Never Too Late

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 “I figured your CD collection might be a few years out of date.”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

By 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.