Hitching a ride on the tour bus offered her best choice. She didn’t have the energy or brain power to spare on complications, and Jacob Stone grew more complicated with each falling snowflake.
Dee stifled the well of exhaustion and moved to assist the remaining thirty-five disembarking seniors.
An hour later, Dee trudged through the parking lot to her room. After the last of the guests had checked in, she’d pigeonholed the bus driver to cement their plans.
Jacob had darted pensive scowls their way, frowns she’d ignored. If only her jittery stomach could have been as easily controlled.
Talking with the driver, she hadn’t dared discuss her amnesia this time, merely saying her boyfriend had ditched her in the motel and she needed a ride into town to file a police report against the abusive jerk. She hated lying, but the cover story sounded good for getting her where she needed to go.
The driver had agreed to her offer of twenty dollars since he would be driving a few blocks out of his way. By midafternoon tomorrow, she would be at the station.
Tugging her key free from her coat pocket, she counted along the doors until she came to her room number.
And the dark shadow lounging outside.
A six-foot-four-inch shadow.
“Convince me.” Jacob’s gravelly bass mingled with the wind whistling through the eaves.
“What?”
“Convince me you’re telling the truth.”
Like she could convince this rock of anything. Dee stuffed her key in the lock. “I’d rather go ice swimming.”
“Very mature.”
She twisted her doorknob. “Good night.”
“Quit running away.” He angled toward her, his shoulders blocking the meager parking lot lights as well as the force of the wind. “I’m trying to help you. You have to admit the amnesia thing’s pretty far-fetched.”
Did he have to be so persuasive and big and sexy? The heat of him seeped into her while the wind whipped around his body.
She flattened her back against the door. “I can’t change the truth to suit your idea of believable scenarios.”
“What about—” Shivering, he hunched his shoulders deeper into his jacket. “Do we have to talk out here? Wind chill’s gotta be ten below.”
Being alone with him in a room with beds didn’t seem wise. Neither did freezing to death. If he’d planned to hurt her, he could have done so any number of times throughout their day alone together.
Bottom line, she wanted him to believe her.
Dee twisted the knob, backing the door open. “Come on in.”
Following her, Jacob ducked inside. Her room wasn’t small, but Jacob filled it all the same.
She draped her coat on the edge of the first bed, turned up the heat, considered what to say and why it was so important that he believe her this time. Jacob lounged against the wall until she sat at the small table, then lowered himself into the chair across from her, silently.
Words churned inside her, but she stifled them. Better to let him set the tone.
Jacob stretched his legs in front of him. “What did the Tacoma police have to say when you called them?”
“How did you know I—Oh, the three dollars.” She’d forgotten about that part of her tirade. Apparently her mouth ran away from her in the midst of a good rant, another element of her personality to file away with the good and bad she’d deciphered so far.
“Well?”
“They said I need to come in. I described myself, and they did concede there weren’t any obvious missing persons’ reports to match me. They’ll run my prints and do a more thorough search when I get there.”
“You’re willing to let them fingerprint you and run your picture.”