A Ring And A Rainbow

Claire nodded, momentarily thinking how strange it was that they could talk about anything at all, even his mother’s death. “I know. If anything, your mother taught me how to fight back.” He looked at her quickly, making Claire immediately wish she could retract the words. But she couldn’t, so she amended them. “Your mother knew how to take things in stride. She was too feisty to let her arthritis get her down, and too strong willed to have anything but a smile on her face.”

Hunter made a funny little noise in the back of his throat, as if he was choking up and couldn’t risk saying anything.

Instinctively Claire knew he didn’t want to cry, or look weak, in front of her. So she tried to make a joke—as feeble as it was—to give him an out. “Of course, she did have a thing about the driveway,” she said. “She kept telling me that shoveling it was good exercise, that it would keep me young. She bought me a new shovel every fall. I, on the other hand, kept hinting about a snowblower….”

He laughed, hard enough to explain away the red-rimmed, watery eyes. He swiped at them with the back of his hand, as if it was her poor joke that had brought tears to his eyes.

But they both knew better.

Claire longed to give him a hug and tell him she was really, truly sorry. But rational thought warned her that would be a particularly bad idea, given how she felt about him.

So they stood there, grappling with a strained moment of silence. Claire realized she should make some kind of excuse and leave, but couldn’t bring herself to do so. It had been years, what were a few more miserable minutes? Especially if she could share them with Hunter.

“So you caught me,” he said finally, changing the subject as he shook out the T-shirt. “I was about to jump in the shower before the girls and their families got in.” He pulled the shirt over his head, shouldering into the sleeves before yanking down the hem, and stretching it taut against his chest. Hunter’s biceps moved as though he was a day laborer, not a pampered entrepreneur. Claire suspected he probably popped the seams out of his designer suits. “Left my car in the street, so that’s why you probably didn’t notice it. I figured they’d be unloading playpens and high chairs and stuff.”

Regret unexpectedly went zinging through her middle, and she looked away, refusing to let him see the longing she couldn’t control. She was slowly coming to terms with the fact that she’d probably never have a family, never have a child, but some days were more difficult than others.

When she and Hunter were eighteen, and full of hope for the future, they’d impulsively picked out baby names. She wondered if he still remembered. April Michelle for a girl. Tyler Worth for a boy. She’d once written them in all the margins of her spiral-bound notebooks and imagined the beautiful babies they’d have. Now all she had was empty, empty arms.

“My mistake,” she said, forcing a calm into her voice that she didn’t feel. “To tell you the truth, if I’d known you were here, Hunter, I certainly wouldn’t have walked in. I would have stopped one of your sisters in the driveway and handed them the casserole.”

Both of his eyebrows lifted, and he regarded her perceptively. “Still mad, huh?”

She stared at him, considered the blunt question, and reminded herself that maybe she was one lucky woman. She could have married him twelve years ago and been saddled with him for the duration. “Why would I be mad? We haven’t talked in a dozen years. We don’t have anything in common. You have your life in California, I’ve kept mine in Lost Falls. We clearly don’t have anything to say to each other. You’re just one more part of my past.” She held up the key. “Look. Here’s your mother’s house key. I’m sure you’ll want it back.”

His eyes dropped, flicking over the brass key. “Keep it.”

“There’s no reason to keep it. Not now.”

His gaze went hard, penetrating, the green flecks in his eyes fading to bronze. “Mom appreciated everything you did for her, Claire. You were here for her every day when none of the rest of us were. None of us will forget that. No matter what happened between you and me.”

Claire chose to ignore the last sentence. “Your sisters came as often as they could. It was hard for them, living so far from home, and I was happy to fill in when I could. But, your mother, she’s gone now…and…”

Claire tried not to strangle over the words. For herself, for Hunter, for even the awkwardness of the situation. Yet with Ella gone, Claire’s ties to the Starnes family were forever severed.

The sudden, helpless feeling that she was all alone made her shiver with the strangest sense of claustrophobia. She wouldn’t think about the anxiety that had been building in her all day, she wouldn’t even consider it. There were worse things in life than being alone.

Finally, she said, “Experience tells me you’ll want to pull in all the stray keys, Hunter. Or at least change the locks.”

