and a worn leather bomber jacket. His hair was slightly tousled, as if he’d driven with the window down and the night breeze had blown through his dark locks.
The last thing she was looking for was to be attracted to any man, but especially one who had the reputation for being a player, at least before he’d left town. Besides, men who looked like Joshua West didn’t date women who looked like her, and she’d do well to remember that.
She quickly got out of her car and smiled at him. “Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it.”
He gave her a curt nod, his expression letting her know he would rather be anywhere but here at the moment. She pulled her keys from her purse and walked to the front door of the newspaper office.
“All I ask of you is to please keep an open mind when I show you everything I’ve compiled. It took a while and a lot of research before I finally started to make some horrifying connections.” She was rambling. When she was nervous she always rambled and something about the silent man standing next to her made her nervous.
She sighed in relief as she got the door open. She stepped inside, flipped on the overhead lights, then walked across the wooden floor toward a small room in the back that served as her office.
She was conscious of Joshua close behind her, his loafers ringing on the floor. He had yet to say a word, and that only made her anxiety increase.
If he saw the material she’d gathered and judged her as some crazy conspiracy theorist looking for a story she didn’t know what she’d do. She hadn’t felt so right about anything since she’d been seventeen years old and told her mother that she absolutely, positively was not getting a breast reduction.
The office Buchannan had given her to work in was little more than the size of a storage closet. It was only large enough to contain her desk and office chair. She’d tried to dress up the small space, claim it as her own by placing things she liked on the scarred wooden desk.
There was a basket of her favorite candy bars, a stuffed frog that one of her friends had given her for luck when she’d left Scottsdale and, finally, there was a plaque that read, Live Well, Laugh Hard.
Joshua picked up one of the candy bars and gave her a wry look. “Guess you aren’t into counting calories.”
“Never,” she replied and punched the button to boot up her computer. “My mother started counting my calories the day I was born. When I finally got out on my own I decided I was going to eat whatever the heck I wanted.”
He nodded, a touch of amusement lightening his green eyes. “That’s one of the things that drove me crazy about the women in New York. None of them eat. I’d take a lady out to dinner and it would have been just as easy to toss her a head of lettuce and call it a night.”
Despite her nervous tension, Savannah laughed. “You take me out to dinner and I’ll eat your money’s worth,” she exclaimed, then hurriedly added, “not that I think you’d ever take me out to dinner. I mean, not that I’d even want you to take me to dinner.”
His amusement was even more evident as he simply stood there and watched as she dug a hole with her tongue. She flushed and bit her lip to stop her mouth from running away with her.
Thankfully at that moment the computer loaded up and she sat in the chair in front of it to retrieve the files she wanted him to see.
He moved behind her and she was intensely aware of his nearness. He smelled like the outdoors, a scent of fresh Oklahoma sunshine and night breeze and beneath that a clean cologne that tantalized her senses.
“I started all this because of what happened to Kate Sampson’s father,” she said as she finally found the file she wanted and opened it.
Kate Sampson’s father, Gray, had been murdered three months before. It had been Joshua’s brother Zack who had ridden to her rescue and helped her solve the murder. But the one thing the investigation hadn’t yielded was a credible motive for his murder.
“I think maybe Zack’s planning on running for sheriff in November,” Joshua said, his breath warm on the nape of her neck.
“I’m sure he’ll do a far better job than Ramsey,” she replied and hit the print button. “You might not know it, but Gray Sampson was killed by a ranch hand named Sonny Williams.”
“I heard. My brother Clay told me about Gray’s murder and Sonny’s arrest.”
She pulled up another file and began the print process, then turned around in the chair to face him. “But, did you know that Sonny Williams supposedly killed himself in jail? Did you know that before he died he said that Gray’s death was just a part of a bigger plan?”
Joshua frowned. “I might have been told something about that, but I was a thousand miles away and to be honest had other things on my mind.”
“Gray Sampson’s death wasn’t the beginning of things.” She stood and grabbed the material from the printer. “Let’s go back out to Raymond’s desk.”
The space in her office was too small for the two of them as far as she was concerned. Joshua was too tall, too male to share such a tiny space with her.
She breathed a sigh of relief as they returned to the main office area. At least in here she could breathe without smelling the scent of him.
She sat at Raymond’s desk and motioned him into the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Are you a wannabe true crime writer or what?” he asked.
The question irritated her. He knew nothing about her but was already making judgments. “No, I’m not. When I took the job here I decided it was a good idea to read as many of the back issues of the paper as possible to familiarize myself with both the newspaper I’d be writing for and the town where I’d chosen to live.”
“And why did you choose Cotter Creek?” His green gaze held hers intently, as if he were seeking answers to questions he hadn’t yet spoken.
“To be perfectly honest, I feel as if Cotter Creek chose me.” She broke eye contact with him, finding his direct gaze somewhat disconcerting. Instead she looked at the framed front page of the first copy of the Cotter Creek Chronicle that hung on the wall just behind him.
“I wasn’t sure where I was going when I left Scottsdale and eventually made it to Cotter Creek where my car transmission blew. It took a couple of days to fix and, while I was waiting, I just fell in love with the town.”
“And how did you meet Charlie?”
She looked at him again, fighting a wave of impatience. “I thought you were here to see the material I have, not to play a game of twenty questions.”
He smiled, one that lifted only a corner of his mouth with sexy laziness. “I like to know a little bit about the people I deal with.”
“Fine. I’m twenty-four years old. I love animals and candy bars, I hate superficiality and people who don’t have a sense of humor.”
She leaned forward, meeting his gaze directly. “I met Charlie on the first day I arrived in town. I’d just left my car at Mechanic’s Mansion and was looking for a hotel or motel to stay in while the car was being fixed. There were a couple of teenagers on the corner and I asked them about accommodations, and they told
