The Man from Gossamer Ridge. Paula Graves

to me—she’d heard about my side project, since by then I was thinking seriously about making it the topic of my dissertation, and I wasn’t exactly being secretive about it. She told me about Victor Logan and his scrapbook.”

      “And Brenda’s murder?”

      She nodded. “The M.O. was so similar—curvy, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in her mid-to late twenties, working alone late at night in a secluded area. Raped, then stabbed to death.” She held back a shudder. “I started searching through cold cases for that victim profile, making a list of possible victims based on characteristics the killer might find appealing—body shape, hair color, eye color, type of job—that sort of thing.”

      “The convenience store was in the middle of nowhere,” Gabe said quietly. “Melanie Phelps could have gone her whole shift without seeing anyone. Just like Brenda.”

      Alicia nodded, not missing the bleak tone of his voice. He’d clearly taken his sister-in-law’s murder hard. She wondered if there was more to it than his being the person who found her. “Did the police get anything from the security tape at the convenience store?” she asked aloud.

      Gabe released a soft huff of grim laughter. “All the tapes were missing. The guy apparently knew what to look for and covered his tracks.”

      Alicia grimaced. “He’s been at it a long time. He’s probably only getting better at it as he goes.”

      “You know what? I shouldn’t have come here. I gave the police a statement. It’s probably going to be more accurate than anything that I can come up with right now.” Rubbing his temples, Gabe stood. “I should just go back to the motel and let you get some sleep. I can ask to see my statement tomorrow and refresh my memory then.”

      Alicia caught him as he started toward the door. “Wait. Don’t go.”

      He stopped and looked down, towering over her. The room around them seemed to close in on all sides, heat roiling the air between them. Alicia dropped her hand away from his arm, but her fingers still tingled from the feel of his sinewy muscles beneath her fingertips.

      “What?” he asked, his voice little more than a murmur.

      “You can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

      His eyes narrowed slightly at her blurted offer, and her cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. Had she really just invited a stranger to stay the night?

      “I think the killer’s probably through for the night. You should be safe,” Gabe said.

      She was tempted to latch onto the easy out he’d just given her, but that wasn’t really why she’d asked him to stay. Sure, having him around would make her feel exponentially less vulnerable, but so would a German shepherd.

      “That’s not what I mean,” she said, stepping away from him to try to regain her focus. “I just—you came here because of me, and you’ve had a rough night because of me. The least I can do is give you somewhere homey and nice to stay instead of some Route 7 motel room.”

      “The motel’s not so bad,” he said. But she could tell the words were perfunctory.

      She turned back to look at him. “I make a mean omelet.”

      His lips curved. “Now you’re playing dirty.”

      “And, okay,” she admitted, “I would feel a little safer if someone else was here tonight.”

      He laid one large hand on her shoulder, the touch gentle and undemanding. Still, the flesh beneath her robe tingled and burned as if he’d caressed her. “I’ll take the sofa.”

      She eyed the brightly colored sofa warily, feeling a little guilty at the idea of his spending the night hunched up there, trying to make his long limbs fit. “It’s not very big.”

      “It’ll do.” He dropped his hand away from her shoulder and sat on the sofa, hunching forward to rub his face. His palms swished audibly against the rough patch of beard growth shadowing his jaw. “I’m keeping you up. You probably have classes in the morning or something.”

      “I have a lab at eleven,” she answered softly, surprised by how much willpower it was taking not to snuggle up next to him on the sofa. Where had this sudden susceptibility to big biceps and sexy blue eyes come from?

      She was a career woman. Dating was a sporadic thing for her, worked in around classes and studies. She’d tried dating entirely outside the criminology pool, which ended in disaster. Then she’d tried dating a cop—not quite a disaster, but no happy ending there, either. She couldn’t give the time or attention required to nurture a long-term relationship.

      Recently, she’d stopped trying.

      “Why criminology?” Gabe’s voice rumbled into the middle of her musings. She found him looking up at her, curiosity tinting his blue eyes with hints of smoky gray.

      “Why not?” she countered lightly, not sure she really wanted to get into the whole sordid Solano family saga at this time of night.

      “My brother Aaron became a deputy after he was arrested for toilet-papering a neighbor’s house,” Gabe answered, leaning back and threading his fingers together behind his head. “Well, not immediately after. In between, he blew out his knee, ending a promising college and maybe pro football career. That might have had something to do with it, too.”

      “Probably.” She dropped to the ottoman, trying not to stare too obviously at the lovely things his taut chest muscles were doing to the front of his gray polo shirt. What had they been talking about? Oh, right—criminology and why she’d chosen it as a career. She squelched the urge to fan her hot cheeks.

      “My brother-in-law, Riley, became a cop because he didn’t want to be a rancher, so when his best friend became a cop, Riley figured, why not?” Gabe’s eyes narrowed slightly, watching her through the space between his ridiculously long, dark lashes. “Which brings me back to you. How did a nice girl from San Francisco end up in Millbridge, Alabama, investigating murders in the first place?”

      She smiled down at him. “It’s a long story, and we both need a little sleep. So how about this? I go get you a pillow and a blanket, and in the morning, over that omelet I promised, I’ll tell you the story of Alicia Solano, girl detective. Sound like a plan?”

      The sleepy-eyed look he gave her almost made her knees buckle. For a second, any thought beyond dragging him back to her bedroom with her fled her mind. But she managed to get a grip on her hormones before she did something stupid and headed out of the room in search of bedding.

      In the hall closet she found a spare pillow and a thin cotton blanket which should offer just enough cover in this warm climate. She pulled them out and held them tightly against the front of her robe, taking a couple of bracing breaths before she returned to the living room.

      Okay, add “sexy Southern men” to the list of “things that make Alicia lose her head and behave like a blithering idiot,” she thought. Not that any of the other men around here had ever had quite such a potent effect on her equilibrium before.

      He wasn’t even her type. He had to be in his mid-thirties, putting him nearly a decade older than she was. She’d never been one to find older men particularly attractive.

      Yeah, but those older men didn’t look like Gabe Cooper, chica.

      She took no small amount of pride in the steadiness of her gait as she took the bedding back into the living room. Gabe was in the kitchen, refilling his glass of water. He’d stripped off the polo shirt he’d been wearing earlier, revealing a plain white T-shirt beneath.

      Alicia held back a whimper when he came around the kitchen counter into the living room, revealing just how tightly the soft cotton hugged his muscular arms and shoulders. She dropped the bedding on the sofa and retreated to the kitchen for her own glass of water.

      She gulped it down greedily, keeping her back to the living room. She ventured a quick glance over her shoulder. “Do you need another pillow or a