Finding West (5 page)

6

STRANGER

“What is it?” I stood up and peered into the mirror behind her, seeing yet another stranger on its glass surface, though a fairly good-looking one I had to admit. I became painfully aware of Kat in that moment, of my body boxing her in. “Do you recognize me?” I asked, so close I could almost feel her body tensing from my presence. “Was our theory correct? Do you recognize me from somewhere?”

She
shook her head, barely breathing. “No.”

“Then what?”

The bewildered look on her face melted away, replaced by curiosity. She reached up and, like a child unable to help but touch a toy, traced a finger along my jaw.

A tremble traveled
up my spine at the contact as it finally dawned on me what had her so rattled: she thought I was attractive. I grabbed her other wrist and held it up to my face. “Touch me.”

She didn’t need to be asked twice. She smoothed my eyebrows back, traced a finger along my cheeks and down my nose, and finall
y cupped my jaws in the palm of her hands. Her touch alternated from soft to heavy, prodding and caressing.

I couldn’t take my
eyes off her, even as I felt my cock stirring in my pants. This side of her—the side that defied acceptable social interactions—turned me on. She had no filter, physical or verbal, and it was unpredictably exhilarating.

“
You should see yourself,” she said, the pads of her thumbs rubbing along my lips. “And you say
I’m
beautiful.”

“You are.”
I curled my hands around the edge of the counter to keep from grabbing her and holding her body flush against mine.

“
You can’t be real.” A moment later, she cleared her throat and moved aside. “Sorry. I got carried away.”

I touched her wrist. “It’s fine.”

“It’s just... I’ve just never—”

“You’ve never touched a man?”

She barked a laugh. “No, I have. But not one that looks like you.”

“Have you ever been with a man?”

“Of course I have.”

My eyebrows rose in surprise.
“And did you enjoy it?”

“That’s none of your
fucking business.”

She turned to leave when I grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry. I just want to
get to know you.”

“Drilling me about my sexual past is not the place to start.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “I’m trying to understand how someone like you could be single right now. It doesn’t seem possible.”

She folded her arms under
her breasts. “I’m single because men are selfish animals who just take their pleasure and give nothing back in return. At least my vibrators leave me satisfied.”

If I
hadn’t been hard before, the mental image of her playing with a vibrator finished me off. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right man.”

She snickered. “Let me guess, you’re the right man?”

“I might be.”

“You can’t even remember your name! How could you possibly stand there and claim that you’re good in bed?”

I pushed away from the counter and stepped to her, knowing she’d stand her ground. I
loomed over her, asserting my dominance. “I don’t need my memory to know we’d be combustible together. I don’t need a history or past to explore every curve of your body, learn every move that makes you quiver,” I said, my muscles bunching up from the effort it was taking not to grab her. “I don’t need to know my name because by the time I’m done, you’ll forget yours.”

Kat was frozen in place, her face a mask of indifference, but her
eyes gave her away, those blue orbs that touched every part of me as if measuring my sincerity.

I gave her room to breath, feeling a sense of
caveman satisfaction at having knocked her so off-kilter. She was as turned on as I was if her ragged breathing was anything to go by. But I knew I’d already pushed her far enough; now I needed to wait for her to come to me.

She swallowed. “I thought I told you not to say shit like that,”
she said but her voice was without its earlier conviction.

“I’
m just telling you what I know,” I said. I reached up to rub my beard and felt bare skin instead. It felt strange, as if I’d somehow revealed something unexpected about myself. I turned away, grabbed the back of the chair, and took it back to the kitchen. When I came back, Kat was in the hallway, looking as if she still wanted to say something.

I leaned a shoulder against the wall and waited.

“I’m not a virgin, okay?” she said a little grumpily. “I don’t even know why it matters, but I’ve had sex with two men. So don’t get the idea that you need to
deflower
me,” she said, making air quotes.

“
Okay,” I said. “No deflowering. Noted.”

She walked
off towards the living room saying nothing else. She grabbed her laptop and the blanket that was folded over the back of the couch and lay down. Josie immediately jumped up, circled a few times then lay on her feet.

“You look cozy,” I said, sitting on the recliner, which I realized was fast becoming my spot. One day I’d get her to invit
e me onto that couch, and maybe eventually into her bed.

She
flicked a glance at me then promptly turned her eyes back to the computer screen, apparently too intimidated to look at me for long. “This is what I do every Monday.”

A sensation similar to getting doused with ice water came over me.
“It’s Monday? What’s the date?”

“December twenty-second
.”

“I didn’t real
ize it was almost Christmas,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “We should check the missing persons report. I’m sure somewhere out there, my family or friends are looking for me. It’s almost Christmas, for fuck’s sake.”

“I’ve alr
eady checked the missing persons reports.”

“And?”

She shook her head.

I blew out a breath.
“I must have been a real asshole if nobody even cares that I’ve been gone two, maybe three days.”

“If it makes you feel any better,
nobody cares about me either. The only one who does is in jail and won’t even know I’m in trouble until it’s too late.”

“
No, that doesn’t make me feel better,” I said, my chest heavy with an unfamiliar feeling of empathy. It was sad to think that she had nobody else in her life, nobody to even check in on her when a storm hit. She was utterly alone. “If it’s any consolation, I care what happens to you.”

