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Could it really be that easy? She hadn’t even had to bargain with him—the curiosity in his eyes told her he meant what he said, that he would look at her collection of evidence without her having to bare any painful details of their childhood.
Relief swamped her like a warm, comforting tide. This could work. Kate’s idea had been nothing less than inspired. This man, with his clever mind and his insightful prose, could be a powerful ally.
Now all she had to do was hope that Wyatt could look at the evidence with an objective eye, untainted by the damning testimony offered during the trial.
She could always hope. She’d become an expert at that over the last thirty months.
Chapter 4
“You can’t desert me, Kate,” Taylor exclaimed. “This whole crazy thing was your idea!”
“Oh, no. Don’t pin this one on me.” Kate laughed. “I only suggested you talk to the man, try to get him on your side. The whole home-cooked dinner, wine and candlelight routine was completely your idea.”
“I didn’t cook anything! It’s only takeout lasagna from La Trattoria. You think it’s too much, don’t you. It’s too much. I knew it was. Okay, he won’t be here for another half hour. I can just clear everything away, throw it all back in the fridge.”
She reached for the place settings she had just spent ten minutes neurotically and meticulously arranging, but Kate grabbed her hands, laughter brimming in her blue eyes.
She squeezed her fingers. “Relax, Tay. I was only teasing you. Dinner is a great idea to soften him up. No man in his right mind can resist La Trat’s lasagna.”
Taylor pulled her hands free and let them fall to her side, mostly to keep from wringing them. “I’m not good at this stuff. You know I’m not.”
“What stuff? I thought you were just meeting with the man to talk about Hunter’s case.”
Kate raised a knowing eyebrow and Taylor felt heat scorch her cheeks at her own transparency.
“We are. It’s just…he’s just…” She blew out a breath.
Kate grinned. “What? Too gorgeous for his own good?”
Her cheeks heated up a notch. “That too.”
Kate’s lighthearted teasing gave way to a worried expression. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Careful of what?”
“I haven’t seen you like this about anyone since Rob. I just don’t want you to be hurt again.”
Taylor rearranged the place settings again, refusing to meet Kate’s all-too-knowing gaze. “The situations aren’t at all the same. Rob was a complete jerk.”
“A jerk you were seriously thinking about marrying.”
“In one of my more idiotic moments. Good thing I found out how shallow and ambitious he was in time, right? At the first sign of trouble he decided the woman he claimed to be passionately in love with wasn’t nearly as important as his future political aspirations.”
Hours after Hunter was arrested, when Taylor was been reeling from shock and disbelief, Rob Llewelyn had dumped her. He had his whole life mapped out, he had informed her with a self-righteousness that still made her burn at her own foolishness. First the state legislature, then a congressional seat, and after that, the sky was the limit.
Someone in his position had to be above reproach. He couldn’t afford this kind of negative guilt by association, he told her. This was already shaping up to be a huge scandal and he couldn’t have even a whiff of it tainting his future.
“Rob didn’t hurt me,” she said automatically, as she always did. “I had a lucky escape.”
Though she believed the second part of her statement, the first part wasn’t strictly true, she had to admit. Kate knew it too. Taylor might not have been sure she loved the man—in retrospect, she couldn’t believe she had ever even entertained it as a possibility—but being dumped at such a traumatic time when she could have used all the support she could find had been one more shock to get over.
“Anyway, even if I am…attracted…to Wyatt McKinnon, I could never do anything about it. I don’t have the time or energy for that kind of complication right now. I just don’t. With school and Hunter and the appeal, I don’t have anything left to give.”
“Sometimes you just have to find the time and energy, especially when it comes to a man like McKinnon.”
“Says the woman whose personal relationship rule is not to date the same man more than three times.”
Kate gave her a pointed look. “Don’t change the subject. We were talking about you, not me.”
“I’d rather talk about you,” Taylor muttered.
“I’m sure you would,” Kate said. Her smile slid away after a moment. “I’m just saying be careful, that’s all.”
Obviously Taylor hadn’t been as successful as she’d hoped at hiding from her friend the strange effect Wyatt had on her, if Kate thought this little lecture was necessary.
She had spent the past three days trying to figure out what it was about him that struck such a responsive chord in her. He was gorgeous, Kate was certainly right about that. Lean and masculine, with those intense eyes and his surprisingly sweet smile.
She suspected her strong reaction to him—and the disquiet it sparked in her—was from more than just a hormonal reaction to a gorgeous man. The other day at the diner, she had seen the kindness in his eyes. Something about his quiet calm had comforted her, steadied her, more than all the warm tea in the world.
“I’ll be fine,” she finally answered Kate, wishing she believed her own words. “I’d be better if I knew I could count on you for moral support. A nice, friendly buffer. I never would have brought home La Trattoria if I thought for one moment you would be abandoning me.”
“Ha. Nice try. Your guilt trip is not going to work on me this time.”
“Not even a little?” Taylor asked hopefully.
