the east side of the house, surrounded by old scraps of tin and the infamous, huge, elaborate copper weather vane.

The junkyard collection, coupled with his hermitlike tendencies, certainly helped add to Charlie’s reputation as an odd duck.

What was definitely odd was that, as Savannah pulled her car to a halt in front of the overgrown path that led to Charlie’s front door, his two dogs, Judd and Jessie, were pacing the porch, obviously agitated.

Charlie never let the dogs stay out on their own. He’d always told her the two mutts were too dumb to know to scratch an itch unless he was sitting beside them telling them how to do it.

As she got out of her car, the two came running to her. They raced around her feet, releasing sharp whines. “What’s the matter, boys?” she asked and knelt down to pet first the tall, mostly golden retriever then the smaller, mostly fox terrier. Savannah loved dogs, one of her many character flaws where her parents were concerned.

She stood and looked toward the house, where the front door was open, but no sound drifted outward. Odd. Charlie never left his door open. He’d always told her that an open door invited in trouble.

The curly red hairs on the nape of her neck sprang to attention as a sense of apprehension slithered through her,

“Charlie?” she called as she stepped closer to the porch. Judd and Jessie whined at her feet. “Charlie, it’s me, Savannah.”

She climbed the steps and paused at the front door as she caught a whiff of a scent that didn’t belong. It smelled like a firecracker seconds after explosion. She rapped her knuckles on the screen door, then stepped inside.

“Charlie? Are you home?” She walked the short distance through the foyer, then took a single step into the living room.

Charlie was home. He sat in his favorite recliner in the cluttered living room, a handgun on the floor beside him and the pieces of his head decorating the wall in bloody splatters behind him.

Savannah froze, for a moment her mind refused to make sense of the scene before her. In that instant of immobility she was acutely conscious of the pitiful yowls of the dogs coming from the porch, the laughter of a live audience drifting from the television and a mewling noise that she suddenly realized was coming from her.

That moment of blessed denial passed, and the horror struck her like a fist to the stomach. Charlie’s sightless blue eyes stared at her as she stumbled backward, fighting the need to be sick, swallowing against the scream that begged to be released.

Tears blurred her vision as she backed out the screen door. She turned blindly, intent on getting to her car, where her cell phone was in her purse on the front seat.

The scream that had been trapped in the back of her throat released itself as a pair of strong hands grabbed her shoulders.

The red-haired, pink-clad woman nearly barreled over Joshua West as he stepped up on the porch of Charlie’s house. The shriek she emitted as he caught her by the shoulders nearly shattered his eardrums, but the kick she delivered to his shin sent him backward with a stream of cuss words that would have daunted the devil.

“What in the hell is wrong with you, lady?” he exclaimed as he grabbed the porch rail to steady himself.

She stared up at him, whiskey-colored eyes wide and filled with tears. Her mouth worked, opening and closing, but it was as if the act of speech had left her. Her skin appeared unnaturally pale, a smattering of freckles seeming to stand out a full inch from her cheeks.

As he scowled at her she raised a hand and pointed a trembling finger toward the inside of the house. It was only then that Joshua realized it was fear and horror that rode her features.

He had no idea who she was or what she was doing here, but several other questions quickly filled his head. Why hadn’t her ear-splitting scream brought Charlie careening out the door to see what was going on, and why were the dogs running loose?

He took a good, long look at the young woman, in case he had to describe her later, then he went into the house. He’d only taken a single step inside the tiny foyer when he noticed the acrid smell of gunpowder and his gut twisted with a sense of dread.

Smelling gunpowder inside a house was never a good sign. As he took a step into the living room his sense of dread exploded into something deeper, darker. As he stared at Charlie’s body, disbelief fought with shock and a quick stab of grief.

It was obvious in a glance that the old man was dead. Joshua was smart enough to know not to disturb anything, although it looked like an open-and-shut case of suicide.

He needed to do something. He needed to call Sheriff Ramsey. Grief threatened to overwhelm the denial, but he shoved it back, knowing there were things that needed to be done.

What had happened here? How on earth had this happened? Dammit, what had made Charlie do such a thing? What had happened to make the man take his own life? Of all the men Joshua had known, he would have thought Charlie the last one who would do something like this.

It was only when he stepped back out of the house that he remembered the woman. She was crouched down next to her car, a hand on Jessie’s furry back. As he walked down the steps to the path, she stood, a wary suspicion on her features.

“I called the sheriff,” she said, obviously recovering her gift of speech. “He should be here any minute now. Don’t come any closer.” She held up a can of pepper spray.

Joshua stopped in his tracks. She would have looked quite menacing if the hand holding the spray can weren’t shaking so badly.

Some of her color had returned to her face and the freckles now looked as if they belonged on her skin. It was obvious she didn’t belong here, didn’t belong in Cotter Creek.

She had the sheen of the big city on her, from the toe of her polished boots to the top of her short, curly gelled hair. She represented everything he’d left behind in New York City.

Her hair suited her small, delicate features. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was striking. More importantly, there was no blood on her pink sweater or gray cropped slacks. No splatters on the tops of her polished boots.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked. What had happened in Charlie’s house before he’d arrived, and what did she have to do with the old man’s death?

“I could ask you the same,” she replied, eyes narrowed and finger poised above the sprayer on the can.

“I’m Joshua West and I was just on my way home and decided to stop and say hello to Charlie.”

Relief filled her amber-colored eyes and she lowered the can. “I heard they were expecting you either today or tomorrow.”

“You didn’t answer my questions. Who are you and what in the hell is going on here?” Anger swept through him, much more agreeable than the grief that clawed at his insides as he thought of Charlie.

The relief that had shone from her eyes was shortlived. A frown tugged her thin eyebrows closer together. “My name is Savannah Clarion and I don’t know what the hell is going on. I got here about two minutes before you did, just long enough to go inside and find…” She bit her bottom lip as tears welled up.

The anger that had momentarily reared to life dissipated. “Why are you here? Charlie isn’t…wasn’t exactly the type who liked to entertain guests.” And he couldn’t imagine that a young woman like her would have an interest in visiting with the old man.

“I was going to interview him. I write a column for the Cotter Creek Chronicle called ‘People and Personalities.’” Tears spilled onto her cheeks. “Why would he do something like this? I can’t believe it.”

