“I’m sure you’ll be able to find your way to wherever it is you want to go once we reach Burton,” Josh said as they turned from his dirt road onto the asphalt.

Yeah, Shay thought. Won’t that be awesome?

She stared out the passenger window as they drove along and tried to decide what she would do once they reached this town he kept mentioning. Did she still want to go to Reno?

“Are your feet feeling okay?” Josh asked.

She looked at him, wondering if he really cared or if he was just being polite. “They’re fine.” That wasn’t strictly true. The truth was that they were tender. Probably from her walking on them when they’d left his cabin. What would be the point in telling him that? It wasn’t like he would do anything about it. Not when he was eager to see her go.

Curious about him, she angled her body in his direction. “So, Josh.”

He glanced at her, his right hand hanging loosely over the top of the steering wheel, his left arm resting in the open window frame. “Yeah?”

“What’s your story?”

A half-grin turned up one side of his mouth. “My story?”

“Yeah. You wanted to know mine, now I’m asking yours.”

He laughed. “I don’t have a story.”

“Come on. Everyone has a story.”

He shook his head, his smile nearly slaying her. “Not me.”

Wondering why he wouldn’t tell her only made her more curious. Too bad she'd never see him again once he dropped her off. “Do you live at that cabin year-round, or do you have another place?”

After a sidelong glance at her, he shook his head, but didn’t reply.

“It is your cabin, isn’t it?” she asked.

This time he laughed. “Yes. It’s mine.”

“If you live in that cabin—which is in the middle of nowhere, I might point out—what do you do for money?”

He gazed at her a moment, then he threw her a smile. “That, lovely lady, is none of your business.”

Pleased that he’d called her a lovely lady, but slightly irritated that he’d refused to answer such a basic question, she decided to tease him a little. “So you either do something online—although I don’t know if you even have Internet way out here. Or you’re a criminal.” Remembering the Guns & Ammo magazines she’d found in his second bedroom, she looked at him, her head cocked. “Maybe you’re an assassin.”

He threw his head back and laughed, but didn’t give her a hint as to what he did. Once he’d gotten himself under control, he said, “I can only assume you’re unemployed.”

Shay didn’t like his assumption, although it was a hundred percent true. She frowned. “I don’t know why you’d assume that.”

“So you have a job?”

Not anymore. She was sure that when she hadn’t shown up at the burger joint for her shift the day before, they’d fired her. Maybe they’d even called to see if she was coming in, but since she had no cell service, she had no clue.

Which led her to thoughts of Will. Had he tried to contact her? Almost afraid to get cell service since it would mean he’d be able to reach her, she was absurdly grateful to be completely out of touch with the world.

“I did have a job, but…well, I don’t anymore.”

“Why is that?”

She wasn’t about to get into the details, but since it was her ex’s fault, she decided to lay the blame at his feet. “Someone…made me quit.” That wasn’t technically true, but it kind of was. If she hadn’t had to escape Will, she wouldn’t have quit her job.

Josh shook his head. “Sounds like you’re too easily swayed.”

No one had swayed her to quit her job, but telling him that would bring up a whole host of questions she wasn’t prepared to answer. But was it true? Was she too easily swayed? She thought about Will and how she'd always gone along with what he wanted whether it was good for her or not. Was that because she was too easily swayed, or was it her way of keeping the peace?

She didn’t want Josh to think she was like a dandelion getting caught in the wind, blowing whichever way the breeze took her.

“I’m not easily swayed,” she said, trying to project confidence although she wasn’t certain he was wrong.

“Oh yeah?” he shot back. “Tell me a time when you didn’t do what someone else wanted you to.”

He’d nailed her, and she didn’t like it. “That’s none of your business.”

He laughed like he knew there wasn’t a time.

She knew darn well that fleeing Will was definitely not what someone else wanted, but since that bit of information wasn’t for public consumption, she had to come up with something else. Wracking her memory to come up with something—anything—she gave up when nothing came to mind.

That’s when she had to admit that up until that point she had been too easily swayed. Well, that was about to change. From then on she would do what she wanted to do. Her days of being swayed were over.

They rode in silence, her stewing over her resolve to have a backbone from now on, him thinking who knew what.

* * *

Josh was sure of it. Shay didn’t know who he was.

Kind of thrilled by the novelty of it, Josh looked at her as she stared out the passenger window, deep in thought.

What was her story? Really? Who had made her quit her job? Why was she out here with nowhere to go? With nothing?

Was she a criminal? On the run from the police?

He had to admit, the possibility intrigued him. Was she really a tough chick playing at being an innocent girl? If she was, she hadn’t planned her escape very well. Nothing but the clothes on her back, and he had a feeling there wasn’t a lot of cash in that little purse slung across her body.

Okay, maybe not a criminal. But who knew?

Didn’t matter anyway. Once they reached Burton he would drop her off and never see her again. He'd done his part. He'd fed her, tended to her blistered feet, and now he was giving her a ride to town. There was nothing more he was expected to do, right? She wasn’t his responsibility. He didn’t know her. Yeah, she didn’t know him either, but he wasn’t the one who’d broken into a stranger’s home and slept in their bed. Just like Goldilocks.

She was a brunette though. With emerald-green eyes. And when she smiled, dimples appeared on both sides of her cheeks. There was an innocence there that he found endearing. But those lips—full and ruby red—those didn’t speak of innocence. Those were the kind of lips a man wanted to kiss.

Wait. Why was he cataloguing her assets? Yes, he found her attractive, but what did that matter? When they reached Burton, he'd never see her again.

He thought about her question, about whether he lived in his cabin year-round. Of course he didn’t. He had a small place in Sacramento where he stayed when he needed to be in town for practice and games and such. His cabin was over an hour away from Sacramento, so it only made sense to have a separate place there.

He was glad Shay hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t answered her question of whether he lived in the cabin year-round. Admitting that he didn’t would only raise more questions, questions that he didn’t want to answer.

“Here we are,” Josh said as they pulled into a parking lot next to a cluster of stores. “You should be able to buy yourself a pair of decent shoes and be on your merry way.”