She nodded. It wasn’t the music that had kept her from hearing him, it was the realization that this place, this town, was not the one she’d flown into a couple of days ago. Some of the buildings were the same, but if this was Main Street, where were those staples of American life that had been here then?
Arby’s. Taco Bell. Burger King. They were gone. Or they’d never been. Either way, she was lost, lost, lost—
“Unless you and the boyfriend already have a room.”
“For the last time, there is no boyfriend. We don’t have a room. I don’t have a room. We were camping in the canyon—”
“My canyon.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Looked straight ahead, not at him.
“Just let me out anywhere you want.”
“You pick it. The airport? Someplace that’ll rent you a car? The Greyhound terminal?”
“Greyhound? Oh. The bus station. Yes, that’s fine.”
Jesse nodded, The terminal was dead ahead. He pulled to the curb and stopped. He hadn’t meant to bark at her about the damned canyon or to toss yet another accusation about Jack. Who cared if she’d been in his canyon? And she’d already said Jack was her professor, and he believed her.
It was just that he was in one miserable mood. No reason for it. Actually, he should have been feeling great, getting rid of an unwanted encumbrance.
“You want me to wait while you go in and check the schedule?”
“No,” she said quickly. “No, thank you. I—I’ll be fine.”
“Do you need money?”
“No,” she said again.
Still, he reached in his pocket, took out some bills and held them toward her. “Go ahead. Just in case.”
She looked at him and knew she’d sooner starve than take anything more from him.
“I don’t need it.”
Jesse shrugged, opened his door, stepped down from the truck and went around to her side. She had already opened her door and stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Well,” he said.
Sienna flashed a bright smile. “Thanks for everything,” she said, even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t.
The muscle in his jaw locked and unlocked. “Damn it, Sienna,” he said roughly, but before he could say more, she turned and ran into the bus station. The door shut after her.
Jesse stood, unmoving.
She was gone.
It was a relief. It was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To get her out of his life?
Maybe he should have asked her where she’d go. Or how she’d get there. She’d said she didn’t need money, but she didn’t have a purse. Her clothes were still on the floor in his house. If she’d had a wallet, he sure as hell hadn’t seen it.
All he’d seen was sadness in her eyes, and fear—and then, this morning, there’d been more, something that had made him ache to take her in his arms and tell her not to leave, never to leave, which was exactly what he’d come within a heartbeat of saying….
A bus pulled out into the road. Was she on it? She couldn’t be. She’d only just gone through those doors….
“Sienna?”
He started toward the terminal, slowly at first, then faster and faster so that by the time he reached it, he was running. He flung the door open, stood still, looked around him.
The waiting room was empty.
“Sienna!” A worn-out-looking guy dozing on a bench jerked awake. “Sienna,” Jesse shouted…and, suddenly, he saw her, standing at the far end of the gloomy room, looking fragile and lost.
“Jesse?”
Her face lit. It made his heart turn over. He had never thought a woman would look at him that way again, as if he were all she’d ever wanted or needed, and he’d damned well never imagined he’d want a woman to look at him like that, either.
Now he knew he’d never wanted it, or wanted one particular woman, half this much.
He wanted to open his arms and gather her in, tell her what he felt…but a man only made a fool of himself over a woman one time and he had met his quota.
So he strode toward her instead, stopped inches away and put his hands on his hips.
“Where are you going?”
The glow in her eyes dimmed so fast he thought maybe he’d imagined it.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, where are you going? Why didn’t you take that money? Aren’t you even going to try to find this guy, Jack? He brought you here, didn’t he? Shouldn’t he be looking for you?”
“That’s five questions,” she said, lifting her chin. “And not one of them is any of your business.”
That muscle that knotted in his jaw whenever he was ticked off was going full speed. What had made him come after her? Not concern or caring, that was certain, though it was what she’d foolishly thought when she first saw him.