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He sat next to her, taking an equally rickety chair. It creaked from his weight. “Yes, Miriam is gone. I’m so sorry, Julia.”
Dizzy, confused, lost in sudden grief, she corrected him. “JJ. I’m still JJ.”
“Not to me.”
“I’m no one to you, Dylan. We met by accident.”
His voice turned rough. “I buried your mother. I had a service for her.”
Guilt assaulted her hard and fast, and she hugged his jacket, pulling it tighter around her body. “I shouldn’t have argued with Mom. I shouldn’t have left her.” She rocked in her chair, feeling sick inside. “Was she shot? Is that how she died?”
“Yes.”
The sickness remained. “Thank you for taking responsibility for her. You weren’t obligated to do that.”
“I convinced the FBI that I was. That Miriam needed me.”
Because there was no one else, she thought. Besides JJ, her mother didn’t have any family.
She didn’t want to picture the woman who’d raised her being struck by a bullet, but the crimson-stained image presented itself, ripping into her mind, tearing at her conscience. “Where did you bury her?”
He shifted his feet, and his boots made a scraping sound. “Arizona.”
“Where you live. Where I used to live.” She caught a glimpse of untamed emotion in his eyes, and the look made him seem dangerous.
She didn’t understand why he affected her that way. He’d done nothing wrong. On the contrary, he’d done everything right. He’d rescued her from a kidnapping; he’d given her wayward mother a resting place.
Then why did his soul seem so dark? Why did his eyes betray him?
“Come home with me, Julia.”
“JJ.” Unable to control her reaction, she snapped at him.
“Julia.” He snapped at her, too.
And then they stared at each other, a hard-edged, pulse-hammering, uncomfortably possessive moment passing between them.
This man, the handsome cowboy who’d done everything right, wanted to steal the identity she’d created. To force Julia to bury JJ—the way he’d buried her mother.
“Come home with me,” he said again.
She shook her head, imagined herself in his arms. “No.”
“You need to visit Miriam,” he pressed. “To say goodbye to her.”
Heaven help her. She didn’t want to return to Arizona, to kneel beside Dylan at her mother’s gravesite. To trace the headstone he’d chosen. To let him see her cry.
She’d already cried on the day he’d rescued her from the mess her mother had gotten her into. She’d already wept in his arms when he’d carried her out of that dirty, dingy trailer and into the desert sun.
How much more reliant on him could she be? And how much more pain could she bear from her mother’s passing? From being safe at the Rocking Horse Refuge while her only parent lay dying?
“I loved my mom,” she said. “But things were never right with us. Not even when I was a little girl.”
“I know.”
“Yes, of course you do.” She frowned, realizing she was still wrapped in his jacket, in the scratchy warmth he’d provided. “You hired P.I.s to investigate me. You uncovered my secrets.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I just touched the surface.”
No, she thought. He’d touched more than that. So much more. She removed his jacket and handed it to him. “I need to talk to Henry. To tell him what’s going on.”
“That’s fine.” The wind whipped Dylan’s hair, blowing a loose strand across his face, creating a dark slash against granite-cut cheekbones. “But I’m not leaving this refuge without you.”
When she walked to the front door and turned to look back at him, he looked directly at her, too.
Like a warrior who’d just raided a woman’s heart.
JJ went inside and approached Henry. She knew the parlor, with its cherry wood curio cabinet and doily-covered end tables, was his favorite room in the house. But only because his wife had crocheted the doilies and had packed the curio with things that were special to her, including a faded photograph from their wedding day.
JJ glanced at the picture and tears sprung to her eyes. She didn’t have any photographs of her mother. They’d run off in the middle of the night, leaving nearly everything behind. No keepsake items. No tangible memories.
“What happened?” Henry asked, when he saw her expression. “What did that boy say to you?”
“He told me that my mother was murdered.” She gripped the edge of the sofa. “But he told me that he buried her, too.”
Henry came forward and gave her a gruff yet tender hug. “I’m so sorry about your mama.”
“Me, too.” She knew the old cowboy understood grief. He’d been rattling around without his wife for the past five years. She gulped some air into her lungs and stepped back, afraid she would cry and not be able to stop. “I don’t know what to say. How to explain all of this.”
“Just start from the beginning, honey. Tell me who you are, and who Dylan is to you.”
“My real name is Julia Joyce Alcott, and eight months ago Dylan rescued me from a kidnapping. He stumbled upon me by accident. Afterward, my mother and I left town, and Dylan started searching for us because he learned there was a hit man on our trail.”
She kept talking, repeating everything Dylan had told her. Summoning personal details, she admitted that her mother was a compulsive gambler who’d borrowed an excessive amount of money from loan sharks and couldn’t pay it back. “I didn’t know who the kidnappers were until my mother told me what kind of trouble she was in. Then she begged me not to say anything. She said they would come after me again if we gave them up. But if we ran away, if we got new identities, we would be free. But once we were on the run, she started gambling again.”
“So you and your mama had a falling out?” Henry asked, filling in the blanks.
“Yes. And that’s how I ended up here and she ended up dead.”
