Home in Cottonwood Canyon

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Well, it looks like I’ll never find them now. The whys and the hows are probably locked away somewhere in Brenda Golightly’s drug-ravaged mind.”

  He hated seeing her features haunted by pain.

  “I suppose we should just turn around and start heading back to Salt Lake City,” she went on. “There’s no reason to drag this out any further.”

  A few hours earlier when he had been sitting awake in that damn hotel room after a sleepless night castigating himself and her, he might have agreed with her that they should just cut their losses and go home.

  Faced with her pain, he had a difficult time remembering the anger that had prowled through him like a caged animal since making love with her the night before.

  He hadn’t been mad at her. Not really, though he supposed she no doubt believed otherwise after the abrupt, rude way he left her.

  Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.

  While he still believed she should have told him she had never been with a man, most of his anger was self-directed. He had given into his overwhelming need without giving any thought to the consequences. For three long days he had fought his attraction for her and then in an instant all his hard work, every bit of control and self-denial, had been for nothing.

  None of that seemed important suddenly. Not with Kate in the seat next to him, looking like she had just been kicked in the teeth. The need to comfort her, to ease that pain in her eyes, was stronger than any lingering anger.

  “We’re not turning around.”

  She blinked. “We’re not?”

  “No. We can’t just give up. We’re this close, Kate. We can make it to Key West in time to watch the sunset.”

  “To what end? There’s no point in dragging this out. Don’t you get it? Brenda can’t tell us anything. Gage sent one of his FBI colleagues to talk to her and from the sound of it she was barely coherent.”

  “She might not have said much to an FBI agent but that doesn’t necessarily follow that she won’t have anything to say to you. I’ve seen brain injuries before and I know how capricious they can be. You should know that, Dr. Spencer. Who knows, you could have better luck getting through than a stranger.”

  They traveled a full mile before she spoke again. “She might not even know who I am. What if she doesn’t say anything more to me than she did to Gage’s colleague?”

  “Then she doesn’t. You may never find the answers you want. I guess you’ll have to be ready for that eventuality. But at least it won’t be for lack of trying on our part.”

  She still looked unconvinced, her hands fisted together on her lap.

  “Besides, I’ve never been to Key West,” Hunter went on, undeterred by her silence. “Maybe I can take Taylor home a conch shell for Christmas.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’d like to take her a palm tree but I don’t think it will fit in the cargo area.”

  She frowned. “No, why do you insist on dragging this out? After last night, I would think you should be more than ready to turn back.”

  His jaw hardened at her reference to the evening before. “The job’s not done. I offered to help you and I’ll see it through.”

  “Don’t you think you’re carrying this damsel-in-distress thing a little far?”

  Maybe. If he were smart, he would be doing all he could to spend as little time as possible with a woman who left him aching and confused. He would have seen the wisdom of cutting their trip as short as possible, returning to Salt Lake City and going their separate ways.

  A sane man—or at least a smart one—certainly wouldn’t be coming up with transparent excuses to spend as much time as possible with a woman he knew he couldn’t have.

  “We’ve come this far, Kate. Let’s see it through.”

  She looked undecided for a moment, then nodded tightly.

  * * *

  She wasn’t sure how he did it, but Hunter was able miraculously to find deluxe lodging in Key West that welcomed pets, after only a few phone calls. The two tiny matching cottages were set in a lush tropical garden over-looking the Gulf of Mexico. Both painted a pale, cheerful pink, they looked like the perfect spot for a breezy, relaxing beach vacation.

  Too bad she wasn’t here to relax.

  Under other circumstances she would have found it restful swinging in the hammock on the small wood porch while palm fronds rustled and swayed overhead and the ocean licked the sand twenty yards away.

  If not for the low, steady thrum of anger—the deep, restlessness that seemed to have increased the closer they drove to this isolated paradise—she would have loved this.

  She had come to the Keys once with Tom and Maryanne. They had stayed not far from here, she remembered.

  The trip had been a panacea of sorts—a consolation prize—to offset their deep disappointment after Brenda once more had refused to relinquish her parental rights so Kate could be officially adopted by the Spencers.

  Her entire adolescence had been one long tug-of-war with Brenda. With the Spencers, Kate had finally found a place where she could be content, could belong. Yet Brenda had refused time and again to let them make their foster arrangement permanent.

  Kate had been fourteen that long-ago trip to the Keys, trying desperately to figure out why Brenda didn’t want her but didn’t seem to want anyone else to have her either.

  She and Tom and Maryanne had gone through the motions of enjoying themselves on that trip, she remembered now. They had walked and shopped along Duval Street and the rest of Old Town, had snorkeled, had even gone out deep-sea fishing where Tom had caught a swordfish that still hung in his office in St. Petersburg.

  But through it all, a dark, greasy cloud had hung over them, a shadow they couldn’t shake. Brenda, with her lies and her manipulations and her dogged determination that Kate remain legally hers.

  It wasn’t as if Brenda had wanted to play a huge part in her life in those eleven years after Kate had been removed from her custody until she’d reached eighteen and could legally change her name.

