Safety in Numbers

Chapter 3

Dinner was chaotic. It always was when the entire West family broke bread together. Meredith let the conversation swirl around her, grateful that for the moment nobody was focused on her.

She’d had enough attention when each of her brothers had arrived at the ranch. They’d teased her unmercifully about her new haircut until her father had insisted they stop picking on her.

Red West had gazed at her for a long moment, a softness in his eyes. “You look exactly like your mother did when I fell in love with her,” he’d said, then hugged her. “She would have been so proud of you.”

His words had merely renewed her desire to get to the bottom of the crime that had stolen her mother. She and Chase had agreed to go over the file that evening, after her family had left and her father went to bed.

She cast a surreptitious glance across the table at Chase, who was in the middle of a conversation with Zack. There was no denying the fact that she was attracted to the Kansas City cop.

It had been over a year since Meredith had enjoyed any kind of relationship with a man. At that time she’d been working in Florida and had fallen into a relationship with a local man. It had lasted over two months, until her job in Florida had ended.

Todd Green had been a terrific guy and she’d hoped when it was time for her to return to Oklahoma that he’d beg her not to go, that he’d tell her he couldn’t live without her.

But he hadn’t. Instead he’d told her he’d had a lot of fun with her, but when he finally decided to settle down for a long-term committed relationship it would be with somebody softer, somebody less capable…a real woman who needed him.

She’d been devastated. Not so much because she’d been head over heels in love with Todd, but rather because his hurtful words had pierced through to a well of doubt and insecurities she’d secretly harbored.

How could she know what it meant to be a real woman when there had been no woman in her life? She’d learned martial arts and self-defense like her brothers. She’d been taught how to shoot a gun and how to assess a situation for danger. But nobody had taught her how to be a real woman.

Since Todd there had been nobody else. Until Chase McCall with his piercing blue eyes that for some reason made her feel oddly lacking whenever he gazed at her.

The talk at the table turned to the Fall Festival dance in three days. “The whole town shows up for the dance,” Tanner said. “Except Meredith, she always heads home before the band starts to play.”

“We’ve all decided she must have two left feet,” Zack added with a teasing grin. His wife, Kate, elbowed him in his side.

Despite the teasing, there was no denying the sense of unity at the table, the fierce loyalty and love they all felt for each other was on display, no matter who the guests of the house might be at the time.

Chase gazed at Meredith from across the table. “Surely this time you’ll stay. If fact, I insist you save me a dance or two just to prove to your brothers that you don’t have two left feet.”

The idea of being held in his arms even for the length of a song caused a stir of warmth to seep through her blood. She wanted to protest, to tell him that she never went to the local dances, but try as she might, the protest refused to rise to her lips and she found herself nodding her assent.

Chase and his mother had only been in town for three days, but each day had increased the annoying tension in Meredith. She’d tried to keep her distance from him, but it was difficult in the confines of the house.

After dinner there was another hour of small talk, then everyone began to leave. “Meredith, will you walk me to my car?” Dalton asked.

She looked at him in surprise. “All right,” she replied. Together brother and sister left the house and stepped outside into the chilly night air. Darkness had fallen and the only light was the faint glow of the moon drifting down from the cloudless sky.

“I assume you wanted to talk to me alone?” Meredith said as they crossed the expanse of yard to where Dalton had parked his car.

“I’ve got a favor to ask you,” Dalton replied. “About the dance on Saturday night. Even though you said you’d be there at the dinner table, I thought you might sneak out early. I know dances aren’t your thing, but could you hang around and entertain Chase and his mother for me?”

Meredith had already decided to skip the evening festivities despite the fact that she’d said she would save a dance or two for Chase. Her experiences at the occasional town dances had never been pleasant ones.

“Why do I have to babysit your guests?” she asked, a touch of irritation deepening her tone.

Dalton grinned, leaned over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Because you’re the best sister in the whole world and I have a date with Melanie Brooks for the dance.”

She wanted to decline, she so didn’t want to do this, and yet Dalton had never asked her for anything. She also knew he’d spent the past month working up his nerve to ask pretty Melanie out on a date. “All right. I said I’d go, so I’ll go and make nice to your friend and his mother.”

“You’re the best.”

