by Beverly Bird
“Not sure that’s a good idea. The insurance—”
“Do it.” Liv swallowed carefully and softened her tone deliberately. “Please.”
“You’re the boss.”
She looked back at Hunter. She heard Bourne’s saddle creak as he mounted again behind her, then the plodding sound as seventeen sets of hooves hit the rocky soil, moving out.
Something strange was beginning to happen in the area of her chest, something airy and light that almost felt like relief. They’d settle this now. Liv discovered that she was ready for combat. It was better than living in dread. She couldn’t go on leaping out of her skin every time the phone rang.
“Boss,” Hunter repeated so softly his voice might have been a caress, but there was nothing warm about it.
“You knew that or you couldn’t have found me. Someone had to have told you I was leading this ride.”
“The desk clerk at the Connor suggested where I might find you. You have a few of his paying customers astride.”
“Yes.” It seemed safest to keep things simple until she could gauge his intent.
“I’m staying there.”
She forced herself to nod. “How nice.”
“I thought the Copper Rose might be a little…too close for comfort.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you.”
He made no move to go. She hadn’t expected him to. “Where’s Johnny Guenther? Back at the inn cleaning the toilets?”
“Don’t you dare disparage him!” Outrage hit her with enough force to take her breath away. “He did more for me than you ever did!”
It was cruel, and his eyes showed it. “I thought he might be the type who would jump to do your bidding. That’s what you wanted, right, Livie?”
She clamped her jaw hard, refusing to rise to the bait. “Right.”
“So where is he now?”
She was all out of lies. And there was no sense in them anymore, anyway. She’d devised them all to keep him away. “Flagstaff, I would imagine. We’re not together anymore. You knew that, too. From Delaware.”
He nodded. “Get up on your mare, Livie. Let’s ride a bit. We need to talk.”
“I have to catch up with my group.”
“Do it later.”
She brought her chin up. “No. You need to go.”
He was off his horse in a flash. She’d forgotten how he could move like that, as though he were part of the wind. Liv back-pedaled quickly enough that she almost stumbled. When he reached out to catch her, she jumped again. “Don’t touch me!”
“Scared you might still like it?”
Yes. “I got over you the day I knew you weren’t coming back.”
“Why would I bother? You were the only thing in Arizona worth seeing, and you closed the door.”
It cracked something inside her and she made a sound she despised, something low and throaty and pained. Liv turned away from him. “I’m leaving.”
“Fine. Then I’ll see you at the Copper Rose tonight.”
It stopped her in her tracks. “Don’t come there!”
“Why? Do you think I’ll figure out that that little girl is mine?”
Liv felt her knees fold. Hearing him say it aloud had her reaching quickly for the saddle horn to regain her balance. Her mare sensed her tension and skittered cautiously out of reach. Liv fisted her hands and turned back to Hunter.
She was many things, but she had never been a coward.
“I’m afraid that she’ll figure out she is.”
It stopped him like stone just as he began to approach her again. Liv wanted to see his eyes, had to know what she’d find there. But when he reached up and pulled off his ultradark sunglasses, all she saw in that dark, dangerous blue was betrayal.
“I could kill you for this.” He nearly snarled the words.
Things inside her went cold. It happened gradually, starting in her heart, then spreading out through her limbs. If he had loved her once—and that was a big if—then he clearly hated her now.
Liv told herself she didn’t care. Not anymore. “Cut me a break, Hunter. You’re the last man in the world likely to spend time shaking a rattle over a bassinet.”
“I never knew I had a bassinet worth rattling over.” He moved in her direction again.
Liv rounded to the other side of her horse. Fast. “Don’t you dare take another step toward me.”
“I want to choke you.”
There was enough of a vibration in his tone to tell her that he meant it. “Which is precisely why I want you to stay right over there.”
“I’m not leaving, Olivia. Not until we settle this.”
“You already left. Eight and a half years ago.”
“That was your choice. This time around, I’ll decide.”
It snatched the air right from her lungs. Liv looked into the dark-blue midnight of his eyes. Midnight was when all the most dangerous animals came out in the desert, she thought, the ones that could kill. “If you drag Vicky into this just to tell the world you had a part in it, I will hunt you down and destroy you.”
“Spoken like a mama protecting her cub.”
“I am.”
His grin was slow and cruel. “Damn, Livie, could it be that you’re capable of loving someone after all?”
Then he closed the distance between them. The mare skittered away, spooked. He brought his hand up to close it around Liv’s throat.
His palm was calloused as it had always been, the splay of his fingers broad, and that was the same, too. The thumb stroking under her right ear made something inside her convulse.
“I’m not Johnny Guenther, babe. I don’t know what you did to him or where he went, but I won’t let you snap your fingers and tell me where to go.”
“I’ve got a few good suggestions.” She couldn’t breathe.
“It’s too hot where you’re thinking. And even the devil won’t have me there.”
“He might be afraid of the competition.”
“With good cause.”
Liv slapped his hand away. “I’m not nineteen anymore. You don’t impress me, and you can’t touch me and make me crumble and forget everything I need.”
“We’ll see.”
She spun away from him to find her horse. This time she managed to get hold of her saddle horn. Liv swung into the saddle.
“Eight o’clock,” he said. “Tonight. We’ll finish this then. Meet me in the Spirit Room at the Connor Hotel. I’ll buy you a drink…for old time’s sake.”
Her gaze whipped to his face. “There really wasn’t anything worth commemorating, Hunter.”