“That hit man could have gotten you, too.” The old man shivered. “But you’re safe now, JJ. And you’ll always have a home here. You’ll always be part of the refuge, even if we’re struggling to make ends meet.”
She glanced at a blue and white doily, where the pattern frilled into a scalloped edge. “Thank you, Henry.”
They sat in silence for a moment. They both knew the refuge gave him purpose. He’d always been a cowboy, breeding cutting horses, but he’d started saving abused and abandoned animals after he’d lost his wife.
“So are you and Dylan sweet on each other?” he asked suddenly.
She shook her head, keeping her feelings, the heat Dylan evoked, to herself. “He keeps calling me Julia.”
“’Cause that’s the name he knows you by. Do you want me to call you Julia, too?”
“No. I want to be JJ.”
“It still fits, you know. Didn’t you say you’re real name was Julia Joyce?” He sent her a small smile. “You can still be JJ.”
She smiled, too. “Dylan wants me to go to Arizona with him to visit my mother’s grave.” Her smile fell. “But I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to, honey. You’ll suffer inside if you don’t make peace with her.”
“But it’s over now.”
“No, it isn’t. You haven’t even begun to mourn. You’re still in shock, still trying to wrap your mind around all of this. When it hits you, it’s gonna tear you apart. And if you don’t say a proper goodbye to your mama, it’ll only get worse.”
“Is that what happened to you when your wife died?”
He nodded. “I was angry at her passing on and leaving me alone. So for a while, I avoided saying goodbye. But that didn’t do anything but mess me up even more.”
JJ protested, defending her jumbled emotions. “I’m not angry at my mom for dying.”
“No, but you’re mad about the hell she put you through. And for that, you need to forgive her. So let Dylan take you back to Arizona to see her grave. Let him help you through this.”
She fidgeted, folding her hands, unfolding them. “He told me that he wasn’t leaving this place without me.”
“He seems like a good one, honey. Someone you can count on.”
Yes, she thought. But Dylan’s valor didn’t ease her mind. Because she feared that by going home with him, she was being kidnapped all over again.
And this time the man who’d rescued her, the man who’d carried her to safety, was her captor.
Two
Dylan waited for Julia to return to the porch, frowning at the landscape, thinking about the uncharacteristic way in which she consumed him.
He’d never been a possessive man, not until he’d stumbled upon her, bound and gagged with barbed wire cuts stinging her skin. Not until he’d freed her from her bonds and she’d reached for him, needing him like no one had ever needed him before.
Dylan would always remember the way she’d grazed his cheek, the way she’d moved her mouth closer to his, the way she’d almost kissed him.
Soft, he thought. Sweetly sensual.
He refused to feel guilty for wanting her, for being affected by her touch. He had something else to feel guilty about, something that was ripping a grenade-size hole in his chest.
Her mother’s murder.
Dylan hadn’t fired the gun, but he’d done something that had triggered the hit. He’d killed Miriam just the same.
But he couldn’t tell Julia. Not now. Not this soon. The truth wouldn’t bring Miriam back. It would only destroy what he intended to salvage with her daughter. The harshly tender, perilously intense connection.
He’d been living with the twisted need to protect Julia, to become part of her, even before her mother had died.
When the screen door creaked, his pulse jerked. Julia came outside and he stood up to look at her.
She inched forward. She’d put on a suede coat, but she still looked chilled.
And vulnerable.
The roots of her hair were coming in dark, defying the bleach she’d used. He knew she was an outdoorsy girl, but today she seemed lost, the power of the earth, of the trees, of the snow-capped mountains nearly swallowing her whole.
“Henry told me that I should go to Arizona with you,” she said. “So I’m going.”
Would he be able to purge his sin by taking Julia to her mother’s grave? Would kneeing beside her in the aftermath of murder free him? “I’m glad Henry sees things my way.”
“I have a feeling people always see things your way.”
He frowned. “You don’t.”
“I never expected to run into you again. And certainly not like this.” She slipped her hands into her pockets, burrowing into the lining of her coat.
He held her gaze. “So you tried to forget about me?”
“I tried to forget everything that happened.”
“But you couldn’t, could you, Julia?”
“No. Not completely. And please stop calling me that. I’m JJ, whether you like it or not.”
He didn’t like it, not one bit. She was pulling away from him already, not giving him a chance. “You’re attracted to me,” he said, refusing to let her deny the heat between them. “The way I’m into you.”
Rattled, she glanced away, fighting whatever she was feeling. He could see the struggle.
“You saved me from a dangerous situation,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “We both got caught up in that.”
He had another theory. “If we’d met under different circumstances, we’d still be attracted to each other. It would still be there.”
“Like some sort of cosmic energy?” She shook her head. “I don’t believe in fate. I think people create their own destiny.”
Dylan wanted to disagree, but he couldn’t. He’d gotten her mother killed. He’d created a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened.
“We should try to get a plane out of here tomorrow,” he said, changing the subject. “I’ll book the flight.”
She took a step back. “Why do we have to leave so soon?”
“What point is there in waiting? We both need to face this.”
“Both?” She made a curious expression. “What do you need to face?”
He fought the guilt. “Nothing.”
“Where am I supposed to stay when I’m in Arizona?” she asked.
