But she decided not to let herself be offended. Hunter was a proud man who had seen his entire world crash down around him. He had lost friends, his job, his standing in the community.
It must have been agony for him to know the whole world believed him capable of murdering a pregnant woman and her dying mother.
He had a right to be prickly about it, to deal with his wrongful conviction and everything else that had happened in his own way. If that way included being surly and hostile when an unsuspecting soul tried to offer comfort, she couldn’t blame him.
His bitterness and anger must be eating him up from the inside and she could certainly understand all about that.
She would take the higher road, she decided. Instead of snapping back or sulking all day, she would swallow her hurt feelings and pretend nothing had happened.
She decided a change of subject was in order. “I brought music if you’re interested,” she said, then risked a joke. “I figured your CD collection might be a few years out of date.”
He sent her one of those dark, inscrutable looks she could only imagine must have been torture for any crime suspect he was questioning. He said nothing, but she thought she registered a vague surprise in those dark-blue eyes at her mild reaction to his rudeness, and she was immensely grateful she hadn’t gone with her first instincts and thrown a hissy fit.
“What are you in the mood for?” she asked. “Jazz? Rock? Country? Christmas music? I’ve got a little of everything.”
“I don’t care. Anything.”
“Okay. I’ll pick first and then you can find something.”
She chose Norah Jones and felt her own stress level immediately lower as soon as the music started.
They drove without speaking for several moments, Belle’s snoring in the back and the peaceful music the only sound in the vehicle, then Kate reached into her bag again and pulled out Wyatt’s latest bestseller that had come out a few months earlier.
“You don’t mind if I read, do you?”
“Go ahead. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. I imagine we’re going to run out of small talk by the time we hit Spanish Fork.”
She laughed. “
You
might. I never seem to run out of things to say. But I’ll take pity on you and pace myself.”
To her delight, that earned her a tiny, reluctant smile, but it was more than she’d seen since his release. It was a start, she thought. Maybe by the time this journey was through, he would be smiling and laughing like the man she had met five years ago with Taylor in that all-night diner.
She picked up her book, one of only a few of Wyatt’s she hadn’t had time to read yet. She had actually discovered his books long before she ever knew he was her brother, and had read each one with fascination.
He wrote true-crime books—usually not one of her favorite genres—but Wyatt had a way of crawling inside the heads of both the victims and the killers he wrote about, and she found his work absorbing and compelling.
This one was no different, and she was surprised by the warm contentment stealing over her as she rode along with Hunter’s sexy male scent drifting around her senses and the tires spinning on the highway while the windshield wipers beat back a light snow spitting from the sky.
Combined with the peaceful music, Kate felt herself begin to relax and slip further into that warm, cozy place where she didn’t have to worry about the family waiting patiently for her love—or the man beside her who wouldn’t want it, if he ever guessed it might be his for the taking.
She must have drifted off to sleep. One moment she was reading the introduction to Wyatt’s book, the next she woke facing Hunter, with her left cheek squished into the leather seat.
She blinked, disoriented for a moment, then whispered a fervent prayer that she hadn’t done something humiliating in front of the man, like snore or drool or—heaven forbid—talk in her sleep.
They had stopped moving, she realized. The cessation of movement must have been what awakened her. The SUV was parked at the gas pump of a dusty, dilapidated filling station, far from the traffic and houses of the Wasatch Front.
“Where are we?” she asked, her voice gruff with sleep.
“A ways past Price. Sorry to wake you but Belle needed to get out.”
“No. It’s fine. I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
“Don’t worry about it. You looked comfortable so I figured you needed it. I know what kind of hours you M.D.s keep.” He started to say something more but Belle’s sharp, impatient bark cut him off.
Kate winced. “That sounds urgent bordering on desperate. Why don’t I go to that park across the street and play with her for a few moments while you fill up?” she offered.
“Thanks. I brought along a ball and a Frisbee. She likes either one.” He looked a little embarrassed. “But I guess you know what she prefers, don’t you? Probably better than I do.”
That bitterness tinged his voice again and again she had to fight her instinctive urge to offer comfort.
He opened his car door and she caught sight of the gas pump again, which reminded her of something she meant to bring up earlier in the trip. She reached for the huge, slouchy purse she’d bought in Guatemala when she was there on a medical mission a few months earlier, and dug through it until she found her wallet.
She pulled out a credit card and handed it to him. “Use this for the gas.”
With one hand on the frame of the SUV and the other on the door, he gazed at her, another of those unreadable expressions on his face. His mouth quirked a little as if he wanted to say something but he just shook his head.
