Never Too Late

Chapter 3

Hunter was stowing her suitcase in the cargo area of his new SUV next to Belle’s travel crate when Kate walked down the steps of the old Victorian that had been split into three or four apartments.

“All set,” she said. “Everything’s turned off and locked tight.”

He wondered if she realized her chipper tone seemed as forced as her smile—and about as enthusiastic as he felt about this whole thing.

Was she as apprehensive as he was about this whole road trip? He ought just to back out right now, let her fly down to Florida by herself on this quest of hers.

He couldn’t do that, though. If he hadn’t opened his big mouth and suggested it, she wouldn’t even have grabbed onto the idea.

No, he had started this and he would see it through. He had offered to help her, had made a commitment, and he was a man who honored his promises, no matter how difficult.

How tough could it be anyway? All he had to remember was that those columbine-blue eyes and that honey-blond hair and those lush delectable lips were off-limits. No worries.

To his surprise, Kate immediately opened the back door of the Jeep to greet Belle.

His setter barked in greeting and jumped from the vehicle, writhing around Kate with her tail wagging like crazy. Hunter was about to apologize and order Belle to settle down but before he could, Kate knelt down and wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck.

“Oh, I’ve missed you, sweetie. How’ve you been?”

She didn’t seem to mind Belle’s slobbery greeting or the dog’s enthusiastic licking of her face, or the hair she was undoubtedly depositing on Kate’s gray sweater.

He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised by their happy reunion. While he had been locked up, Belle had lived with his sister and her roommate and best friend. Kate.

In truth, Belle had probably spent more time with Kate than she had with him. She was really more theirs than his. Belle had only been a few years old at the time he had been arrested.

His dog certainly hadn’t suffered at all under their care. By the looks of things, the Irish setter adored Kate as much as him.

He let Belle work out a little of her energy by dancing around Kate a few times, then opened the door of her crate.

“Belle. Kennel.”

With one last enthusiastic lick of Kate’s hand, the dog leaped into her travel crate and settled in.

“It’s safer for her to ride back here,” he explained. “For her sake and for the driver’s. Belle’s a good traveler but she can be a distraction.”

“I know. Once she tried to attack the rear windshield wiper in Taylor’s Subaru—from the inside of the vehicle, of course. She spent about ten minutes trying to figure out why she couldn’t wrap her teeth around the thing.”

Her smile looked more natural, a little less forced, and he had forced himself to look away, focusing instead on the clouds hanging heavy and dark in the December sky.

“We’d better get going,” he said brusquely.

“Right,” she said after an awkward moment, then headed for the passenger door of the SUV.

He beat her to it and held it open for her, earning himself an odd look, as if she weren’t quite sure how to react to that small courtesy.

As he walked around the Jeep, he couldn’t help thinking about the somewhat old-fashioned lessons his father had constantly drilled into his head about how to treat a woman. With respect and civility and basic human courtesy.

He and his father had certainly had their differences but he could never fault the Judge in that regard. His father’s example had been lesson enough. Even when his mother had been at her most difficult—days when she had been barely coherent and had raged at everything in sight—Hunter never saw his father treat her with anything but dignity.

He doubted the Judge would find anything courteous about the thoughts he was entertaining about this particular woman. Like how the ivory December morning light gave her skin the soft delectability of a bowl of fresh apricots and how that full mouth begged to be devoured.

He paused outside the driver’s side for one more last-minute lecture to himself. He had to send those kinds of thoughts right out of his head.

Okay, so he’d been a long time without a woman. He could have remedied that anytime these last six weeks if he’d chosen, but he hadn’t and now it was too late. It was his own damn fault if he found himself in a near-constant state of arousal for the next few days.

With a heavy sigh, he opened the driver’s side door and immediately wished he hadn’t. He felt invaded. Overwhelmed. Instead of the comfortably male scent of leather and new car he expected, he smelled Kate—that subtle, alluring scent of shampoo and woman and the vanilla sugar that always clung to her. The smell seemed to slide over him like silk and he wanted to close his eyes and sink into it.

He gritted his teeth and climbed into the SUV.

