Cowboy PI (2 page)

“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….”

W
HAT 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.”