“I’d rather not.”
She blinked in response to Sam’s firm interjection. “I understand there are some questions you’d probably rather not answer, but—”
“I’d rather not be interviewed. Period.”
“But—”
“I really have nothing more to tell you,” he explained. “I remember very few details about the attack, and everything else is part of an ongoing police investigation. That leaves only my personal life to talk about, and I doubt you’d find that interesting enough for an article.”
“Oh, but I—”
“It was very nice meeting you, Ms. Gray. Come into the Rainbow Café sometime and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. Chief, it was a pleasure to see you, as always. Oh, and don’t forget to check on that matter I mentioned to you, will you?”
“Are you sure I can’t give you a lift home?” Dan looked eager to have an excuse to escape the determined reporter.
Lindsey protested, “But, Dan, I want to talk to you.”
Rather enjoying the cocky police chief’s predicament, Sam grinned. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m enjoying the exercise. And besides, I wouldn’t want to take you away from Ms. Gray’s questions.”
Dan gave him a rather comical look that promised he would get even for this somehow.
“If you change your mind about talking to me,” Lindsey began to say to Sam.
“I won’t,” he assured her. “Not for an interview, anyway. But I meant what I said about that cup of coffee.”
He heard her sigh gustily behind him when he turned to walk away. And then she complained to Dan, “That man never let me finish a sentence.”
“I wish he’d teach me that trick,” Sam heard Dan grumble. “What is it you want now, Lindsey?”
Sam didn’t linger long enough to hear her reply. He had decided to stop by the library, maybe do a little research on amnesia. It was long past time he took an active part in finding out just what was wrong with him and what he should be doing about it—besides lying to everyone he met.
Chapter Seven
It was Walter who led Serena to Sam again Saturday afternoon. She’d let the dog out to take care of nature, and he’d headed straight for the fence at the back of the property. Before she could stop him, he’d wriggled underneath by way of a hole he’d discovered when Serena hadn’t been watching. He was gone before she could yell his name.
“Son of a…” Finishing the curse beneath her breath, she drew a deep breath and let herself out the back gate, prepared for a chase. “I should let him get lost, see how he likes eating out of garbage cans and dodging pickup trucks. If I ever catch him, I swear I’m going to give him away. Why should I have to be responsible for a dog I never wanted? Walter, get your scrawny butt back in the yard before I—”
“You think his butt is scrawny?” Sam stepped out of the trees beside the road, carrying the squirming dog in his arms. “He certainly feels chunky enough.”
Her hand on her pounding heart, Serena glared at him. “Where did you come from?”
“I walked down to the lake. Walter, here, met me coming back.”
“You walked all the way to the lake?”
“All the way? Serena, it’s only a couple of miles.”
He didn’t even looked winded, she noted. His bruises had faded, and the assorted cuts and scrapes that had marred his face were almost healed. She’d thought him good-looking before—he was almost breathtakingly so now. Who was this golden-haired, blue-eyed Adonis wearing discount store clothes, holding a squirming mutt and giving her a smile that had her heart tripping all over itself? “I’m, uh, glad you’ve recovered so finely—er, so well.”
“Lots of rest, fresh air and plenty of your mother’s good cooking. Better than any treatment I received in the hospital.”
Walter wiggled and tried to lick Sam’s face. Sam chuckled. “We’d better get this guy back to the house. I’ll see if I can repair the fence to keep him from making another dash for freedom.”
She nodded and turned toward the row of fences that marked the back of her neighborhood. There were five houses on her street, all with large yards. The house in which she’d spent most of her life was at the end of the street. She could see the second story over the top of the wooden fence her father had built. The window on the right marked her bedroom, still filled with the mahogany furniture she’d picked out for her seventeenth birthday. Except for the years she’d spent away at college and law school and the apartment she’d maintained for a while afterward, she’d lived her whole life in that house.
How dull must that seem to a man who drifted from one place to another as the mood struck him, never staying anywhere long enough to put down roots?
Not that she envied Sam’s lifestyle, s