They drove in silence for a block or so before he dared unclench his teeth to speak. “Your apartment seems comfortable.”

She looked a little nonplussed by his comment coming out of nowhere. Okay, so he was a little rusty at making small talk. His companions for the past two years had been the other inmates on death row, who weren’t exactly big on social chitchat. He was going to have to work on it, though, or this trip with Kate would be excruciating.

“Thanks,” she said after a moment. “I had to find something in a hurry and this was one of the first places I looked at. I thought it was a graceful old house and I liked the fact that it was an established neighborhood. That was one of the things I enjoyed most about sharing Taylor’s house in the Avenues, having neighbors who actually knew your name.”

Guilt pinched at him and he felt like he had shoved her out onto the street. “You had to find somewhere else in a hurry because of me, right? I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m not. You were coming home and that was the important thing. Anyway, the house in Little Cottonwood Canyon was yours. Taylor and I were only staying there temporarily after her cottage burned.”

“After it was torched, you mean.”

Her mouth tightened at the reminder. “Right. I was always planning on finding somewhere else. You and Taylor deserved some time alone without me hanging around.”

“You could have stayed. There was plenty of room.”

She laughed a little. “Right. The roommate who would never leave. That’s me. Don’t worry about me, Hunter. I like my new place, even if I don’t expect to be there long. I only signed a six-month lease—I imagine when my residency is over and I start my own family-medicine practice somewhere, I’ll buy a house somewhere.”

Her words reminded him of his own aimlessness since his release. He needed to give some serious thought to what he was going to do with the rest of his life, now that it had been handed back to him. Maybe with the open road stretching out ahead of him, he might find inspiration.

“I do like my apartment,” Kate went on, “but this is the first time I’ve ever lived alone and I have to admit I’m finding it a little odd.”

“You’ve always had roommates?” There. That sounded just right. Casual and interested but not too inquisitive. They were almost having a normal conversation.

She nodded. “I’ve been a struggling med student, remember? I found it hard enough to make ends meet. Sharing the rent helped ease the financial strain a little.”

She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe by my second or third year I would have decided I’d had enough of roommates and moved out on my own but then Taylor bought her house and asked me if I wanted to share it. I couldn’t say no.”

Hunter had to admit, that decision of his sister’s to take on a roommate had come as a surprise to him. Taylor had bought her little cottage in the Avenues outright with her inheritance from their father. She certainly hadn’t needed a roommate to share expenses but she had taken one anyway for the company.

Taylor wasn’t like him in that respect, he reminded himself. He had never been much of a pack animal, but his sister loved having people around her. He knew she had been lonely those first few months after she’d bought her house and she’d been eager for Kate to move in.

Kate seemed to be waiting for him to respond, so he fished around in his mind until he found an appropriate question. “So do you miss having a roommate?”

She gazed out the windshield, at the minimal Sunday-morning traffic, then finally looked back at him. “I miss Taylor,” she admitted. “That sounds silly, I know, but she was more than just a roommate. She was my best friend. The closest thing I had to a sister.”

“You’ll still be close.”

“It’s not going to be the same. I understand that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled for her and Wyatt. They’re perfect for each other, I could see that right away.”

“Your brother is a good man.”

“I know. Wyatt is strong and smart and funny. Just the kind of man Taylor needs.”

What kind of man do you need? he almost asked but stopped himself just in time. None of his business. That kind of question would lead their fledgling conversation in a direction he absolutely didn’t want it to go.

“He makes her happy,” she said. “When it comes down to it, that’s all that matters.”

“Right,” he murmured. He had to admit, he enjoyed seeing Taylor find some happiness. She deserved it. Both she and Wyatt did.

If not for the efforts of his sister and of Wyatt McKinnon, he would still be in that prison, feeling his soul shrivel more each day. Taylor had worked tirelessly to free him. She had put her dream of becoming a doctor like Kate on hold, switching instead to law school so she could fight for his appeal. Taylor had finally enlisted the help of Wyatt, who had been writing a book about Hunter’s case.

