Finding West Read online

  “December twenty-second.”

  “I didn’t realize it was almost Christmas,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “We should check the missing persons report. I’m sure somewhere out there, my family or friends are looking for me. It’s almost Christmas, for fuck’s sake.”

  “I’ve already checked the missing persons reports.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head.

  I blew out a breath. “I must have been a real asshole if nobody even cares that I’ve been gone two, maybe three days.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, nobody cares about me either. The only one who does is in jail and won’t even know I’m in trouble until it’s too late.”

  “No, that doesn’t make me feel better,” I said, my chest heavy with an unfamiliar feeling of empathy. It was sad to think that she had nobody else in her life, nobody to even check in on her when a storm hit. She was utterly alone. “If it’s any consolation, I care what happens to you.”

  She gave me a hard stare. “Until you regain your memory and go on your merry way back to Hollywood or Fashion Week or wherever the hell it is you belong.”

  “You know you don’t always have to push people away,” I said in frustration. “Especially if they’re being sincere.”

  She pinned me with a hard stare but for the first time that morning, I rendered her speechless.

  “So what is it that you do?” I asked.

  “I don’t work.”

  “How can you afford to live here, get groceries and such?”

  “I’m living off my dad’s oil royalties.”

  “So you sit here all day, doing nothing?”

  She flipped her laptop shut. “No, I don’t just sit here and eat truffles while watching soap operas all day. I keep busy.”

  “With what?”

  “Fuck, you’re nosy,” she said, rising from the couch and stalking away. She stopped at the hallway and hooked her hands on her waist. “Well, are you coming?”

  I followed her down the hall to a narrower hallway at the back of the house I hadn’t even realized was there. Beyond that was an addition to the house, a larger, more colorful room. In the center was a large table with a sewing machine on top and scraps of material and paper all over the place. Bolts of colorful fabric sat on shelves and three dress mannequins lined the back wall, each one wearing a beautiful gown that was miles removed from this sullen, dark place.

  I walked over to the nearest wall and studied the drawings that were held up by tape. “You’re a fashion designer?”

  She snorted, but more out of surprise than derision. “Hell no. I just like to sew.”

  “You came up with all of these on your own?”

  “Sort of,” she said, standing beside me. “I learned to sew on my own, watching videos on the internet and basically just trial and error. I look at designs and pick and choose what I like and try to replicate them.”

  I turned to her with new eyes. Just when I thought I had her figured out, she found another way to surprise me. “Do you sell your designs?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not? Even if you never leave this town, there are places online where you can sell your work.”

  She flushed. “I just don’t, okay?”

  “You don’t want to or you’re afraid to?” I knew my goading would set off her already short temper, but I didn’t care. Something in me wanted to push her, to make her step outside the safe confines of her life. Seeing the drawings on the wall and the fully realized clothes across the room revealed her talent—if only she would see it.

  She turned on a heel and stalked out.

  “Why won’t you answer the question?” I asked.

  She spun around but instead of the fury I was expecting, her face was awash with indifference. “It doesn’t matter. You’re out of here the instant the snow melts.” Her eyes sparked. “In fact, we should get started on that.”

  I followed her to the front door where she slipped into her boots and coat. “Where are you go—” I dodged when a snow boot came flying at my face. I caught the following with one hand.

  “Get your shit on, pretty boy,” she said, opening the front door. “We’re digging you the hell out of here.”

  Armed with a snow shovel, Kat stubbornly led the way to her Jeep, retracing the path I’d made yesterday. I gripped the shovel in my hand and followed her, knowing that the snow was too deep for the vehicle to go anywhere. I’d learned from yesterday’s trek that no roads in this godforsaken place had been plowed. Even if we managed to dig the Jeep out of the ditch, it would be nearly impossible to drive into town.

  Regardless, I jabbed the shovel in the snow and scooped it over my shoulder. “You have a good eye for fashion,” I said, trying to fill the silence with friendly conversation. “Why don’t you wear any of it?”

  “Right. Can you imagine me wearing a gown?”

  “Actually, I can.”

  She stopped to stare at me, forever trying to gauge my sincerity.

  I grinned. “I think you’d look good in more feminine clothes.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Feminine clothes? Are you kidding?”

  I blew out a frustrated breath. “Come on, don’t turn this into a sexist thing. You know very well what I meant.” I pointed to the house. “Those clothes in there, the ones you made, there’s no way you can mistake those for anything other than feminine. All I’m asking is why the hell are you covering yourself up in bland, baggy clothes when you obviously like fashion?”

  She bit back a smile. “Calm down there, Larry. No need to get all riled up.”

  “You’re giving me a headache.” Or whiplash.

  She turned her attention back to shoveling the snow. “My mom left us when I was seven,” she said. “I had no aunts or any female figures to teach me how to dress. Everything in that room, I had to learn myself.”

  “So why do you still dress this way?”

  She shrugged. “I got used to it, I guess. I feel uncomfortable in tighter, shorter clothes, like I’m bringing attention to myself.”

  “Some people bask in that kind of attention.”

  “I bet you do. I bet you love the attention you get from the ladies,” she said, eyeing me again. “Or the guys. Whichever.”

