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with the stove and peering into the refrigerator. She'd asked about some horses and had seemed intimidated about getting into his truck. Now she was looking all around, her dark eyes big and frightened as though she had never seen things as ordinary as cars and road signs and airplanes. |
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Had she escaped from a mental institution? |
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What he ought to do was take her to the police and dump her, let them figure out what her problem was. |
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Yet there was something about her. . . . He found her beautiful, even dressed in his old T-shirt and baggy jeans. Her valor yesterday had touched himhe knew of few women who would have survived an ordeal like the flood, let alone put it behind them without crying about it. |
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Yet she had cried. She'd had a nightmare last night, and had cried for her family. She claimed to have lost them in the desert. But what had really penetrated his defenses was the way she felt clutched against his chest. She was a tall woman, though still much shorter than he, and her slenderness had felt fragile as he held her. More than that, she seemed to belong there. Despite himself, he felt as though he knew her, as though he understood her sadness, as though he shared it. |
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No, he couldn't just dump her with the police. Of course, he would not lower his guard with her, for who knew if she had an ulterior motive for her strange behavior? But he'd help her find her family or wherever else she belonged. |
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And then? Then he would see if he could get her out of his mind. |
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