Love at First Sight - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,22

mood. Right now they were as warm and bright as a Caribbean sea in sunlight.

“Are you asking me for a date?”

He thought about it for half a second, then nodded and grinned. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

She smiled then, too, a slow, easy smile that sent a shot of heat through him.

As good as it felt, it made him feel guilty. “I have to be honest with you. I have a little more in mind than dinner.”

She raised a brow, shifting her weight to drop a hand to her hip again, but said nothing.

“I’m worried about you,” he blurted out. “I don’t think you should stay in a motel right now. It’s too easy for the killer to find you if he’s motivated enough, and I think he is. So, the safest place I could think of was with me.”

“With you?”

“At my place in the mountains,” he continued, surprised that’s where he intended to take her. He hadn’t taken anyone up there. Not even Denny, his closest friend.

“It’s not anything fancy, that’s for sure,” he found himself saying. “In fact it’s pretty primitive but—”

She started to speak, but he interrupted her, determined he wasn’t going to take no for an answer if he could help it. “It’s only twenty minutes out of town. I’ll bring you back in the morning.” He stopped and looked expectantly at her, ready for a fight.

It must have showed in his expression because she laughed. “I was only going to say thanks. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t looking forward to a motel tonight.”

He smiled in relief. “Then it’s settled.”

“I guess I can finish this tomorrow,” she said. “But tomorrow, I’ll find a place on my own to stay.”

He let it go, saying nothing. He’d deal with that problem tomorrow. At least for tonight, he knew she’d be safe.

Her gaze held his as she untied her tool belt and dropped it on the workbench.

“I’m not really dressed for a dinner date, though,” she said, glancing down at her dusty overalls.

“You are for this date,” he said, unable to remember a time he was as excited about a dinner date. “The atmosphere and dress are casual, the cook is pretty good even if he says so himself and the view—wait until you see the view. You can see for miles.”

That was the idea. From the ski lodge, he’d be able to see anyone coming for her. And he didn’t mind that he’d have her all to himself.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Karen sat back and let the spring night blow by the Jeep windshield. Country-and-western music spilled from the radio to the hum of the tires and the wail of the wind. She sighed with an odd sense of pleasure and excitement.

“If it gets too cold for you, let me know,” Jack said as they zipped along the two-lane road leaving Missoula behind.

It had been the new Karen’s idea to put the top down. Just the way it had been her idea to take Jack Adams up on his offer of dinner and a night away from Missoula.

After the day she’d had, not even the old Karen seemed to care what her mother would think. She leaned back and closed her eyes. The wind whipped her hair and the cold night took her breath away. She couldn’t remember feeling so…free. Or safe.

Safe with a man she’d just met! But she did feel safe with Jack and…free, as if by leaving Missoula’s glittering lights behind, she’d left everything behind, including her problems. At least for one night.

The moon came up from behind the mountains, washing the landscape in silver. Jack turned onto a narrow gravel road and headed up the mountainside, the road snaking higher and higher.

“I hope you’re hungry,” he said over the roar of the Jeep. They’d stopped at a grocery store on the way out of town and bought steaks and all the trimmings. Plus Jack had insisted on buying her some doughnuts for breakfast.

“Starved,” she mouthed, realizing how true that was as she looked over at him. It was the man beside her who whetted an appetite in her that had nothing to do with food. She felt like a woman who’d just woken from a long sleep to find the world more wonderful than she remembered it.

Not even the large manila envelope Jack picked up at his apartment could bring her down, although she’d seen the red stamped words on the outside just before he’d tossed it in the backseat with his gear. Confidential. Missoula