Hunter's Vow

Tyler’s lips thinned and his chin lifted. Because Abby knew her son so well, she easily recognized the look that expressed the bottom line to everything he felt.

Condemnation.

“I know. You told me Hunter Wyman was my father.”

“Well, this is him,” Abby said brightly. “He’s moving back to Brewster County because he’s partners with Grant Brewster. So now he really gets to be your dad.”

Though he spoke directly to his mother, Tyler never took his gaze from Hunter’s face. “He didn’t want to be my dad before this?”

“He was away,” Abby began, but Hunter interrupted her.

Hunkering down to Tyler’s level as Abby had, Hunter captured Tyler’s attention. “I didn’t know you existed. I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry,” he said honestly, humbly. “Sometimes adults do things that don’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, and people who shouldn’t get hurt do.” He paused, giving Tyler time to digest that. “I shouldn’t have left town without finding out for sure what had happened to you…and your mother.” He glanced at Abby for emphasis. “Because I didn’t, we didn’t get a chance to know each other. This is my fault. I will fix it.”

“How?” Tyler asked simply.

Yeah, how? Abby echoed in her head.

Calm, cool, collected, Hunter said, “I don’t know yet. But if we take this one step at a time, everything will work out. For right now, though,” he said as he rose and walked back to the table, “it’s enough to finally get to meet you. If you want to go up to your room or go outside with your friends, I understand.” He paused and smiled. “You can do whatever you normally do.”

Tyler peered at his mother. “Can I go outside?”

“I’d rather you changed into play clothes first,” Abby said, feeling ridiculous making the inane request, given that she had just introduced her son to the father he had never met.

Tyler nodded and raced from the room. Abby turned and gaped at Hunter. “Well, that was warm and fuzzy.”

“We’re boys, Abby, not girls.”

“You didn’t even hug him!”

“He didn’t want me to hug him,” Hunter replied.

“Hell, he didn’t even want me to touch him.” From the quiver in his voice Abby might have believed that bothered Hunter, but his next words were again detached and indifferent, making her think she had imagined the emotion. “It was almost as if somebody might have told him things about me that made him afraid of me.”

Abby gasped incredulously. “What?”

Hunter faced her. “Did you hate me so much that you had to poison his mind against me?”

Abby might have actually appreciated his accusation, if he had said it with some feeling. Since it was delivered with complete composure, she didn’t trust it.

“First, I didn’t hate you,” Abby quietly replied, so confused she knew she didn’t dare lose her temper for fear she had misinterpreted something and would make a worse mess out of this situation than it already was. “Second, I didn’t tell him anything but good things about you.”

“That’s not how it looks to me. There’s no other explanation for how he could hate me even without knowing me….”

Before Hunter could say anything else, Tyler slid into the room again. “You hurt my mom,” he said simply, his chin raised defiantly.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your mom,” Hunter quickly retorted. But Tyler didn’t listen. He grabbed another cookie and shot out of the back door.

“You still expect me to believe you didn’t say anything to him?”

Abby only stared at Hunter. She understood that Tyler’s jumping in and out of the room—and the conversation—was only his way of dealing with his anger, and typical behavior for a six-year-old. But she couldn’t get herself to explain that to Hunter because his insinuation was infuriating. And personal. All these years of sacrifice and struggle, she had never once said anything hurtful or hateful about Hunter. She couldn’t stand here and let him make the accusation as if he had the right—as if he had every right in the world to everything he wanted after deserting them.

“Do you really think me capable of trying to get him to hate you? And if I did, why?” she demanded. “To what end?”

“Your parents got rid of me seven years ago by lying to me,” he said. “What was their reason for that? To what end?” he asked, mimicking her, but he shook his head as if to stop himself. “Okay, let’s just calm down.”

Again he hauled back his anger and controlled himself, but Abby’s eyes narrowed. She would have welcomed the opportunity to argue any of this out with him, but because she believed it was better not to fight, she reined in her temper just as he had. However, the part of her that was hurt and upset, the part that had been abandoned, knew they would never resolve any of this without an opportunity to clear the air, because they both had feelings they had to deal with. Though Hunter kept leading them in the direction of a real, honest discussion, as if he understood that, too, he never let them finish. Seven years ago he not only would have let her have her say, he would have encouraged it.

