Her Lone Star Protector Read online

  Seb cut Rob a curious glance, then leaned back in his chair, chuckling. “Yeah, it does. Though that number’s dwindling fast. I’m beginning to wonder how we’re going to decide how to fund the profits from the Texas Cattleman’s Ball.”

  Jason leaned forward, interjecting himself into the conversation. “I thought the terms of the bet were that the last bachelor standing prior to the Ball got to choose which charity would receive the money?”

  “True,” Seb conceded. “But since Will here is married now and out of the running, that only leaves four of us. Just makes me wonder how many more will fall before time for the Ball.”

  Rob rose, preparing to leave. “You can quit your worrying, because there’ll be at least one.” At Seb’s questioning look, he tapped a finger against his chest. “Me.”

  After leaving Seb, Rob dropped by the police department and read the report the investigating officers had filed, requested a copy for his own files, then drove to the florist shop to question its owner, Rebecca Todman. He parked his sports car across the street from the shop, unfolded his long legs from the cramped interior and climbed out, slamming the door behind him. With his gaze on the shop, mentally assessing the place, he pressed a thumb against the security device attached to his key ring, activating the car alarm, then slipped the keys into his pocket and strode across the street.

  A bell chimed musically above his head as he stepped inside. The heavy floral scent of fresh-cut flowers immediately sent his sensory nerves into overload. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed once to clear his sinuses before beginning a slow inspection of the shop and its occupants.

  He pegged the owner immediately. A slim woman, about five foot six, short, dark blond hair, wearing a bright yellow bib-style apron with In Bloom embroidered in a colorful garland of flowers across its front. Though serviceable, the apron didn’t stand a prayer of hiding the feminine curves beneath it. Small, firm breasts, slender waist, delicately shaped rear, long, shapely legs. On another occasion, Rob might have taken the time to weave a few erotic fantasies of having those legs wrapped around his waist.

  But not today. And not about this woman. Until he proved otherwise, Rebecca Todman was a suspect.

  And Rob never complicated a case by becoming physically involved with a woman he’d been hired to investigate.

  From his vantage point in the center of the shop, he had a good view of her standing in front of a glass-fronted refrigerator. She was sorting through a tall bucket full of long-stemmed roses while another woman—obviously a picky customer—watched, alternately nodding her approval or shaking her head at the stems selected. Though he pretended to browse, he kept a careful eye on the two, hoping to get a feel for the owner’s current emotional state before approaching her.

  Though she appeared calm to the eye, keeping a patient smile in place for her customer, Rob easily detected the level of nerves beneath. She was scared…or, at the very least, shaken. Her face was pale with high points of color on each cheek, and her hands trembled slightly, causing the petals on the roses to quiver.

  She glanced his way and inclined her head slightly, inviting him to browse. He nodded and pretended to do so while she arranged the roses in a vase, attached a ribbon and card, then walked her customer to the door.

  When the bell chimed, signaling the customer’s departure, she headed his way, her smile still in place, though he could see the strain beneath it.

  “Welcome to In Bloom. May I help you find something?” she asked politely.

  He set down the potted plant he had been examining and glanced her way. “Maybe.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open, exposing his private-investigator license. “Rob Cole,” he said by way of introduction, while watching her face for a reaction. “I’ve been hired by Wescott Oil to investigate the death of Eric Chambers.”

  He watched her face drain of what color still remained there. She took a step back, bringing her hands together at her waist to wring. “I’ve already told the police all I know.”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I read the report. But I was hoping that you wouldn’t mind answering a few more questions.”

  She turned and moved behind the counter. “Like what?” she asked uneasily as she picked up a daisy to add to a fishbowl arrangement she’d obviously been working on earlier. He noticed that the tremble in her fingers was stronger now, the pallor of her skin a ghostlier white.

  “Just a few questions about your association with Eric Chambers. Were you friends?”

  Her chin quivered, but she quickly pressed her lips together to still it. “I’d like to think we were. We were neighbors, plus he was a client.”