  After hitting dirt, I stuck the shovel in the ground and leaned against the handle. “I’m fairly sure I’m a ladies man.”

  “I bet you are,” she said sarcastically.

  I grabbed a handful of snow and threw a snowball at her, hitting her arm.

  “Hey!” She retaliated with a larger snowball.

  I tried to catch it but it exploded in my hand, sending cool chips of snow on my face. Another snowball came flying at me immediately after, smacking me in the side of the head.

  “I call that the Sneaky Snowball,” she said with a grin.

  I dove after her, tackling her into the snow. I grabbed snow and stuffed it down her collar, but she was stronger and faster than I expected and flipped me onto my back. She jumped on top and grabbed handfuls of snow, shoveling it directly onto my face.

  I clamped my hands onto her hips, enjoying the contrast of her body’s heat and the cold on my face. I feigned a struggle, to encourage more wriggling on her part, feeling myself harden underneath her.

  She stopped, looking down at me with a snowball in one hand, the other resting by my head. “Do you give up?” she gasped.

  I saw the moment awareness crept into her eyes, when she realized, beneath the thick layers of clothing, the hardness she was feeling between her legs was actually my erection. She tried to climb off me, but I squeezed her hips to hold her in place. “Never,” I breathed.

  Her lips parted as she stared down at me, and just as I was diving into a fantasy where we were naked and in a warm place, Kat brought the snowball down on my face. “Let me go,” she said.

  I held her one moment longer before releasing my hold. She stood up and stomped back to the house, the shovels forgotten. I wiped
my face and stared up at the clear blue sky, trying to hold onto the memory of her heat a second longer before the breeze chilled it completely. I stood up and brushed myself off, deciding that what I needed was a long, cold shower.

  I had my cock in my hand for a good portion of that shower. I could already feel some of my control evaporating and I needed to relieve the pressure to continue acting civilly, but try as I might, I couldn’t not think of Kat as I worked my erection, my imagination taking off when I tried to picture the warm, strong body under all those baggy clothes.

  I came with a groan, holding onto the wall as I shot my seed all over the shower floor. It felt good to release some tension but instead of relaxing me, it wound me tighter. Now I couldn’t get the image of a naked Kat out of my head, and my penis was in complete agreement.

  After the shower, I looked again at my cheesy tattoo in the mirror.

  I came. I saw. I conquered.

  The tattoo itself was visually simple and elegant, but the message inscribed on my body was one that reeked of frat boy vainglory. Was I really that kind of guy who thought the world and everything in it existed solely for me to conquer?

  When I came out Kat was nowhere to be found so I took a chance and walked down that narrow hallway. I stopped with my fist poised to rap on the door and heard music and something else, the sound of a machine whirring. The sewing machine came to a stop and then a gruff voice said, “Leave me alone.”

  I took a deep breath and, despite wanting to do the opposite, walked away.

  7

  KAT

  I was finally able to release my breath when the shadow under the door moved away. For a moment there, I thought he would burst in the room and… I don’t know, kiss me or screw me or something. Our horseplay outside had quickly turned to something else, something that confused the hell out of me because I had liked it.

  I’d only known him a day and a half, and already my body was responding to his like a dog in heat. And most frightening of all was that, he—or at least his body—wanted it too. And frankly, I didn’t know how to feel about that.

  So I did what I do best and hid.

  I tried to work on the dress I’d been working on. For weeks I’d been unable to finish the floor-length gown because I couldn’t figure out what the hell was missing. Something was off and I didn’t have the trained eye to figure it out. Everything was trial and error in my life. Nothing had ever come easy.

  I stripped down to my underwear and slipped the dress over my head, struggling a little with the tight fit around my chest. I waddled over to the long mirror nailed to the wall and adjusted the gown. I turned around, trying to figure out the missing element, very nearly falling over the fabric twisting around my ankles.

  Then I realized that the dress simply needed to be shorter. It was too long, too much.

  Before I could forget, I wriggled out of the dress and laid it out on the table, trying to figure out the best place to make the cut. A rap on the door startled me.

  “What?” I shouted, reaching for the scissors.

  The door opened and I spun around in time to see the stranger’s eyes taking in my white-underwearing glory. I froze, pinned in place by his traveling gaze.

  Without a word, he took a step back and closed the door.

  I ran to the door and locked it, my heart pounding in my ears, the embarrassment and excitement all rolling into one truly frightening feeling.

  I stomped out a few minutes later, after recovering my wits and my clothes. I found him standing at the west window again, his arms folded casually as he stared out the window. Without his beard, he looked like a complete stranger. Well, more so than he already was.

  “What did you want?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t blushing.

  He turned to me with a serious expression. “I can’t stay here anymore.”

  I took a moment to absorb his words. “That’s what you barged in there to tell me?”

  The corner of his mouth tugged upward. “No. I was going to ask if you wanted a sandwich.”

  “So seeing me in my underwear made you want to run away as fast as possible?” I asked before realizing I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “No. Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “Then what?”

  He took in a long, deep breath.

