Wedlocked?!. Pamela Toth

you from bagging one of the wealthiest men in the state.” She ignored Ryan’s gasp. “You had means, opportunity and motive, since you just happened to be staying at her hotel in Austin on the night in question. You told the police you hadn’t been in her suite, but they found your bracelet on the floor by her body. They say the two of you quarreled and you held a pillow over her face until she was dead.”

      During Annie’s recital, Lily had paled, but she seemed to draw strength from Ryan. Her chin went up. “I didn’t do it. I could never take another person’s life.” Her gaze held Annie’s without wavering. “Do you believe me?”

      Annie noticed that Cole had shifted closer to his mother as if to protect her. Where had all that loving support been when she’d needed it? “I don’t have to believe you to do my job,” she told Lily.

      Angrily Cole slapped his hand on the table, making them jump. He had no intention of sitting quietly while this hotshot P.I. tried and convicted his mother of murder right here in the restaurant. Annie’s bald recital of both the facts and speculation surrounding the case had just handed him a concrete excuse to refuse to work with her on the investigation.

      “I’ve heard enough,” he told Ryan, confident the older man would agree with him. “We’ll have to find someone else.”

      To his surprise, his mother gripped his arm. “No, dear, I don’t think so.”

      Cole knew that tone. Underneath the soft drawl lay pure steel. Still he argued. “You need someone who knows you’re innocent.”

      She shook her head, a rueful smile curving her lips. “I have you and Ryan for that,” she said huskily. Then she looked right at Annie. “Miss Jones, I need a fighter on my side. I’d like you to take my case. If Ryan says you’re good, that’s enough for me.”

      Cole’s automatic protest died in his throat. Under the circumstances, surely Annie would refuse.

      Instead she smiled. Despite his annoyance, Cole felt his nerves leap in reaction. Working with her would be insane—just one of several reasons why she had no business on this case, but the one he could never verbalize. And what about the resentment she might still feel toward him over the past? What better revenge than standing by and watching his mother go to prison? Could the Annie he’d known have turned into the kind of person who would let something that evil happen—even contribute to it? Could he risk the possibility?

      Before he could bring up his other objections, the waiter was back with their food. Grimly, Cole realized he might have better luck discussing the situation with Ryan and his mother later, away from Annie’s troubling presence.

      As Ryan turned the conversation away from the case, Cole concentrated on his lobster salad and tried to resist sneaking peeks at the woman seated across from him, the thick brown hair he remembered so well pulled into a high ponytail that made her look younger than her twenty-nine years. He didn’t know which of the emotions churning through him was more disturbing—his guilt over the way he’d handled their breakup, the renewed attraction to her that threatened his focus now, or the certainty that being thrown together on this case would be a disaster not only for him but also for his mother, whose very life was on the line.

      “I can take a cab,” Annie said, wanting nothing more than to get away from Cole long enough to catch her breath and beat her overactive hormones back into submission. Not that she was the least bit interested in him—she’d learned her lesson there—but a woman could admire a man on a strictly physical level as long as it didn’t interfere with the work at hand.

      “Nonsense,” Ryan replied with the breezy confidence of the super-rich. “The ranch is in the opposite direction from your office, and Lily needs to rest. But Cole can drop you off.” His arm was curved protectively around Lily’s shoulders. “It will afford the two of you a chance to map out your strategy.”

      Even Annie couldn’t argue with that. It was time to put aside her personal feelings toward her new client’s son and get busy. They had barely a month until the trial, and there was a lot to be done.

      She glanced at Cole, who was watching her with an unreadable expression on his sharply chiseled face. Did he never relax these days? She remembered that he had a killer smile. The unfortunate memory jarred her back to reality.

      “Good idea,” she agreed with a hint of challenge in her voice. “If you have time to get started right away, so do I.”

      The flicker of surprise in Cole’s eyes was more than enough reward for her capitulation. “My mother’s out on bail,” he drawled. “I don’t have a lot else on my calendar right now.”

      Moments later, the two couples had split up, the older pair heading for the car Ryan’s driver had brought around to the front door of the restaurant. Meanwhile, Cole led the way to the lot behind the building where his rental was parked. If his back were any straighter, Annie might have suspected his tailor had sewed a metal rod in his jacket.

      “So how have you been?” she asked, striving for a light tone, after he’d joined her in the confines of his white Lexus. The interior reeked of leather and wealth. Her ancient Volkswagen smelled like pine cleaner, courtesy of a dangling piece of cardboard shaped like an evergreen tree.

      She refused to analyze why it was important that he see how easily she was handling his sudden reappearance in her life. She just knew she wanted to get the preliminaries out of the way so they could concentrate on the case.

      Cole backed the car out of its parking spot and headed toward the street. “I’ve been fine,” he said as he eased into a break in traffic. “I don’t know if you’d heard that I moved to Denver after—”

      “I heard,” she blurted, and then could have bitten off her tongue for her unguarded response. He’d probably think she’d tracked him like a spurned lover who didn’t know when to let go. She couldn’t remember who had told her, but she damn well couldn’t explain that she hadn’t sought out the information, not without looking ridiculous. This was going to be more difficult than she’d realized.

      The light turned red, and Cole took the opportunity to really look at her. Nearly hidden by her air of self-confidence and the solid reputation Ryan had described lurked a freshness that was downright amazing. Life had handed her lemons and from them she’d made a blue-ribbon pie. When he recalled how thoroughly he’d misjudged her, he wanted to turn back the clock and rewrite history.

      “Look,” he said instead as the light changed and the cars in front of him began to move, “we probably need to clear the air. Can we wait to discuss our history together until we get to your office before I rear-end someone?”

      He sensed her sudden tension. Maybe she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she would like him to think, or maybe it was just resentment that had her hands tightening on her patchwork leather bag. Again he wondered how far she might go to avenge herself. Would she punish an innocent woman? Damage her own reputation as an investigator? He had to admit the possibility was pretty far-fetched—and damn egotistical of him.

      “There’s really nothing to discuss,” she said in a voice that had plunged several degrees in temperature despite the heat of the October day. “At least nothing of a personal nature. We have a lot of ground to cover for your mother’s case. I suggest we focus on the present and forget ancient history.”

      “If that’s the way you want it,” Cole muttered, swerving and hitting his horn when a car in the next lane cut them off. The other driver didn’t appear to notice.

      For the next few moments, Cole’s attention was divided between the directions she gave him and speculation about what she must really be feeling. The former was straightforward enough; her expression yielded no clues to the latter. Finally they turned into a small strip mall and he stopped the car beside a faded blue bug with a hot-pink windsock attached to its antenna.

      In front of them was a rather plain storefront with simple black lettering on the glass door. Annie Jones, Private Investigator, it read, followed by a local phone number. Her office was flanked by a dry cleaner on one side