And he would have had his say, too.

“The bottom line is that I want a relationship with my son,” Hunter said, removing his coat from the back of the kitchen chair. “So if I can’t form a decent connection with Tyler while he’s in your custody, I’ll file for custody myself.”

Without another word he strode out of the kitchen and Abby stood, openmouthed, staring at her back door. Now where had that come from? After the great pains he took to make sure they didn’t argue, it didn’t make any sense to threaten to file for custody.

For a few seconds, she considered that he might not care to get his say or to hear hers, because he was simply going to push until he got what he wanted—to bulldoze his way into their lives. But she honestly hadn’t seen signs of his being unreasonable in either of their conversations. Actually, she hadn’t seen signs that he wanted anything at all until his parting shot.

The truth was she had absolutely no idea what to think. She didn’t have a clue who he was or how to deal with him. She didn’t know how to keep the peace with him, resolve the past, or even come to a halfway decent agreement, because any time an emotion entered the picture, he quickly quashed it.

But one thing was clear. He’d changed. He’d really changed.

And she wanted her fantasy back.

Chapter Two

Since Abby knew less was more with her son, she said very little about Hunter that night or on the walk to school the next morning, except to reinforce that Hunter was basically a nice guy who had missed out on being part of their lives. She told Tyler she genuinely believed Hunter would have been there for them if he had known of Tyler’s existence. She didn’t lay blame on her parents. She couldn’t. She didn’t want Tyler to hate the only family he had known because of a mistake.

And for her own sanity, Abby had to believe it was a mistake. She had to believe her parents never would have tricked Hunter out of town if they had realized how very desperately she’d loved him and how very much he’d loved her.

Thinking about how much Hunter had loved her, walking from Tyler’s school to the diner, Abby smiled. He had been wonderful. Funny. Effervescent. Handsome. And passionate. Incredibly passionate! He had loved life and refused to be beaten by a horrible childhood. He’d intended to be something…someone. And he’d promised to take her with him.

That had been the plan. Lying naked in the back seat of his old car, cuddling after making love, he would tell her his dreams and the very resonance of his voice could convince her he was right. He would have it all. They would have it all—together.

She almost couldn’t equate the withdrawn stranger with the extraordinary man who had loved life, who had seen the future as bright and beautiful in spite of his humble, disheartening beginnings, and who couldn’t wait to make love to her.

Even as Abby served breakfast to the residents of Brewster at the diner, she kept thinking about the way Hunter made love to her. The memories, replete with feelings and sensations, haunted her. The pictures in her mind were so vivid and so complete, she was abundantly grateful for the distraction when the wives of all three Brewster brothers entered the restaurant, each carrying a toddler triplet.

Both little girls, Taylor and Annie, wore pink dresses with ruffle-rump tights and Cody wore a navy one-piece romper that looked like a sailor suit. The babies, now over a year old, got a refill of milk in their “sippy” cups and each woman ordered toast.

Though they tried to make it look as if they’d decided to bring the kids into town for a treat, Abby knew they’d come in to hear about her meeting with Hunter. Evan’s wife, Claire, a stunning brunette, was the only one of the women Abby had actually known since childhood. But Kristen, Grant’s wife, and Lily, Chas’s wife, had become close to Abby in a very short time. When the Brewster brothers became guardians of their father’s triplets, Evan met Claire and married her. Lily was hired to be the triplets’ nanny and Chas fell in love with and married her. Then when Kristen, the triplets’ aunt, came to Pennsylvania to try for custody of her nieces and nephew, she and Grant fell in love. Now all three Brewsters were married. Each of them had responsibility for one of the triplets and Abby had three friends. She decided not to spare the details of her meeting with Hunter. Lord knew the truth always got out eventually.

“He said what?” Lily asked, her big blue eyes wide and round with confusion. A breathtaking blonde with a sharp mind for details, Lily was the most sensitive of the three.

“He threatened to file for custody.”

