Читать книгу Cowboy Pi - Jean Barrett - Страница 12

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.