He still didn’t reach for the key, and Claire, left holding it, stared at him.

“You’re as good as family, Claire.”

Claire’s hand dropped slightly. She let the palm of her hand swallow the key and curled her fingers tightly around it. “Blood’s thicker than water, we both know that.”

A second slipped away. His gaze was pinned on her. There wasn’t a hint of sexual suggestion behind his eyes, just a steady evaluation. “You look good, Claire. Really good.”

How could he say something like that, she fumed. How? Why couldn’t he just politely thank her for the blasted pot pie and show her the door?

Tension sizzled, and she insanely thought of the key Benjamin Franklin had threaded on the kite string to conduct a little electrical current. Right now, Hunter Starnes was like that, offering her one fantastic lightning bolt after another. “I also wanted to let you know,” she said evenly, “if you need anything—”

“A truce?”

Claire’s eyelids involuntarily went half-mast, and her heart fluttered. “Don’t.”

“C’mon, Claire. This is ridiculous,” he growled, imperceptibly moving toward her. “We haven’t even said hello. Not a real hello. You’re standing on your side of the room, I’m standing on mine. We both know we aren’t going to take up where we left off, but we can at least be civil.”

“I think this is probably best. Before we let that other stuff cloud our vision.”

He frowned, his eyebrows going into a straight, hard line. “Other stuff? What other stuff? What the hell are you talking about?”

She needed to tell him? Stuff like stolen kisses and intimate discoveries and necking out on Pine Lake Road. “Teenage hormones,” she said succinctly. “Teenage encounters of the worst kind.”

“Oh, Claire, come on! We were kids!”

“Exactly. I’m older and wiser now.”

A heartbeat skipped away as his gaze flicked over her. “You’re better.”

She heard just enough of the husky approval in his voice to know he meant it, and that unnerved her. “Hunter, don’t. Don’t take me at face value. You don’t know me at all. Not anymore.”

He took a tentative step toward her. “What I do know is that in all these years, you never let my mother down.” Claire steeled herself to dismiss his words, to dismiss him—but Hunter took another step in her direction. “I know she thought the world of you, Claire. I know I’ve never forgotten you, no matter how badly we parted.”

Claire scrunched her eyes closed. She didn’t want praise. She didn’t want explanations. She’d only wanted to do the right thing by Ella, as hard as it had been, and as hard as Hunter had made it for her. “Hunter—”

Before she could reply, he looped his arms around her back and drew her full-length against his chest. “Hush. Just for a minute,” he whispered against her ear. “Because there’s a part of me that needs you now.”

Ripples of longing, of empathy, coursed through her, and Claire struggled to repulse each and every one of them. It would have been so easy to sag against him, to absorb his heat, his strength, to let herself go…but she stoically refused to do it. “Hunter…” she said softly, gently pulling back and trying to extricate herself, “…don’t.”

Claire Dent, Hunter realized, was the epitome of strength. In his arms, she was as willowy as a sapling, as resilient as a rock. Her hair was longer now, at least four inches past her shoulders, in a wavy, loose style that was invitingly silky, sexy. In high school she had curled and crimped her hair into submission. Now he wondered why she’d ever bothered.

He also wondered why the hell he’d never realized what she’d grow into.

She was a beauty. Simple as that. Everything about her was seductively simple. From her khaki slacks to the powder-blue T-shirt top she wore. Pearl studs in her ears and the sheerest of makeup. Her skin was flawless, and her high cheekbones carried a natural blush.

She didn’t have the hollowed-out, starved look of a cover model; her face was firm and full, the curve of her jaw solid. Her nose was so straight and perfect that she could have posed as the scale model for a plastic surgeon.

But it was Claire’s darker-than-mocha gaze that leveled a man. Her deep-set eyes were so luminous that he’d caught himself searching for a reflection in their depths. She’d always had a brooding, thoughtful quality shadowing her eyes, but then, that was no wonder, given what she’d been through.

“Hunter…don’t,” she repeated.

Claire’s lower lip, which was provocatively fuller than the top, had always had the most incredible way of working around a word. It worked that way now. With that single word. Don’t. He ought to heed the warning, but he couldn’t help goading her. “Don’t what?”

