Safety in Numbers. Carla Cassidy

bathroom is just down the hall on the left. Feel free to head to the kitchen after you get settled in.” She slid out of the room as if she couldn’t escape him fast enough.

      He pulled his suitcase onto the bed and opened it. He’d improvised a bit on what Dalton had said. Dalton had called his sister neither gorgeous nor sexy.

      As he hung some of his clothing in the closet, he wondered how difficult it had been for Meredith West to be raised in a house filled with men. By the look of her she certainly didn’t seem to be in touch with her femininity. Not that it mattered to him. Not that he cared.

      He wasn’t here to care about anyone. He was here to do a job. It was bad enough he was here to betray a friend’s trust; the only thing that could make it worse was if he also seduced his friend’s sister.

Chapter 2

      There was no way Dalton would have described her as gorgeous or sexy, although he certainly would have told Chase she looked like a woman who’d gotten too close to a Weed Eater.

      Meredith thought about that all through dinner that night. Dalton had arrived at the ranch to share the meal and visit with his friends. Meredith had eaten quickly, then excused herself and retreated to the stables until bedtime.

      Now, the faint gray of predawn painted the sky as she crept from her bedroom and down the hallway to the bathroom. As she showered and dressed for the day, her thoughts lingered on Chase McCall.

      Gorgeous and sexy. He had to say that. Had he been making fun of her? Nobody had ever used those terms to describe her.

      She didn’t like him and she wasn’t sure why. He’d been pleasant enough at dinner the night before, entertaining them with cop stories and talking about the good times he and Dalton had shared while they’d worked on the same case.

      But there was an edge to him, a whisper of something slightly dangerous in his eyes, an arrogant tilt to his head. She stood in front of the mirror and brushed her shoulder-length hair, then frowned.

      Maybe Savannah was right. She needed to get into the Curl Palace and get one of the ladies to trim her hair the right way.

      Fighting her impulse to pick up a pair of scissors and try to straighten out the mess, she reached for her toothbrush instead. She always cut her hair when she was stressed, and there was no denying that she’d been stressed lately.

      She’d go to the Curl Palace this morning, then head over to Sheriff Ramsey’s office to see if she could get her hands on the files of the investigation into her mother’s murder.

      She had a feeling Ramsey wouldn’t be particularly pleased by her request. “As if we don’t have enough going on around here,” she could imagine him saying.

      She finished brushing her teeth, then gave her hair a final finger comb. Her decision to get her hair professionally cut and styled had absolutely nothing to do with Chase McCall, she told herself. She would have done it whether the handsome man had come to town or not.

      Leaving the bathroom, she was glad that Tanner’s bedroom door remained closed. It was early enough that she didn’t expect anyone to be up except Smokey, who would be in the kitchen working on breakfast.

      Instead of heading into the kitchen, she walked to the front door and slipped outside to the porch. She moved directly to the railing and leaned against it, staring out at the land that stretched for miles all around.

      This was her favorite time of day, when the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon and birds sang from the trees. Scents of hay and grass and cattle wafted on the air, as familiar to her as her own reflection in a mirror.

      She loved the ranch, but there were times when she longed for the excitement of the city, the anonymity of a place where she wasn’t one of those West kids, but rather simply Meredith West.

      She drew deep breaths, filling herself up with the smells of home, then turned to go back inside. She jumped, startled as she saw the old man seated in the wicker rocking chair.

      “Smokey! Jeez, you scared me half to death. What are you doing out here?” Even in the dim light she could see the frown that tugged his grizzled eyebrows together in an uneven unibrow.

      “That woman is in my kitchen.”

      “Kathy? What’s she doing?”

      “Cooking.” The word spat from him as if he found it distasteful on his tongue.

      A small burst of laughter welled up inside Meredith, but she quickly swallowed it. As far as Smokey was concerned invasion of his kitchen was grounds for execution. “Think I’ll go get a cup of coffee and check things out,” she said.

      Smokey merely grunted in response.

      Meredith found the attractive white-haired woman in the kitchen cutting up fruit. “Ah, another early riser,” she said in greeting to Meredith.

      “You’re supposed to be on vacation,” Meredith said as she poured herself a cup of coffee, then perched at the island where Kathy worked.

      “There’s nothing I love more than cooking, especially for other people, but I rarely get a chance.” She smiled at Meredith. “I told Smokey that I’d take over this morning and give him a little vacation. Besides, I’m not sure he was feeling well this morning. He looked positively gray when he left the kitchen.”

      “He’s just not used to somebody else taking over his duties,” Meredith replied.

      Kathy smiled once again, a hint of steel in her baby blues. “Well, he’ll just have to get used to it. I intend to pull my own weight around here and at my age about the only thing I am good for is cooking.”

      It was going to be an interesting couple of days, Meredith mused. At that moment Chase entered the kitchen clad in a pair of jeans and a navy knit shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and flat stomach. The sight of him filled her with an inexplicable tension.

      “Good morning,” he said as he walked to the countertop where the coffeemaker sat.

      “’Morning,” Meredith replied. “I hope you slept well.”

      “I always do.” He carried his cup and sat on the stool next to Meredith, bringing with him the faint scent of shaving cream, minty soap and a woodsy cologne. The tension inside her coiled a little tighter. “What about you? How did you sleep?”

      It was a simple question, but something about the look in his eyes made her feel like he was prying into intimate territory. “I always sleep well, too,” she replied.

      He took a sip of his coffee, then looked at her curiously. “Dalton mentioned last night that we’ve come to town at a time when things are pretty unsettled,” he said.

      “Very unsettled,” she agreed, relaxing a bit as the subject changed.

      “Tell me about it.”

      “It’s complicated, but a couple of weeks ago we discovered that a corporation called MoTwin has been buying up property in the area.”

      “That doesn’t sound unusual. Corporations seem to be buying up property everywhere in the United States,” Kathy observed.

      “Yes, but in this case, the land they were buying was from ranchers who had died, ranchers who had been murdered.”

      “Oh, my,” Kathy exclaimed, then picked up her knife to continue cutting up a kiwi.

      “The deaths were made to look like accidents, so it took a while for anyone to realize what was going on,” Meredith continued. “The latest death was a real estate agent who had written up the property contracts on the land in question. She was murdered. A couple of FBI agents are here now working the case. We know somebody in town has to be behind the scheme, somebody local has orchestrated the deaths and that’s who we want.”