Slowly, and with care, he advanced into the room. “Just keep still,” he instructed her. “Not a muscle, okay?”
Did trembling count? Samantha wondered. Because she was certain that by now she was quivering all over as she watched him withdraw a revolver from a shoulder holster inside his suit coat. What was he doing carrying a gun? Never mind, just be grateful he had one.
When he was several yards away from the bay, he stopped and took aim. “Don’t worry,” he assured her with what she could swear was nonchalance. “I’m a good shot.”
She took his word for it and prayed. The diamondback had detected his presence. Head lifted from its tight coil, it issued a sibilant alarm as it whipped around. In the next second it had no head at all. It was blown away by the bark of the revolver in Roark’s steady hand.
Samantha permitted herself to shudder in earnest before going limp with relief. “If that was a demonstration of your skills as a bodyguard, I’m impressed.”
“I don’t like to destroy nature,” he said, nodding solemnly toward the snake whose heavy body was still twisting in spasms, “but in this case…”
“Exactly.” She watched him tuck the revolver back inside the holster. “Do you always come prepared like that?”
“I’m a PI, remember?”
Samantha doubted that private investigators carried guns with them everywhere they went. On the other hand, he was no ordinary PI. Yesterday he had been clad in denim. Today he wore a trim business suit whose coat emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, making him no less potent than yesterday’s cowboy in jeans. The contrast was rather startling, reminding her that this was a man who inhabited two worlds.
Roark glanced around, discovering the marble fireplace with its tools still in place at the side of the hearth. He went and got the poker and shovel, returning with them to scrape up the remains of the snake.
“Big sucker,” he said. “Maybe not lethal if it had managed to sink its fangs in you, but you’d have suffered some serious consequences.”
Her silence must have made him realize his observation was not a welcome one. He looked up from his task, searching her face. “I’ll get rid of this thing. You okay?”
“Dandy.”
She wasn’t. She could see that for herself the moment he left, disappearing into the hallway. There was a pier glass directly opposite the bay, and even across the width of the parlor she could tell that the tall, slender woman in jacketed dress and low heels, long chestnut hair coiled at the back of her head, was badly shaken, shoulders sagging, legs looking like they were in danger of no longer supporting her.
Samantha lowered herself into the window seat. Roark found her huddled there when he returned to the parlor.
“Dumped it in the shrubbery outside,” he reported, replacing the poker and shovel.
She didn’t invite him to join her on the seat, but that was where he ended up, his big, solid body squeezed so close beside her that she could feel his heat, smell the clean, masculine scent of his soap. Quite a change from the unshaven, grimy Roark Hawke of yesterday but every bit as unsettling, though she couldn’t argue that his nearness was also comforting.
“Feeling better?” he asked, turning to her.
There it was again, that Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, hypnotizing her with its slow action that shouldn’t have been in any way alluring but somehow was.
“Much,” she lied. “Thank you for playing knight to the rescue and slaying the—well, I guess it would be serpent in this case and not dragon.” She tilted her head to one side, favoring him with a grateful smile. “And now would you please tell me just what the hell you think you’re doing?”
“Care to clarify that?”
“Turning up here like this. It’s not by chance that you happened to walk through that front door.”
“Ah, that. It’s because of the watering hole I visited last night. Some interesting people hang out there, and sometimes they provide me with useful bits of information. Seems to be a favorite haunt of one of your competitors. It only took him a couple of drinks before he was bragging to anyone who would listen that you’d just lost a major sale, that he’d taken another important listing away from you and that your agency was on the ropes.”
Van Nugent! Bad news traveled fast in the business, particularly when vipers like Nugent got hold of it. Apparently, he’d learned before she did that she wouldn’t get the River Walk property.
“So you decided I’d be desperate enough by now to change my mind about my grandfather’s inheritance.”
“It did occur to me to look you up again.”
“And I suppose it was Gail again who told you where to find me.”
“Nice lady, your office manager. Very helpful. Remind me to send her flowers.”
“Did Gail also tell you to be sure to pack a gun when you came looking for me?”
“Now, see, that was my idea. I kind of had this uncomfortable feeling by then that, if you did go and change your mind, maybe you weren’t as safe in San Antonio as you figured. Looks like I was right, huh?”
“Are you suggesting the snake was—”
“Deliberate? Why not? You think that thing just happened to crawl in here? I bet if you looked through the house you’d find a window or door somewhere that’s been forced open.” He turned his head, sweeping his gaze around the parlor. “So where are they?”
“Who?”
“The couple Gail told me you were scheduled to meet here.”
His shifts in topics were so abrupt that Samantha had trouble following them, particularly when she was feeling limp again. And vulnerable. Decidedly vulnerable. She glanced at her watch. “I guess they’re late.”
“You ever meet them?”
“No, they arranged the appointment by phone through Gail.”
“Wanna bet they never turn up? That they don’t even exist?”
She stared at him. “But that would mean—”
“Oh, yeah, a setup, because your office manager must have mentioned the house was unoccupied, and you go and walk into it with a diamondback rattler waiting for you in the parlor.”
“If that’s true,” she said, feeling weaker by the moment, “then it’s also possible…” She couldn’t name it, didn’t want to believe that anything so fantastic could be a reality.
Roark, however, had no hesitation about putting it into words. “That Joe Walker wasn’t imagining someone was after him. The same someone who wants to prevent you from qualifying for your grandfather’s estate.”
“But I told the lawyer that I intend to sign away any claim to the estate.”
“Either this guy hasn’t learned that yet, or he’s trying to make sure you don’t change your mind. Because, even though he must have realized it was unlikely the rattler would have killed you if it had managed to sting you, there was a good chance it would land you in the hospital or, if not that, scare you into not joining the cattle drive.”
“Well, his threat was an effective one.” She was silent for a moment, absorbing his conjecture and not liking it one bit. “Oh, this is crazy. Who could possibly have a motive for wanting either my grandfather or me out of the way?”
“Someone who benefits, of course. Did Ebbersole explain the contents of your grandfather’s will?”
“In more detail than I wanted to know.”
“So,