“No,” he said, and shut the door in her face.
Undeterred, she climbed out after him before he could come around and open her door. A cold wind nipped at her and lifted the ends of her hair. The air felt heavy, she thought. Moist and expectant, as if just waiting for the right moment to let loose. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to skirt around the snowstorm after all.
She shoved away inane thoughts of the weather and focused on what was important. With her Visa tight in her hand, she marched to the rear door of the Grand Cherokee, where he stood hooking on Belle’s leash so he could let her out of the crate.
“I mean it, Hunter. The only reason you’re even here at some armpit of a gas station in the middle of nowhere is because of me. I intend to take care of expenses on this trip.”
“I’m here because I want to be here,” he corrected her. “It was my idea to go after the woman you’re looking for.”
“Right. The woman
I’m
looking for. That’s my point. For all intents and purposes, you’re my private investigator. You’re working for me, so I should be footing the bill along the way.”
He paused at that, his hands on Belle’s crate as he closed the door. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not working for you. I’m doing this because I want to do it, because I was looking for something to occupy my time, and because I need to be doing something useful.”
“And I appreciate all those reasons. Believe me, I do. But you’re still here because of me.”
He sighed at her obstinate tone. “Look, I can afford it, okay?”
She lifted her chin. “So can I.” So she had a pitiful resident’s salary with medical-school debts that would probably take her the rest of her natural life to repay.
“Anyway, that’s not the point,” she went on, thrusting the card out to him again. “You’re already going to have to give up a couple weeks out of your life on this quest. Please let me pay for expenses.”
Belle chose that moment to break in, a slightly frantic note to her bark this time. Hunter let her jump from the vehicle, where she danced around them, eager to be off.
“You’d better take her,” Hunter said, holding out the leash.
“Okay, as long as you take this.”
She didn’t wait for an answer—as she reached to accept the leash, she handed the Visa to him in return. With a victorious laugh, she hurried away after Belle, certain she was leaving him glaring after her.
Chapter 4
B
y the time he finished pumping gas into his Jeep, that cold, damp wind seemed to have picked up and a few stray snowflakes drifted down.
Hunter looked up at the heavy gray sky. The weather forecasters said the storm wasn’t supposed to hit this part of the state, but it sure looked to him like those black-edged clouds were boiling around up there, ready to blow.
Maybe they could still outrun it before the center of the storm passed over. If the storm was heading east, as most low-pressure systems moved here in the Intermountain West, it might clip past them.
He might still have to drive through a little snow, but by the time they hit southern Utah in a few hours, it would probably be mostly rain.
Anyway, he didn’t mind snow. He had spent his youth driving the canyons of the Wasatch Front, skis strapped to the roof, looking for fresh powder.
When he was a kid, skiing had been his passion. He’d even been on the junior U.S. ski team for a while.
For the adult in him, skiing had been therapy. When he was stressed over a case and couldn’t quite find the answer to whatever puzzle he was working on, he would take a few hours of personal leave and head for the slopes. More often than not, while his body focused on turns and terrain, his mind was able to come up with an answer.
He was chagrined to realize that even though most of the ski resorts had been open since mid-November, he hadn’t been able to summon the energy to go yet.
The nozzle clicked off, signaling the tank was full. With a sigh, Hunter tightened the gas cap, then went inside to pay.
On the way, he pulled Taylor’s credit card out of the pocket of his jacket and shoved it in his wallet before pulling out one of his own, new since his release and still shiny enough that the gilding on the numbers hadn’t worn off.
He had absolutely no intention of letting Kate foot the bill for this trip. He meant what he’d said to her—this whole thing was his idea. He would pay his own way.
He decided he wouldn’t make a big deal about it, though. He would just keep her card in his wallet until the trip was over, then give it back to her. He wasn’t prepared for another confrontation with her, not when it made her eyes look bright and vibrant and gave her skin that appealing flush, raising all kinds of questions in his vivid imagination, like if she would look like that in his arms.
Inside the convenience store, he grabbed some liquid caffeine from the soda dispenser. He probably should have asked Kate if she wanted something, but he hadn’t thought of it and he didn’t have the first idea about her beverage preferences.
Being forced to consider someone else’s likes and dislikes was a novel experience. Or at least not something he had considered much since his arrest three years earlier.
That was one of the unfortunate side effects of prison—behind bars, the world condensed to one of survival, to thinking of self before anything else.
