Read Wild Heat (Northern Fire) for Free Online

stared at her. Kitty Grant not laughing? He couldn’t imagine it. “You belong here.”
    “I didn’t used to think so.”
    She would probably decide she didn’t again, but it wasn’t his place to remark on it. She’d been wrong back then and she’d be wrong when she left again, but one thing he was sure of. Kitty would leave.
    Her parents had left a legacy of more than money to their only daughter. They’d left how much they despised living in the wild north to her as well.
    “It’s good to see you,” Kitty said when the silence had stretched a little.
    “Is it?”
    “Yes. I missed you.” Deeper emotion than he would ever allow himself to trust from her seemed to infuse those four little words.
    “There was no place for me in your life.”
    “No. Not when I was with Nevin.”
    Because back then there’d been no room for someone who happened to be both her best friend and a man who loved her. He’d become an awkward problem she didn’t want to deal with anymore.
    He didn’t love her now, that was for damn sure, but desire was making itself known in the swollen flesh pressing against the button fly of his jeans.
    “No place for the little people when you were married to LA elite.” The words might be bitter, but his tone wasn’t.
    He’d been hurt back then at her rejection, but he wasn’t naïve to the ways of the world. Even if he was from a small Alaskan town.
    He hadn’t fit in with the Los Angeles glitterati, even when he’d been a student at USC.
    Her perfect bow-shaped lips twisted in a grimace. “You won’t understand, but Nevin handpicked the people in my life, from my yoga instructor to the woman who called herself my best friend. He saw you as a threat, though I didn’t realize it until much later, so…”
    “I got kicked to the curb.”
    Her head dipped, as if that shamed her. “Yes.”
    She was partially right about him not understanding. He couldn’t imagine allowing anyone to have that kind of power in his life; however, there had been a time he’d left behind the life he loved because that was what this woman wanted.
    “You must have loved him very much.”
    “I don’t know.” Kitty’s blue eyes clouded with confusion and pain he didn’t want to see. “Maybe I loved him once.”
    She’d given up her education, her family…She’d given up Tack for Nevin Barston. Of course she’d loved him. And Tack didn’t like dwelling on that truth any more today than he had eight years ago.
    She shrugged, a move he was quickly learning to dislike. It was way too noncommittal for the Kitty Grant he’d known. No way he could be sure when Kitty had started changing, but change she had. When they’d been friends, she would have argued her point of view, even in the face of irrefutable evidence.
    The woman standing in front of him wasn’t about to do that.
    The truth of the difference between Kitty then and Kitty now hit him hard and right between the eyes. Shit. Piss. Damn.
    That urge to take a little trip south and beat the ever-loving shit out Nevin Barston washed over Tack again.
    “It’s complicated, Tack.” Kitty made an aborted move with her hand. “And I’ve had a really long day.”
    Oh, he believed it was complicated all right. However, Tack knew the flames of her nature might be doused, but he refused to accept that an ember didn’t still burn somewhere deep inside her.
    “Kitty, I know you’ve been through hell—”
    Kitty interrupted before he could go any further. “I go by Caitlin now.”
    “Well, maybe you need to find Kitty again.”
    “And you think I’m going to just because you use that name?” She might not realize it, but there was a tinge of the old Kitty snark in that tone.
    He grinned. “I don’t know, but I’m not calling you Caitlin.”
    “ You haven’t changed.”
    “You’re wrong about that too.”
    “Too? What else am I wrong about?”
    “You’re stronger than you think.”
    “Because I finally divorced the monster who claimed to