  I crossed my arms, mimicking his pose. “You afraid of me?”

  He came closer and stopped a few inches away so that I had to crane my neck to meet his gaze. “You’re not the one I’m afraid of.”

  I knew exactly what he meant because I felt it too, and never more than in that moment, when our bodies were so close we had but to lean forward to touch. I studied his face, still taken aback by his stark beauty. His face was angular; the harsh cut of his jaw, the high angle of his cheek bones, his feline eyes, his wide chin. Everything down to the slight crook at the bridge of his nose was infinitely masculine, roughly hewn and yet utterly perfect. That was no boy hiding under that beard. He was very much a man.

  I suddenly felt very aware of every inch of my body, of the tingling between my legs, the trembling in my stomach. I’d only ever felt shades of this kind of desire before; never had it been this strong or vivid.

  Somehow I found the will to nod. “Yes, you really need to go.” Nothing good could happen if he stayed, I knew that for sure.

  He took a step back, allowing oxygen into my lungs again. “I’ll go as soon as the snow is passable.”

  “Fine,” I said through stiff lips. My stomach chose that moment to grumble. Loudly.

  “So how about that sandwich then?” he asked and took the opportunity to put some distance between us.

  I ate my sandwich in the living room while he remained at the dining table; both of us needed some space, which was hard to get in such a small house. Every move I made, every breath I took, I felt him with me. I realized with a start that I felt comforted by his presence; the thought made my face burn with anger.

  I have always prided myself on my independence. Ever since my father went off to prison I’d taken care of myself and I’d be damned if I let someone else come in and invade my space, making me dependent and weak and shit.

  No freaking way.

  After finishing my lunch, I stalked over to the sink and washed my plate. As I made my way back to my studio, the stranger’s deep voice reached out to me, stopping me in my tracks. “Don’t be mad, Kat.”

  I looked over my shoulder, surprised once again by the face of the man looking back. “I’m not mad.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “So this is happy, then?”

  “Fucking elated,” I said deadpan.

  He chuckled. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, you know,” he said. “You have a nice body.”

  My pulse picked up again, despite my wishes. “Nice. Yep. Right.”

  “What, you don’t think you have a nice body?”

  “I think I have a strong body,” I shot back.

  “Don’t tell me you think you’re fat.”

  I whirled around, my hands already clenched. “God, you’re so confrontational.”

  His eyes burned into mine. “So are you.”

  “For fuck’s sake, no, I don’t think I’m fat,” I said. “Do I think there are better bodies out there than mine? Sure. Do I bemoan the fact that I’ll never have a sexy Hollywood body? Hell no. Do I care about what I look like? Take one guess.”

  “Do me a favor, Kat,” he said gently from across the room. “When I’m gone, stand in front of your mirror and take a look at yourself. Really look. Pretend you’re seeing through someone else’s eyes.”

  “What’s the point in that little exercise in futility?”

  “I want you to see yourself for what you really are,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to look.”

  Okay, that incensed me. Nothing like telling me I’m a scaredy-cat to piss me off. “I’m not afraid. I just don’t want to be all gussied up for absolutely no reason. I live alone; the only person I have to please is
me. And you’d better believe I’m okay with what I see.”

  “There’s a distinct difference between okay and happy.”

  “I was happy before you came along.”

  “Were you really?”

  I wanted to say yes. Every contrary bone in my body was shouting yes, and maybe two days ago that had been true. But things had changed and I’d be a liar if I said it hadn’t affected me. “Why does it matter to you?”

  His luminous eyes studied my face, the dark pupils piercing my brain. “Because it does.”

  “I’ll be fine once you’re gone,” I said. “When everything goes back to normal.” But I doubted the words even as I said them.

  The stranger went to my dad’s bedroom and took a nap, hoping to sleep off a headache. I went back to my studio with Josie to work on shortening the dress while listening to music, but every time I held the scissors over the blue fabric, I stopped and questioned my sanity. Was I doing the right thing? Would I regret it come the morning? Was something clouding my judgment?

  Eventually I put the scissors down and locked the door. Unable to get the stranger’s words out of my mind, I stripped down to my underwear and stood in front of the mirror, my feet shoulder-width apart, my hands on my hips.

  “There, I’m looking,” I told my reflection in the mirror. “Nothing special.”

  I was tall and solid, not willowy like those models in fashion magazines, but I was strong and it showed. I had well defined arms and if I flexed, my stomach showed the defined muscles underneath. My thighs were thicker and my hips more voluptuous than I’d like, but no number of squats was going to make that go away.

  I turned around and looked at my reflection over my shoulder and, suddenly, I caught a glimpse of myself with my back arched in an S-shape, my ass sticking out. It was a side of me I rarely saw and I was surprised to say I looked sexy. Even more shocking was that it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant look.

  I tried out another feminine pose, facing the mirror and cocking my hip to the side and sticking my chest out. It was then I noticed that the flare of my hips made my waist look narrow, accentuating my chest. Even though they were my favorite assets, I often hid my breasts from the world to keep my body from becoming my identity. I wanted people to see me as Kat rather than as a pair of boobs with a side helping of attitude.