Claire pursed her lips and spat out the answer, “You know what!”

Inside, he ached to laugh. His mother used to claim Claire Dent didn’t pout very often, but when she did it was the prettiest little pout this side of the Mississippi. He was inclined to agree.

Hunter slowly, reluctantly, released her.

She’d found herself. He could see it in every mannerism, in the way she carried herself and the way she talked. She was a woman, confident and assured. She’d grown up—and he experienced a glimmer of regret that he hadn’t been around to see it.

“I just needed a ‘welcome back home.’And,” he admitted, “maybe a little hug.”

“I’m not the one to offer it, Hunter. We both know that.”

“Claire, the first half of my life you were my best friend. I don’t want to spend the last half of my life thinking I’ve made you my enemy.”

“I’m not your enemy,” she denied. “I doubt thoughts like that will keep you up at night. I just want to walk out of this awkward situation with some class, that’s all.”

“You want to go out of this with class?” he repeated. “Fine. I’ll let you. But first, before you walk back out that door, let’s resolve our hard feelings. I say we kiss and make up.”

Chapter Two

Hunter’s mouth brushed over hers. She should have stopped him, Claire thought dizzily, before she allowed his powerfully sweet kiss to addle her brain and destroy her defenses.

Yet Hunter didn’t overpower her, and his mouth made no demands. Instead he expertly touched and tasted, meeting her hunger halfway. In a gesture of comfort that did seem to have some inexplicable healing power.

Years and burdens fell away as he magically carried her back to her youth, to memories that were steeped in expectation and hope. He lifted her, and she soared, weightless for the first time in years.

No hard feelings? she thought woozily. Everything about him was hard. The way he held her, the way he cradled her. The way his fingers pressed into her back, drawing her to him, the way his knee instinctively sluiced between her legs, taking possession.

It would have been easy to give herself up to the kiss. Remarkably easy. But she restrained herself, slapping a conscious rein on her emotions, willing her tongue to still, her lips to cease their explorations.

Hunter pulled away, the coarse stubble on his cheek grazing hers. “Now that,” he whispered huskily, “makes me feel like I’ve come back home.”

His arms dropped loosely to her sides, his fingertips sliding down the length of her forearms and her wrists. She imperceptibly drew back, shaking him off.

“Hunter,” she said shakily, “that won’t happen again. You can joke and say that we’ve kissed and made up. But all we will ever be toward each other is polite. Anything else is out of the question. We can be neighbors for the few days you’re here. But anything more than that is—”

“Out of the question?”

She took a step back, regret nipping at her heels. “Yes. I think maybe we understand each other now.”

“Don’t count on it, Claire. I never did things the easy way. You, better than anyone, should know that.”

“The whole town knows that, Hunter. Because you didn’t just walk out on me, you walked out on your dad and your mom. They expected you to run the station, to keep it going.”

“It wasn’t what I wanted,” he retorted, dismissing her reproach.

“Apparently, neither was I,” she pointed out softly. She turned to go, then stopped at the back door, the key still in her hand. It was all she could do to walk away from him, but she forced herself to do it. “I meant to tell you. I know you’ll be crowded here, and there’s no good place to stay within thirty miles. So, if you decide you need an extra bedroom, someone’s welcome to use the guest bedroom at my place. You can let them know.”

She opened the door and had one foot on the steps.

“Thanks, Claire. I’ll bring my stuff over later.”

She swung around to face him, unable to wipe the surprise off her face. “You’ll what?”

“I’ll shower first, then bring my stuff over,” he said nonchalantly, “after the girls get in.”

“I didn’t mean you,” she stammered. “I meant Courtney or Lynda or—”

“You’ll want me,” he said decidedly.

Her eyes widened.

“That is, I’m the one that’s the best houseguest. The girls and their families are loud and noisy and on a schedule that runs counterclockwise to the rest of the world.”

“I can adjust.” She’d have to adjust, because there was no way she could live in the same house with Hunter. Not even for a few days.

“But Courtney’s baby is colicky. Beth’s little boy has asthma and—”

“I know that.”

“But he’d probably be allergic to your cat.”

“What! How do you know I have a cat?” Claire bristled, incensed that he knew even one intimate detail about her. Huh. He probably regarded her as an old maid who had nothing to do except sit around carrying on conversations with her cat.

