Last Night's Kiss Read Online Free Page A

pushed the notion aside. She moved around too often to commit to a relationship. Of course, she had friends all over the world, but no one special.
    “I’d better get back.” Rosa took a step toward the door. Adam moved in front of her, blocking her way. Without thinking, she instinctively moved back. She hated herself for doing it, but somehow she didn’t want him to touch her.
    “I’m sure you’re missed out there,” he said. “But I have a question for you.”
    “What is it?” Her throat was dry and she opened the bottle of water again and took a drink. Although it was wet, it didn’t seem to satisfy her thirst.
    “Why are you here?”
    “Here?” Her heart beat faster. She didn’t know what he meant. From what she’d heard from the people in the other room, everyone had known for months she was coming. “I came for the waters. I hear they have healing powers.”
    Adam didn’t take to the joke. His face went dark. She could see the blood paint a dark undertone below his brown skin.
    “You don’t look broken to me,” he said.
    “Looks can be deceiving. And I know the proper use of light and makeup.”
    “You can stop being sarcastic,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Vida doesn’t need someone she’s going to have to wait on. She had a bad fall and she needs to heal.”
    “Vida’s not an invalid. And you don’t need to worry about her waiting on me.”
    “And why is that?”
    “I’m taking a rental. Liam says I might find a house.”
    “What? When? Where?” Vida stood in the doorway. She hobbled inside, letting the door swing closed. “I thought you were going to spend the summer with me. When did you decide this?”
    “Staying with you would be fine for a weekend, even a week, but I’m here for the summer.”
    “So? We were roommates on the road. What’s the difference?”
    Rosa smiled and looked at her friend. “We’re not on the road, Vida. On the road we were working ninety hours a day. We hardly did anything in those rooms but fall into a tired sleep and shower. At our age being roommates is like having dead fish in your kitchen.” Rosa spread her hands to encompass the room. “After three days they smell.” She smiled. “And we’d probably be ready to kill each other long before that.”
    “But where will you live?”
    “I don’t know yet. Liam is showing me some places tomorrow afternoon.”
    “I know I’m not going to be able to change your mind,” Vida said. The two of them had spent enough time together to know their minds. “But see if you can find something close by. There are things about Montana you don’t know. Dangers that could get you hurt.”
    “Like bears,” Rosa joked.
    “Like bears,” Adam stated without the hint of a joke in his voice. “Coyotes, snakes—”
    “How about werewolves?” she asked, staring him directly in the eye.
     
    Adam peered at Rosa from across the room several minutes later. She had to be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. What was she doing in Waymon Valley? Okay, she had a friend here, but this was a nowhere kind of place, a way station, a pit stop on the way to somewhere else. People didn’t come here for the season. They had no tourist industry.
    Butte, a stone’s throw away, was a day trip. People came to see the defunct copper mines. Take the tour. They took pictures in western garb, drank Coca-Cola, and piled back into their vans or SUVs and hurried off to Glacier National Park, Yellowstone in Wyoming, or back to their RVs at one of the local campsites. They didn’t hang around for the entire summer.
    Rosa Clayton was hiding something. The journalist in him knew it. She was a story in the making. He’d give Ben a call. Suddenly Adam stopped. He was no longer a journalist. He’d left that life behind in Washington, D.C. He was a rancher now. And Rosa Clayton was none of his business.
    “So, Adam, what do you think? Is she as pretty as her pictures?”
    He