“That’s what you guys always tell me when you’ve managed to talk me into doing something I don’t want to do.”

Dalton laughed and got into his car. She watched as he drove down the lane, his headlights eventually swallowed up by the darkness of the night.

She wrapped her arms around herself and remained standing in place for a long moment. She frowned as she thought about the dance and rubbed her hands along the soft flannel of her shirt.

She didn’t even have anything to wear. Her closet was filled with jeans and shirts, and the only dress she owned was the bridesmaid dress she’d worn to Clay and Libby’s wedding. It was floor length and far too fussy for a town dance.

Maybe she’d talk to Libby tomorrow about borrowing a dress for the night. The two women were about the same size, and Libby had a closet full of clothes she’d brought with her when she’d moved from California to make a life with Clay.

A night breeze blew a burst of chilly air through the nearby trees. Dying leaves swished against one another and a chill that had nothing to do with the night air swept up her spine. Once again she felt that creepy feeling, like somebody was watching her, like she wasn’t quite alone in the night.

She told herself she was being foolish, but turned on her heels and hurried back into the house. She went into the kitchen to see if there was anything she could help Smokey with, but Kathy stood at the sink next to him chatting as she dried the dishes he washed. Smokey wore a long-suffering expression, as if her chatter was about to drive him insane.

Meredith’s father, Red, was in the living room seated in his favorite chair and Chase was nowhere to be found. She sat on the sofa and smiled at her dad.

“I love family meals,” he said. “I love having the family all together.”

“It was nice,” she agreed. As usual when speaking to her father she made her voice louder than usual. Although Red refused to admit any problem, all of his kids knew he was growing deaf. “It won’t be long before the family gets bigger. Anna is pregnant and I have a feeling if Kate has her way she won’t be far behind her.”

Red’s eyes took on a faraway cast. “Grandchildren are a blessing. I just wish—” He broke off and smiled at Meredith. “Well, you know what I wish.”

She nodded. He wished Meredith’s mother were here to share it all with him. He wished his wife were by his side in the autumn of their lives. Meredith thought of the file that was in the top drawer of her dresser in her bedroom.

She couldn’t give her mother back to her father, but maybe after all these years she could finally give him some closure. She could give him the name of Elizabeth’s murderer.

Minutes later Kathy and Smokey came out of the kitchen and the four of them visited for another half hour or so. Chase came into the living room from his bedroom just about the same time Red decided to retire for the night.

By ten o’clock everyone had gone to his or her room except Chase and Meredith. “Is now a good time to go through that file?” he asked her.

“It’s a perfect time. I’ll just go get it.” As she left the living room, she drew deep breaths, wondering what it was about Chase McCall’s presence that made her feel as if she never got quite enough oxygen.

She retrieved the file from the dresser drawer, then returned to the living room. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen where we can spread it out on the table?” she suggested.

He nodded and together they went into the kitchen and sat at the round oak table. Meredith placed her hand on the top of the file, for a moment feeling as if she were about to open Pandora’s box.

Inside the folder was the last evidence of a life interrupted, the pieces of an investigation that had yielded no results, leaving a man and six children to wonder who had committed such outrage and left behind such devastation.

“You sure you want to do this?” Chase’s voice was soft, but his gaze was sharp and penetrating, as if he were attempting to look directly into her soul.

“No, I’m not at all sure I want to do this,” she replied honestly. “But, I feel like I have to.” She looked at the folder beneath her hand. “I feel like she wants me to do this, she needs me to do this.” She laughed and looked at him once again. “I know it sounds crazy.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he replied. “I know all about needing answers, but you realize it’s possible we won’t get the answers you want from that file.”

“I know. I’m just looking for a lead, something that was perhaps overlooked when the initial investigation took place.”

He pulled the folder from beneath her hand and opened it. He quickly withdrew three photographs and flipped them face down on the table just out of her reach. “There’s no reason for you to see those,” he said. There was a toughness in his tone that forbade her to argue with him.

She didn’t want to argue. She didn’t want to see crime-scene photos of her mother’s broken body. She had a faint memory of her mother’s smiling face, and she wanted nothing to displace her single visual memory of the woman who had given her life.

