Until I Found You by Victoria Bylin Page A

across his scalp.
    She grinned. “Me, too.”
    The messy look charmed him. So did the excited grin on her face, but he knew a thing or two about women. They liked hairbrushes and lipstick, so he opened the saddlebag holding her purse. “I’ll trade you the purse for the helmet and jacket.”
    “It’s a deal.”
    While she brushed her hair, he set the helmets and her jacket on the concrete porch and put on the field vest he wore for adventures like this one. One pocket held a camera and a notepad. The contents of the second pocket included a knife,Band-Aids, gloves, a water bottle, and a couple of energy bars. The boy scout in him loved this stuff.
    When Kate finished with her hair, she slipped the brush in the saddlebag and removed her own camera, then faced him with her eyes aglow. “The ride was great.”
    “I enjoyed it, too.” We’ll do it again sometime, maybe a ride up the coast. There’s a good seafood place in Pismo . . . No. Today was about friendship and a news story, not a sunset walk on the beach. Mentally, he wiped the slate clean and focused on the here-and-now. “It’s a good road for the bike, one of the best in California.”
    “You’d know about that.” A smile curved her lips, freshly pink and moist with lipstick. “With the book and all, you’ve been everywhere. You’ve done so much—”
    “Too much.”
    He needed to set Kate straight about the allure of the old days, because his past was neither admirable nor romantic. But when? And how? Telling her about his daughter would cross the very boundary he needed to preserve—the one between casual friendship and feelings that cut deep enough to bleed. His pledge didn’t end for six more months. He had to hold back, but what was best for Kate, whose eyes were shining with admiration?
    Before Nick could break the mood, Marcus stepped out of the building. The biologist was in his midthirties, built like a barrel, and sporting a brown beard that matched his close-cropped hair. Dressed in a khaki shirt and green uniform pants, he resembled Smokey Bear without the hat.
    Nick offered a handshake. “Hey, Marc. It’s good to see you.”
    “Good to see you, too.” The men shook, then Marcus’s attention shifted to Kate. Without warning, he lifted her in a hug and spun her around. “Kate Darby, you are awesome !”
    Nick’s brows snapped together. Marcus was known to be exuberant, but a hug?
    Kate wiggled out of the biologist’s grasp. “I’m glad Number 53 is all right. Seeing her on the road was quite a moment.”
    Marcus stepped back, his expression somber now. “I’m sorry about the accident.” He hooked a thumb at Nick. “This guy’s a hero.”
    “No.” Nick didn’t want praise—especially from Kate, who was looking at him as if he could walk on water, even run on it. “Anyone would have helped.”
    “But you were the one,” she said, lightly touching his arm. “You were a hero that day. I’ll never forget it.”
    A hero with feet of clay. If they had been alone, he would have told her he was human and struggled every day to be an honorable man, that he believed in Jesus and the bloody cross and all those sticky subjects that made people cringe. He and Kate needed to have a conversation but not now, not with Marcus silently laughing at him, because the biologist saw Kate’s sweetly bowed lips as plainly as Nick did.
    She liked what she saw in him.
    They had chemistry, sparks, attraction. Whatever a person called it, those feelings made any friendship between them complicated. For Nick, the next six months were as critical as the buildup to a NASA space mission, where every minute of preparation had a purpose, even the final ten-second countdown. He had to remember that he and Kate were just friends—nothing more. But if Marcus hugged her again, Nick would be sorely tempted to bloody his nose.

    Kate prided herself on reading people’s expressions, a skill she had honed in meetings at Sutton where clients masked