Joshua raked a hand through his thick, dark hair and frowned. “I just spoke with him two days ago. He seemed fine, his usual self.” Judd nuzzled Joshua’s hand, seeking a reassuring pat on the head.

“What’s going to happen to Judd and Jessie?” Savannah asked. “Who’s going to take care of them?”

“I’ll take them with me. They’ll be well taken care of at Dad’s.”

“I don’t understand this.” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if chilled to the bone. “Seems like a drastic way to get out of an interview.” She gulped in a deep breath.

He wondered if she was about to get hysterical on him. The last thing he wanted was a hysterical woman on his hands. He shoved his hands in his slacks pockets as he heard the wail of a siren in the distance.

The joyous homecoming he’d expected had transformed into something horrible, and he knew the full realization that Charlie was dead hadn’t even struck him yet. What he couldn’t yet comprehend was the fact that Charlie hadn’t died in his sleep or suffered a heart attack, but, instead, from all indications Charlie had eaten the business end of his gun.

He said no more to Savannah as the sheriff’s car pulled onto Charlie’s property. Things have changed, he thought as he watched Sheriff Jim Ramsey lumber out of his car. The sheriff had put on a bit of weight in the year and a half that Joshua had been gone. His hair was more salt than pepper, and as his gaze fell on Savannah an expression of annoyance flashed on his features. What was that about?

The West family and Sheriff Ramsey had always shared a precarious tolerance for one another. A tolerance that often threatened to dissolve whenever the sheriff felt that the West work stepped on his toes.

Ramsey nodded to Savannah, then walked past her. “Joshua,” he greeted with a touch of surprise. “Heard you were expected back here. Hell of a welcome home. Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I was on my way into town and decided to stop and say hello to Charlie. I stepped up on the porch as Ms. Clarion came crashing out the door. I went inside to see Charlie. It looks like he shot himself.”

“I came out here to interview him for my column,” Savannah said and stepped closer to the two men. “Something isn’t right here. Charlie was excited about being interviewed. He would have never done something like this. I want a full investigation into his death.”

Ramsey sighed audibly. “I’m going inside. I’ve already put in a call to Burke McReynolds.”

“Burke McReynolds?” Joshua didn’t know the name.

“You haven’t met him. We hired him on a month ago as a part-time medical examiner. If I have any more questions for the two of you, I know where to find you both. There’s no reason for you to hang around here.”

It was an obvious dismissal, and Joshua was more than ready to leave this place of death. There was nothing he could do for Charlie, and more than anything he was eager to get home to his family.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Savannah replied. Although her eyes still shone with tears, she raised her chin and looked at the sheriff defiantly. “I have a responsibility to my readers, a responsibility to Charlie.”

The annoyance that had flashed momentarily across Ramsey’s features appeared again. “Savannah, you write a gossip column and there’s nothing you can do for Charlie. Now you go on and get out of here. We don’t need you in the way as we go about our business.”

If her face had lacked color before, it didn’t now. A flush of red swept up her slender neck and took over her face, nearly matching the bright red of her hair.

“There’s something rotten in this town, Sheriff Ramsey, and I’m not going to quit until I figure out what it is.” She stomped to her car and got inside.

“What was that all about?” Joshua asked Ramsey as she pealed out and took off down the road.

“Who knows. Just spare me from Lois Lane wannabes.” Jim sighed again. “I got work to do.” As he headed for Charlie’s front door, Joshua loaded Jessie and Judd into the backseat of his car, then got in behind the steering wheel.

As Ramsey disappeared into the house, Joshua thought of Savannah Clarion’s parting words. “Something was rotten in Cotter Creek.”

What was she talking about? What in the hell had happened in his town in the time that he’d been gone?

Chapter 2

Savannah awakened with grief pressing thickly against her chest. The early-morning October sunshine drifted through the frilly lace curtains in her bedroom, and all she wanted to do was pull the pillow over her head and forget what had happened the day before.

Charlie was dead. The thought hit her in the stomach with the force of a blow. Other than Meredith and her landlady, Winnie, Charlie had been the only friend she’d made since coming to town. And now he was gone, dead in a way that made no sense whatsoever.

She’d never again see that slow, easy grin of his, never hear his acerbic sense of humor or match her wits against his in a game of chess.

“Charlie,” she whispered, her voice nothing more than a hollow echo of itself.

She wanted to weep, but she’d spent most of her tears the night before. Besides, crying didn’t change anything and neither did covering her face with a pillow and hiding in bed all day. She owed Charlie more than tears, more than denial.

She was a reporter, and even though her published work so far was nothing more than a couple of gossip columns and fluff pieces, as Sheriff Ramsey had characterized them, it was time she became an investigative reporter and found out the truth about what had happened to Charlie. She owed the old man that much.

Galvanized with a new determination, she showered, then dressed in a pair of black pencil-thin slacks and a lightweight lavender sweater. Even though it was only the first week of October, the weather had been unusually cool.

The scent of bacon and freshly brewed coffee greeted her as she stepped out of her room and headed downstairs. No matter what time Savannah got up in the morning, her elderly landlady was always up before her.

Winnie sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in front of her. She smiled a greeting as Savannah entered the kitchen. “Coffee’s on and the bacon is fried. All you need to tell me is how many eggs you want.”

“None. I’m not hungry this morning.” Savannah went to the cabinet that held the coffee mugs, then poured herself a cup of the brew and joined Winnie at the table.

She suspected the old woman hadn’t rented the upstairs of her house to Savannah because she needed the money but rather because she wanted companionship and somebody to cook for. Winnie’s husband had died three years before, and it was obvious she was lonely.

“How did you sleep?” Winnie asked, the wrinkles in her forehead deepening in concern. When Savannah had come home from Charlie’s place the day before she’d told Winnie what had happened.

Savannah wrapped her hands around the warm coffee mug in an attempt to fight off a chill. “Terrible.” She suddenly remembered the nightmares that had plagued her all night, visions of blood and death and poor Charlie.

Winnie shook her head. “I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how anyone becomes so desperate they commit suicide.” She paused a moment to take a sip of her coffee. “Why, I saw Charlie yesterday at the grocery store and he seemed just fine.”

Savannah stared at Winnie. “You saw Charlie at the grocery store? What time?”