  Though Seb had mentioned the business association, Rob wanted to hear Rebecca’s explanation. “Client? He was a customer in your store?”

  She chose a cluster of pink snapdragons to add to the arrangement. “That, too, but he also contracted with me to take care of his houseplants. Eric liked having live plants in his home, but didn’t have the time or talent to tend them.”

  A huge white cat jumped up onto the table where Rebecca worked, startling Rob. It arched, rubbing its back along her arm, and meowed pitifully. Rebecca’s chin quivered again.

  “Hey, Sadie,” she murmured, and set aside the flowers she was arranging to draw the cat into her arms. She nuzzled her cheek against the cat’s fur. “Are you missing Eric, sweetheart?”

  Rob immediately tensed. “Eric? That’s Chambers’s cat?”

  She nodded, then set the animal down, giving its sleek head one last, sympathetic stroke. “He was very attached to her, and her to him. I couldn’t very well leave her in the house alone, not with Eric…well, not without anyone there at the house to feed and look after her any longer.”

  “Eric didn’t have family?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and went back to arranging the flowers. “None that I know of.”

  “So you just took the cat?”

  She snapped up her head, the lift of her chin defensive. “I didn’t steal her,” she said evenly, “if that’s what you’re thinking. The police know that I have her. I’m just taking care of her until they can locate Eric’s next of kin.”

  Rob offered her what he hoped came across as an apologetic smile—though it mattered little to him, whether he had insulted her or not. He wanted information and would get it, no matter whose feelings he stepped on along the way. “I didn’t mean to imply that you had stolen the cat. But I am curious about Eric’s family.”

  The tension eased a bit from her shoulders and she turned the fishbowl around to place flowers on the opposite side. “As I said, I’m not aware of any family. He was an only child and lived with his mother until her death a couple of years ago. But that was long before I moved here,” she added as she slipped a sunflower among the other blooms.

  “Any girlfriends that you know of?”

  Her gaze went to the cat, who sat on the edge of her worktable, cleaning her paws, and a ghost of a smile touched her lips. “No. Just Sadie.”

  “Male friends?”

  She cut her gaze to his, her blue eyes flat with resentment. “If you are asking me if Eric was gay, I don’t know. We never discussed his sexual preferences.”

  So, he’d made her angry, Rob thought. Good. People usually revealed more in anger than when they were in control. “What did you discuss, then?”

  She snatched at a length of yellow ribbon hanging from a row of colorful spools at her right, cut a strip, then slipped it around the lip of the fishbowl. Though he could tell she resented his prying, she didn’t allow her anger to affect her work. The bow she tied was soft, flowing and free of the tension obvious in her shoulders and hands.

  “The weather. Plans for a cutting garden in his backyard he wanted me to design. General things. Nothing personal,” she added, slanting him a look before turning the fishbowl to inspect the finished arrangement.

  Rob followed her gaze. Thick wedges of orange and lemon slices filled the base of the clear glass bowl and helped hold the flower stems in place, as well as adding a unique decorative touch to the arrangement. He nodded his head toward her creation. “Clever idea.”

  She pressed her lips together, stubbornly refusing to accept his comment as a compliment. “It isn’t mine. I saw a similar arrangement done with limes and expanded on it.”

  “Still a clever idea.”

  She picked up the arrangement and turned her back on him to place it in the glass-fronted refrigerator behind her. “Do you have any other questions, Mr. Cole? As you can see, I’m rather busy.”

  He lifted a brow at her curt, dismissive tone, a sharp contrast to her earlier politeness. “Just one. Are those flowers for sale?”

  The question caught her off guard, which is what he’d intended, and she glanced back over her shoulder to peer at him. “You mean this?” she asked, indicating the arrangement she’d just placed in the refrigerator. At his nod, she stammered, “Well, y-yes. It is.”

  He pulled out his wallet and tossed a credit card on the counter. “I’ll take it.”