At least for him it had. He knew men with families on the outside could spend their time thinking about them. He hadn’t had anyone but Taylor. Though he worried about her, in his heart he had known she could take care of herself, as she had proved so adroitly a few months earlier.
It would take him a while to get into the rhythm of having someone else to consider.
He paid for the gas and his drink then carried it outside. He moved the Jeep so someone else could use the pump, and a few moments later he walked across the street to the park, where he could see Belle still gleefully chasing after a ball.
Without direct sunlight, colors were saturated in the over-cast sky. The russet, sleek dog and Kate with her bright blond hair and gray sweater looked vibrant and alive playing in the light snow covering the ground.
Even from a hundred yards away, he could see Kate’s smile light up her face as she watched Belle scramble through the snow after that ball as if it were made of raw hamburger.
She was breathtaking in that pale light, like something out of an impressionist painting.
He had always been attracted to Kate, he acknowledged now. He had never done anything about it, in fact he had gone out of his way to avoid situations like this one where they would be alone.
He
couldn’t
do anything about it. For one thing, she was Taylor’s closest friend. His sister hadn’t had all that many close friends and he wasn’t about to screw this up for her by messing around with Kate.
He had a poor history with women. Until Dru, most of his relationships had ended after only a few months, usually because the women he dated tired quickly of his complete dedication to his job. Dru hadn’t minded; in fact she had encouraged him to talk about work. In retrospect, he wondered how much of that was genuine interest and how much was her reporter instincts, nosing around for a good story.
He had a feeling their relationship would have gone the way of all those others if she hadn’t told him after only a few months of dating that she was pregnant.
Since her murder, he’d had plenty of time to think about things between them. He knew now that he had tried to convince himself he loved her because he’d thought she was pregnant with his child and he’d wanted fiercely to make things work between them.
His son deserved a father and Hunter intended to be part of his life. The best way to accomplish that—the right thing to do—was to marry his child’s mother.
Dru had refused, though. Oh, she hadn’t minded him taking her to doctor appointments and fussing over her, but she wasn’t ready to marry him, she said. Now he knew the reason why. She had likely known—or at least suspected—that he wasn’t her baby’s father.
Kate’s laughter rippled across the cold air suddenly, distracting him from the grim direction of his thoughts.
He could never act on this attraction simmering through him, he thought as he approached them. He didn’t have room in his life right now for a woman and, even if he did, it wouldn’t be this particular one.
“Hey.” She greeted him with a smile. “I’ve almost worn her out. A few more throws and I think she’ll be good for a while.”
He held a hand out for the ball. When she gave it to him, he hurled it to the other side of the park.
“All right, show off.” Kate laughed as Belle let out an ecstatic bark and set off after it. “Let me guess. You were a baseball player in another life.”
He shrugged. “All-state in high school. When I wasn’t skiing, I was throwing a ball through a tire hung up in the backyard. I played one year of college ball and had dreams of the majors, then I messed up my shoulder.” Not that the Judge had ever encouraged those dreams for a second.
“So you decided to become a cop instead.”
“Right.” He didn’t add that he had dreamed of being a cop as a boy but had entered the police academy mostly in an effort to piss off his father, who would see nothing else for his son except that Hunter should follow in his footsteps and study law.
To Hunter’s surprise, he had thrived at the academy. By the time he’d graduated first in his class, he knew he had discovered his calling.
Or he thought he had, anyway. As much as he had loved being a cop, first on the beat then as a detective, he had been betrayed by the brotherhood. He couldn’t work upholding a system he no longer respected.
“Do you miss it?”
He wasn’t sure what to say, since the answer to that question was anything but an easy one. Did he miss it? Yeah. He’d been a good cop, a dedicated one. But he certainly didn’t miss it enough to jump right back into the fray.
He was spared from having to answer by the return of Belle, who came panting back with the ball tightly clenched in her teeth. She rushed to Hunter and dropped the drooly thing like an offering at his feet.
“Good girl.” He rewarded her with one of the treats he’d brought from the Jeep. She gulped it down then barked with joy when Hunter threw the ball hard for her again.
What was it about dogs? he wondered. They never seemed to get tired of the same activity. Give Belle a ball and a little attention and she was content for hours.
“Do you?” Kate asked again. He sighed. He hoped she would let the matter drop, but he supposed he wasn’t really surprised when she didn’t. The woman was nothing if not tenacious.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “I loved being a detective, helping people find justice. Giving them answers. The badge meant something to me.” He gazed across the park at a pair of forlorn swings, chains rattling in the cold wind. “But I had already come to hate the politics of the job before I was arrested.”
