Cowboy PI Read Online Free PDF Page B

sister, Christy, was likely to treat it as a bombshell. He wasn’t wrong.
    She finally came up for air after one last, mournful “Rory, why are you doing this?”
    Christy wouldn’t understand his dilemma. She had always loved being a private investigator, had never wanted to be anything else, and couldn’t imagine any member of the family thinking about another career. But he tried.
    “Honey, I’m a frustrated rancher who needs to devote time and energy to his spread. I can’t do that if I’ve got clients to serve here in the city.”
    “Are you sure that’s all it is?”
    It wasn’t. There was another issue in the picture, and the guilt related to it that had been eating at him for weeks now. Making him wonder how he could bear to go being a PI after his fatal mistake, whether he even deserved to be. But he couldn’t bring himself to talk about that.
    “Very,” he lied. “Look, it’s not final yet.”
    “It sounds like it is. What do Ma and Pop say? Have you told Devlin and Mitch yet? Talked to Eden about it?”
    Christy was referring to their parents, who managed thehome office of Hawke Detective Agency in Chicago, and their brothers and sister who, like them, operated branches of the agency in various parts of the country.
    “They’ll support me in whatever I decide.”
    Christy issued a sigh of reluctant resignation. “All right. I don’t like it, but you have my support, too.” He had known she would come around in the end. They were that kind of loyal, loving family. “What about the San Antonio office? Will you just shut it down?”
    “I’m training a replacement.”
    “But not family. It won’t be the same.”
    No, Roark silently agreed after ending the call a moment later, it wouldn’t be the same. He regretted that. If it happened. He still had that tough decision to make, and he figured that a cattle drive, out there away from everything, would be a good place to deal with it. He promised himself that by the end of the drive he would have the answers, both for himself and his client. Providing, that is, he wasn’t too distracted on a personal level.
    Samantha Howard. Oh, yeah, she definitely qualified as a distraction, a risky one for a man who needed to concentrate on what might be his last case.
    Getting to his feet, Roark went to the window behind his desk. The agency’s fourth-floor location offered an appealing view of the city, but it wasn’t San Antonio that interested him as he stood there unconsciously exercising the fingers of his right hand. His mind was entirely occupied with the image of the woman he had escorted back to her office less than an hour ago. He couldn’t get her out of his head.
    Not beautiful, he decided. Not in the conventional sense, anyway, but eye-catching all the same with her mane of burnished chestnut hair. The kind of hair a man longed to release from that tight coil so that it tumbled into his hands, his fingers sifting through its mass while those velvet-brown eyes stroked him with her gaze. Eyes that werevulnerable but at the same time wore a strength of character.
    He tried to remember her face, and all he could picture was pride and a composure that he wanted to believe concealed hot emotions. The wild fires that challenged a man.
    Careful, Hawke. You’re letting an imagination you can’t afford control your senses. You’re being hired to protect her, not seduce her.
    Damn, he was getting himself all aroused. There were problems enough in this case without involving himself in that direction. He reminded himself that he needed to be concerned not with those long, silky legs and a pair of tantalizing breasts but with the welfare of the woman behind them. He had guessed almost from the start she was hiding some painful secret and that maybe it was connected with her resentment of him.
    Issues from the past were bound to complicate things on this fool cattle drive. Yeah, he could count on it. And why, in the first place, had he ever urged her