Out of the Storm (Buckhorn, Montana #1) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,19

true belief that she’d held in both her head and her heart all these years. If she ever got to look into Danny’s eyes again, she would know him without a doubt—no matter how much he had changed.

As she paused at the opening into the alley, she saw a new set of tracks. Someone else had been here. Her tracks were nearly indistinguishable from yesterday. These tracks appeared larger. The older man she’d seen yesterday? She remembered seeing him come out again before she’d finished breakfast. It had been the same man she’d seen before. She’d recognized his lumbering gait and his buffalo-plaid coat.

With her tracks from yesterday nearly gone with the storm, it was as if she’d never walked down this alley. Never seen that man. Never thought he was her long-lost dead husband.

Even the older man’s tracks were now sunken shadows in the deepening snow. In a few more hours, the falling snow would erase all trace of both of their tracks. She took a step into the alley, even though the snow now came over the top of her boots.

“Kate?”

The sound of Collin’s voice made her flinch. She turned, startled to see him coming toward her through the drifts that had formed on the sidewalk. He looked upset, as if he’d seen where she’d been headed. Just a few more minutes and she would have been pulling open one of the carriage house’s double doors and stepping inside.

“Are you headed back to the motel?” Collin asked, clearly pretending he hadn’t known what she was about to do. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to make an issue of it.

“I bought some books at the store to read,” she said, also pretending that she’d only stopped here to catch her breath. She hugged herself against the cold and driving snow, disappointed and yet thinking that he’d probably just saved her from further embarrassment. “What did you hear on the car?” she asked as she joined him.

“Fred’s hoping the used part comes in tomorrow. He thinks he can get the engine fixed and we can leave by afternoon,” he said as they headed in the direction of the motel.

It took all of Kate’s strength not to look back at the carriage-house doors and that slice of light bleeding out. She’d thought she’d heard the creak of one of the doors opening down the alley. Was Jon Harper standing in the doorway watching them leave? If she turned, would she see his face, and would that be the end of it? Or just the beginning?

CHAPTER SEVEN

“YOU WEREN’T THINKING of going back to see that carpenter, were you?” Collin asked after they’d finished the cinnamon rolls. He’d wordlessly eaten most of the two. She’d had only a little of one before handing it over for him to finish. As good as they had smelled, she wasn’t hungry, even though she’d barely eaten her breakfast.

She met his gaze as she wadded up the foil the rolls had been wrapped in and tossed them into the trash. “I have to set my mind at ease. Once I see him again—”

Collin swore and shot to his feet. “Kate, why put yourself through that? Look, you made a mistake. For a moment, something about him reminded you of your dead husband.” He was pacing the small motel room now. “You’re a rational woman. What would he be doing in Buckhorn, Montana, even if he was alive?”

Working with his hands—just as her father had done. But she said nothing, letting Collin pace and talk.

“Not to mention, what a coincidence it would be that we get stranded here and, lo and behold, there’s your thought-to-be-dead husband.”

Kate heard the truth in what he was saying. Jon Harper wasn’t Danny. Yet she found herself silently arguing, why not? Why couldn’t a man with no memory of the past end up here? Buckhorn was the kind of place a loner might fit right in. Bessie had said that his vehicle had broken down—just as theirs had. Why couldn’t this man who was good with his hands find a way to survive here?

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but there was something about him that made me think he was Danny. I need to know what it was. I have to be sure it’s not him.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” Collin said, grabbing his coat from where he’d dropped it and shrugging it on. “Come on, let’s get this over with.” She didn’t move except to shake her head. He stopped