In the process of trying to free him, she had been threatened, her house set ablaze, and finally had faced down death for his cause. He hadn’t wanted her to sacrifice her dreams for him—or, heaven forbid, her life—and Hunter knew he could never repay his sister for all that she had done.

He supposed that was another of the reasons he was driving through the sparse Sunday-morning traffic heading south on I-15. He owed Taylor and Wyatt everything for all they had risked. Maybe by turning around and helping Kate—someone both of them cared about—he could start to check off a little of that debt.

“You’re not taking I-80?” Kate asked as he passed the interchange—the Spaghetti Bowl, as the locals called it, for the various lanes twisting off in every direction like pasta in a dish.

He shook his head. “The weather report said that light snow we had last night gathered strength as it headed east and was due to hit Wyoming with a vengeance today. I figured if we head south now, down through Albuquerque and Amarillo, we’ll escape the worst of it.”

“Good thinking.”

They encountered no delays traveling south across the Salt Lake Valley and, all too soon, they reached Bluffdale where the Point of the Mountain state prison sprawled out to the west of the highway, its buildings squat and depressing.

This was the first time he’d been this way since his release, Hunter realized. Perhaps he had made a point of staying north of the area without even realizing it.

If he had come this way before, he might have been prepared for the rush of anger and hatred rising like bile in his throat.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Sunday mornings were relatively quiet at the prison. Many prisoners chose to sleep the day away, while others attended the various religious services offered.

Hunter had quite deliberately chosen to stay in his cell reading. By the time he’d found himself on death row, he had lost whatever faith might have lingered in his soul.

He had been less than nothing in prison. Inhuman, like a dog locked up in a cage at the pound. He had been out for six weeks and he wondered if that feeling would ever go away.

“It’s hard for you to see the prison, isn’t it?”

It seemed a sign of weakness to admit the truth. It was just a cluster of buildings, after all. A part of his life that was over forever.

He opened his mouth to deny he was at all affected by the sight but somehow the lie caught in his throat.

“I lost two and a half years of my life to that bastard Martin James. Three lives were lost while he tried to protect his web of lies and deceit. Who knows how many more he would have taken? It’s a little hard to get past that.”

Her blue eyes softened with understanding and she reached a hand across the width of the SUV and touched his arm with gentle fingers. “I’m so sorry, Hunter.”

Despite his grim thoughts, heat scorched him where she touched his arm and he was suddenly aware of a wild, terrible hunger to drown in that heat and softness, to lose some of this rage always seething just under the surface.

He jerked his arm away, just firmly enough to be obvious. “I’m sorry enough for myself. I don’t need your pity, too.”

She paled as if he had slapped her—which he guessed he had done, verbally at least—and quickly pulled her hand away.

“Right. Of course you don’t.”

He opened his mouth to apologize for his rudeness, then closed it again. Maybe it was better this way. They weren’t buddies. It was going to be tough enough for him to stay away from her on this journey without having to endure shared confidences and these casual touches that would destroy him.

He had been without any kind of physical affection since his arrest and he hungered for gentleness and softness as much as for sex.

It was a grim realization, one that certainly didn’t make their situation any easier.

She had two choices here, Kate thought as his blatant rejection burned through her like hydrochloric acid. She could let herself be hurt and pout for the rest of the day. That was the course that appealed to her most, but what would that accomplish?

Yes, her feelings had been hurt. All she had been trying to do was offer comfort and he had slapped her down like she was one of those inflatable punching bags she used to beat the heck out of when she was in foster care, angry at the world and unsure of her place in it.

But she decided not to let herself be offended. Hunter was a proud man who had seen his entire world crash down around him. He had lost friends, his job, his standing in the community.

It must have been agony for him to know the whole world believed him capable of murdering a pregnant woman and her dying mother.

He had a right to be prickly about it, to deal with his wrongful conviction and everything else that had happened in his own way. If that way included being surly and hostile when an unsuspecting soul tried to offer comfort, she couldn’t blame him.

His bitterness and anger must be eating him up from the inside and she could certainly understand all about that.