“I don’t know, it must have been around noon. We met in the ice cream section and he told me how much he loves butter pecan and I told him I was quite partial to plain old chocolate.”

“Did he buy ice cream?”

Winnie frowned. “I saw him get a gallon out of the freezer, but I didn’t see him when he left the store.”

Savannah took a sip of her coffee, her brain burning up as it worked overtime. She knew how much Charlie had loved his butter pecan ice cream. Many evenings she’d shared a bowl with him as they had played a game of chess.

Did a man who planned to commit suicide buy groceries? Did a man who intended to take his own life buy a gallon of ice cream?

All through the night her gut instinct had told her that Charlie didn’t commit suicide, and the fact that the old man had bought ice cream an hour or so before his death only deepened her gut instinct.

Winnie eyed her over the rim of her coffee cup. Despite being seventy-two years old, Winnie was still a sharp tack. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Savannah?”

“I just don’t believe that Charlie committed suicide. Aside from the fact that he bought ice cream a short time before his death, I know Charlie would have never done something like that, knowing I was coming to his house. He would have never wanted me to find him like that.”

“Then what do you think happened?”

“I think Charlie was murdered. He was murdered and somebody made it look like a suicide and I intend to prove it.”

“How are you going to do that?”

Savannah frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. One of the first things I need to do is talk to Sheriff Ramsey.” She took a sip of her coffee, then shook her head. “There’s been too many deaths around here lately.” Strange falls off tractors and from haylofts, a gas heater explosion and other odd deaths. The citizens of Cotter Creek were either unusually unlucky or something more frightening was going on.

She suddenly thought of the handsome hunk she’d literally bumped into on Charlie’s porch the night before. “What do you know about Joshua West?”

A smile curved Winnie’s lips. “Before he left town I think every rancher in the area was locking up their daughters for safekeeping. He’s a charmer, spoiled as a dozen eggs left out in the sun too long, but like all those West boys he’s got a good heart.”

Savannah didn’t care if he was a charmer, or spoiled or had a good heart. His attraction as far as she was concerned was that he was a local who had been out of town for a while and might have some objectivity that could work to her advantage.

But, more importantly, she knew the West name carried weight in Cotter Creek and the sheriff would give more credence to Joshua than he ever would to her. She had a feeling if she wanted people to take her seriously about Charlie’s death, then it wouldn’t hurt to have Joshua West on her side.

“Are you sure you don’t want something for breakfast?” Winnie asked. “You know a good breakfast is always the way to start a good day.”

Savannah laughed. “My mother believed a protein shake and an hour on a StairMaster was the way to start each day.”

“That’s what happens to people when they got more money than sense,” Winnie scoffed. “A couple of eggs?”

Savannah relented and nodded her head. She suspected Winnie didn’t care so much about what she ate but wasn’t quite ready for Savannah to fly out the door and leave her alone for the day.

It was after nine when Savannah left the house, her stomach full and a renewed burn of determination in her soul. Her first stop was at the sheriff’s office, where she was disappointed to learn that Sheriff Ramsey wasn’t in.

She left the office, got into her car and headed for the West ranch. She hoped she could enlist Joshua West’s help in demanding a full investigation into Charlie’s death. Charlie deserved at least that much, and, as far as Savannah was concerned, Sheriff Ramsey hadn’t been too diligent in following up on other deaths in the small town.

The West ranch was a sprawl of pasture surrounding a huge rambling home with a long wooden porch that was perfect for sitting and watching the sunset in the evenings. On more than one occasion in the last couple of months she and Meredith had sat on the porch, talking while the sun went down.

Savannah had always found friendships difficult. From the time she was young her mother had chosen her friends. They had to be beautiful, stylish and from privileged backgrounds. Savannah had never fit in and had found it difficult to trust females so different than her.

But Meredith West was another story. She certainly came from a family who had tons of money, but she suffered no airs, didn’t judge people by their clothes or their looks. She was refreshingly normal after Savannah’s years of being surrounded by superficiality.

It was Meredith who answered Savannah’s knock. As usual the tall brunette was clad in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Her long dark hair was in a careless ponytail. “Savannah.” She opened the screen door, stepped out on the porch and drew Savannah into the warmth of an embrace. “I heard about Charlie. I’m so sorry.”

A wave of grief swept over Savannah, but she shoved it aside. She had no time for grief. She was on a mission. “Thanks, I still can’t believe it myself.”

“I was going to call you this morning to see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing okay. Actually, I’m here to see your brother.”

Meredith frowned. “My brother? Which one?”

“Joshua. Is he home?”

“He’s here, but he’s out riding at the moment. Come on in. He should be back before too long.” Meredith ushered her into the house and toward the kitchen.

Smokey Johnson, the West cook and the man who had helped raise the West children when their mother had been murdered, scowled as the two women entered the room he considered his exclusive domain.

“You be nice, Smokey,” Meredith exclaimed. “Savannah is quite fragile this morning.”

The old man snorted. “Red-haired girls aren’t fragile. They’re tough as nails, got to be to get through all the teasing they take when they’re young.”

Savannah was accustomed to Smokey, who was a cliché of a tough old coot with a heart of gold. “I’m not feeling fragile this morning. I’m feeling more than a little pissed off because I think somebody killed my friend and made it look like a suicide.”

Smokey pointed a gnarled finger toward a chair at the table. “What are you talking about? According to what Joshua told us when he got home last night it was an open-and-shut case of suicide.”

Meredith gazed at Savannah sympathetically. “Everyone knew how much Charlie missed his wife since her death eight years ago. Maybe he just got tired of waiting to join her in the hereafter.”

Savannah shook her head vehemently. “After eight years? Give me a break. Sure, Charlie missed Rebecca and he was looking forward to the time when they would be together again, but he also believed that everyone went when it was time for them to go. After eight years of being alone why would he suddenly decide to end it all?”

Before anyone could reply, the back door opened and Joshua stepped into the kitchen. He stopped short at the sight of her and frowned. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

“Joshua!” Meredith shot her brother a dirty look. “Where are your manners?”

“I lost them when she kicked me in the shin hard enough to half cripple me yesterday.”

Warmth swept up Savannah’s neck as she remembered the kick she’d delivered to him. “I thought you’d killed Charlie.”

She’d recognized in the brief time she’d seen him the day before that he was handsome, but his attractiveness today hit her like a kick from a horse.

