be hard finding even one person in town who’d liked Teresa. Hated her? Well, the numbers in that camp would make most of the town a suspect.
He stared at the neat little hole in Teresa’s nightie. Right in the heart. Someone hadn’t been screwing around here. The shot had been meant to kill.
He rose to his feet, while the lone forensics tech employed by the Serenade Police Department snapped photos of the scene. The rest of the living room was pristine. No overturned furniture, no hints of a struggle. The only sign of foul play was the body lying on the floor next to the brown leather couch, and the ominous pool of blood congealing on the hardwood.
Damn Cole Donovan. He’d caused nothing but trouble since moving to Finn’s town two years ago. Shut down the paper mill and built a hotel in its place. Married Serenade’s ultimate bad girl. Divorced her.
And quite conceivably killed her.
This was a quiet town. Serenade’s five thousand or so citizens were pleasant, hardworking people. They quietly lived their lives, they raised their families and attended the annual craft festival every August, they ran the quaint shops on Main Street and catered to the tourists that wandered into their picturesque town.
Cole Donovan wasn’t one of them. He was a big-city man. He’d built his real estate empire in Chicago, then taken it up and down the Atlantic Seaboard, developing in little towns that didn’t appreciate his interference.
With growing weariness Finn’s gaze was yet again drawn to Teresa’s body, and as he stared at the pool of sticky, crimson blood gathering next to it, only one thought entered his mind.
All hell is about to break loose.
Chapter 1
Two Weeks Later
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” Ian Macintosh asked, hesitating in the doorway of Cole Donovan’s isolated house.
“Go back to Chicago,” Cole answered with a sigh. He held up his hand before his assistant could object. “I’ll be fine, Ian. Worst thing the sheriff will do is arrest me.”
Ian’s face went cloudy. “I don’t know how you’re so calm about this, boss. If I were being wrongfully accused of something, I’d lash out at the entire damned department.” He flushed. “Don’t tell my mum I said that. She’s spent twenty-five years trying to instill good manners in me.”
Uh-oh, Ian must really be worried about him, if his British accent was flaring up. Cole had hired the kid on a business trip to London, during which Ian had pulled him aside at a conference and told him he wanted nothing more than to be a part of Donovan Enterprises. Cole had his reservations at first—the kid was barely out of college—but over the past five years, Ian had proven to be invaluable.
Which was why Cole needed him back in Chicago, overseeing everything at the company’s headquarters while Cole tried to put an end to this mess he’d found himself in.
Damn Teresa. Although a part of him was still reeling over the fact that his ex-wife was dead, there was also a small part that thought good riddance. That woman had caused him nothing but trouble over the past two years. She’d hurt him, humiliated him, cost him not only money, but pride.
And now she was gone, and Sheriff Finnegan lurked in the shadows with a pair of handcuffs, just waiting for the moment he could arrest Cole.
He stifled a groan, resisting the urge to pull out his own hair. He needed to squash this situation before it got completely out of hand. The papers had already gotten a whiff of the story, and the last thing he needed right now was negative publicity. Donovan Enterprises had taken a hit in the market thanks to the recession, and he couldn’t afford to have prospective developments fall through because Serenade’s sheriff had decided he was a killer.
“Make sure you contact Kurt Hanson when you get in,” Cole said as he followed Ian out onto the wraparound porch of the house. “Take him to dinner, pump him with wine and confidence. We can’t have him backing out of the waterfront deal.”
Ian busily keyed the instructions into his BlackBerry, efficient as always. He glanced up, his brown eyes grave. “And what about the Warner hotel? Kendra Warner decided to double the price on the property. Are we going to meet the new figure?”
Cole rubbed his chin, mulling over the question as the two men walked toward Ian’s rental car. “No,” he finally said.
“The property isn’t worth it. Add a million to the bid, and if she puts up a fight, tell Margo to look for another location.”
Ian’s fingers flew over the BlackBerry’s keyboard. “Okay. I’ll call you when I get in.” The younger man opened the driver’s door of the rented sedan, sending a concerned glance over his shoulder. “I could stay,” he said again.
“Go,” Cole said firmly. “I can handle this mess by myself.”
With a resigned smile, Ian slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Cole drifted back to the porch, waved stiffly as Ian drove off, then headed back inside. The moment the door closed behind him, his shoulders sagged, heavy with the stress and shock of the past two weeks.
Teresa was dead.
The woman he’d been married to for two years was dead.
So why didn’t he feel anything but relief?
He keyed in the code on the panel by the door to set the security alarm, then walked into the living room and made his way to the wet bar in the corner of the room. His hands were annoyingly shaky as he grabbed a glass and dumped a few ice cubes into it, followed by a hefty amount of bourbon. He glanced at the intricate wooden grandfather clock across the spacious room. Four o’clock. Wonderful. He’d resorted to drinking in the middle of the afternoon. To drinking, period. He never indulged in alcohol, not since his college graduation, which he’d left early in order to drive his mother to rehab.
Cole’s legs grew as heavy as his shoulders. He moved toward one of the two black leather couches and sank down, lifting his glass to his lips. The alcohol stung his throat as it slid down to his gut, where it burned his insides.
He drank in silence, wishing, and not for the first time, that he’d never laid eyes on Teresa Matthews. One night, that’s all it had taken for him to fall for the woman. Six months later they were married.
A year after that, filing for divorce.
He was just draining his drink when the sound of a car engine drifted in from the open window. Ian was the only other person who had the codes for the steel gate at the end of the driveway, which meant his assistant was coming back. Probably left something behind.
Sighing, Cole set his glass on the coffee table and stood up, frowning when a flash of black crossed his peripheral vision. He turned to the window, and his eyes narrowed as he spotted an unfamiliar SUV emerging from the long dirt driveway on the property.
Damn Ian. This was the second time his assistant had forgotten to arm the gate on his way out. What was the point in paying for an overly expensive security system when his own staff couldn’t lock a damn gate?
The SUV’s windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see the driver, but whoever it was drove up and parked right beside his pickup. The engine shut off, and then the driver’s-side door opened and an exceptionally attractive redhead stepped out. She wore a fitted black business suit that showed off her tall, willowy form, complete with slacks that hugged her long legs and a jacket left unbuttoned to reveal the crisp white-collared shirt beneath it. Very professional, save for the auburn-colored hair casually cascading over her shoulders and resting well below her breasts.
Cole’s breath hitched slightly when the woman started to walk. She had a long, confident gait. She moved with her shoulders straight, her chin high, as if she had no care in the world and should she have a care, she’d just kick its ass.
She disappeared from view as she approached the