“I have rounds! I don’t have any choice—I can’t help it if my schedule was changed. With this flu outbreak, Sterling has all the residents on double shifts. I’m going to be late as it is if I don’t hurry!”
Taylor gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sorry I badgered you.”
Kate hurried for the front door to pick up the battered denim jacket she adored. She grabbed her keys off the hall table. “You know I’m going to expect total deets in the morning, right? I’ll pick up Krispy Kreme on my way home, so be ready to spill.”
“I will.” Taylor gave her another hug. “You can have leftover lasagna and doughnuts for breakfast.”
“Mmm. My favorite.”
With a laugh, Kate rushed out the door. Taylor watched her go, aware of the jealousy settling like a hard, greasy lump in her stomach.
She wanted to be the one running out the door to the hospital. Just went to show how crazy she was, she thought, that she could actually envy Kate the upcoming twelve hours on her feet dealing with surly patients and reams of paperwork.
She fiercely wanted to go back and finish medical school, to serve the residency she’d been promised in pediatrics. She had told Wyatt the truth about that the other day at the diner. Though she knew it wasn’t fair, that it was petty and small, sometimes it chewed her up inside that Kate had the freedom to follow her dreams while Taylor was trapped in a world she hated, a world that threatened to suck the life out of her.
Taylor sighed, ashamed of her moment of weakness. How could she feel sorry for herself and decry her own lack of freedom? If the mood struck her, she could walk outside right now and enjoy the cool bite of an October evening or the sweet scent of the late-blooming flowers in her garden.
She could run to her favorite Italian restaurant for all the lasagna her heart desired, could top it off with a big bowl of triple chocolate Häagen-Dazs from the freezer if she wanted.
Hunter could do none of those things. He truly had no freedom, no choices. Until he did, she could put her own dreams on hold.
Wyatt wasn’t sure what to expect from Taylor’s house. From his research and from testimony during the trial, he knew she came from money—her great-grandfather Bradshaw had been a wealthy silver baron in Park City during its mining heyday. Through prudent investments, the Bradshaws had managed to hang on to their money at a time when many other mining magnates went broke.
That had been one of the more intriguing aspects of her brother’s case that the media had played up relentlessly—Hunter had come from wealth and privilege. He hadn’t needed to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to, yet he had dirtied his hands by playing at being a cop. Rich boy turned cop turned killer.
For all he knew, Taylor could live in some starchy Avenues mansion. But when he followed the directions she’d given him three days earlier, he found a neighborhood of small cottages. Though the houses were small and the yards minuscule, this was a desirable area, neatly sandwiched between the University of Utah campus and Salt Lake City’s downtown. The houses were old but charming, with residents who kept them freshly painted and tidy.
With its cheerful blue shutters and fall flower garden, Taylor’s house reminded him a little of the cottage his brother Gage had rented in Park City earlier in the summer, where he had met his fiancée Allie and her two darling little girls.
A group of children played basketball on a standard tacked to the garage of the house next door, and on the other side, a rail-thin gray-haired man paused his leaf-raking long enough to study Wyatt with curiosity, making him wonder if Taylor didn’t have many male callers.
Before he turned off his engine in front of her house, he saw a small silver Honda back out and drive away, but from his angle he couldn’t get a glimpse of the driver.
Maybe Taylor chickened out and decided not to meet with him. Wyatt rejected the thought as soon as it entered his mind. She struck him as the kind of woman who would never back down from a fight. Besides, he had seen her car the other afternoon at the prison and knew she drove a Subaru wagon.
Anticipation flickered through him at knowing he would see her again. He was grimly aware that he had done entirely too much thinking about Taylor the past few days.
Objectivity.
He repeated the word in a low mantra as he hit the locks on his Tahoe and climbed out into the October evening. He might be fiercely attracted to Taylor, but he couldn’t allow that to distract him from his goal. He was going to write her brother’s story.
No, he corrected himself. He was going to write Dru and Mickie Ferrin’s stories. Big difference, one he needed to remember. They were the reason he was here.
Taylor Bradshaw was a source for his book, that’s all. As a loving, devoted sister, she could give him rare insight into her brother’s mind and heart, perceptions he might not even be able to get from Bradshaw himself. She could tell him what it had been like growing up as the two children of a man who by all accounts had been as strict with his children as he’d been on the bench.
Maybe she could even shed some light into what might have made Hunter snap that night.
He rang the doorbell and smiled at the curious neighbor, amused that the elderly man was still watching with his rake in his hands as if he was prepared to use it if Wyatt threatened Taylor in any way.
The door opened a moment later and, before he could even say hello, he was accosted by a sleek Irish setter. The dog didn’t bark at him or jump up, but she blocked his way inside, sniffing and wagging her tail in greeting, until he reached down to pet her.
She immediately took that as permission to get up close and personal. She rubbed her head against his thigh eagerly, that long auburn tail going like crazy.
Taylor stepped forward, her color high—at the dog’s friendliness or at something else, he couldn’t begin to guess. “Belle, leave the poor man alone. Down,” she ordered. The dog whined a little but obeyed, slinking down to the tile floor.