She nodded her understanding. “I suppose it’s the same as medicine. I love treating patients but I can’t stand dealing with insurance companies and HMOs. I guess it’s true that sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.”
“And sometimes it’s easier to walk away from both.”
She opened her mouth to argue but before she could say anything, Belle came bounding back with the ball. She came running at them just a little too fast, though, and bumped into Kate’s legs in her rush to get to Hunter.
Kate wobbled a little and tried to keep her balance but the light layer of snow made gaining traction difficult. She gave a small cry as her legs started to slip out from under.
He didn’t take time to think—if he had, he would have known reaching for her was a bad idea. Still, he couldn’t let her fall.
He grabbed her to keep her upright, blocking her from falling with his own body. Her hands came out to grab something solid to hang onto—his shirt, as it turned out—and his arms came around her.
Though she was small, only five-four, maybe, she was sturdy. Still, she felt tiny and fragile in his arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“Yes. Yes, I think so.”
Hunter wasn’t. He felt frozen, cast in bronze like that statue in the corner of the park of a couple of soldiers crouched over what looked like a piece of World War II heavy artillery.
How long had it been since his arms had held a warm female? Forever. So long, he’d forgotten how absolutely perfect it could be to feel all those intriguing curves and angles, to be surrounded by the mouthwatering vanilla-sugar scent of her, to know he only had to bend his head down a little to capture that perfect, lush mouth for his own.
He had to let her go. The thought flickered through his mind then flew away like a killdeer on the side of the road.
Her eyes, wide and lovely in that delicate face, gazed up at him, full of confusion and embarrassment and what he thought might be sexual awareness—though it had been a hell of a long time since he had seen it, so maybe he was wrong about that last bit.
She made no effort to pull away. Instead her hands seemed to curl in his sweater and her dewy lips parted a little as she hitched in a ragged little breath.
They stood there, eyes locked and bodies entwined, as the moment seemed to drag on forever. He was vaguely aware of the cold seeping through his boots, of those swings creaking in the wind, of a pickup truck driving past. But nothing else mattered but this moment.
This woman.
He had to think he would have gotten around to letting her go eventually, but Belle took matters out of his hands. She whimpered as if she knew she’d messed up and nudged the back of his leg.
The contact seemed to jerk him back to his senses. What was he doing? In another second, he would have thrown caution to that cold wind and done exactly what his body was loudly urging him to do. He would have kissed Kate Spencer right here in a public park in Nowheresville, Utah.
And what a disaster that would have been!
Kate took a step backward quickly, and he was instantly cold, far colder than he should have been even with the chill wind.
“We should probably be on our way again,” Kate murmured. Her voice sounded a little thready, a little breathless, as if she had just hiked the steep trail behind his family’s ski cabin in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
“Yeah. You’re right.” He scrambled for something to say. Should he apologize? No, he hadn’t done anything. Not really, only held her a moment—or two or three—longer than strictly necessary.
“I, uh, need to give Belle some water now. That will take me a few moments, if you need to make a trip inside the gas station.”
She looked blank for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite figure out why she might need to make a trip inside the gas station, then he saw understanding dawn in her eyes.
Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t help being amused, charmed, by the color that spread across her elegant cheekbones.
She was a doctor who had undoubtedly seen things that would make his hair curl, but she could still blush at a suggestion that she might need to use the ladies’ room.
“Right. Yes. I’ll only be a moment.”
They walked across the street together, then their paths diverged as he headed for the SUV and she went inside the gas station. He paused and watched until she went inside, reliving the heat and
rightness
of holding her in his arms for those few seconds.
If he responded so forcefully just to a platonic embrace, how the hell was he going to keep his hands off her this entire trip?
In the surprisingly clean restroom of the gas station, Kate stood at the sink for several moments, her cold hands covering the heat still soaking her cheeks.
She was such an idiot. She wanted to die, to sink through the floor—or at least to hide in this bathroom for the rest of her natural life.
What must he think of her? He had only been trying to keep her on her feet after that lovely show of grace and poise she had demonstrated. Just extending a courteous hand—like his habit of opening the door for her, keeping her upright had been only another polite gesture.
But the moment she found herself in such close contact, surrounded by those hard muscles and that rugged, masculine scent of him, she dug her hands into his sweater and held on for dear life.
And then she had made things worse by standing there, staring into his eyes, willing with all her heart for him to kiss her.
She fought the urge to bang her head against the mirror a few dozen times. She was an
idiot!
One who should certainly know better than to make mooneyes at a man who had no interest in her whatsoever.