caused your herd to stampede?”
As he listened to her explain what had happened, he tried to figure out why she had called him. She’d certainly made it clear years ago that she didn’t like him, had resented his relationship with her father.
She’d been a brat, trying to undermine him, competing with him for her father’s attention and generally making his life miserable when they’d been younger. So why on earth had she called him?
“Are you sure it wasn’t the storm that spooked the cattle?” he asked. “There was a lot of thunder and lightning, enough to spook a herd.”
“The storm had them restless, I’ll admit to that.” She shoved a strand of her long, shiny hair behind her ear. “But I heard something like an air horn blow and that’s what spooked them into the stampede. Somebody did this on purpose and the only reason for them to have done this was in hopes that I’d be trampled to death.”
At that moment the door opened and the doctor entered. “X-rays are back. No break, just sprained. We’ll get that ankle wrapped up and get you out of here.”
Zack headed for the door, but paused as she called his name. “Would you wait for me? I still need to talk to you.”
He hesitated.
“Zack…please.”
It was the first time he’d ever heard that word from her lips and it seemed to be pulled from someplace deep inside her. “I’ll be in the waiting room,” he said grudgingly, and left the exam room.
For the past month Zack had felt as if the world had gone mad. A woman he’d come to respect and love had been murdered, his eldest brother, Tanner, had gotten married, Gray Sampson had died and now Katie had said please.
He threw himself into one of the cheap orange plastic chairs in the waiting room, unsurprised to find himself alone. The Cotter Creek Memorial Hospital was small and most folk knew that if an injury was serious, the best place to go was to one of the bigger hospitals in Oklahoma City, a two-hour drive away.
He twisted the rim of his hat between his fingers, his thoughts on the woman he’d just left. Katie Sampson, all grown up. She had turned twenty-three years old a month ago and was as pretty as any woman he’d ever seen—not that he cared.
He was just surprised that the wild-haired, skinned-knee brat had become a lovely young woman. Lovely to look at, he reminded himself, but still Katie Sampson.
As he waited, he thought about what little information Katie had given him. He dismissed the idea that somebody had intentionally spooked the herd in an effort to kill her. She’d always been given to melodrama and although unusual, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of reality for a storm to cause a herd to stampede.
A loud boom of thunder crashed overhead, but still no rain peppered the glass. Looking toward the windows, he wondered why he’d agreed to wait around, what else she could possibly want to tell him.
She entered the waiting room on crutches, her ankle cloaked in a bright purple wrap. Once again he was struck by the physical changes that had occurred since last time he’d seen her.
Her scrawny neck was now a graceful, slender column. Her grass-stained jeans clung to curvy hips and long, lean legs. That palpable tension again filled the air and he watched as she walked over to the window and stared out.
For a long moment she said nothing and he merely watched her, waiting for her to explain what she wanted, why she needed to talk to him.
“You didn’t even come to his funeral.” Her voice was low, but vibrated with a rich bitterness. She turned to face him, her pretty features twisted into an angry mask. “He loved you like a son, but you couldn’t even show up to pay your last respects.”
Grief ripped through him as he thought of her father. Gray Sampson had been far more than a neighbor to Zack. The older man had been like a second father to him. During Zack’s turbulent teenage years, Gray had been the voice of wisdom and unconditional love.
But he wasn’t about to explain himself to her. “You call me down here to talk about what I should or shouldn’t have done in the last two weeks or is there something else on your mind?”
Some of the anger left her face and for just a moment a raw vulnerability shone from her eyes and her shoulders sagged as if she carried the weight of the world on them. Zack preferred her anger, it was familiar.
“I want to hire you. Whether you believe it or not, somebody tried to get me killed this afternoon.”
He frowned. “Haven’t you heard? I’m not working for the family business anymore. I’m not for hire. Call Dalton, he’s in charge of the business while Tanner is on his honeymoon. He’ll assign somebody to you if that’s what you want.”
Zack’s father had semiretired a year before and Zack’s eldest brother, Tanner, had taken over the reins of running the company. However, Tanner had gotten married a week before and was now on his honeymoon, leaving Dalton, Zack’s second eldest brother in charge of the business.
Zack had worked as a bodyguard for the past ten years, since his twenty-first birthday, but a month ago he’d quit the family business when his last assignment had gone bad.
“I don’t want anyone else. I want you.” Whatever touch of vulnerability he’d thought he’d seen earlier in her was gone. Her eyes were steely, reminding him of when she’d been a young girl and had wanted her own way.
“I just told you, I’m not for hire anymore.”
To his surprise, she leaned toward him and placed a hand on his arm. “You’re the only person I really trust in this town and it’s not just about what happened to me this afternoon.”
Her blue eyes suddenly radiated an emotion he’d never seen in them before. Fear. Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Zack, I think somebody murdered my father.”
Chapter 2
She’d forgotten the raw masculinity that radiated from him. It was there in the simmering depths of his moss-green eyes, in the shadow of whiskers that darkened his jaw and the broad shoulders that strained at the confines of his navy T-shirt.
She dropped her hand from his arm, all too aware of the heat of his skin and her nearness to him. His scent surrounded her, the smell of the wind and the approaching storm and the underlying hint of maleness that might have stirred her if she’d allow it.
Taking a deep breath, she took a step backward as he stared at her in disbelief.
“What are you talking about?” His deep voice radiated skepticism. “From what I heard, Gray fell off his horse and hit his head. A senseless tragedy but hardly murder.”
“Dad was a championship bronco rider. There wasn’t a horse alive that could throw him. And he wasn’t riding some spirited mount that morning, he was riding Diamond, the same horse he’d been riding for the past seven years.”
The words bubbled from her like smoke from a boiling cauldron. All the fears she’d fought for the past two weeks suddenly seemed too close to the surface.
She
