Page 57 of Puppy Kisses

The car had slowed considerably by this time, so Adam could only assume the moment of danger had passed.

“I don’t regret it,” she said, her voice heavy with meaning. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat. That man had no business owning a dog if he meant to mistreat her like that. If he hadn’t had a gun, I might have given him a strong piece of my mind.”

“Agun?”

She ignored him. “And the truck chases aren’t that bad—really, they aren’t. The first one took me by surprise, I’ll admit, but I think he’s only trying to intimidate me. He never does anything but flash his lights and gun his engine.”

“Stop the car.”

“Adam, I know it sounds crazy and totally irresponsible, but it wasn’t. Something had to be done for her.”

“Stop the car,” he repeated.

“I’m not going to apologize for it. Iamsorry about lying to you, and we probably should have told Sheriff Jenkins right away rather than make up that story about her being your support dog, but I only wanted to get her somewhere safe. The rest was just details.”

“Dawn, for the love of everything, will you please pull the car over to the side of the road?”

She eased up on the gas but didn’t stop. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking you to.”

It was the sort of comment that drove Phoebe and Zeke crazy—this autocratic demand for compliance. It was also the sort of comment that drove a wedge between them, since Adam was always the one who had to make them. But Dawn didn’t take offense. Nor did she hesitate. The click of the blinker was on for only a few seconds before the car crunched to halt on the side of the highway.

“Does Zeke know about this?” Adam asked.

“About the man? Yes. I wanted to warn him in case he started getting followed, too.”

“And he didn’t do anything to stop him?”

“Well, no.” A note of genuine curiosity crept into Dawn’s voice. “Why? Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Damn straight it is.” He unclipped his seat belt and stepped out of the car. “With any luck, he’ll see us and stop.”

The whir of traffic zooming by whipped up the air into a mix of hot asphalt and dirt, but Adam didn’t mind as much as he probably should have. He was far too busy trailing one hand on the car, following the line of it until he reached the trunk.

And then he leaned against it to wait.

It took Dawn only a few seconds to join him, the press of her body next to his giving the car a little push. “This is my fight as much as it is yours,” she said. “I hope you aren’t going to tell me to get back in the car.”

“I’m not. I could use the backup.”

“Oh. Okay. Good.” She paused a moment before giving him a traffic update. “There’s no sign of his truck yet, but there’s a good chance he’s broken down somewhere a few miles back. I wasn’t kidding about how easy it is to outrun him. Honestly, if you were planning on chasing a woman down, wouldn’t you get a tune-up first?”

Adam was forced into a laugh. “I’d like to think that any woman-chasing I did would be entirely consensual and occur either in a bar or a bed, but I guess I’m unusual in that regard.”

The shift of the car seemed to indicate that she’d turned to face him. It was a theory that held when it took her a good twenty seconds to respond. He could almost feel her nonstare.

When she finally spoke, her question took him aback. “Haveyou ever chased a woman, I wonder?”

Although it technically only required a simple yes or no, there were an awful lot of layers to unpack beneath a question like that one—far too many to discuss while standing on the side of a highway waiting to confront a gun-toting madman, at any rate. The truthful answer—no—wasn’t the whole picture. If he was being perfectly honest, he’d chase Dawn right now, pursuing her with every ounce of strength and determination he had, if he didn’t think it would be criminal to catch her.

Dawn Vasquez wasn’t a woman to be tied down. His favorite thing about her was how free she was, how unapologetic about everything she did. She was someone who wouldn’t blink at the thought of being chased by a man with a gun, who’d steal an abused puppy when it needed to be done, who’d tackle runaway cows and cranky old ladies and go home smiling each time. She’d been to extraordinary places, met extraordinary people, made extraordinary love.

In other words, she was worth chasing.

“I’ve always left the running to Zeke,” he said by way of answer. It wasn’t even close to what he wanted to say, but it had to be enough. There was nothing he could offer, no future the two of them shared, where her way of life wouldn’t have to be sacrificed for his.

That was one thing he could give her—the one thing he could never ask. The only way he’d be able to live with himself was if he refused to throw the rope that would catch her forever.