“Mom mentioned it. Said you found the kitten in her garage.”

“Well, she couldn’t take care of it,” she said defensively. “That was the winter she went on that whale-watching cruise.”

He chuckled. “Mmm, nice of you to take it in, though. Even so, it would most likely send Brendon into an asthma attack. Cat dander, and all that.”

Claire grimaced. Okay. She didn’t want to be responsible for that. “Then maybe Mindy. Or Lynda…”

“I don’t know. Mindy’s husband is a lovable guy, but an uncontrollable slob. And frankly, they bicker all the time. But you probably already know that, too. Lynda’s better half works nights, and when he isn’t working he’s up banging around the kitchen, making omelettes and frying up hash browns.” He lifted his broad shoulders. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

She stepped back inside the kitchen. “No. Not a good idea. It wouldn’t look good for you to be in my house.”

“Why not?”

She sputtered. “Because—because someone might think we were taking up where we left off.”

“So?”

“So it matters to me what people think—and I don’t want you in my home.”

To his credit—or amazing acting abilities—Hunter recoiled, as if he’d been hurt. “I just thought it would be the best all-around solution,” he said. “For both of us. Since you were willing to help us out, and I simply want to fly under the radar with my sisters’ families.”

“Hunter, we both know it goes way beyond that.”

He gave her a long, assessing gaze, one that made Claire waffle. She needed to dismiss those tawny-colored eyes, that suggestive slant of his mouth. He wasn’t going to talk her into this. He wasn’t! But even as her mind was saying ‘no,’ her body was saying ‘yes.’ She could feel herself gravitating to him, as much as she wanted to deny it.

“I was only taking you up on your offer for a place to stay because I wanted a little peace and quiet. Just while the girls are here. Then I’ll move out, I swear. Nobody even needs to know I’m there, if it embarrasses you.”

Claire paused, her blood growing even hotter—and for anentirely different reason. Hunter didn’t know what embarrassment and humiliation was. But she’d faced it down. For twelve years after he’d left, she’d stared it in the eye and risen above it. If he thought he could just move in with her and resume their old comfortable relationship—

“Hey, I’ll sneak in after dark and leave before dawn.”

The implications sent a curling sensation through Claire’s middle—making her feel as if he was intentionally taking that impulsive kiss one step further. “Now that would be an even worse idea.”

“Look, Claire,” he reasoned, “we’re going to have to get past this. I’m going to be here for a while to settle Mom’s estate. We’re going to be neighbors for a few weeks, like it or not. But as soon as the girls leave to go home and get all their kids back in school and their activities, my energies go to putting this place in order. I don’t even have time to make nice with you. I want to get the job done and get out of here.”

Claire should have been hurt. But she wasn’t. In fact, it was almost a relief to know where he stood and what he intended to do. In the meantime, she’d bash back her inclinations and brace up her defenses. She’d drive him out of her mind and banish him from her soul. She would not let him get the best of her.

For she knew, without another word between them, that in the next few hours she’d relent and Hunter would move into her home as a houseguest. But she’d absolutely, positively draw the line at letting him move back into her heart.

Hunter moved in with a matched set of leather luggage, and an apologetic smile. He stood uncomfortably in the kitchen of the frame home she’d inherited from her mother and eyed the new wallpaper with the whimsical birdhouse border. His gaze flitted over the remodeled kitchen. The oak cabinets were a far cry from the dark avocado-green ones he probably remembered. The refinished claw-foot table now had four matching chairs, instead of five spindly castoffs. “I didn’t mean to strong-arm you over this, Claire.”

“Sure you did,” she said easily, putting the coffee carafe back on the burner. At the same time, she wondered whether he was having second thoughts. “The coffee’s all set for tomorrow morning. If you get up before me, all you have to do is turn it on.”

“Thanks.”

“Help yourself to whatever you need,” she said breezily, wishing the moment she uttered the words she could take them back. What could the man possibly need? Intimate confessions at midnight? Another stolen kiss behind closed blinds? A little pleasure in the pantry? “Bread’s in the bread box,” she said, “eggs in the fridge and cereal’s on the top shelf over the stove. I don’t do much more than yogurt for breakfast—and I eat that in the car.” She paused. “I’ll be out early tomorrow, Hunter. I’ve got a house to show. So I’ve left a key on the table. I’ll be in and out, so our paths probably won’t even cross. Don’t worry about that.”

