“Is that why you agreed to let him interview you?” Kate knew Wyatt was writing a book about the Ferrin murders. That was how he had met Taylor, the impetus behind the sequence of events that had led to Hunter’s sentence being voided by the state supreme court.
“I knew someone would write about the case. It was sensational enough that I knew it was only a matter of time. I was impressed by McKinnon’s writing and the way he treated the victims, with a dignity and respect that’s missing in a lot of other books of that genre. That’s why I agreed to cooperate with him instead of any of the other authors who contacted me.”
What must it have been like for him, she wondered, knowing he was innocent but being bombarded by members of the media who all thought him guilty as sin?
“You know, it was odd,” she said. “I don’t normally pick up true-crime books for my leisure reading—when I have time for leisure reading, which isn’t very often. But Wyatt’s books really appealed to me, right from the first. I read nearly his entire backlist before I ever knew…”
She tightened her lips as her voice trailed off. Why could she never seem to squeeze those words out? They tangled in her throat, lodged there like she’d swallowed a rock.
To her relief, Hunter finished the sentence for her. “Before you knew he was your brother?”
“Right,” she murmured.
She didn’t know much about siblings but Wyatt and Gage certainly didn’t feel like brothers. They were simply two very nice men who happened to share the same blood as her.
She admired them and enjoyed being in their company, but when she dug around in her heart for something deeper, she came up completely empty. Would that ever change? she wondered.
“What’s this book about?”
She passed him a sandwich from her provisions and the bottled water, and outlined the case Blood Feud focused on and a few of the key players in it. While they ate lunch on the go, they spent several moments discussing other Wyatt McKinnon books they had each read. To her surprise, they actually were able to carry on an intelligent discussion. As a former homicide detective, Hunter had interesting insight about police procedure.
Fledgling hope stirred inside her. Perhaps this trip didn’t have to be days of long, awkward silences after all.
“You certainly know enough about that world. Both sides of it, actually—the inside and the outside of the criminal justice system. Maybe you ought to write a book.”
He stared at her for a moment, then he actually laughed. Kate almost couldn’t believe it! It was short and abrupt, but was definitely genuine.
“I can’t imagine anything more torturous. I’m no writer. It was all I could do to pass freshman English in college. Filling out my case paperwork was a nightmare.”
“Well, you could always collaborate with Wyatt.”
“Been there, done that. No thanks. After he finishes the book about Dru and Mickie’s murders, I think my collaboration days are over forever.”
“You don’t want to go back to being a cop and you don’t think you’re cut out to be a writer. What will you do?”
He sent her a sidelong look over his sandwich. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’ll just spend the rest of my life driving around the country helping damsels in distress.”
Was that a joke? She stared at him, unable to believe her ears. Hunter Bradshaw actually made a joke!
“Interesting career choice,” she murmured. “But I’m sure you can make a go of it. If you put out an ad, I’m sure you’ll have distressed damsels crawling out of the woodwork.”
Especially if you include a picture, one that shows your dark and dangerous side, she wanted to add, but didn’t quite have the nerve.
“I’ll be sure to include advertising in my business plan, then.”
She smiled. “And if you need a reference, let me know.”
“Better wait to see if we actually accomplish anything on this quest before you make an offer like that.”
“We will. I have great faith in you.”
“Good thing one of us does,” he muttered, his features austere once more, with no trace of that fleeting lightheartedness.
Unsettled at his rapid transition, Kate turned to look out the window. They rode in silence for a few moments, but she thought it was a little more comfortable between them now.
Not easy, exactly, but getting there.
“I love this part of the state,” she said after a few more miles. “The hoodoos and the mesas and the slickrock. It’s like we’re on another planet from the high mountain valleys of northern Utah.”
“I haven’t been this far south for probably five or six years. I’d forgotten how raw and primitively beautiful the desert can be in the winter.”
“Taylor and I drove down to Moab to mountain bike a few times during med school.”
“Really?”
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
“Every time I saw the two of you, you had your noses stuck in medical school textbooks. I wouldn’t have thought you would make time for a vacation to shred up the slickrock.”
“We weren’t completely obsessed,” she said with a laugh. “We took time away from studying when it was for something really important, like mountain biking.”
“You’ve been a good friend to Taylor,” he said after a moment.
“She’s been good to me,” Kate said simply. “I’m glad she’s going back to finish her last year of med school. It’s been so wonderful these last few weeks to have the old Taylor back.”
“What do you mean, have her back?”
She regretted her words as soon as she uttered them but it was too late to backpedal. She picked her next words more carefully. “You know how she’s been since your arrest. She was driven before as a medical student—both of us were, that was the big link between us. But when she switched to law school to help with your appeal, Taylor went beyond driven.”
“She was obsessed with the case. You don’t have to sugarcoat it.”
“Obsessed is a strong word and I’m not sure it’s the right one, but she didn’t allow much room in her life for anything else.”
“For anything but trying to bail out her jailbird brother.”