  Rebecca strained to peer out the window, watching as he pulled away from the curb. When she could no longer see him, she sank weakly down onto her stool.

  A private investigator? she asked herself.

  He looked the type…although she wasn’t completely sure what a private investigator was supposed to look like. But he certainly appeared tough enough for the job, if that was a requirement. Broad shouldered. Slim hipped. A face that looked as if it had been carved from stone. She shivered, remembering.

  He hadn’t cracked a smile the entire time he’d been in her shop. Not that she had smiled, either. But she hadn’t particularly felt like smiling. Not after the chilling morning she’d just experienced. Finding Eric’s murdered
body. Having questions hurled at her by a detective from the police department faster than she could even think. Then to have to relive it all for another investigator, this one hired by Wescott Oil, Eric’s employer.

  Sighing, she pushed to her feet and began to straighten her worktable, not wanting to think about the incident any longer. With a neatness born from habit, she put away her scissors and snips, straightened the rolls of ribbon, then brushed the bits of soil and fallen petals from the table and onto her open palm. As she stooped to dump the trash into the container below the table, she caught a glimpse of a black sports car through the front glass window, driving by her shop.

  She straightened slowly, recognizing the car as Rob Cole’s. What was he doing? she wondered, then felt a jolt when her gaze met his. She stared, unable to look away. Blue, she thought, and slicked her suddenly dry lips. His eyes were blue. The same deep shade as the morning glories that climbed her back fence. Though he wore sunglasses now that prevented her from seeing the color, she remembered.

  How could she ever forget?

  Late that same night, Rob sat before his desk in his home office, the room dark but for the glow of his computer screen. After several hours of painstaking research through government records stored on the Internet he’d pieced together the life of Rebecca Todman prior to her move to Royal, Texas. Twenty-seven-year-old female. Widowed. Former address Dallas, Texas. Housewife. No priors. Not so much as a traffic ticket to blot her record. The woman was squeaky clean.

  With a groan, he let his head fall back and scrubbed his hands over his face. So why did he have the feeling that Rebecca Todman was hiding something?

  “Because my gut tells me she is,” he muttered under his breath.

  Knowing that his gut was seldom wrong, he dropped his hands to the keyboard and quickly typed information into a search engine. He tapped his fingers against the mouse while he waited for the results to appear. Spotting a listing from the archives of a Dallas newspaper, he clicked the link, then narrowed his eyes as he studied the article and accompanying photo that came into view.

  Rebecca Todman? he asked himself, frowning at the woman pictured at a local charity event. Her hair was longer in the picture than her current style and her manner of dress much more sophisticated, not to mention more expensive, than the serviceable khaki slacks, pastel blouse and apron that he’d seen her wearing at her shop. So why the drastic change in appearance? he asked himself. A disguise? A mood swing?

  No matter what the reason, he told himself, the change in appearance only intensified his gut feeling that the woman was hiding something. And his gut was rarely wrong.

  And, at the moment, empty.

  Remembering that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, he pushed back his chair. In the kitchen he dug around in the refrigerator until he found a box of take-out fried chicken. He lifted the lid and sniffed, trying to remember when he’d put it there. With a shrug, he tossed the box onto the breakfast bar and dragged up a stool. He plucked out a thigh and took a bite, narrowing his eyes as he chewed, thinking over his interview with Rebecca Todman and his first impressions of the woman.

  Scared…or, at the very least, rattled, he amended. Guilty? He shook his head, then took another bite. For some reason that assessment didn’t quite fit, in spite of her drastic change in appearance prior to moving to Royal. She didn’t look like a murderer. She looked more like… What? he asked himself, frowning as he tried to profile her. A librarian? A Sunday school teacher? She had an innocence about her, a polite and gentle manner of speaking and moving that would qualify her for both.

  Physically she didn’t look capable of doing another person in. Overpowering Eric Chambers and strangling him with his own necktie had required a strength he doubted she possessed.