She hadn’t noticed yesterday just how thick and shiny his dark hair was, or the amazing green of his eyes. She hadn’t paid attention to his raw masculinity that today screamed from him.

Clad in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved knit shirt that pulled tautly across broad shoulders and a flat stomach, he was blatantly male and sexy as hell.

Winnie had said he was a charmer, but there was nothing charming in the look he shot her. He looked irritated and tense and just a whisper away from dangerous.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’m heading to the shower,” he said.

Savannah popped out of the chair. “Actually, I’m here to talk to you. Would it be possible for us to speak somewhere alone?”

“I can’t imagine what we’d have to talk about.” He started out of the kitchen and with a glance of apology to Meredith and Smokey, Savannah followed Joshua.

“Of course we have things to talk about,” she exclaimed, unable to help but notice that he had a perfect butt for jeans. “We were both at a crime scene. We should compare notes and see if we can help the investigation.”

His long strides carried him down the hallway toward the master bathroom. “There’s no notes to compare. The investigation is over. I spoke to Ramsey early this morning, and according to him there’s no reason not to think it’s anything but a suicide.”

“Ramsey is an overweight, lazy, incompetent jerk who is just biding time until his retirement at the end of the year,” she protested.

She jumped in surprise and stumbled a step backward as he unexpectedly twisted around to face her in the bathroom doorway.

“And he told me you were an overeager, conspiracy theorist who was desperate to find a story that will take you away from writing silly gossip columns and gain you some real respect.” He yanked his shirt over his head and threw it to the bathroom floor behind him.

Savannah tried to maintain focus as she was presented a broad, bare, muscled chest that would make most women weak in the knees. “That’s not true. Ramsey doesn’t like me because I’m questioning his investigation skills.”

Joshua’s hands went to the waist of his jeans where they unfastened the first button on his fly. A lazy smile curved his lips upward. For just a moment there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the area.

“Unless you want to discuss this while I scrub your back, I suggest you take a hike,” he said.

For just a brief, insane moment the idea of this sexy man washing her back was infinitely appealing. But she reminded herself why she was here and why it was important to get Joshua West on her side.

“All right, I’ll take a hike right now, but sooner or later you need to hear what I have to tell you. Something isn’t right in this town, and somebody needs to do something about it.” Hoping she sounded mysterious enough to pique his interest, she turned on her heel and stomped back to the kitchen.

Joshua walked toward the white tent that had been set up in the cemetery for Charlie Summit’s funeral. When he’d parked, he’d been dismayed to see so few cars here. It appeared that Charlie was going to go out of this world much like he’d spent most of the past eight years of his life…alone.

Joshua knew all about feeling alone, although in the year and a half he’d spent in New York City, he’d rarely been alone.

He’d worked hard and had played even harder. He’d thrown himself into the Manhattan single lifestyle, serial-dating sharp, beautiful women with fascinating careers. But in spite of all that he’d never shaken a core sense of homesickness that had eaten at him day and night.

Failure. A little voice whispered in his head. He’d struck out on his own, determined to make a life separate from his family. He’d wanted to be his own man, but in the end he’d run back home like a wounded puppy.

Although he had been successful as a stockbroker, the shambles of his personal life had finally forced him to get out of town and head back to Cotter Creek.

His father, Red West, had just assumed Joshua would step back into the family business and work for Wild West Protection Services as a bodyguard, but Joshua had told his dad he was taking a little time off to decide what he wanted to do. Going to work for the family business felt like yet another failure.

He shoved these thoughts aside as he approached the tent, the scent of too-sweet flowers cloying in the air. Charlie had left a will with an account set up for his funeral. He’d wanted only a gravesite service and to be buried beside his beloved wife, Rebecca. Together in life, now together again in death.

As he entered the white structure, he stiffened at the sight of Savannah Clarion. She stood next to Winnie Halifax, Savannah’s hair sparkling and appearing even more red against the black of her longsleeved blouse and black slacks.

He nodded to the preacher, then took up a position on the opposite side of the casket from Savannah, who had been an irritating pain in his ass over the past three days.

She’d left a message at the house every day, requesting that he call her back, but the last thing Joshua wanted was to get mixed up in any drama. He’d had enough of that before he’d left New York.

Within a few minutes others began to arrive. His sister, Meredith appeared with his dad and Smokey. Meredith hurried to Savannah’s side, while his father and Smokey joined him.

Raymond Buchannan, the owner of the Cotter Creek newspaper, arrived, looking old and tired. Joshua realized the man must be close to eighty and wondered if he ever intended to retire.

Mayor Aaron Sharp also arrived, shaking everyone’s hands as if he were at a political campaign instead of a funeral.

Finally the service began. As Reverend Baxter talked about life and death and redemption, Joshua found himself looking again and again at Savannah.

He hadn’t thought her particularly pretty the day he’d seen her at Charlie’s house, but there was something in her irregular features that was arresting.

The dark red curls suited her, complemented by her eyes, which were a mix of gold and copper. She had a killer figure, slender hips and long legs and was unusually busty for a slim woman.

Over the past three days Meredith had made it her job to extol the virtues of her friend to him. Witty and smart. Fun-loving and soft-hearted. Tenacious and outspoken. He’d heard more about Savannah Clarion than he’d ever wanted to know.

He had a feeling his sister was attempting to indulge in a little matchmaking, but Meredith didn’t realize the last thing Joshua wanted in his life was any kind of a relationship with a woman.

Unlike his brothers, who seemed to have a knack when it came to the opposite sex, Joshua had failed miserably in that respect as well.

Grief for Charlie shoved every other thought out of his head. The old man had been a special friend to Joshua before he’d left Cotter Creek, and Joshua would miss him.

He was grateful when the service ended. He didn’t hang around to make nice with the other funeral attendees, but rather slipped out of the tent the minute the service was complete.

Instead of walking to where his car was parked, he followed the path to another area of the cemetery, the place where his mother was buried.

The entire right corner of the cemetery contained the West plots. His mother was buried beneath a grand red maple tree whose leaves were just beginning to turn scarlet with autumn grandeur.

He stood before her headstone. Elizabeth West, beloved wife, beloved mother. Joshua had never known her. He’d been a baby when she’d gone to the grocery store one evening and later had been found dead beside her car on the side of the road. She’d been strangled, and her murderer had never been found.

