With Rocky at her heels, Leigh made her way down the hall to thebig room. And yep, it was big all right. The doors to the massive bedroom suite were open, and even though it’d been redecorated in the years since she’d been here, it lived up to the size in her memory.
She didn’t see anything remotely resembling a dead body, but there was a live one all right. Leigh immediately spotted Cullen.
And she felt the punch of lust.
There was no other word for it. Pure, hot lust. Of course, Cullen had that effect on plenty of women, what with his rock-star face. Not a used up, has-been rock star, either, but one in his prime who could attract just by breathing. Sizzling blue eyes, midnight-black hair and a face that, well, created those punches of pure, hot lust.
He was seated in a dark red leather chair, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. The top buttons of his rumpled white shirt were undone, and his tie was tossed on the glossy mahogany table in front of him.
His gaze slid over her, settling for a long moment on the badge she had clipped to her belt. “Sheriff,” he said, and there wasn’t a trace of the smirk or disapproval that some folks doled out when they mentioned her title.
“Mr. Brodie,” Leigh greeted in return, and it earned her a raised eyebrow from him. Probably because the only other time she’d been in this room, they’d definitely been on a first-name basis.
Since Leigh didn’t want to remember that right now or think about the lust, she got down to business. “You had Rosa call 911 to report a body?”
Cullen nodded, his gesture slow and easy. The same as his movements when he got to his feet. He definitely wasn’t dressed like a rancher tonight in his black pants that had no doubt been tailored for that perfect fit.
When he got closer to her, she caught his scent. And she mentally sighed. He smelled expensive.
Leigh followed Cullen to the adjoining bath, but he didn’t go in. He stepped to the side to give her a clear view of the stark white room. A view that gave Leigh a gut-jab of reactions and emotions.
Sweet merciful heaven. There was blood. And lots of it. It was spattered on the tub, the walls. Even the mirror.
There was also a body.
The woman was sprawled out on the glossy white marble floor. She was a brunette with her arms and legs flailed out as if she’d tried to break her fall and then crawl away from her attacker. Maybe she’d managed to do that, but if so, she hadn’t gotten far, and it hadn’t helped save her. Nothing probably could have done that, considering the back of her head had been bashed in.
“Blunt force trauma,” Leigh muttered, hoping if she focused on the scene and not the body that her stomach would stop churning.
She didn’t normally have this kind of reaction to blood. Or a crime scene. But then, she’d never personally seen one this bad. During her time at the Lubbock Police Academy, she’d stayed on the fringes of murder investigations. An observer there to learn. Well, she wasn’t an observer tonight. She was right in the thick of it.
Leigh continued to look around. Continued to study what was right in front of her. There was no weapon that she could see, and there wasn’t any blood on the sharp corners of the counters to indicate that’s how the woman had been fatally injured.
“Uh, you want me to call Jeb?” Rocky asked, and the shakiness in his voice had gone up some significant notches.
“No.” This time Leigh didn’t manage to tamp down her glare when she glanced back at him.
Along with the shakiness, Rocky looked ready to boot. She was pretty sure this was his first murder scene, too.
“Go ahead and call the medical examiner and the county CSI team,” Leigh instructed. “We also need some deputies to do a room-to-room search and check the grounds. When you’re done with that, take Rosa’s statement. And the statements of anybody else who’s in the house.”
“No one else is here,” Cullen provided.Calmlyprovided.
If she hadn’t looked at Cullen, she might not have noticed the tight muscles in his jaw or the fierce set of his mouth. But she did look. Did notice. And she saw this had given him a gut-punch, too.
“But Jeb oughta be brought in on this,” Rocky protested.
This time, Leigh didn’t bother with words. She gave her deputy a look that could have frozen El Paso in August, and it was thankfully enough to get Rocky moving.
“I didn’t kill her,” Cullen said, those jaw muscles stirring again. “I found her when I came to my room after the party.”
He didn’t have to explain what party he was talking about. Small-town gossips had clued in everyone who’d listen or overhear about that. Cullen had hosted an engagement celebration for his friend Austin Borden and Austin’s fiancée, Kali Starling.
According to the bits Leigh had heard, there’d been about a hundred guests, most from Lubbock, about a half hour away. Since Austin lived in Lubbock and it was where Cullen had his main office, that didn’t surprise her. It was also no surprise that only a couple of locals had received invitations. Cullen hadn’t exactly kept close ties with many in his hometown.
Including her.
Leigh gave Cullen another once-over, and this time she made sure the lust stayed out of it. “You wore those clothes to the party?”