Free Finding West by June Gray Page A

least, I hoped that was the case. Perhaps I wanted her to want me to stay as much as I wanted it myself. I didn’t want to be wrong about the long, wistful looks she was giving me, about the way she averted her eyes when my gaze collided with hers. Something had changed, something that was now making her face flush, and I badly wanted to stick around to find out. Even if it meant never returning to my old life.
    But I couldn’t stay. Not if she didn’t ask.
    We finished with breakfast and washed the dishes; all the while I kept my ears pricked for any mention or even hint of my staying. But it never came. Kat showered and got ready, already waiting in the Jeep with Josie by the time I had dressed in my own clothes.
    We drove into town in awkward silence, and it wasn’t long before she was parking in front of the small building that was the police station. Before climbing out, I reached to the back seat and scratched Josie behind the ears. Her tail thumped against the leather seat and her tongue lolled out, enjoying my attention. “You take care of Kat,” I said to the dog, glancing at her owner from the corner of my eye. “Make sure she doesn’t save any more handsome strangers from the side of the road.”
    Kat snickered and got out of the car.
    “I’m serious,” I told Josie before climbing out.
    Kat and I met at the front of the car and she held out a hand. “Well, it’s been nice saving you.”
    I took her hand in mine. “ It’s been nice being saved.” I studied her face, trying to memorize the blue of her eyes, the face that could look both innocent and worldly.
    “Kat…” I began but didn’t know how to end. I didn’t even know how to put to words the thoughts swirling through my head. How do you tell someone you don’t really know how much she already means to you?
    So I just pulled on her hand and brought her in for a hug, surprised at how good it felt to hold her. She stood stiffly for a few heartbeats before wrapping her arms around my back and returning the embrace.
    Then the hug was over as she stepped back and gave me a friendly pat on the arm. “Well, you take care,” she said, walking back to the driver’s side.
    I followed her. “Where are you off to now?”
    “I think I’ll go see my dad,” she said, climbing in and starting the engine.
    I put my hands in my pockets and grinned. “You going to tell him about me?”
    She smiled, flashing that dimple at the corner of her mouth. “Sure. I’ll tell him I took in a stranger with amnesia during a snowstorm.”
    I cocked my head to the side, a little irritated by her words. “ That’s all I was?”
    “Were you more?” she asked, her words coming out like a challenge.
    “I was hoping I’d become more.”
    “ I guess you did become a friend of sorts,” she said. “But don’t let that get to your head. I use the term loosely.”
    I chuckled. “Maybe I can come back some time and make you a cup of coffee.”
    “Now that I’ll agree to,” she said then closed the door. She waved once through the window and backed out of the parking space.
    I watched her Jeep drive off down the street before turning around and heading into the police station, ready to find out who the hell I used to be.

 
     
     
    9
     
    KAT
     
     
     
    Josie whined in the passenger seat as I drove home, giving away that she was a sucker for a handsome face and a rub on the belly. As for me, I couldn’t care less that the stranger was gone; it didn’t matter if I never saw his face again. And this tightness in the middle of my chest? Well, that was just heartburn from breakfast, obviously.
    No way in hell was I going to miss those grey eyes and the breathtaking face surrounding it. And I definitely was not going to miss the way he pushed my buttons, the way he bulldozed past my defenses, through the anger and bullshit, and somehow found a path to the center of who I really was. Even though nobody else had ever gone there before—a few had tried, but none