Sometimes Joshua wondered what his life would have been like if he’d had a mother, if he’d been raised by a woman instead of by his father and the cantankerous Smokey, who had run the house like an army barrack.

He’d heard stories about his mother, a beautiful woman who had given up an acting career to marry his father and build a family here in Cotter Creek. But he knew her only from photos and didn’t have a single memory of his own.

“Meredith told me about your mother’s death.”

Joshua stiffened at the sound of Savannah’s voice. The woman was as tenacious as an Oklahoma tick on the back of a hound dog. He turned around to look at her, noting how the sunshine sparked in her hair. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to listen to me, that’s all. Just hear me out with an open mind. Did you know that Charlie went grocery shopping an hour before his death? Did you know that he bought a gallon of butter pecan ice cream? Why does a man who is suicidal buy groceries that nobody will eat?”

She talked fast, as if afraid she wouldn’t get everything out before he walked away from her. “Joshua, Charlie knew I was coming to interview him. He would have never killed himself knowing that I was expected to be there, that I would be the one to find him like that. Charlie would have never done that to me.”

As much as Joshua didn’t want to get caught up in what he’d considered her drama, her words gave him pause. “Maybe he went shopping then got depressed. Maybe he wasn’t suicidal until five minutes before he picked up his gun.”

She shook her head, red curls bouncing. “At least three times a week I spent the evenings with Charlie. I’m telling you the man wasn’t depressed. He wasn’t suicidal. He had plans, big plans. He was going to plant a flower garden next spring, fill it with all the flowers his wife had loved. He was thinking about taking lessons to learn how to play bridge.”

Joshua wished he had touched base with Charlie more often while he’d been in New York. He’d called every couple of weeks, but the calls had been brief, too brief.

“It’s not just Charlie,” Savannah continued. “There have been others deaths…too many.”

He suddenly remembered her parting words to Ramsey the day of Charlie’s death, that something was rotten in Cotter Creek and she intended to get to the bottom of it. “What deaths? What are you talking about?”

She glanced around, then looked back at him. “It’s too complicated to go over all of it now.”

“Why me? Why are you coming to me with all this?”

She frowned, the gesture wrinkling her freckled nose with charming appeal. “For two reasons. First of all you’ve been out of town for a while. I figure you’ll be more objective about things than any of the other locals. Secondly, you’re a West and that holds a lot of weight in this area of the country.”

“Meredith is a West, why not enlist her help?” he countered. He tried not to notice her scent, a spicy musk that was intensely pleasant.

“I told you the other day that Sheriff Ramsey was lazy and incompetent. The man is also a raging sexist. He wouldn’t pay any more attention to Meredith than he has to me.”

Despite his reluctance to the contrary, he was intrigued. “Okay, I’m listening,” he said.

She glanced over her shoulder to where Winnie stood in the distance, obviously waiting for her. “I can’t go into it all now. Besides, I have some research at the newspaper office. I’d like you to see it.”

He had a feeling she wasn’t going to stop bothering him until he agreed at least to see what she thought she had. “Okay, just tell me when and where to meet you and I’ll see what you’ve got.”

Her features lit with relief. “We need to meet at the newspaper office, but I’d rather do it when Mr. Buchannan isn’t there. He always leaves the office at around eight in the evenings. Could you meet me there tonight about nine?”

Somewhere deep inside him, he knew this was probably a mistake. But, since returning to Cotter Creek, he’d felt unsettled. He’d grown accustomed to the fast pace of the city, of having places to go and things to do. In truth, he was bored, and he told himself that was the only reason he was agreeing to meet her.

“All right, nine tonight at the newspaper office,” he said.

She smiled. The look softened her features and transformed her from arresting into something close to beautiful. “I’ll see you tonight. And Joshua, thanks.” She turned and hurried toward Winnie.

Joshua stared after her, wishing he could take back his agreement to meet her. He had a feeling he’d made yet another mistake in a long string of mistakes that had been made in the past year and a half.

Chapter 3

The Cotter Creek Chronicle office was located on the bottom floor of a two-story brick building on Main Street. The front of the building was a large picture window, at the moment as dark as the night that surrounded Savannah as she parked her car in front.

It was eight-forty-five, and Main Street was completely deserted. Most of the shops and businesses closed their doors at eight-thirty. The only nightlife Cotter Creek had to offer was a couple of taverns on the edge of town.

She turned off her car engine and tapped a pale pink fingernail on her steering wheel, a surge of excitement filling her.

Finally, finally she had somebody who would listen to her. She certainly hadn’t been able to get her boss, Raymond Buchannan, interested in her theories. All he wanted from her were fluff pieces that would please a more feminine audience.

“I write the news fit to print,” he’d told her the last time she’d broached him about the multitude of deaths in the Cotter Creek area. “I reported what happened in each of those deaths, and there’s nothing left to report.”

Nor had Sheriff Ramsey or Mayor Aaron Sharp been interested in what she’d had to say. This town definitely had a good old boy network and she had several strikes against her. First, she was a woman. Second, she was an outsider. And last, she had a feeling that most everyone in town thought she was here only to make a name for herself and have a body of work to take to a bigger newspaper job.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It had taken her only a week in this dusty Oklahoma town to fall in love with Cotter Creek. She had no intention of going anywhere. In fact, she had broached the topic of buying the paper from Raymond Buchannan when he decided to retire. If he ever decided to retire.

She had enough money in a savings account to be able to meet whatever price Buchannan settled on when he did decide to sell. Thankfully her parents had begun investing for her when she was a baby, and on her twenty-first birthday those funds had become available to her. Over the past four years she’d tried not to touch that money unless it was absolutely necessary, believing that it was her nest egg for the future.

At exactly nine o’clock a big black pickup pulled into the parking space next to hers. Joshua got out of the vehicle, and Savannah tried not to notice his physical attractiveness.

He was clad in a pair of black slacks, a black turtleneck and a worn leather bomber jacket. His hair was slightly tousled, as if he’d driven with the window down and the night breeze had blown through his dark locks.

The last thing she was looking for was to be attracted to any man, but especially one who had the reputation for being a player, at least before he’d left town. Besides, men who looked like Joshua West didn’t date women who looked like her, and she’d do well to remember that.