The bitterness in his eyes pierced her like a lancet. “No,” she said firmly, earnestly. “Trying to right a terrible wrong. Trying to save the life of an innocent man.”
He didn’t say anything for a few more miles. She was just about to ask if he wanted to listen to another CD when he finally spoke.
“What about you?” He made his voice quiet, deceptively casual. “Did you think, like everyone else, that I was guilty as hell, that Taylor was wasting her time?”
“Never. Not for one single moment.”
The vehemence in her voice stunned him enough that he shifted his gaze from the road to look at her. He saw no dissemination in her columbine-blue eyes, no hint of doubt. Only pure trust, absolute certainty.
He jerked his gaze back to the road, his mind barely registering the passing yellow lines under his tires. “How could you be so sure? You barely knew me. My closest brothers on the force thought I was guilty.”
Men he had worked beside, would have taken a bullet for. Of all the crushing betrayals of the last thirty months, that had been the worst, that more police officers hadn’t been willing to stand with him.
“They all thought I did it,” he went on. “How could you be so sure I didn’t?”
She paused so long he finally looked at her again. What had he said to put that light blush across her cheekbones? he wondered.
“I saw you with Dru,” she murmured. “Even though you were angry that she refused to marry you after she found out she was pregnant, you still treated her like fragile, priceless glass.”
“The prosecution would have said that was all the more reason for me to be furious when I found out she was cheating on me, when I found out the baby wasn’t mine. All the more reason for me to kill her in a jealous rage—because I had been a blind, besotte
d fool.”
“Whatever Dru did—no matter how she treated you—you never would have hurt her. And you absolutely would never have done anything to harm that baby. Never.”
That solid, unwavering faith shook him to his core, somehow managed to sneak under all those hard, crusty protective layers he had worked so hard to build these last thirty months. The cold, hard knot that had been tangled around his heart, his lungs, eased just a little and he almost thought he could breathe just a little easier.
Except for Taylor, he had felt completely alone in prison. Even Taylor’s unwavering support had been small comfort, he was ashamed to admit. As his sister, she was supposed to believe in him. He had both needed and expected her faith in him.
Kate definitely wasn’t his sister but she had believed in him, too. He shouldn’t have found the knowledge so achingly sweet.
But he did.
* * *
Hunter was quiet for a long time after she uttered her fervent declaration, so long Kate wondered if she had embarrassed him by it.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been quite so ardently enthusiastic in her support of him. She couldn’t help it, though. She was so angry at what had been done to him, first by that bitch Dru Ferrin and then by the system of justice he had risked his life day after day to uphold.
The miles ticked by and for a long time she stared out the window watching dark clouds scud by above the desert, moving even faster than they were. Finally, she turned back to her book but she found it much harder to concentrate than she had earlier. She was relieved when Hunter stopped the SUV on the outskirts of Moab to fill up again and let Belle out.
Their first pit stop earlier in the day set the pattern for this one. Once more they worked as a team—Hunter pumped gas while she found an open space to exercise Belle for a few moments.
This time, though, when they finished she offered to drive again. To her surprise, he agreed.
The SUV handled even better than her little Honda, she was pleased to discover. Kate took off heading south while Hunter, big and rangy in the seat next to her, leafed through her CD collection for several moments.
She waited, curious as to what he might pick. Music was one of her passions and her collection was eclectic and extensive. Most men she dated tended to favor her blues or classic-rock CDs but she had to admit to some surprise at Hunter’s ultimate choice—Dianne Reeves, one of her favorite jazz vocalists.
“I saw her in concert once at Red Butte,” he explained at her raised eyebrow.
They listened in silence for a few moments while she adjusted her driving instincts to the SUV’s bigger frame and longer braking time. By the third song, she glanced over and was further surprised to find Hunter’s eyes closed.
At first she wondered if he might be feigning sleep to avoid making conversation, but after a few moments of the steady rise and fall of his chest, she was certain he was genuinely asleep.
This was nice, she thought. Driving along through harshly beautiful scenery with a gorgeous man sleeping in the seat beside her, while soft jazz kept her company.
Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon at all.
CHAPTER 5
He was in heaven.
A paradise of sensations—heat and hunger and the sweet tug of anticipation.
He was lying on a beach, palm fronds rustling and clicking overhead. Sunlight seeped into his bare skin, his toes dug into warm sand and his arms were filled with naked womanly curves.
Heaven.
Kate.
She was everything he hadn’t let himself imagine. Her skin was creamy and smooth and when he pressed his mouth to the curve of one shoulder, she tasted like sun-warmed vanilla candy. He wanted to lick every inch of it, to work his way from her pink-polished toes to that sweetly bowed mouth then back again.
“Mmmm, that’s good,” she murmured, arching her back as she stretched beneath him so that the tight buds of her nipples brushed against the hard muscles of his chest.
He groaned and kissed her neck, that intriguing hollow just above her collarbone, then shifted his body just enough that he could cup one of those warm, tantalizing breasts in his fingers.