“Sorry about that. I’m afraid Belle is a cheap hussy for any man who gives her a little attention,” she said. “Most women she can take or leave, but whenever a man comes to the house, she is practically giddy. She misses Hunter, I think.”
“She was his?”
Taylor nodded. “He raised her from a puppy. Actually, he rescued her from a crime scene. Belle’s mother was shot trying to protect her owner from the woman’s abusive boyfriend. Neither the dog nor the woman survived. There were three others in the litter, and Hunter and John Randall, his partner, made it their mission in life to find homes for all of them. He fell hard for Belle and couldn’t give her up.”
He tried—and failed—to imagine the tough man he met in prison rescuing a litter of orphaned puppies. With that hard, steely gaze of his, Wyatt had a difficult time imagining Hunter had a soft spot for much. Except maybe his sister.
“I guess you inherited her after his arrest.”
“I’m just watching her until Hunter gets out,” she said, her chin lifted defiantly as if daring him to contradict her.
Wyatt wasn’t sure what to say to that, and they stood awkwardly in her small foyer for a few moments until she seemed to collect herself.
“I’m sorry, let me take your jacket.”
He shrugged out of it and handed it to her. “Have you eaten?” she asked after she hung it in the closet off the entryway.
“No. I was going to ask if you wanted to grab something after we were done,” he said. He didn’t want to admit, even to himself, how much he had wanted her to agree.
“Do you like Italian?” she asked. “I picked up some takeout on the way home.”
“Italian’s great. If my mother were here, she’d tell you I never met a pasta dish I didn’t like.”
She looked vaguely surprised at his mention of his mother, as if she’d never given the matter of his parentage much thought. “Does your family live in Salt Lake?” she asked as she led the way through the small house toward the kitchen.
“We’re all over. My parents split up when I was a kid. Mom lives in Liberty near my ranch—she’s an elementary school principal—and my dad has a carpentry shop in Las Vegas. I have an older brother who has lived all over the West but currently hangs his hat in Park City. He’s with the FBI.”
“FBI? Really? So I guess you both work closely with criminals.”
He sent her an amused look. “Something like that.”
The kitchen reminded him of a Tuscan farmhouse, with warm yellow stuccoed walls and pots hanging from a center island. It looked comfortable and well-used. He leaned a hip against the counter as he watched her transfer a pan from the oven to a dining table set in a small alcove overlooking her backyard.
“So your parents had just two boys?” she asked, her hands too busy with setting out food to notice the reaction he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide at her innocent question.
He thought of Charlotte—little Charley—with her blond curls and her sweet smile. Guilt socked him in the gut, as it always did. “We had a little sister but we lost her when she was three.”
It was his easy, glib answer, the one he used when he didn’t want to get into the whole story. He knew she would assume Charlotte died. Most people did. It was often easier to let them think that than going into all the grim details of the kidnapping, which would inevitably dominate the conversation for some time.
“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Compassion turned her eyes a dewy midnight blue and filled him with guilt at his lie of omission.
He chose to deal with it by changing the subject quickly. “Everything looks delicious. This is great. You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”
“I didn’t do anything but pick up the lasagna from a restaurant. I wish I could say I made it, but Kate—my roommate—is the expert in the kitchen. I’m learning from her but I still am an amateur. I thought she would be here to join us but her shift was changed at the hospital. You just missed her.”
Did she tell him that to subtly remind him this wasn’t a date? he wondered. That even though they were two adults enjoying a delicious meal alone together, he shouldn’t make any kind of leap in logic about it?
Too bad the roommate wasn’t here. There was an intimacy to being alone together here that he would have preferred to avoid, given his attraction to her.
Objectivity, he reminded himself as he poured wine for both of them. This was just another interview, just like dozens of others he’d done for this book.
This wasn’t so bad, Taylor thought a few moments later as she took another bit of rich, spicy lasagna.
All her nervousness had been for nothing. Wyatt seemed to find nothing odd about sharing a meal before they got down to the gritty business of going over the facts in Hunter’s case. As they enjoyed the delectable pasta and crusty Italian bread, they talked of mundane matters—her classes, his ranch, how long she’d lived in the house.
“I bought it after my father died four years ago.”
“Your mother died when you were just a little girl. Six, isn’t that right?”
The question was a blunt reminder of the unpalatable fact that he knew far more about her than she did about him. She couldn’t help feeling a little exposed that so many private details of her life had become public knowledge after Hunter’s arrest. Her sense of invasion made her reply sharper than she had intended.
“And I guess that’s the explanation you’re going to use for everything that supposedly went wrong with Hunter.”
He looked surprised by the sudden attack, then thoughtful. “No. I was just thinking how tough that must have been on you, losing a mother at such an early age.”
The age hadn’t been as difficult as the circumstances of her mother’s death. “My mother was…ill for a long time before she died. I don’t remember her any other way.”