  Brenda had come only occasionally for the court-approved visit, just often enough that Kate couldn’t be considered abandoned and therefore become eligible for adoption.

  She had come to dread those brief, uncomfortable encounters that always left her angry and depressed for weeks.

  The real hell of it was that she hadn’t hated Brenda. Not at first, anyway. That had come later, as she had moved further into her teens.

  No, for most of her childhood before she had landed with the Spencers, Kate had loved the woman she thought was her mother—loved her with single-minded, childlike affection and desperately wanted her approval, waiting for the day when Brenda would claim her and they could be together again.

  For all Brenda’s selfishness, her addictions, her men, she had been the only constant in Kate’s life as she was shuttled from home to home, the one thing she had to hold onto for as far back as she could remember.

  The troubled child she had been was frightened of Brenda—of the chaos and tumult of their life—but she had loved her.

  Sitting on the porch of this cheerful little cottage by the sea, Kate felt an echo of that love and couldn’t stop her heavy sigh. How could she have loved a woman who treated her with such callous indifference? Why hadn’t she known somehow that their whole relationship was a fraud?

  Since finding out about her past, she had scoured the deep recesses of her memory bank trying for even one instance when she might have suspected Brenda wasn’t really her mother. She could come up with nothing. She had only a vague, very early memory—not even a memory, really, more just a hazy impression—of a time when her life had been happy, safe.

  Charlotte McKinnon might have been happy in her safe, comfortable world but poor little Katie Golightly had never enjoyed that luxury.

  She sighed again, hating this self-pity, just as Hunter walked up the steps to the porch with the suitcase he had insisted on carrying up from the Jeep for her.

  He set it down inside th
e cottage, then rejoined her on the porch, leaning against a pillar.

  “Want to grab a bite to eat before we head over to the nursing home?” he asked.

  She turned to face him, for the first time noting how the hard lines around his mouth seemed to have eased a little. In the slanted sunlight filtering through the lush growth in bright patches, his features seemed less harsh than they had four days earlier.

  He was gorgeous, so beautifully male that her stomach did a long, slow roll.

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “No problem. We can get something a little later, after we talk to Brenda.”

  The dread that had ridden with her all afternoon seemed to wash over her again, drenching her like a sudden tropical rain.

  She exhaled slowly. “I…Hunter, would you mind if we waited until the morning to go to the nursing home?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why? We’re here now. You’ve come three thousand miles for answers.”

  “Answers we both know I’m not likely to ever find now.”

  “You certainly won’t find them if you refuse to even go talk to the woman.”

  “I will talk to her,” she insisted. “But not yet. I know you probably think I’m crazy or the world’s biggest coward but I…I just can’t yet. I need to work up to it. Can we wait until morning?”

  He studied her. “You’re not crazy.”

  “Well, I seem to be doing a pretty good imitation of it then. I feel crazy. Restless and angry. Itchy inside my own skin. I want to scream and shout and throw chairs around one minute and curl up into a ball and cry my eyes out the next.”

  “Sounds pretty normal to me.”

  She laughed a little at his dry tone. “I guess that proves we’re both a little wacky.”

  “That’s certainly a possibility.”

  Kate had a sudden vivid memory of the wild heat they’d generated between them the night before and had to take a deep breath to calm her suddenly racing heart.

  “Crazy or not,” she said when she could think again, “I can’t face Brenda yet. I just can’t, Hunter. I need a little more time.”

  * * *

  Hunter studied her in the dappled tropical light. She looked fragile and tired, her eyes huge in her pale face. With each mile they drove closer to Key West he had seen the finely wrought tension on her features, her body posture. By the time he’d found these cottages, she was so tightly strung it was a wonder she didn’t vibrate.

  He couldn’t blame her for being nervous about meeting the woman who had caused her such pain. He still hadn’t been able to bring himself to see Martin James since his release. His former defense attorney was in the county jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a host of charges, including the capital-murder charges he had ostensibly been defending Hunter on, though Martin had done everything possible to make sure his client would pay for his own crimes.

  Martin was expected to receive the same sentence he had done his best behind the scenes to make sure Hunter had received—death by lethal injection.

  Hunter doubted he would ever have the strength of will to face Martin as Kate was facing her demons. A least not without wanting to be the one shoving in that needle—not just because Martin had framed him but for Dru and her dying mother and her unborn baby. And because Martin had been willing to kill Taylor to keep his deadly secrets.

  He wouldn’t even go see Martin, so how could he blame Kate for needing a little time to prepare herself before confronting her pain?

  “Okay. This is your show,” he said. “There’s no reason we can’t go in the morning.”

  Her smile flashed like a heron taking flight. “Thank you.”

  That smile entranced him and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to stand in the warm sunlight and soak it in.

  Well, okay, he did want something more. He wanted to capture that smile with his mouth, to absorb her sighs and her pain into him.

  Hunger gnawed at him, making a mockery of any hope he might have been foolish enough to entertain that the night before might have worked her out of his system.