She made a soft, erotic sound and arched again, long, smooth legs sliding against his. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close.
He couldn’t seem to breath as a torrent of sensations crashed over him like those sea waves buffeting the shore. So long. It had been so terribly long since he had tasted and touched and explored the mysteries of a woman’s body.
She called his name and her low voice rippled down his spine like a slow, warm trickle of suntan lotion on his skin. He reached for her again, craving her touch with every cell, every synapse. She came to him with an eagerness that stunned and aroused him, with that secretive, seductive smile that hinted of female delights he had nearly forgotten.
“I want you,” he murmured.
Her sleepy-lidded eyes beckoned him. “I know.”
One hand slipped from behind his back between their bodies. He waited, stomach muscles contracted, not a single particle of air in his lungs, as she reached for him.
Her hand moved with agonizing slowness, down, down and it was all he could do not to whimper.
He had never been so aroused, never wanted so ferociously. He couldn’t wait, he wanted to consume her. To take her until neither of them could move. Fast, slow, and every way in between.
“Hunter?”
The voice came again, more insistently this time. Instead of a warm, sensuous whisper, this time it blew across his skin like the Arctic Ocean had suddenly come crashing over him.
In an instant, everything disappeared, yanked away with such cruel abruptness he wanted to bellow with rage. The warm sand, the sunshine, the naked and beautiful Kate in his arms. It was all gone.
He blinked quickly back to awareness, to the inside of his Jeep, to Belle snuffling around in her crate. Instead of warm tropical breezes, snow whirled around outside the SUV, blowing hard across the highway.
A dream. He was having a dream about Kate Spencer, about making love to her on some tropical beach, while she sat oblivious two feet away.
Holy hell.
He drew in a ragged breath, more grateful than he had ever been in his life that sometime while he’d slept she must have covered him with that fleece blanket he’d put behind the front seat in case of emergency.
This definitely qualified as an emergency. He was so aroused, it was a wonder he hadn’t popped a few buttons on his Levi’s.
He was sick thinking about what might have happened if she hadn’t awakened him—and if the blanket wasn’t hiding his obvious arousal. In another few moments, he would probably have embarrassed them both, something that hadn’t happened to him since he’d hit puberty.
He would have had to move away, to another country, possibly another continent. Though he would have hated it, he would have had to break off all contact with his own sister to avoid ever having to see Kate again.
He had been far too long without intimacy. While on one level it was good to know he was still capable of all the normal hunger he thought had shriveled away during his incarceration, he would really rather not have discovered this salient fact on a long road trip with the one woman he couldn’t have.
He could only hope and pray he hadn’t said anything incriminating while he’d slept, that he had only done all that moaning and groaning in the feverish recesses of his mind.
Hunter blew out a breath and tried to focus on anything but the need still centered in his groin.
Even though the electronic clock on the dashboard read only five-thirty, the sky had darkened while he’d slept. They were approaching the shortest day of the year, he remembered. Outside the window, he saw nothing but snow swirling in their headlights. No house lights, no headlight beams from other traffic.
It was otherworldly, that total absence of life, as if they were completely alone in their own intimate little universe. His shoulder blades itched and he almos
t—not quite—forgot about that horrifying dream.
“Where are we?”
“On the Navajo Reservation. The last road sign said five miles to Shiprock, so we should be seeing some signs of life soon.”
“How long has it been snowing?”
“Right before I hit Blanding.”
That must have been a hundred miles ago! He couldn’t believe he’d slept that long or that deeply. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept three hours at a stretch.
Of course, he couldn’t remember the last erotic dream he’d had, either.
His lingering embarrassment turned him surly. “I told you to wake me up if the weather turned bad. Why the hell didn’t you do what I said?”
“There was no reason to wake you. I was doing fine. I’m still doing fine. You looked like you needed the rest and I didn’t see any need to disturb you. I wouldn’t have awakened you now except I thought since it’s your vehicle here I’d better check to see if you want to stop in Shiprock and wait out the storm or keep driving onto Farmington or points south. I’ve been listening to weather reports on the one station I’ve been able to get and they’re saying it’s snowing hard between Farmington and Albuquerque and the Weather Service has issued a travel advisory.”
Damn. So much for his plans to reach Albuquerque that night—or his hopes of outmaneuvering the storm by heading south. He had to hope this wasn’t a grim precursor of what was to come on this trip.
“I guess we’d better stop in Shiprock for the night. Pull over and I’ll drive from here.”
She slanted him a quick, amused look before turning her attention back to the road. “Why? I’m perfectly comfortable driving in snow.”
But he wasn’t comfortable with her driving in snow. It was irrational, he knew, as from what he could see she was handling his SUV just fine.
She wasn’t exactly driving at a snail’s pace but her speed didn’t seem at all excessive for conditions. She had engaged the on-demand four-wheel drive, he noted, and she seemed very competent behind the wheel.
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