Though Abby didn’t want to admit it, and though she didn’t want to see it come down to a battle between husbands and wives, she was glad that the Brewster women considered her a part of their clique. Because she didn’t know how to handle Hunter, it was a comfort of sorts to have an “in” with the other people in his life. If she couldn’t get him to listen to reason, maybe the Brewsters could.

Glancing from Claire to Lily to Kristen Devereaux Brewster, Abby sighed and wondered about the fairness of using them. In the end, she chose not to. “I probably shouldn’t be talking with you guys about this.” Her gaze drifted over to Kristen, the green-eyed blonde who was also the aunt of the triplets, babies who had been in the custody of the Brewster brothers since the death of their father and Kristen’s sister, the babies’ parents. “Especially you,” she said to Kristen. “After all, your husband is Hunter’s partner. I wouldn’t want to say anything to cause trouble or hard feelings.”

“Well, you just hush up, now,” Kristen said, her Texas accent obvious in the hills of central Pennsylvania. “Hunter may be Grant’s partner, but you’re my friend. And where I come from friends take care of friends.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think anybody can take care of this.”

Claire frowned. “Frankly, I don’t see what the problem is. For seven years you’ve been waiting for Hunter to ride back into town and take you away from all this,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the aging diner. Cody, the triplet for whom she and Evan took responsibility, patted her cheeks as she spoke. “If you ask me, everything will be fine after a few weeks of the two of you getting reacquainted.”

Abby shook her head. “Reacquainted” didn’t quite fit the bill of what was happening between them. While Abby remembered a bright, wonderful man full of promise, the Hunter Wyman who had returned was quiet and brooding. And bossy. They couldn’t even have a reasonable discussion about Tyler. Getting “reacquainted” was completely out of the picture. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Why?” Claire demanded. “Has he suddenly grown a second nose?”

“No,” Abby said, heat suffusing her when she brought up Hunter’s image in her mind. His looks were the very last of his problems. If anything, age had made him even more gorgeous. “He hasn’t lost one ounce of his attractiveness.”

“Oh, look at you,” Lily said with a laugh. “You’re blushing.”

“She’s always adored Hunter Wyman,” Claire told Lily as if speaking a confidence, but she didn’t bother to lower her voice. “He was the older man in her life. The rebel.”

Both Lily and Kristen sighed with delight, but the observation made Abby frown. “Maybe that’s it.”

“What?” Kristen asked.

“Maybe I don’t like him because he’s not a rebel anymore.”

Claire gave her friend a confused look. “You don’t like him because he’s not a borderline criminal?”

“No, that’s not quite it.” Abby pulled her lower lip between her teeth as she tried to draw her conclusion. “I think I don’t know how to deal with him because he’s not a rebel. Seven years ago, if Hunter would have decided he wanted Tyler, he probably would have kidnapped him.”

All three of the women gasped. Abby shook her head furiously. “I wouldn’t have let it happen,” she insisted. “But the point is, back then I knew how to handle Hunter. I knew him so well I could have kept him from doing something rash and foolish. I don’t have a clue how to handle the man he is now.”

“I still say you’re worrying over nothing. This is a chance for you to reunite with your one true love,” Claire said dreamily. “So, things aren’t going exactly as planned. Give it a chance. It will all work out.”

“My one true love was passionate and wonderful,” Abby said dully. “This guy isn’t. This Hunter might be handsome and sexy, but the passion is gone. In some ways he behaves as if he thinks passion is wrong. Or as if he believes passion is the ‘bad’ trait that held him down in Brewster County.”

“Or,” Kristen proposed, “because Grant is the passionate partner, maybe Hunter thinks he’s the one who has to be in control. Maybe all he needs is a little time or a little push to loosen up.”

“So what are you going to do?” Lily asked.

“I have no choice but to let Hunter see Tyler,” Abby said. “He’s coming over tonight after dinner.”

“Maybe you should try to be a little seductive and refresh his memory about what you shared,” Claire suggested, waggling her eyebrows.

Abby blushed furiously. “Not on your life.” She might have done that under other circumstances, but she was afraid to now. For all she knew, this Hunter might scold her if she flirted with him.