  He couldn’t kiss her and he couldn’t afford a repeat of the night before. The very fact of her inexperience had driven that home forcefully through the long night and their drive south across Florida.

  Kate was a relationship kind of woman with a capital R. She obviously wasn’t interested in casual sex or she wouldn’t have still been a virgin, and he wasn’t capable of anything else right now.

  He was empty inside. No, not completely empty. There seemed to be room for his hate and anger—and even some irrational shame—over what had happened to him. But anything good and decent had died during those grim days and miserable nights of his incarceration.

  He would hurt her. He didn’t want to but he knew himself well enough to know it was inevitable. He couldn’t do it to her—she was coping with enough pain right now.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her, good intentions be damned. “I think I’ll take Belle for a run on the beach. We can both use it after four days on the road.”

  She looked as if she would like to go along but right now he needed distance from her to rebuild his self-control, so he refrained from issuing an invitation.

  “I’ll be done in an hour or so. If you’re hungry by then, we can wander out and see what we can find to eat.”

  He’d heard the nightlife on Key West was wild and woolly. He wasn’t much of a drinker but maybe if he got good and smashed he might be able to forget the night before and the healing peace he had known so briefly in her arms.

  * * *

  He was still feeling vaguely unsettled after he’d changed into a T-shirt and the one pair of jogging shorts he’d brought along.

  Belle was beside herself with joy, anticipating exactly what was coming. She panted with glee and raced circles around him as they headed out toward the water.

  They had made good time from Jacksonville that day. Hunter had predicted they would be in Key West by sunset and, sure enough, the sun was just beginning its slow slide into the sea as he set a hard pace for himself through the hard-packed sand close to the waves.

  Lord, he loved this. Euphoria churned through his veins with every step, every thud of his jogging shoes in the sand.

  Of all the things he had missed during his three years of incarceration, the freedom to take off and run whenever the mood hit him had been up there close to the top of his list. Exercise had certainly been encouraged for inmates. Corrections officers figured it worked off aggression better expended in sweat and exertion than on each other. But Hunter found little satisfaction running around a prison-yard track like a rat in a cage.

  He did it anyway, along with weight lifting to keep his body in shape. But every time he would run inside those razor wire–tipped walls, he would dream of a moment like this, of stretching his legs as far as they would go and heading off into the sunset.

  The ocean was a new twist. Usually his prison fantasies involved taking off into the mountains surrounding his home in Little Cottonwood Canyon, the sharp tang of sage surrounding him and the clear, high air burning his lungs while Belle chased after ground squirrels and pikas.

  This was a heaven he wouldn’t even have let himself dream about two months ago—water lapping at the sand, the warm sea breeze kissing his skin, the sun slipping toward the Gulf of Mexico in a fiery show of orange and purple.

  Hunter enjoyed the sunset on the go, unwilling to stop even for something so spectacular, not with the endorphin high pumping through his system.

  With Belle chasing the waves excitedly and shorebirds crying overhead, it was a moment of pure, stunning joy. The euphoria almost made up for his four days on the road, of trying—and obviously failing spectacularly—to keep his hands off Kate.

  He ran for a long time, until his lungs ached and the sun dipped into the water. As he headed back up the beach toward their rented cottages, his mind traveled of its own will to the woman who waited the
re.

  Small and lovely and vulnerable, she made a dangerous package, one he found entirely too appealing. He just had to do his best to resist her, no matter what it took.

  His resolve was tested unexpectedly about a quarter mile from their lodging. The sun was now only a rim above the waves but he still had enough light to see a solitary figure on the beach staring out to sea, arms wrapped around her knees.

  He knew instantly it was Kate.

  Even if he hadn’t recognized the sunlit warmth of her hair or that slender, elegant stretch of neck, he would have known it was her by Belle’s joyful reaction. The dog raced to her side and leaped and writhed to see her as if they had been separated for months and hadn’t just spent the last three days in almost constant company.

  Kate hugged Belle to her and even from a dozen yards away he could hear her low laughter. It slid around and through him like a thin, silvery ribbon.

  He stopped there in the sand, his muscles twitching and his heart still pounding from the run.

  Still sitting in the sand, she swiveled a little to face him, a small smile of welcome on her face.

  Coming home. That’s what he felt like when he saw her, like some part of him that had been adrift for too long at last had a place to rest.

  He stared at her as a stunning realization hit him with the jolt of a thousand watts of electricity.

  He was in love with her.

  These last few days on this trip—hell, for the whole five years he had known her—he had done his best to convince himself this thing between them was only physical attraction. Pheromone to pheromone, yin to yang.

  Standing here with the tropical breeze cooling the sweat on his body and the sea a soft wash of colors behind him, he forced himself finally to face the truth he had been running from.

  They shared an attraction, certainly. A constant, insidious heat that made him aware of her every sigh, her every breath.

  But he could no longer deny the truth. This was far more than a mere physical attraction. He was in love with Kate Spencer, of the healer’s spirit and the troubled past and the haunted eyes.