Northern Exposure by Debra Lee Brown Page B

realized he was just trying to help her.
    â€œYeah.” All the fight had gone out of her. “I thought I saw him a couple of times.”
    â€œChrist, Wendy, why didn’t you say anything?”
    Why hadn’t she?
    Covering herself with the down bag, she pulled her knees up to her chest, then wrapped her arms around her legs in a bear hug. “I don’t know.”
    It was a lie. She did know.
    She’d been afraid to tell him, because it would have meant telling him everything.
    â€œIt’s cards-on-the-table time, Wendy.” Joe forced her to meet his gaze again. “Who is this guy?”
    â€œHonestly, I don’t know!” Which was the truth.She had no idea who this maniac was. Hey, wait a minute… “Why would I have to know him? Maybe he’s just some kook who gets his kicks terrorizing women.”
    â€œYeah, right. Out here, a million miles from nowhere. I don’t think so.”
    He was right. Not only did that scenario not make sense, she knew in her gut that this mystery man, whoever he was, had singled her out, purposely. But why?
    â€œTell me again about your stolen luggage.”
    She shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell. Some guy—I didn’t get a good look at him—just grabbed it off the conveyor and ran.”
    â€œWhat was in it?”
    â€œNothing.” She shook her head. “Clothes, toiletries, some old camping gear from my folks’ place in Michigan. Just the usual stuff.”
    She felt uncomfortable under his scrutiny and let her gaze drift to the play of the flashlight beam on the walls of the tent.
    Joe grabbed her arm, roughly enough to startle her, and recaptured her attention. “What aren’t you telling me?”
    A lot.
    But that wasn’t the answer she gave him.
    A week after the incident in the Manhattan loft, her purse had been snatched. Three days later her apartment was burglarized. At the time, she hadn’t connected the two incidents, nor had she really thought all that much about them, since she was spending nearly every waking hour either talking to the police about what had happened with the malemodel, fighting off tabloid reporters or trying to reach Blake, who’d refused to see her.
    â€œBack off,” she said to him, and pulled her arm from his grasp. “Who put you in charge of my life?”
    â€œYou did, the second you stepped into this reserve.”
    Ouch.
    She smirked at him but couldn’t argue. She knew that, regardless of her own choices or actions, Joe Peterson felt responsible for her as long as she was on his turf. He was more than ready and willing to “take care of things” as he’d put it.
    And in the end that’s what she feared most of all.
    That’s why she hadn’t told him about the other incidents, or about the man in the dark clothes she’d glimpsed near the trail two days ago.
    Joe’s rugged good looks, the obvious physical attraction between them, his strength of character, the concern he tried, but failed, to mask behind that stony expression of his…all of it, taken together, set off cautionary alarms inside her.
    It would be far too easy to lean on a man like him, to let him take over, make her decisions, solve her problems for her. She’d done that once already, and with disastrous results.
    Wendy shook her head.
    She’d been young, too young, and Blake’s urban sophistication, his self-confidence and power, his charm, all of it had sucked her in. But she wasn’t a naive twenty-two-year-old anymore, and Joe Peterson wasn’t Blake Barrett.
    â€œYour sister,” she said, remembering that Cat Peterson had been just twenty-two when she died. “You two were close?”
    The question caught him totally off guard, but he didn’t look away. Back at the station, when she’d asked him about Cat, he’d become angry and had retreated. But now they were in a four-by-eight tent with