She quickly got out of her car and smiled at him. “Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it.”

He gave her a curt nod, his expression letting her know he would rather be anywhere but here at the moment. She pulled her keys from her purse and walked to the front door of the newspaper office.

“All I ask of you is to please keep an open mind when I show you everything I’ve compiled. It took a while and a lot of research before I finally started to make some horrifying connections.” She was rambling. When she was nervous she always rambled and something about the silent man standing next to her made her nervous.

She sighed in relief as she got the door open. She stepped inside, flipped on the overhead lights, then walked across the wooden floor toward a small room in the back that served as her office.

She was conscious of Joshua close behind her, his loafers ringing on the floor. He had yet to say a word, and that only made her anxiety increase.

If he saw the material she’d gathered and judged her as some crazy conspiracy theorist looking for a story she didn’t know what she’d do. She hadn’t felt so right about anything since she’d been seventeen years old and told her mother that she absolutely, positively was not getting a breast reduction.

The office Buchannan had given her to work in was little more than the size of a storage closet. It was only large enough to contain her desk and office chair. She’d tried to dress up the small space, claim it as her own by placing things she liked on the scarred wooden desk.

There was a basket of her favorite candy bars, a stuffed frog that one of her friends had given her for luck when she’d left Scottsdale and, finally, there was a plaque that read, Live Well, Laugh Hard.

Joshua picked up one of the candy bars and gave her a wry look. “Guess you aren’t into counting calories.”

“Never,” she replied and punched the button to boot up her computer. “My mother started counting my calories the day I was born. When I finally got out on my own I decided I was going to eat whatever the heck I wanted.”

He nodded, a touch of amusement lightening his green eyes. “That’s one of the things that drove me crazy about the women in New York. None of them eat. I’d take a lady out to dinner and it would have been just as easy to toss her a head of lettuce and call it a night.”

Despite her nervous tension, Savannah laughed. “You take me out to dinner and I’ll eat your money’s worth,” she exclaimed, then hurriedly added, “not that I think you’d ever take me out to dinner. I mean, not that I’d even want you to take me to dinner.”

His amusement was even more evident as he simply stood there and watched as she dug a hole with her tongue. She flushed and bit her lip to stop her mouth from running away with her.

Thankfully at that moment the computer loaded up and she sat in the chair in front of it to retrieve the files she wanted him to see.

He moved behind her and she was intensely aware of his nearness. He smelled like the outdoors, a scent of fresh Oklahoma sunshine and night breeze and beneath that a clean cologne that tantalized her senses.

“I started all this because of what happened to Kate Sampson’s father,” she said as she finally found the file she wanted and opened it.

Kate Sampson’s father, Gray, had been murdered three months before. It had been Joshua’s brother Zack who had ridden to her rescue and helped her solve the murder. But the one thing the investigation hadn’t yielded was a credible motive for his murder.

“I think maybe Zack’s planning on running for sheriff in November,” Joshua said, his breath warm on the nape of her neck.

“I’m sure he’ll do a far better job than Ramsey,” she replied and hit the print button. “You might not know it, but Gray Sampson was killed by a ranch hand named Sonny Williams.”

“I heard. My brother Clay told me about Gray’s murder and Sonny’s arrest.”

She pulled up another file and began the print process, then turned around in the chair to face him. “But, did you know that Sonny Williams supposedly killed himself in jail? Did you know that before he died he said that Gray’s death was just a part of a bigger plan?”

Joshua frowned. “I might have been told something about that, but I was a thousand miles away and to be honest had other things on my mind.”

“Gray Sampson’s death wasn’t the beginning of things.” She stood and grabbed the material from the printer. “Let’s go back out to Raymond’s desk.”

The space in her office was too small for the two of them as far as she was concerned. Joshua was too tall, too male to share such a tiny space with her.

She breathed a sigh of relief as they returned to the main office area. At least in here she could breathe without smelling the scent of him.

She sat at Raymond’s desk and motioned him into the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Are you a wannabe true crime writer or what?” he asked.

The question irritated her. He knew nothing about her but was already making judgments. “No, I’m not. When I took the job here I decided it was a good idea to read as many of the back issues of the paper as possible to familiarize myself with both the newspaper I’d be writing for and the town where I’d chosen to live.”

“And why did you choose Cotter Creek?” His green gaze held hers intently, as if he were seeking answers to questions he hadn’t yet spoken.

“To be perfectly honest, I feel as if Cotter Creek chose me.” She broke eye contact with him, finding his direct gaze somewhat disconcerting. Instead she looked at the framed front page of the first copy of the Cotter Creek Chronicle that hung on the wall just behind him.

“I wasn’t sure where I was going when I left Scottsdale and eventually made it to Cotter Creek where my car transmission blew. It took a couple of days to fix and, while I was waiting, I just fell in love with the town.”

“And how did you meet Charlie?”

She looked at him again, fighting a wave of impatience. “I thought you were here to see the material I have, not to play a game of twenty questions.”

He smiled, one that lifted only a corner of his mouth with sexy laziness. “I like to know a little bit about the people I deal with.”

“Fine. I’m twenty-four years old. I love animals and candy bars, I hate superficiality and people who don’t have a sense of humor.”

She leaned forward, meeting his gaze directly. “I met Charlie on the first day I arrived in town. I’d just left my car at Mechanic’s Mansion and was looking for a hotel or motel to stay in while the car was being fixed. There were a couple of teenagers on the corner and I asked them about accommodations, and they told me there was a nice bed-and-breakfast on the edge of town.”

His eyes began to glitter with humor, obviously seeing where her story was leading. “Anyway,” she continued, “one of the boys offered to drive me there. He took me to the entrance to Charlie’s place and left me there.”

“I’ll bet you were horrified,” he said.

She laughed. “When I broke through the trees and saw Charlie’s place, I suspected I’d been had, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure so I marched up to Charlie’s door and told him I’d heard he ran the best bed and breakfast in town.”

She smiled at the memory of Charlie’s face and a swift sharp grief pierced through her, stealing her smile and forcing the sting of tears to her eyes. She raised a hand to swipe them away.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” His voice was gentle and she saw real regret in his eyes.

She nodded. “I’m just going to miss him so much. Other than your sister and Winnie, Charlie was my only friend in town. We used to spend hours playing chess.” She released a small laugh. “I never got a chance to beat him.”