She would take the higher road, she decided. Instead of snapping back or sulking all day, she would swallow her hurt feelings and pretend nothing had happened.

She decided a change of subject was in order. “I brought music if you’re interested,” she said, then risked a joke. “I figured your CD collection might be a few years out of date.”

He sent her one of those dark, inscrutable looks she could only imagine must have been torture for any crime suspect he was questioning. He said nothing, but she thought she registered a vague surprise in those dark-blue eyes at her mild reaction to his rudeness, and she was immensely grateful she hadn’t gone with her first instincts and thrown a hissy fit.

“What are you in the mood for?” she asked. “Jazz? Rock? Country? Christmas music? I’ve got a little of everything.”

“I don’t care. Anything.”

“Okay. I’ll pick first and then you can find something.”

She chose Norah Jones and felt her own stress level immediately lower as soon as the music started.

They drove without speaking for several moments, Belle’s snoring in the back and the peaceful music the only sound in the vehicle, then Kate reached into her bag again and pulled out Wyatt’s latest bestseller that had come out a few months earlier.

“You don’t mind if I read, do you?”

“Go ahead. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. I imagine we’re going to run out of small talk by the time we hit Spanish Fork.”

She laughed. “You might. I never seem to run out of things to say. But I’ll take pity on you and pace myself.”

To her delight, that earned her a tiny, reluctant smile, but it was more than she’d seen since his release. It was a start, she thought. Maybe by the time this journey was through, he would be smiling and laughing like the man she had met five years ago with Taylor in that all-night diner.

She picked up her book, one of only a few of Wyatt’s she hadn’t had time to read yet. She had actually discovered his books long before she ever knew he was her brother, and had read each one with fascination.

He wrote true-crime books—usually not one of her favorite genres—but Wyatt had a way of crawling inside the heads of both the victims and the killers he wrote about, and she found his work absorbing and compelling.

This one was no different, and she was surprised by the warm contentment stealing over her as she rode along with Hunter’s sexy male scent drifting around her senses and the tires spinning on the highway while the windshield wipers beat back a light snow spitting from the sky.

Combined with the peaceful music, Kate felt herself begin to relax and slip further into that warm, cozy place where she didn’t have to worry about the family waiting patiently for her love—or the man beside her who wouldn’t want it, if he ever guessed it might be his for the taking.

She must have drifted off to sleep. One moment she was reading the introduction to Wyatt’s book, the next she woke facing Hunter, with her left cheek squished into the leather seat.

She blinked, disoriented for a moment, then whispered a fervent prayer that she hadn’t done something humiliating in front of the man, like snore or drool or—heaven forbid—talk in her sleep.

They had stopped moving, she realized. The cessation of movement must have been what awakened her. The SUV was parked at the gas pump of a dusty, dilapidated filling station, far from the traffic and houses of the Wasatch Front.

“Where are we?” she asked, her voice gruff with sleep.

“A ways past Price. Sorry to wake you but Belle needed to get out.”

“No. It’s fine. I can’t believe I fell asleep.”

“Don’t worry about it. You looked comfortable so I figured you needed it. I know what kind of hours you M.D.s keep.” He started to say something more but Belle’s sharp, impatient bark cut him off.

Kate winced. “That sounds urgent bordering on desperate. Why don’t I go to that park across the street and play with her for a few moments while you fill up?” she offered.

“Thanks. I brought along a ball and a Frisbee. She likes either one.” He looked a little embarrassed. “But I guess you know what she prefers, don’t you? Probably better than I do.”

That bitterness tinged his voice again and again she had to fight her instinctive urge to offer comfort.

He opened his car door and she caught sight of the gas pump again, which reminded her of something she meant to bring up earlier in the trip. She reached for the huge, slouchy purse she’d bought in Guatemala when she was there on a medical mission a few months earlier, and dug through it until she found her wallet.

She pulled out a credit card and handed it to him. “Use this for the gas.”

With one hand on the frame of the SUV and the other on the door, he gazed at her, another of those unreadable expressions on his face. His mouth quirked a little as if he wanted to say something but he just shook his head.

“No,” he said, and shut the door in her face.