Out of the Storm (Buckhorn, Montana #1) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,107

released from the hospital because they’d needed the bed. He wore a dead man’s clothing out of the hospital as he had walked into that new life.

He hadn’t known anything about himself. But when he’d looked down at his calloused hands, he’d known he was a laborer in whatever life he had lived. He had no idea of his exact age. He didn’t think he was even twenty-one at the time. He hadn’t been. After he’d walked out of the hospital, he’d done what he’d assumed he’d always done. He got a job working on a construction site and saved his money. He had no purpose other than to clothe and feed himself, until one day a friend had suggested he apply to the law-enforcement academy.

He hadn’t realized it until now, but he’d been lost from the moment he woke up in that first hospital. The explosion had untethered him from people he’d loved and needed. He’d been adrift for the past twenty years.

Tears filled his eyes. Even if he’d never been Daniel Jackson, it was time for him to go home.

* * *

AS KATE DROVE up the lane to her house, she frowned. There was a pickup parked out front with a boat behind it. She pulled into her drive, the garage door yawning open at the touch of her fingers, but she didn’t pull in.

Instead, she was looking in her rearview mirror. The boat was a classic wooden one, long and sleek with red cushions in the cockpit. Her father had always wanted one like it. But that wasn’t what had caught her eye.

It was the name stenciled on the back of the boat: Katie.

Her heart hammered as she climbed out of her car and squinted in the sun toward the pickup. It was new, didn’t even have license plates on it yet.

As a tall man climbed out from behind the wheel, she stared, telling herself he had the wrong house even as her pulse thrummed in her ears. It was the way he moved. No limp. Not Jon. Her heart dropped as he moved toward her.

And yet she could feel the chemistry that arced between them. It wasn’t something she wanted to feel because he was the wrong man, she told herself.

He wore jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers along with a baseball cap and sunglasses. “Hi,” he called to her. Not Jon’s voice. A stranger. A man looking for directions. A man who just happened to have a boat named Katie.

She’d often fantasized how Danny would come back to her. One day she’d open the door, and there he would be. Of course, Earl Ray had warned her that she wouldn’t recognize him. But once he told her who he was...

“Can I help you?” she asked as he walked toward her. She still had her keys in her hand, her car door open—just like the garage door.

“I hope so,” he said. She waited for him to ask directions. Clearly he was lost, since there was no place nearby to put that boat into the water.

He must have seen how nervous he was making her, because he stopped just a few feet from her. He shook his head as he studied her. “I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of this. I can see that I’ve scared you. I’m sorry. My name’s Nick. Nick Ross. You’re more beautiful than even in my dreams.”

She stared at him, trying to make sense of the words.

“When Earl Ray told me that the beautiful brunette with the amazing green eyes was real and not just a figment of my delirium, I couldn’t wait to see you again. For months I’ve been trying to get back to you. Oh, Katie.” He said it with a softness that made her close her eyes to stem the tears.

She tried to speak around the lump in her throat but couldn’t.

“Katie.” He was so close now that she felt her name on his lips stir the hair next to her ear. He gently touched her shoulder. “I know I look nothing like the man you knew. Either of them. I’m not sure how they were able to put me back together, but all I could think about was seeing you again. Tell me I’m not too late.”

She opened her eyes, reached over and lifted his sunglasses to see his sable brown eyes. “You’re right on time,” she said, her voice breaking as she threw herself into his arms. He held her tightly as if he never wanted to