Her Lone Star Protector

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.