“I could never beat him either.” For a long moment their gazes remained locked. It was a moment of connection, two people mourning for somebody they had both loved. This time he broke the eye contact and gestured to the papers in front of her. “Okay, show me what you’ve got.”

She cleared her throat, stuffing her emotions for Charlie back deep inside. “I noticed when I was reading back issues of the paper that there seemed to be an unusual number of fatal accidents in the area.”

“It’s a ranching and farming community, there are always accidents.”

“True, but Cotter Creek seemed to have more than its share, so two weeks ago I did some statistical analysis, comparing like-size ranching and farming communities. What I discovered was that the incidence of accidental deaths was three hundred times higher in Cotter Creek than anywhere else I compared it with.”

Joshua raised a dark eyebrow and took the sheet of paper that held her data. She watched him as he studied it. She’d met most of his brothers, each more handsome than the next, but Joshua seemed to have gotten the West good-looking gene in spades.

Savannah had been raised among the beautiful people of Scottsdale and if they weren’t beautiful by nature, then plastic surgery solved the problem. She’d been the anomaly, a busty redhead with a snub nose covered in freckles, who had no interest in beestung lips or liposuction.

By nature she didn’t particularly trust handsome men. She knew she was the kind of girl handsome men took home only when all the pretty blondes and brunettes had left the party.

She’d had one relationship with a man who’d been so attractive he’d taken her breath away, but it had turned out to be a cliché. He’d left her for a gorgeous woman who had taken his breath away.

But she needed to trust Joshua West. She needed him in her corner.

Her mind flashed with an image of him standing in the bathroom doorway, his chest splendidly naked and tautly muscled. A wave of warmth fluttered through her at the memory. Her last relationship had been almost a year ago, long enough that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have a warm naked chest pressed against her own. Almost…but not quite.

“Okay.” He set the paper back on the desk and looked at her, no trace of humor in his gaze. “You’ve got my attention.”

“Trust me, that’s just the beginning,” she said. She handed him the next paper she’d printed off. “This is a list of all the deaths that have occurred in Cotter Creek in the past two years.” She focused on her subject and tried to forget the vision of his naked chest that had popped unbidden into her head.

“If you take each one separately, they don’t seem so ominous…a tractor accident, a fall from a hayloft, a gas heater malfunction. You know Gray Sampson’s death had initially been ruled accidental. Sheriff Ramsey assumed he’d been thrown from his horse and had hit his head on a rock.”

She talked faster and faster, needing to get everything out. “It was only when Gray’s daughter and your brother Zack began to investigate that they realized it wasn’t an accident, but instead was murder.”

Joshua held up a hand to stop her. “Take a breath before you pass out.”

She felt a blush sweep up her neck. “Sorry, I’ve just been waiting so long for somebody to really listen to me. For the last week and a half I’ve been telling anyone and everyone that something isn’t right here, but nobody is interested in hearing me out.”

“Right now all you’ve convinced me of is that in the past year and a half the people of Cotter Creek were either more careless or more unlucky than others.”

“I’m not finished yet,” she replied. “By the time I am, you’ll see that something terrible is happening in this town, and unless somebody does something about it, more people are going to die.”

Joshua had yet to make up his mind about Savannah. He wasn’t sure if she was a drama queen looking for excitement or was really onto something.

She’d surprised him with her statistical analysis and the sharp intelligence that gleamed from her amber-colored eyes.

The one thing he did know was that something about Savannah Clarion made him a little bit jumpy, made his thoughts race in directions they shouldn’t be going.

As she’d talked to him, he’d found himself wondering if her red curls were soft and silky or wiry and coarse. He’d wondered if her full mouth would be soft and yielding beneath his or fierce and demanding?

Those kinds of thoughts irritated him. Hadn’t he learned his lesson in New York? He focused his attention on the next piece of paper she shoved over in front of him.

“I made a list of all the people who have died. As you can see, all of them are men,” she said.

He read the list of names, then looked back at her. “Look, this is all very interesting, but I don’t see any big conspiracy here.”

She frowned, her lower lip jutting out slightly in what appeared to be a small pout. “I’m not finished with all the investigating I intend to do,” she said. “Help me, Joshua. Please help me find out exactly what happened to all these men. With two of us working together it will take half the time to get some answers.”

He leaned back in his chair and swiped a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure what the questions are that need to be asked.”

“We need to look at each individual incident and see if there are any anomalies, anything that doesn’t fit with it being an accident. Like I said before, Gray Sampson’s death would have been ruled an accident. It wasn’t until your brother picked up the rock where Gray had supposedly fallen off his horse and hit his head and saw blood on both sides that they realized the rock had been used to bludgeon him to death.”

She paused to draw a deep breath and he tried not to notice the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the light lavender sweater she wore.

“As far as I’m concerned, Charlie buying ice cream an hour before he supposedly committed suicide is a huge red flag,” she continued. “Joshua, you were his friend. You should know Charlie didn’t have a suicidal bone in his body. Don’t you want to know the truth? Isn’t Charlie worth a little of your time?”

Joshua sighed. He had to admit that the fact that Charlie bought groceries then went home and blew his brains out, didn’t make sense. Charlie’s wife Rebecca had been gone a long time and Charlie seemed to have made peace with the fact that he would live out the rest of his years alone.

Surely if a man was going to commit suicide to be with his departed wife, he wouldn’t wait eight long years. Charlie’s suicide just didn’t make sense, although any other scenario didn’t make sense either.

What else do you have to do with your time, a little voice whispered inside his head? He didn’t want to work the family business and he wasn’t interested in continuing as a stockbroker, but had no idea what he really wanted to do. He had nothing but time on his hands at the moment.

“All right,” he relented after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll do some checking into these deaths. I’ll get the accident reports and look them over.”

“Thank you.” She smiled and he felt a jolt of heat sweep through him. She had one hell of a smile. She grabbed a sheet of paper and scribbled something then handed it to him. “That’s my phone number at Winnie’s and my cell phone number.”

He took them reluctantly, having no intention of calling her except to tell her he’d done as she’d requested. Something about her unsettled him and the less interaction she had with him the better he’d feel. “It should just take me a day or two.” He stood, eager to be away from her with her sexy scent and heart-stopping smile.