He looked. The key ring, an advertising piece for Falls Company Real Estate, offered a single brass key. “Sounds like you’re trying to avoid me.”

“No. I’ve got a house to sell and a living to make, that’s all.”

He nodded slowly. “Funny to think of you as a real estate agent now. I remember the time you had to beg Mrs. Montgomery for the receptionist’s job. So? You like it?”

“It was probably the single best thing that ever happened to me.” Polite conversation, she reminded herself, that was the only thing they needed to make together. Yet the phrases make time, make music, make love went zinging through her head.

He nodded again, his attention fixed on the pot rack over the work island.

“With a kitchen like this I know you’ve learned how to cook.”

“Enough to get by. But I don’t like to eat alone.” Hunter shifted his big, muscular frame, nailed her with a look, then let the implication slide. They should have been husband and wife by now, she thought miserably. She should have been making him eggs and kissing him out the door in the morning. They should have had sleeper-clad feet padding to their bedside before dawn.

“You’ve changed things around here so much, Claire, I wouldn’t have recognized the place.”

“Things don’t stay the same, Hunter. Of course, people don’t stay the same, either. But I guess you’ve figured that out.”

He snorted, inclining his head slightly. “I would have recognized you, though.”

“Really?”

“Mmm. I could have been a block away, on Main Street, and picked you out of a crowd.” She waited, feeling her eyelashes drop a coquettish fraction of an inch, wondering what he meant. “You’ve got this tilt in your get-along. It’s the way you walk.”

“A tilt in my get-along?” Claire repeated, acutely conscious that Hunter’s comment was slightly suggestive.

He chuckled. “And the way you twist yourself around. You have this distinctive way you lean back from the hip and look over your shoulder. You did it on the back-porch steps today. Just like I remembered.”

“I think the explanation for that is startled. I was startled that you’d think my invitation included you.” She grabbed a tea towel off the counter, folded it and hung it over the oven door. “I certainly never saw that coming.”

“Hey. I always did like to keep you guessing, Claire.”

“No guessing games this time around, Hunter,” she warned. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he started teasing her again, not like the old times. He wouldn’t, of course. Because his eyes were shadowed, and his grief was palpable. No, his mind was on another kind of loss.

“Well—” he lifted a shoulder “—I appreciate you putting me up anyway. Being around the girls and their families makes me feel like an outsider. Like I’m the odd man out, the one who’s in the way.”

“Hunter, your sisters wouldn’t make anyone feel like an outsider. And I doubt you’re in the way.”

“Mmm, no,” he said dryly, “not when it comes to lifting and carrying.” He leaned against the countertop. “They already put me to work. I hauled in two high chairs, a bunch of diaper bags, a playpen, and then, before I came over, I put a portable crib together.”

Claire’s gaze drifted to the empty spot against the far wall. She’d intentionally saved that space for a high chair. It didn’t look as if that was going to happen. “At least you made yourself useful,” she said coolly.

“The girls wondered when you were coming over.”

“I thought about it. But I wanted to give them some time alone. It’s always hard, going into the house for the first time, realizing the people you love aren’t there anymore.”

He thoughtfully flicked the zipper tab on the shaving kit tucked under his arm. It was a muscular gesture, one that put a curling sensation through Claire’s middle. “They appreciated the hot meal, Claire. Said it was just like you, to do something like that.”

Claire ignored the praise. She couldn’t bear it if he was nice to her; she’d rather be dismissed. She’d learned how to deal with that.

“They also said you should be there with us, eating.”

A lump formed in Claire’s throat as she imagined taking her place at the Starnes family dinner table. She once thought that those girls would be her sisters-in-law, that she would be part of the family. “How’s everybody holding up?”

He looked away, considering. “Lynda’s family is staying with friends, so I haven’t seen much of her. But Courtney’s pretty upset,” he admitted. “She was planning a trip back next month, and she feels guilty, like she should have arranged her trip sooner, to get here before…well, you know.”