“What was it you loved about him, sugar?” Kristen asked suddenly.

Though anybody reading her thoughts of the morning would have said the way he made love to her, Abby knew that wasn’t true. “He was honest,” she admitted quietly, because in her life there had not been enough honesty. Poor as Hunter had been, lonely as he had been, he didn’t know any way to behave but with honesty and simplicity. Being with him, loving him, was the easiest thing Abby had ever done. “And direct and genuine.”

“Okay,” Claire said, sounding relieved. “Those things don’t change. Now if you had said his looks, we’d all think you were crazy because looks can fade. But honesty doesn’t fade. Neither does forthrightness. He’s still the same guy, Abby. You only need to bring out the best in him.”

Just the thought that he was the same man filled Abby with yearning. Not simply sexual, but emotional. In that second, she realized how much she missed him, but more than that she understood that she had never stopped loving him. If there was a chance, even a teeny, tiny chance, she could bring out the simple, honest man in him again, Abby knew she had to try.

Dressing that evening, after rushing Tyler through dinner, Abby also reprimanded herself for being impatient. She couldn’t believe she had jumped to the conclusion that Hunter had drastically changed merely on the basis of two short meetings. Good Lord, seven years had passed. Many, many things stood between them. Of course, he wouldn’t act like her best friend the first time he saw her after a long separation. And he certainly wouldn’t behave like a lover.

Confident, composed, Abby jogged down the steps when she heard the front doorbell ring. Though she hadn’t exactly dressed up, she hadn’t worn jeans and a T-shirt, either, as was her usual practice. Instead, she had exchanged the jeans for a short, flared skirt and the T-shirt for a soft mint-green sleeveless sweater. She wasn’t a woman who believed in high heels, but she did have chunky-heeled mahogany sandals that more or less suited the outfit.

Reminding herself that her friends were right and she shouldn’t judge Hunter too harshly or too quickly, Abby pasted on a smile and opened her front door. When she saw him, her jaw fell.

He wore charcoal gray slacks and a black turtleneck sweater that not only made him look wealthy and sophisticated, but also made her short skirt and sandals seem totally inappropriate. She felt poor and humble and something like the beleaguered heroine of Cinderella, instead of the lonely, ivory-tower princess she used to be.

“Hello, Hunter,” she said gaily, though inside she was dying. “I’m afraid I’m a little behind schedule, and I haven’t had a chance to dress yet,” she said, adding the lie because she refused to be in the submissive position with him again. Surely she had something in her closet that could give his charcoal gray slacks a run for their money. “So, I’ll just run upstairs and—”

He caught her hand and kept her from turning to the steps. “You look fine,” he said quietly, then almost groaned. Had he said “fine”? She looked wonderful. Cute. Happy. Sexy. Incredibly sexy. “There’s no need to change on my account.”

“I know,” she said, and yanked her hand out of his grasp. Too late, he realized he’d been holding it forever, as if her hand belonged in his. “But you’re so dressed up,” she added plaintively.

Hunter laughed. “These are comfortable clothes for me now,” he said and moved into her foyer, hoping she would relax and follow him. He hated the fact that he made her nervous. The more nervous she became, the more he wanted to console her. And that was bad, even dangerous.

Not only had Hunter heard from Grant that Abby never spoke harshly of him, but he also realized that the Abby he loved wasn’t capable of being vindictive, which meant she hadn’t said anything but good things about him to Tyler. In one short day every suspicion he had about her had been mitigated or completely resolved by someone, and he kept getting this surge of nearly overpowering emotion that seemed to demand that he ask her to marry him.

Aside from his own miserable marriage failure, he couldn’t dredge up one good reason not to marry her, except that seven years had passed and Abby might not want to marry him. Which was actually the clincher that kept him from making a darned fool of himself. Unless he harnessed all the instincts that continually sneaked up on him, he might blurt a marriage proposal. And he could not let that happen. Particularly since he had decided that moving into the bed-and-breakfast would be the best way for him to get to know his son and for him and Abby to have time to hash out their problems. If they were going to live under the same roof, he had to control himself.