She handed him the papers she’d printed off and he folded them and stuck them in his back pocket. “Why did you decide to come back to Cotter Creek?” she asked, also rising. “Meredith told me you’d been doing quite well in New York.”

I ran back home like a dog with my tail tucked between my legs. I screwed up with a relationship that turned more than ugly. The thoughts flew through his head, bringing with him the sense of failure that had ridden his shoulders since he’d made the decision to return home.

“I missed my family. When you’re used to being surrounded by people who care about you, a place like New York City can be pretty lonely.”

She eyed him wryly. “I doubt if a man like you had too many lonely nights.”

“There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely.” He gestured toward the door, uncomfortable with the personal turn of the conversation.

“Must be nice to have a loving family,” she said as she gathered her papers, then joined him at the front door.

“You aren’t close with your family?” he asked. She stood close enough to him that he could again smell her scent, a heady fragrance that put all his nerves on alert.

“It’s just me and my parents,” she replied. “I don’t think my mother ever recovered from the shock of not birthing a perfect blond, beautiful miniature of herself, and my father was mostly absent while I was growing up. He had to work long hours to keep my mother in baubles and bling.”

She turned out the light, locked the door and they stepped out of the building. Night had completely fallen, but the illumination from a full moon cascaded down, painting her features in a soft, becoming light.

“I can’t thank you enough for meeting me here tonight and listening to me.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned. “You haven’t convinced me that there’s anything ominous going on.”

She nodded, her curls dancing with the gesture. “How are Jessie and Judd?”

Joshua thought of the two dogs he’d brought home from Charlie’s place. “Initially they were confused and seemed depressed, but they’re beginning to settle in just fine. Smokey wasn’t thrilled that I’d brought them home.”

She laughed, a low throaty sound. “Is that man ever happy about anything?”

He grinned. “Smokey’s bark is definitely louder than his bite. After my mother’s death I’m not sure my father could have coped with six small children without Smokey’s help.”

“How did that happen? I mean, where did he come from?”

“Smokey worked as a foreman on the ranch until a terrible fall from a horse crushed his leg and left him with permanent damage. He’d just about healed from his wounds when my mother was murdered. Smokey stepped into the house as if he were born to the job.”

“I’d love to interview him for my column. Actually, I’d love to interview you, you know, something about the return of the prodigal son.”

“No way, I’m not interested in being interviewed. And good luck with Smokey,” he added drily. At that moment a loud bang resounded and almost simultaneously the picture window just to the right of them exploded.

Without thought, acting only on instinct, Joshua dove toward Savannah and tackled her to the ground.

Chapter 4

Savannah hit the pavement hard, the back of her head connecting with the concrete with a dull whack that momentarily created whirling stars in her brain. Joshua’s body covered hers as shards of glass rained down around them.

For a moment she was frozen, unable to think. The back of her head throbbed from the blow. She opened her eyes and winced. “What happened?” she asked as the initial shock began to wear off.

“Shh.” He shushed her sharply. She could swear she felt his heart pounding against her chest, but then wasn’t sure if it was his or her own beating so frantically.

In the moonlight she could see his features, taut and dangerous-looking as he gazed at the darkness across the street.

What was he looking for? What had just happened? A dog barked in the distance, the only sound in the otherwise silent night. “What’s going on? Do you see anything?” she whispered.

“Where are your keys to the office?” His voice was like hers, just a whisper.

She dug her hand into her pocket and withdrew the keys. He took them from her. For the first time since they’d fallen to the pavement, he looked down at her. “I’m going to open the office door and when I do, I want you to crawl inside. Whatever you do, don’t stand up.”

His eyes gleamed more silver than green in the moonlight. Dangerous. He looked so dangerous it frightened her. “What happened, Joshua?” she asked again, her fear evident in her voice. “What’s going on?”

“Somebody just took a shot at us.” His eyes narrowed as he once again looked across the street. “And I don’t know if the shooter is still there waiting for us to make a move or not.”

A shot? Somebody had shot at them? Fear swelled inside her. Her head throbbed with nauseating intensity. “I told you something was rotten in this town.” Her voice rose in volume. Surely this was proof. “I must be onto something and now somebody is trying to shut me up.”

“How about you shut up right now until we get inside and can call the sheriff.”

She would have been offended by his words if she hadn’t been so busy trying to process the fact that apparently somebody had just tried to kill them.

As he started to get off her, she had the crazy need to wrap her arms around his neck and keep him in place so close to her.

Don’t go, she wanted to say. But, she didn’t. She held her breath as he slowly eased up into a crouch and quickly made his way to the office door.

She tensed, waiting for another gun report, praying another bullet didn’t come careening out of the night toward him. She released a sigh of relief as he reached the door, unlocked it and shoved it open.

“Keep low,” he said.

Keep low? She’d crawl on her belly like a worm if it kept her alive. And that’s exactly what she did. As she moved, she was aware of the grit of the sidewalk beneath her, the shards of glass that littered the way.

Tension made her feel like throwing up. Somebody had shot at her. Somebody had pointed a gun and pulled the trigger. Her head pounded with the horrifying knowledge. Apparently somebody wanted her dead.

She made it to the doorway and slid inside. Joshua sat on the floor next to Raymond Buchannan’s desk, the phone to his ear. As she crawled up next to him he hung up. “The sheriff is on his way. Are you okay?”

“My head hurts and my clothes are ruined, but other than being positively terrified, I think I’m fine.” But, she wasn’t fine. A trembling shuddered through her as she thought of the window exploding and the bullet that had caused it.

He nodded, then rising to a crouch once again he moved away from the desk and to the edge of the broken window where he peered outside. “I don’t think our shooter is out there now.”

“How do you know that?” Even though she wasn’t at all sure she liked Joshua West that much, what she wanted to do more than anything at the moment was curl up in his arms. There was no doubt in her mind that the bullet had been meant for her.

He turned from the window and glanced back at her, his eyes glittering darkly. “If the shooter was still out there, there’s no way we would have been able to make it back inside to call the sheriff. He would have fired again to try to prevent us getting help.”

“What more proof do you need that something is going on? Somebody just tried to kill me and it can only be because I’m digging into things somebody doesn’t want uncovered.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he replied tersely. “And when the sheriff gets here let me do the talking. If you come off like a half-hysterical female, he won’t listen to either one of us.”

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