“What?” James glanced over his left shoulder and spied Sophia heading in his direction. Wearing a black coat that fell to her knees and a silver stocking cap that shimmered with sequins, she was threading her way through the icy potholes and mud of the loading area.
“James!” she said with a happy smile and the wave of a gloved hand. “Wait up!”
“I’ll wait for you in the truck.” Bobby took off just as Sophia reached James.
“Hey.” He didn’t know what to say to her. After finding her in his bed, then remembering his fight with Megan, he decided to tread carefully. Sophia had mentioned that she thought she was the cause of the fight between Megan and him; it turned out she was right on the money.
“How’re you feeling?” She was squinting, one hand tucking a strand of blond hair into her sparkling cap.
“Better.” He considered telling her that his memory had returned, then decided against it. First, he needed to talk to the police.
“Great.” She smiled brightly, her blue eyes warm. She glanced up at the cab of the truck, where Bobby was seated behind the wheel and lighting another cigarette. “So I wanted you to know, the offer’s still on the table.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need to be taken care of.”
“I meant about moving in.”
“Uh . . .” He took a sip of coffee.
“Like a couple, James? Like we talked about?”
He nearly choked on the coffee. “We talked about this?”
“You don’t remember.”
“No,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie. Though much of his memory had returned, he had no recollection of a plan to move in with her. Or Megan. Or anyone. “I have a house.”
“I know. We talked about renovating it, y’know. Updating it and, while that was happening, living in my apartment. In town. It would be tight, but cozy.” Her eyes sparkled. “I’d like that.”
He couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. He wanted to ask her if she were serious, but he saw that she was innocently sincere. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“Why not?”
He glanced at the cab of the truck, where Bobby was trying to look as if he wasn’t eavesdropping through the open window as the big rig idled. Another one of the workers was hauling a tree to a vintage station wagon and glanced his way. James was suddenly painfully aware of how visible they were. “Look, Sophia,” he said, more softly. “I don’t think this is the time or place to discuss this. Right now, I have a lot of things to sort out.” He didn’t want to go into the fact that Megan Travers was still missing, that Megan had thought James intended to marry her, and for all he knew, he was the primary suspect in her disappearance. Aside from all that, he had a business to run and wasn’t exactly a hundred percent.
“We all do,” she agreed, and touched the lapel of his coat, a personal, intimate gesture that said to anyone who caught it that they were a couple or, more succinctly, that she considered him hers.
He stepped back, and she let her hand drop. “Later.”
She lowered her voice. “Didn’t last night mean anything?”
He looked up at the sky, where gray clouds were threatening the sun. “That . . . was great, but it was a surprise . . . I’ve got to go.”
“But—”
“I just need a little space.”
He saw a wounded look cross her eyes, and he mentally kicked himself from one side of hell to the other. Why was he always disappointing women? Causing them pain? Was he just that callous and self-serving? Had he been sending out the wrong signals? Or had the women misread him?
“All of the above,” he muttered and while Sophia stayed where she was, staring at him, her full lips knotting into a sexy pout, he walked around the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. Ralph was waiting. “Get in,” he said to the dog, tossing the dregs from his cup onto the snowy ground. By the time he’d settled into the seat and the shepherd was next to him, head pressed to the window, James saw that Sophia had turned around and was walking toward the hotel.
Had he really planned on moving in with Sophia when he hadn’t broken off his relationship with Megan? What had he been thinking? What the hell kind of idiot was he?
“Women trouble?” Bobby asked, ramming the Ford into gear.
He put his empty cup in one of the holders between the seats. “Always, I think.”
“Ye-up. Best to settle down with one.” He eased on the gas, and the big flatbed started rolling across the pocked parking lot. “Or at the very least settle down with one at a time. That’s what I did with Cyn, and it’s worked out.”
James didn’t argue. He winced from a sharp pain in his shoulder when Knowlton turned onto the long, rutted lane that led into the foothills, where his shop and office were located. What was it Rebecca Travers had said her sister accused him of being? A man-whore?
He thought about Rebecca—tall, dark, with red-tinged hair and, he remembered, whip-smart and someone who wasn’t that close to her sister. They were half-sisters as it was, but that wasn’t the reason. Rebecca and Megan just hadn’t gotten along—oil and water. She the calmer, Megan the hothead. He was even surprised that Rebecca was so determined to find her sister. As he recalled, she found her sister irritating.
Guiltily, he remembered other things about the older Travers sister as well, most of which involved laughing and talking and fierce lovemaking. There had been that last night in Seattle, in a hotel room overlooking Elliott Bay. They’d had too much to drink and had been ravenous for each other, as if they’d subconsciously known their time together was doomed.
While the lights of the city reflected on the dark water and they’d kissed wildly, her dark auburn hair spilling around them, they’d become tangled in