  Or did she? he reflected further, thinking of the kind of muscle work a shop like hers would require. Some of those potted plants he’d seen were large, and for the most part she worked alone, a fact he’d already verified. Which meant she would have to be stronger than she appeared, in order to lift them. But strong enough to overpower a grown man?

  Grabbing a chicken leg from the box, he strode back to his office and flipped on the overhead light. He crossed to his desk and pushed through the papers littering it, until he found the item he wanted. Tossing the half-eaten chicken leg into the trash can, he held up the picture of Eric Chambers, taken from the employee files at Wescott Oil. Five foot seven or five foot eight at the most, Rob figured, examining the photo closely. Approximately 140 pounds. A small man. And, from what Rob could tell, one who hadn’t spent any time at the gym. If caught off guard, it was possible that Rebecca could have overpowered Chambers.

  He puffed his cheeks and dropped onto his chair again, tossing the picture aside. So why was he having such a hard time believing Rebecca Todman murdered Eric?

  Thinking better with paper and pen in hand, he plucked a pad from his desk and reared back in his chair. With his bare feet propped beside his monitor, he began to jot down questions. When he’d finished, he returned to the first item he’d listed and studied it.

  Motive? He tapped the end of the pen against his lips as he mentally listed the possibilities, focusing on the two behind most murders committed: money and revenge. Was Rebecca Todman in desperate need of money? Desperate enough to kill to acquire it? He made a quick note to check into her finances, then began to jot down reasons she might want revenge. Romance gone sour? Business deal gone bad? Feud between neighbors?

  He tossed down the pen in disgust, his instincts telling him none of the reasons jibed. But maybe there wasn’t a reason. Maybe Rebecca Todman was simply a psychopathic killer, a man hater, who had considered Chambers an easy mark and killed the guy just to get her jollies. He rolled his eyes and picked up his pen again, going back to the first item he’d listed under revenge: romance gone sour.

  Rob picked up the picture of Chambers, took one look and tossed it aside with a snort. No way. The guy had no physically redeeming qualities and, if what Rob had heard was right, was a loner and probably a mama’s boy.

  Rebecca on the other hand, he reflected, scooping up a picture taken of her unawares at the crime scene, was young and attractive, and had a kind and generous heart, a trait exemplified by her willingness to take in Chambers’s orphaned cat. He arched a brow, studying the photo, noting the soft roundness of her breasts outlined behind the light cotton pastel blouse and the feminine curve of hip beneath the khaki slacks…and found himself wishing for a bed and a couple of hours of hot, sweaty sex with the woman.

  Swearing, he dropped the picture to the desk and rose from his chair, dragging a hand over his hair as he headed for the door. You’re tired, he told himself. Or horny. Maybe both. Otherwise you wouldn’t be having sexual fantasies about a woman you suspect is guilty of murder.

  But one thing was for sure. Horny or not, he’d be talking to Rebecca Todman again. Until he’d proved to himself otherwise, she was still his prime—and only—suspect.

  Two

  Rob snatched his cell phone from its holder on his sports car’s console. “Rob Cole.”

  “I’ve done some checking and here’s what I’ve got.”

  He whipped the car to the shoulder of the road, wanting to give his full attention to the call. Earlier that morning he’d phoned Chuck Endicott, a private investigator from Dallas with whom he shared information from time to time, and requested that Chuck track down what he could on Rebecca Todman. “Shoot,” he said, picking up a pen to jot down notes.

  “In a nutshell, her in-laws hate her. Think she was responsible for their son’s death. They tried to make a case of it, but the police couldn’t find enough evidence to even fill out a warrant for her arrest.”

  “Did you check it out?” Rob asked, frowning.

  “Yeah. The guy bought it in a car wreck. He was driving. Lost control of the car and broadsided a bridge embankment. Driver’s side. The wife walked away with only minor scrapes and bruises.”

  “Any signs of foul play?”

  “The car was totaled, but the in-laws demanded an inspection, accusing the daughter-in-law of tampering with the brakes or steering. Results came back negative.”