“Well, they sure don’t look comfortable to me,” Abby insisted, her gaze roaming up and down his body.

Hunter felt an instant, instinctive reaction, which didn’t amaze him as much as it overwhelmed him. No matter how much his logical thoughts kept reminding him to cool off and settle down, his instincts were screaming that this was his woman. He didn’t need to cool off or calm down. She was his.

Looking at her the same way she’d just appraised him, he couldn’t suppress a burst of jealousy thinking she dressed this cute, this sexy for her guests all the time. And if she did, why?

But if she didn’t, why tonight?

“So, where’s Tyler?” he asked, setting his suitcase on the floor beside him and turning his attention away from her and onto the proper matter at hand, before his curiosity and his unwarranted jealousy got the better of him.

She shrugged, then glanced around questioningly. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding truly confused.

She looked adorable standing in the center of her dark wood foyer. Her bright hair sparkled from a recent shampoo. Her gorgeous legs were exposed beneath the short skirt. Her face was scrunched in confusion. She was nervous and flustered and simply irresistibly dressed, and before Hunter could stop the natural conclusion from forming, it formed. Adding the nervousness and her sexy little outfit together, Hunter couldn’t help but think that she might still have feelings for him.

If she had dressed this way specially for him because she found him as attractive as he found her, maybe there was more than attraction between them….Maybe she had actual feelings for him?

Immediately on the heels of that, he realized that he still had feelings for her. Lots of them. Attraction. Desire. And the need to be a parent with her. They had a relationship that resulted in the creation of a child and he wanted to raise that child with her. With her. Because she was good, kind and genuine and he knew their personalities complemented each other. He would never be so foolhardy as to think he still loved her after a seven-year separation, particularly since he had been through an ugly divorce and didn’t believe love of the poetic, romantic kind existed. But all things considered, if he were to try again with another woman, Abby would be that woman. She was sweet, she was sexy and she had his son.

As all those thoughts rolled to their obvious completion, and Hunter acknowledged that sexual attraction was not the only thing he felt for Abby, he wondered if the impulse he had tagged instinct wasn’t actually good, sound logic.

“You know what, Abby?” he said suddenly, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “This is starting to make sense to me.”

“This?” she asked breathlessly, confirming what he had been thinking all along. She did find him as attractive as he found her.

“Well,” he said slowly, his logical conclusions urging him on. He refused to be guided by uncontrollable impulses, but sound reasoning couldn’t be ignored. Because it was sensible, it had to be right. “I don’t want to be forward, but it looks like you probably dressed up for me.”

She gasped, but he held up his hand to stop her from commenting. “And I still think you’re the sexiest woman on the face of the earth. Adding our attraction to the fact that we have a son, the very best thing for everyone involved would be for us to marry and raise Tyler together.”

Abby was speechless, flabbergasted and embarrassed—mostly because he’d guessed she had dressed up for him because she was attracted to him. She considered that he was teasing, or didn’t fully understand what he was saying because he said it so calmly, so efficiently. But then, for the first time since he’d entered her foyer, she noticed the suitcases at his side.

“What’s this?”

“I decided that the quickest way to get to know Tyler would be to stay here—in the bed-and-break-fast.” He paused and caught her gaze.

Their eyes locked, and Abby swallowed hard as a hundred possibilities assaulted her. Hunter Wyman would be staying in her home. The man she adored. The man she hadn’t been able to resist since she was eighteen. The man she had pined for the past seven years. The man who had just asked her to marry him.

“I hadn’t intended to stay for free,” he advised pragmatically. “I’ll be a paying guest.”

His straightforward announcement left her even more flabbergasted than she had been at his proposal, and Abby stared at him. Where were the sensitive bones that used to be in that wonderful body? Not only was he rolling into her world like a bulldozer on one of his construction sites, but he offered his proposal like a waffle cone without ice cream. It held so much promise, so much potential, but there was no love behind it. She wanted to feel the wonderful, heavenly hope that someday he could love her. Instead, she felt only emptiness.

It seemed she was nothing more to him than a hotel proprietor, who just happened to be raising his child.

Where was her Hunter?