Free One Night by Debbie Macomber Page B

better. At least that was the way Kyle would view it.
    “You two been married long?”
    Kyle exchanged glances with Carrie. “We’re not married,” he told the officer, whose name tag identified him as Andrew Lindsey.
    “Take my advice and don’t do it.”
    “Do it?” Kyle repeated.
    “Get married.”
    “You don’t need to worry,” Carrie said, leaning toward Kyle to get a better look at the patrolman. “We don’t even like each other. We just work together. For one reason or another, we’ve never quite hit it off.”
    “I don’t think the officer is interested in listening to our differences,” Kyle said pointedly.
    “Oh-oh.” Andrew Lindsey opened the door and slipped onto the back seat. He removed his hat and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “That’s the way it started with Gayle and me too. She was a secretary at the station, and the two of us couldn’t see eye to eye on anything. The next thing I know, we’re married.”
    “Married.” Kyle laughed. “Trust me, officer, I’d rather eat skunk meat than marry this woman.”
    Carrie shot him a hot look, her temper rising. He didn’t have to be so insulting. “I’d rather leap off a tall building than spend the rest of my life with this man!” she retaliated heatedly.
    “You don’t need to worry, it isn’t going to happen.”
    “You’re darn right it isn’t going to happen. I’d be crazy to marry anyone like you.”
    “No more crazy than I’d be to marry you!”
    “She left me, you know,” Patrolman Lindsey said, his shoulders sagging. Carrie guessed he hadn’t heard a word of their heated exchange.
    “I’m sorry,” she offered sympathetically, twisting around in order to see the other man. “When did all this happen?”
    Kyle muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t hear. Apparently he wasn’t keen on her feeding this conversation.
    “Last week,” Lindsey answered. “It was totally unexpected. I left for work and couldn’t see that anything was wrong and returned to find a note. If she was going to leave me, you’d think she’d take the kids with her.”
    “You have children?”
    “Five.”
    “Five!” Carrie and Kyle responded together.
    “The two oldest are in school. It’s a good thing her mother lives with us, or I wouldn’t know what to do with the three younger ones.”
    Carrie’s eyes locked with Kyle’s. “Her mother lives with you?” Kyle asked.
    “Yeah. Gayle left me with the kids and her mother and a letter that claimed she needed to find herself. Hell, all she had to do was look in the laundry room. Everything else is in there.”
    “Oh, my,” Carrie murmured.
    “I haven’t heard a word from her since. For all I know, she’s off praying with some guru who wears thongs and eats sushi.”
    “She’ll be back,” Carrie said, letting optimism flow through her words.
    “That’s what I thought at first too,” he mumbled. “Now I’m not so sure.”
    “Do you miss her?” Carrie could feel Kyle’s eyes boring into her. It went without saying that he wanted her to terminate the conversation, instead of encouraging the other man to talk about his problems.
    This was the real difference between her and Kyle, Carrie decided. He held everything inside until the weight of hauling all his emotions aroundbogged him down. She, on the other hand, freely spoke her mind. Of the two, Carrie considered herself by far the healthier one, emotionally.
    “The real problem is we got along in bed better than anyplace else,” the patrolman continued. “We’d argue all day and make love all night. We never could seem to find a middle ground.”
    “That’s unfortunate,” Kyle said impatiently.
    Apparently his tone was enough to snap Officer Lindsey out of his depressed reverie. He looked up and seemed surprised to find himself in the back seat of Kyle’s vehicle. He reached for his pad and pen and climbed out of the car.
    After making a couple of notations, he peeled off a sheet. When he spoke