For the next hour they pored over the papers and while she read lab reports and crime-scene analyses she tried not to notice the evocative scent of Chase, the heat of his body so close to hers.

It had been a very long time since she’d been so intensely aware of a man and aware of her own desire for a man. She held no illusions about her desirability as a woman. She’d always been a bodyguard first, a woman second, more in touch with her abilities to exist in a man’s world than in her own femininity.

But as she sat next to Chase, she wished she knew more about womanly wiles, about how to flirt and how to let a man know she was interested in him.

She instantly chided herself. She knew nothing about Chase McCall, about what kind of man he was, what was important to him. She knew nothing about him except the fact that one glance of his eyes and everything tightened inside her, one brush of his hand against hers and the defenses she kept wrapped around herself threatened to shatter.

With a sigh of irritation at her own wayward thoughts, she consciously focused on the paper in her hand.

“Was it your mother’s usual habit to go grocery shopping on a Friday night?” Chase asked.

“I don’t know. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about my mother.”

His eyes held curiosity. “You never asked your father or any of your brothers about her?”

She leaned back in the chair and frowned thoughtfully. “Over the years I’d asked some simple questions. I wanted to know what kind of woman she was, what she liked and didn’t like. But I never asked anything that might stir up Dad’s grief all over again.”

Chase nodded. “I’d be interested to know if your mother was a creature of habit or if the shopping trip that night was just a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Maybe I should write down some of the questions.” She got up from the table and went to the desk in the corner of the kitchen to get pen and paper. “Tanner would be the one for me to talk to. He was ten when Mom died and he still has a lot of memories of her.”

It was a relief to have just that momentary distance from him, from his pleasant scent that seemed to fill her head. When she returned to the table, she noticed that the photos he’d placed on the side had been moved, letting her know that while she’d hunted for paper and pen, he’d looked at those photos.

He leaned back in the chair and frowned thoughtfully. “The investigation looks tight. The officials did everything that should have been done,” he said. “Unfortunately they didn’t have a lot to go on. There were no witnesses and not much evidence to examine. But it looks like they spoke to your mother’s friends and acquaintances to see if there was anyone giving her problems or somebody she’d made angry.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t look like they missed anything.”

Meredith sighed in frustration. She’d hoped he’d find something, anything that might provide a lead to the killer.

She stared toward the window where the black of night reflected her image back to her. “I think she was killed by somebody who knew her, somebody here in town. For a week after she was buried, a bouquet of daisies was placed on her grave. Daisies were my mother’s favorite flowers and nobody from the family was responsible for putting them there. A bouquet of daisies is still put on her grave every year on the anniversary of her death.”

“Has that been investigated?” He leaned forward, as if she’d captured his attention. His blond hair gleamed in the artificial light and she wondered if it was as soft as it looked.

She nodded. “Clyde Walker was the sheriff at the time of her death and he tried to solve the mystery of the daisies. According to Tanner what he discovered was that an FTD order was placed and paid for in cash from Oklahoma City directing the flowers be placed on the grave for that week. The florist here had no idea who had ordered them. Sheriff Ramsey has tried to get to the bottom of the yearly bouquets, but he hasn’t learned anything new.”

“I agree with you, I think she was killed by somebody she knew, by somebody she trusted.”

“Why do you think that?” Meredith asked.

“The evidence, such as it is, supports it. I’m assuming that stretch of road between here and town is dark and probably not well traveled.”

“That’s right.”

“There was no evidence in those reports that your mother had any kind of car trouble that night, yet she pulled over to the side of the road and got out of her car to meet her murderer. That’s not consistent with a stranger kill. And there’s something else…” He frowned, his gaze assessing, as if gauging how strong she was, how much she could hear.

She raised her chin and held his gaze. “Tell me. What else?”

He rubbed a hand across his lower jaw where she could see the faint stubble of a five-o’clock shadow. “According to the crime-scene report, there was evidence of a struggle and yet from the photo I saw that was taken when your mother was found, her clothing was almost artfully arranged in place. If I had to guess, whoever killed your mother had some sort of feelings for her.”

He leaned forward and gathered the papers together and shoved them back into the folder, then looked at her once again. “Is it possible your mother was seeing somebody?”