She gave me a hard stare. “Until you regain your memory
and go on your merry way back to Hollywood or Fashion Week or wherever the hell it is you belong.”

“You know you don’t always have to push people away,” I said
in frustration. “Especially if they’re being sincere.”

She pinned me with a hard stare but for the first
time that morning, I rendered her speechless.

“So what is it that you do?” I asked.

“I don’t work.”

“How can you afford to live here, get groceries and such?”

“I’m living off my dad’s oil royalties.”

“So you sit here all day, doing nothing?”

S
he flipped her laptop shut. “No, I don’t just sit here and eat truffles while watching soap operas all day. I keep busy.”

“With what?”

“Fuck, you’re nosy,” she said, rising from the couch and stalking away. She stopped at the hallway and hooked her hands on her waist. “Well, are you coming?”

I
followed her down the hall to a narrower hallway at the back of the house I hadn’t even realized was there. Beyond that was an addition to the house, a larger, more colorful room. In the center was a large table with a sewing machine on top and scraps of material and paper all over the place. Bolts of colorful fabric sat on shelves and three dress mannequins lined the back wall, each one wearing a beautiful gown that was miles removed from this sullen, dark place.

I walked over to the nearest wall and studied the drawings that were
held up by tape. “You’re a fashion designer?”

She snorted, but more out of surprise than derision. “
Hell no. I just like to sew.”

“You came up with all of these on your own?”

“Sort of,” she said, standing beside me. “I learned to sew on my own, watching videos on the internet and basically just trial and error. I look at designs and pick and choose what I like and try to replicate them.”

I turned
to her with new eyes. Just when I thought I had her figured out, she found another way to surprise me. “Do you sell your designs?” I asked.

“
No.”

“Why not?
Even if you never leave this town, there are places online where you can sell your work.”

She flushed.
“I just don’t, okay?”

“Y
ou don’t want to or you’re afraid to?” I knew my goading would set off her already short temper, but I didn’t care. Something in me wanted to push her, to make her step outside the safe confines of her life. Seeing the drawings on the wall and the fully realized clothes across the room revealed her talent—if only she would see it.

She turned on a heel and stalked out.

“Why won’t you answer the question?” I asked.

She spun around
but instead of the fury I was expecting, her face was awash with indifference. “It doesn’t matter. You’re out of here the instant the snow melts.” Her eyes sparked. “In fact, we should get started on that.”

I
followed her to the front door where she slipped into her boots and coat. “Where are you go—” I dodged when a snow boot came flying at my face. I caught the following with one hand.

“Get your shit on,
pretty boy,” she said, opening the front door. “We’re digging you the hell out of here.”

Armed with a snow shovel, Kat stubbornly led the way to her Jeep, retracing the path I’d made yesterday. I gripped the shovel in my hand and followed her, knowing that the snow was too deep for the vehicle to go anywhere. I’d learned from yesterday’s trek that no roads in this godforsaken place had been plowed. Even if we managed to dig the Jeep out of the ditch, it would be nearly impossible to drive into town.

Regardless, I jabbed the shovel in the snow and scooped it over my shoulder.
“You have a good eye for fashion,” I said, trying to fill the silence with friendly conversation. “Why don’t you wear any of it?”

“Right. Can you imagine me
wearing a gown?”

“Actually, I can.”

She stopped to stare at me, forever trying to gauge my sincerity.

I grinned. “I think you’d look good in more feminine clothes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “
Feminine
clothes? Are you kidding?”

I blew out a frustrated breath. “Come on, don’t turn this into a sexist thing. You know very well what I meant.” I pointed to the house. “Those c
lothes in there, the ones you made, there’s no way you can mistake those for anything other than feminine. All I’m asking is why the hell are you covering yourself up in bland, baggy clothes when you obviously like fashion?”

She bit back a smile. “Calm down there, Larry
. No need to get all riled up.”

“You’re giving me a headache
.” Or whiplash.

She turned her attention back to
shoveling the snow. “My mom left us when I was seven,” she said. “I had no aunts or any female figures to teach me how to dress. Everything in that room, I had to learn myself.”

“So why
do you still dress this way?”

She shrugged. “I got used to it, I guess. I feel uncomfortable in tighter, shorter clothes, like I’m bringing attention to myself.”

“Some people bask in that kind of attention.”

“I bet you do
. I bet you love the attention you get from the ladies,” she said, eyeing me again. “Or the guys. Whichever.”

After
hitting dirt, I stuck the shovel in the ground and leaned against the handle. “I’m fairly sure I’m a ladies man.”

“I bet you are,” she said sarcastically.

I grabbed a handful of snow and threw a snowball at her, hitting her arm.

“Hey!” She retaliated with a larger snowball.

I tried to catch it but it exploded in my hand, sending cool chips of snow on my face. Another snowball came flying at me immediately after, smacking me in the side of the head.

“I call that the Sneaky Snowball
,” she said with a grin.

I dove after her,
tackling her into the snow. I grabbed snow and stuffed it down her collar, but she was stronger and faster than I expected and flipped me onto my back. She jumped on top and grabbed handfuls of snow, shoveling it directly onto my face.