At Last Read Free Page A

of nothing. Basically, she would admit to being lost over her own dead body.
    Usually people were happy to see him, but not this woman. Never this woman, and it was a little baffling. He knew from watching her at the diner, serving everyone from the mayor to raunchy truckers with the same impassive efficiency, that she had a high bullshit meter and a low tolerance for anything that wasn’t delivered straight up. “So Mallory’s what, on crack?” he asked.
    “She thinks she’s funny.”
    “So… you’re good?”
    “Pretty much,” she said.
    He nodded agreeably. Fine by him if she didn’t want to break down and admit to being lost. He enjoyed her fierceness, and the inner strength that came with it. But he still couldn’t just walk away.
    Or take his eyes off her. Her hair was a deep, rich, shiny brown, sometimes up, sometimes falling softly about her face, as it was today. She wore aviator sunglasses and lip gloss, and that tough-girl expression. She was a walking contradiction.
    And a walking wet dream. “You know this trail closes at dusk, right?”
    She tipped her head up and eyed the sky. Nearly dusk. Then she met his gaze. “Sure,” she said with a tight smile.
    Hmm. Not for the first time, he wondered how it’d beto see her smile with both her eyes and her mouth at the same time.
    She retied her boots, those silly boots that didn’t have a lick of common sense to them. He was picturing her in those boots and nothing else when she climbed off the rock and pulled on her cute little leather backpack, which was as impractical as her boots. “What are you doing all the way up here?”
    “Just hiking,” she said carefully. She was always careful with her words, careful to keep her thoughts hidden, and she was especially careful to keep herself distanced from
him
.
    But Matt had his own bullshit meter, and it was deadly accurate. She was lying, which stirred his natural curiosity and suspicion—good for the cop in him, dangerous for the man who was no longer interested in romantic relationships. “Hiking out here is big,” he said. “But it can be dangerous.”
    She shrugged at this, as if the dangers of the forest were no match for her. It was either cocky, or simply the fact that she’d spent a hell of a lot of time in far more dangerous situations. He suspected the latter, which he didn’t like to think about.
    She moved back to the trail, clearly anxious to be rid of him. Not a surprise.
    But along with Matt’s BS meter came a honed ability to read people, and he was reading her loud and clear. She was exhausted, on edge, and his least favorite: scared, though she was doing her best to hide that part. Still, her nerves were shining through, and he knew it was because of him.
    He wasn’t sure what to do about that. Or her. He wasn’t at all used to explaining himself, but he needed toexplain a few things to her. Such as exactly how lost she was. “Amy—”
    “Look, I appreciate you coming out. I did lose track of time, but I’ll be going now, so…”
    Knowing the value of a good, meaningful silence, Matt waited for her to finish her sentence.
    She didn’t.
    Instead, she was clearly waiting for him to leave, and he suddenly got it—she wanted to follow him out. Pride sucked, as he knew all too well. “Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll see you at the diner real soon.”
    “Right.” She nodded agreeably, the woman who was the singularly most disagreeable woman he’d ever met.
    Having much more time than she, he leaned back against a tree, enjoying the flash of annoyance that crossed her face. “Right,” he mirrored. It’d been a hell of a long day, and it was shaping up to be a longer night. He didn’t have enough Dr. Pepper left to get him through it, but he was perfectly willing to try.
    Amy sighed with barely concealed annoyance and stalked off down the path.
    In the wrong direction.
    Funny, Amy thought, how righteous indignation could renew one’s energy level, not to mention make