“You mean like an affair? Absolutely not,” she said forcefully. “Everyone who knew my parents talk about how devoted they were to each other. All of the women who knew my mother said she adored my father.”

She didn’t even want to think that the fairy-tale love her parents had shared wasn’t true, that her mother had wandered outside her marriage vows. “Mom was a budding actress in Hollywood when she met Dad. She was just beginning to enjoy success and attention. She left her career behind to move here with him and have a family.”

He tapped a finger on the file. “I don’t see how I can help you on this,” he said. “It looks like everything was done at the time to try to find the murderer. It’s a cold case with no new evidence to explore.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she replied. “I really appreciate your thoughts on this.”

“No problem.” He grinned, a slow, sexy gesture that caused her breath to momentarily catch in her chest. “Now, tell me, why don’t you go to the town dances?”

She got up from the table. Now that he’d done what she’d wanted him to do in looking through the files, she felt the need to escape. The kitchen felt too small, his very presence far too big.

He rose from the table and moved to stand within inches of her. His clean, masculine scent once again infused her head, making her half-dizzy. “I thought all women loved dances,” he said, his breath warm on her face.

“I went to a few but I got tired of standing around waiting for somebody to ask me to dance.” Step back, her mind commanded, but it was as if her legs had gone numb.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said, his gaze focused on her mouth. She fought the impulse to lick her lips, afraid he might see it as an open invitation, even more afraid she would mean it as an invitation.

“It’s true,” she said, the words seeming to come from far away. “I don’t know if the men in this town are more afraid of my brothers or because I carry a gun.”

He touched her then, a mere brush of her hair away from her face. As his fingertips skimmed the side of her cheek, a coil of heat unfurled in the pit of her stomach.

“I’ve met all your brothers and I don’t find them scary at all. And I carry a gun, too, so that definitely doesn’t bother me. But, let me tell you what does bother me.” His eyes were no longer cold and assessing, but rather warm and inviting. “It bothers me that since the moment I laid eyes on you I’ve wondered what your mouth would feel like under mine.”

Her breath caught painfully tight in her throat. “Do you intend to keep on wondering or do you intend to find out?” Her heart crashed inside her chest.

How had they gotten from talking about a murder to contemplating a kiss? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. All she wanted at the moment was for him to kiss her…hard and deeply.

“I definitely intend to find out,” he said as he wrapped her in his strong arms and pulled her tight against him. His mouth took hers, his lips possessing, demanding.

She opened her mouth to him, wanting the touch of his tongue against hers, the shattering heat of full possession. She raised her arms around his neck and placed her fingers where the bottom of his thick, silky hair met his shirt collar. Soft. The blond hair was definitely soft.

The kiss seemed to last forever, but it wasn’t long enough for her. It was he who finally broke the kiss and stepped back from her, his eyes gleaming with wicked intensity.

“If you dance even half as well as you kiss, then we should have a great time on Saturday night.” He walked over to the table and picked up the file folder. “Sweet dreams, Meredith,” he said, then left the kitchen.

She stared after him, wondering if she’d ever breathe normally again. Meredith had spent most of her life competing with her brothers, but at this moment she was intensely grateful that she was a woman.

He’d seen the cars come and go at the West ranch from his hiding place in the stand of trees. The entire family had gathered. But he wasn’t interested in any of the others…just her…just Elizabeth.

No, not Elizabeth, he told himself. Elizabeth was gone. Dead. But Meredith was wonderfully alive and having her would be like having Elizabeth.

It had only been in the last month or so that he’d realized that Meredith was the spitting image of the woman he’d loved, the woman he’d been obsessed with.

Before the last month, Meredith had been out of town a lot and he’d rarely run into her. Then one day he’d seen her walking on the sidewalk downtown, and he’d been electrified by the sight. It was as if Elizabeth walked again, breathed again.

He’d been unable to get Meredith out of his mind. She was so beautiful. He could almost feel the silk of her dark hair between his fingers. He wanted to drown in the green depths of her eyes. Just looking at her made it hard to breathe. She possessed his every thought.

He had to have her. His need soared through him, filling him with both a euphoric high and an edge of apprehension. He had to have her. He would have her, but this time he’d do things differently. This time he’d try not to kill her.

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