Wild With You (Independence Falls 4)

But one night—­one meeting—­did not lead to I-­need-­you emotions. That truth had haunted her for her entire life. No reason it would change now because she’d let Brody Summers give her a pair of orgasms. Sure, they were the Rolls-­Royces of climaxes, but that didn’t mean they could lead to more.

“I see,” Brody said, his tone measured and even. His dark eyes, which had openly conveyed his need and desire last night, appeared guarded. “We should hit the road. My truck is parked out front,” he continued. “Can I help with your bag?”

He grabbed the handle of her suitcase, lifting it as if it weighed next to nothing, and headed for the door. But she knew for a fact that the five pairs of shoes she’d packed were like a set of bricks. She maintained a careful distance behind her Prada luggage just in case Brody decided to stop short and trip her up. After what she’d done, she wouldn’t blame him.

In the lot, she watched as he secured their bags in the locked and covered bed of his pickup. He went around to the passenger side and held her door open, slamming it once she’d settled into the seat. Then he climbed into the driver’s side, secured his belt, and slipped the key into the ignition.

And froze.

“I don’t get it.” Brody turned to her, his hand still on the key. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“If you’d known I was your brother’s doctor,” she said, meeting his searching gaze, “would you have followed me to the pool?”

“No.”

“That’s why.”

“Was it because of the kid on the mountain? Was this your shrink’s way of helping me? Did you think I needed last night?”

“I wanted to help you,” she said evenly. “And I didn’t lie about working in the ER, Brody. I did a long, painful rotation during my residency. But that’s not why I went back to your room. Desire is a powerful emotion.”

He slid her a glance as if he didn’t quite buy that her explanation ended there. But she wasn’t about to tell him she’d had a crush on him in high school, or that she remembered him as the white knight of shoes.

“I know,” he said.

They rode in silence as he merged onto the highway leading to the Willamette Valley and Independence Falls. “You said you wer

e from here. Did you go to high school in Independence Falls?”

She heard the implied question—­Who the hell are you?—­and knew she owed him an explanation. As much as she wanted him to suddenly remember her from high school and admitting that, oh yeah, he’d noticed her once upon a time, Brody deserved the truth.

“I was a year behind you in school,” she explained.

“Do your parents still live here?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Independence Falls isn’t New York City, I must have known them,” he said, frustration filling his tone.

“My mother died when I was five. A drunk-­driving accident. She was the drunk. And she was all I had,” Kat said, keeping her tone calm and collected while she recited the facts. “She’d moved to Oregon to work in one of the mills not long before the accident. We didn’t have family and friends in the area. Or anywhere, really. My father was never part of the picture. Last I knew he was still incarcerated. He shot his dealer when I was a baby, according to my social worker. I grew up in foster care, mostly placed with families on the outskirts of town.”

The section of Independence Falls where practically everyone struggled to make ends meet. The neighborhoods where ­people needed the money the state offered for taking in a foster child.

He stole another glance as if still trying to place her.

“I got braces after medical school and dyed my hair,” she said, meeting his searching gaze.

His eyes widened with shock and he turned back to the road. “I remember you now. Your picture was in the paper when you left for Harvard. Not a lot of kids from around here go to an Ivy League school.”

And not many who’d grown up moving from house to house with all of their possessions in a black industrial-­strength garbage bag.

“I did well on my SATs. And spending twelve years with ten different foster families gave me a lot to write about in my essays,” she said, clinging tight to a trace of humor.

“Now you work with one of the leading neurologists in the country,” he said.

“I went to John Hopkins for medical school and obtained my Ph.D. from there as well.” She needed to erase any doubts about her clinical trial. Regardless of his feelings toward her, the course of treatment she’d designed with Dr. Westbury was his brother’s best option.

“Dr. Westbury and I came up with this therapy together,” she continued. “She’s been researching short-­term memory loss resulting from traumatic brain injuries for two decades. Together we formed a plan that treats the whole patient, looking for signs of depression, working through those feelings, while at the same time trying to retrain the memory.”