Free Stranger in the Moonlight by Jude Deveraux Page A

and sweep you off your feet.”
    “Like Tris did to you at Reede’s Welcome Home party?”
    “Yes,” Jecca had said with a dreamy sigh, and Kim knew she had managed to get the conversation away from her.
    Kim quietly sat down on the couch and picked up the Sunday magazine.
    Minutes later, he asked, “Ready?” without looking up.
    “Any time,” she answered, but she wasn’t in a rush to leave. Usually on Sunday morning she was hurrying to get ready for church, answering the phone to her mother’s calls, and thinking about the work that needed to be done that week. Sunday afternoons were quiet for her. Her past boyfriends, the ones with the normal jobs, would sometimes come over to visit, but Dave was always busy on weekends. Since she’d met him, her weekends had been solitary.
    “You look like you’re miles away,” Travis said.
    She smiled at him. “I was thinking how I usually work on Sundays.”
    “That doesn’t sound like fun,” he said.
    He was repeating her words of long ago. “I can attest that it is no fun whatever,” she said, quoting his response, and they laughed together.
    “Shall we go see what my mother is getting herself into?”
    “Since you don’t want to be seen, how about if we take a back way? There’s an old forest road, but I don’t know what shape it’s in. I’ll try not to lose us in any potholes.”
    Travis still had her keys from last night. “In that case, how about if I drive? And we’ll take my old car so we don’t hurt your pretty new one.”
    “All right,” she said, but there was caution in her voice. The area around Edilean was rough. It was a wilderness preserve, maintained by the state of Virginia, but she knew that her cousins often took care of the trails. The question was whether anyone had looked at that particular road in the last few years.
    A few minutes later, she and Travis were in his old Bimmer and sitting at the head of a trail that looked like it hadn’t seen any traffic in years. There were holes, ridges, fallen rocks, and a dead tree was taking up half the roadway.
    “Looks like we should turn around and go by the road,” Kim said. “I’ll tell Colin about this and he’ll get it fixed.”
    “Colin?”
    “The sheriff. You may have seen him at the wedding. He’s big, dark hair.”
    “Pregnant wife?”
    “That’s him. Did you two meet?”
    “Sort of,” Travis said, and he thought about the risks of what Kim was saying. The sheriff would ask why she wanted the road cleared, and how she’d discovered it was a mess. And then there was what would happen if they didn’t go in this way. A ride through town with Kim seated beside a stranger was bound to cause comment—and he’d be damned if he’d hide in the back!
    “We could walk,” Kim said. “It’s only about two miles to the building.”
    “Those are awfully pretty sandals you have on,” he said.
    “Thank you. I just bought them. They’re made by Børn and I love the soles. They’re—” She broke off. “Oh right. They’d be destroyed walking through that.”
    “Kim . . .” he said slowly as he looked into her eyes.
    She could almost read his mind. He wanted to drive down that old road. If they went slowly and carefully, they might be able to do it. If it got to be too much for him to drive, they could walk—and maybe Travis would give her a piggyback ride. She checked her seat belt to see if it was securely fastened.
    “Once I get going, I can’t stop,” he said in warning. “This car isn’t four-wheel drive, so if I slow down we’ll get stuck.”
    “Then you’d have to call a Frazier to get you out.”
    “A Frazier?”
    “The sheriff’s family. They know about cars.”
    “Do they?” From Travis’s perspective, the road was easy. It would do some damage to the undercarriage of the car, but he might be able to avoid that. The question was whether or not a girl like Kim could stand it. “The sheriff would drive over that?”
    “Colin? Are you kidding?