Never Too Late. RaeAnne Thayne

a kid on the playground at recess? Heat rushed to her cheeks, surely enough to melt any flakes left there.

      “I’m sorry I interrupted your solitude.”

      “Don’t worry about it,” he finally said after an odd pause.

      “I’ll leave. You obviously wanted to be alone.”

      He shrugged. “Not really. I just can’t seem to spend enough time outside.”

      He didn’t add any other explanation, but he didn’t need to. She knew exactly why he craved fresh air, even cold and snowy fresh air. It all must seem heavenly to a man who had only been out of prison for a little over a month.

      Hunter had spent more than two years on death row for a hideous crime he didn’t commit. He had only gained his freedom after Taylor and Wyatt had uncovered the truth behind the slayings of Hunter’s pregnant girlfriend, her mother and her unborn child.

      Relieved to be able to focus on someone else’s problems for a change, she studied him in the moon’s glow and the twinkling lights. He looked tired, she thought, and the doctor in her wondered how he’d been sleeping since his release.

      “How are you doing? I mean, really doing?”

      He was quiet for a moment, as if not very many people had asked him that. “When I was first released,” he finally said, “I wanted to do everything I’d been dreaming about inside that miserable cell for thirty-one months. I wanted to climb the Tetons again and feel the water rushing around my waders as I stood in a stream with a fly rod and ski every single black diamond run I could find.”

      “Did you?”

      His laugh was rueful and a little bitter. “The first week. Now for some strange reason I can’t seem to generate enough energy to do anything but sit out here and breathe the mountain air.”

      She knew exactly what he meant—his discontent and malaise mirrored her own.

      “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. It’s going to take a while to adjust to normalcy again. Give yourself a little time.”

      Hunter had to smile at that crisp, professional note in her voice. “Thank you, Dr. Spencer. I don’t believe I realized psychiatric medicine was your specialty.”

      He watched as color climbed her high cheekbones and wondered if Taylor had any clue how very much she resembled Lynn McKinnon.

      “You know it’s not,” she said. “But in family medicine you need to do a little of everything. Sorry for the uninvited advice. Hazard of the profession. I’m afraid I always think I know what’s best for everyone.”

      “No, I appreciate it. Intellectually I know you’re right—I just need more time to adjust. But I’ve never been a particularly patient man and I’m having a hard time trying to figure myself out right now.”

      He paused, uncomfortable talking about this with anyone, but especially with Kate Spencer, and decided to change the subject. “Taylor tells me you’re doing well with your residency.”

      “Right. I just finished an E.R. rotation and on Christmas Day I start one in the neonatal intensive care unit at Primary Children’s Medical Center.”

      He hadn’t been a cop for a while now but even his rusty detective skills could hear the definite lack of enthusiasm in her voice and he wondered at it. As long as he had known her, Kate had been focused on only one thing—becoming a doctor. It had been the strongest tie binding her to his sister, the common ground that had led them to becoming friends.

      “You don’t sound very thrilled about it.”

      “I am. I’ve been looking forward to working in the NICU. I know I’ll gain valuable skills there.”

      “But?”

      She sighed and turned back to the ghostly mountains. “But just like you, I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for anything right now.”

      “You’ve had a wild few months, I guess.”

      “We both have.”

      They drifted into a comfortable silence. After a moment, she stirred next to him and he caught the scent of her, that mouthwatering smell of vanilla sugar, and suddenly became very uncomfortable.

      With her blond hair piled up on her head and that slender green dress, she looked elegant and graceful and delicious. He wondered what Dr. Spencer would do if he gave in to his sudden urge to yank the pins out of those luscious curls, bury his fingers in them, and pull her toward him.

      He hadn’t had much to do with women since his release and his body was loudly reminding him of the fact.

      That had certainly been on his to-do list, one of those things he’d dreamed about in prison—sex with a different woman every single day for a month.

      But the reality was, he didn’t enjoy meaningless sex. He’d had plenty of offers since his release from prison but all from the kind of women who didn’t appeal to him at all, the kind who found his dark history a turn-on and wanted to make it with an ex-con, even an innocent one.

      He cleared his throat and tried to figure out how he could escape without being rude.

      “Do you think you’ll take your old job back?” she asked, unaware of his torment.

      If any question could deflate his fledgling lust, it was that one. He stared out into the night. “That’s still one of those things in the undecided column. I don’t know.”

      “You were a good cop, Hunter.”

      “Yeah, I was.” He didn’t say it out of ego. “I loved it. But I have to admit I don’t have much faith left in the system.”

      How could he, when that system he’d worked so hard to uphold had failed him so miserably? Despite an unblemished—even stellar—career with the Salt Lake City Police Department, he had first been arrested and then convicted of taking three lives, one of them an unborn child, one a dying cancer patient and one the woman he thought he loved.

      He would still be in that cell on death row if not for his sister’s unwavering faith in him. God knows, his former buddies on the force had all turned on him. The system of justice he had built his life around had failed him with disastrous consequences, and he didn’t know if he could ever believe in it again.

      And if he didn’t believe in it, he sure as hell couldn’t pick up his detective shield again and take up where he had left off before his arrest nearly three years earlier.

      “So what will you do?” Kate asked.

      He shrugged. “For now, I guess I’ll just stay out here and watch the mountains.”

      She laughed a little, then shivered as a cold gust of wind blew across the porch. “We’re both going to turn into blocks of ice if we stay out here much longer.”

      “I suppose we’d better go inside.”

      He was surprised to see her expression become guarded, reluctant.

      “Why the hesitation? That’s your family in there.”

      “I don’t know. I must be crazy, right?”

      He gave a harsh laugh. “Believe me, I know crazy. You can’t spend thirty-one months behind bars and not get real good at telling the nuts from the wackos. You’re neither—in fact, you’re one of the most sane women I know.”

      “Not the last six weeks. I’m a mess, Hunter.”

      She faced him then and he was stunned to see tears gathering in her vivid blue eyes. He didn’t know what to do for a wild moment, then he placed a hand over hers, struck by her icy fingers.

      He squeezed her hand and she gave him a tremulous smile. They stood there for a moment, then she slipped her hand away and returned to the deck railing.

      “I should be happy. I know I should. I’m