“You’re not. You’ve been honest with me.” He hesitated. “Maybe I’m out of line saying this, especially as I think you know the way I feel about you, but we’ve known each other a long time, and I don’t want to see you hurt. In this case I think you should listen to your mom. Tyler isn’t the settling-down type. Having his daughter living with him isn’t going to change that.”
It was the first time he’d put his feelings into words, and hearing it was somehow worse than suspecting. “Josh—” It was agony to think he might be hurting as she was hurting. “We’ve been friends a long time and—you’ve never said anything and—” she breathed “—and I have no idea what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. My feelings, my problem.”
He was trying to make it easy for her, but it didn’t feel easy. Probably because she was in the same situation. Everything he was feeling, she was feeling, but for a different person.
“We can’t go out for dinner with you feeling the way you do. It would be wrong.”
“Like you can’t live with Tyler, feeling the way you do? I’m not about to read something into it that isn’t there. You don’t have to worry about that. Would I like more? Yes, but I’ll settle for friendship.”
And no one understood that better than she did.
She’d done the same, hadn’t she? All her life.
She felt a flash of envy for Élise and Kayla. Their love lives seemed so simple. Hers was a tangled mess.
“Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
Josh gave a soft laugh. “I think it’s called life.”
It should have been easy to love him. He was everything most women would look for in a man. But she knew love and logic weren’t necessarily close relations. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Big tough guy like me? Sure. I’ll go and arrest some folks to let off steam.”
It was typical Josh. Strong, patient and steady. It was the reason people still sent him Christmas cards even after he’d locked them up for the night.
Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with him?
Her mother was right. It would have been so much simpler.
“But I will say one thing.” Josh put his hands on her arms, and his tone was deceptively mild. “If Tyler ever hurts you, I’ll be the arresting officer.”
“My feelings, my problem.” She delivered his own words back to him, and Josh looked at her for a moment and then let go of her arms.
“Maybe. But if I see you with red eyes and I know you haven’t been peeling onions, then it’s going to be his problem, too.”
Hoping the situation between Tyler and Josh wasn’t about to deteriorate, she grabbed her backpack from the car, hurried toward the Outdoor Center and walked straight into Tyler.
“Hey—” he locked his hands on her shoulders, steadying her “—what are you running from? Fire or avalanche?”
Love.
She was running from love.
Seeing him unsettled her, coming so soon after the conversation with her mother and then Josh. Knowing that Josh was still outside, she decided it might be best to keep Tyler talking for a few minutes. She wouldn’t put it past the chief of police to read Tyler his rights.
How had it all got so complicated?
How on earth had she got herself into this mess?
By not speaking up.
She should have told Tyler she couldn’t move in with him, and she should have told her mother to mind her own business.
“Sorry. I haven’t had the greatest morning so far.”
“You had breakfast with your mom. From the look on your face, I’m guessing that went the way you were afraid it would.”