“If you’re not there by eight-thirty, I’ll come looking for you.”
Liv didn’t acknowledge the threat with an answer. She put her heels to her mare and trotted past him, then she let the horse break into a canter when they reached the trail. But no matter how fast they moved, she couldn’t get past the fact that he looked much better in person than he ever had on TV—and so much more volatile.
God help me, she thought. I’m in trouble.
Hunter watched her go. That long dark hair of hers, all woven with gold, bounced against her back with the horse’s jog, just the way it had all those years ago. She wore a tight red tank top that told him she hadn’t put on a pound in eight years, except maybe in the right places. Her legs were still trim and lean and long, clasped in denim as her thighs gripped her mount.
What a shame that she could still make his mouth water, Hunter thought, because he had every intention of unraveling her lie, thread by thread, piece by piece, even if it hurt her.
“You’re sitting on that pony like you’ve got one of Dinny’s broom handles down the back of your shirt!” he shouted at her as she rode the horse in circles around him. “Loosen up!”
“I’m loose!” But then the horse broke into a faster gait and she squealed and grabbed the saddle horn.
She’d been afraid of horses from the first moment he’d met her, Hunter thought. Her father had been a college pr
ofessor, her mother an artist. Though she’d been born and raised in Phoenix, Livie had never set foot near a horse until she landed on the Res.
He’d done his best to ease her out of her fear, if only for the sake of her survival. It had been a long distance from point to point back there in Navajo land. But Liv had always preferred to walk or stick her thumb out whenever she needed to go somewhere.
Now her new job demanded that she know how to manage a horse. She’d been hired by one of the major Flagstaff resorts to work in their stables and guide their group rides. She’d let her past speak for itself, implying that a girl from the high-country could gallop with the best of them. She needed the job, so she hadn’t bothered to mention that she preferred her heels planted solidly on the ground. She’d written him a frantic letter for help instead.
So Hunter had come back from New Mexico. He’d picked her up at dawn at her apartment and they’d slipped out to this isolated ranch north of the city. The owner was the father of a guy he’d crossed paths with in the Army.
Hunter was suddenly struck by inspiration as he continued to watch her critically. “You know what you’re doing wrong?”
“Besides sitting on top of a thousand pounds of unpredictable animal?” But her fingers loosened on the saddle horn.
Hunter grinned. She was the only person he’d ever known who could make him do that—grin himself right out of frustration. “It’s in your hips, Liv.”
She wiggled her brows at him. “You like my hips.”
“Not on a horse, I don’t.”
She sighed and reined the animal in. “Okay. Tell me what’s wrong with them. I’m all ears.”
“You don’t move them right. You’re all rigid. Move them like you do when I’m inside you.”
Her reaction delighted him. Her breath caught and her eyes went wide, then she looked around quickly to see if anyone was close enough to overhear them. They were alone.
She grinned wickedly. “Um, I forget exactly. Better remind me.”
He hadn’t been angling for such an invitation…and for the life of him he couldn’t walk away from it. Hunter started toward her horse with slow, deliberate strides. She made a move as though to dismount. Then something—maybe the snap of a twig as his heel came down on it, or the sudden tension that he could only imagine was zinging through her body—made the horse spook. It reared, and Liv went head over heels off the back of the saddle.
Hunter shouted and closed the rest of the distance at a run. When he reached her, she had a wild look in her eyes and she was breathing hard, but he knew in an instant that she was unhurt. She was spitting mad.
“That nasty beast tossed me!”
“Did it hurt?” He helped her sit up, brushed her off.
“Of course it did! It jarred the breath right out of me!”
“Will you live?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ll never touch me again if you don’t show a little sympathy here.”
“Sorry. But think about it. The worst happened. You got thrown. If you’re going to ride, it had to happen eventually. But how bad was it? Something to be so terrified of that you can’t do this job they’re offering you?”
He could tell by the way she refused to let herself smile that he’d made his point. “I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“Some days less than others. You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You spooked my horse to make a point.”
“Nope. It was an accident.”
She finally let herself grin. “I’m still not exactly sure how to move my hips.”
He had her flat on her back before she could breathe again. “Ah, Livie.” There was no one like her, no other woman who could make him crave and ache and smile during long nights alone in the barracks.
As they began fumbling with each other’s clothes, Hunter maneuvered her to her feet. “Not here.” They weren’t on the Res anymore.
“The barn,” she gasped against his mouth.
They headed that way, trying to walk decorously, but her mind was on other things and she stumbled once. Liv giggled. He caught her elbow and propelled her inside, into a stall. And they laughed and touched and feasted and it ended too soon because he had to leave again, but for that one high noon, everything was the way it had been before. He slid inside her as they rolled on bales of hay, and he whispered the truth in her ear, that she was all he ever needed.
There was never any doubt that she would go to the Spirit Room.
Liv prowled her sitting room at 7:30, her hands scraping restlessly through her hair then fussing with the belt of her robe. Her stomach was alternately a knot, then something squishy and weightless. She tried a glass of wine to calm her nerves, but it only made her nauseous.
“Okay,” she whispered aloud to walls that undoubtedly knew many more secrets than her own. “I’m fine.”
All that mattered was Vicky, Liv reminded herself. She would die to protect her, would keep any of this from affecting her, and that was that. Liv paused in her pacing to swig more wine, then her throat closed and she found it hard to swallow.
She had lied to Hunter all those years ago for one reason—to make him go before he realized she was pregnant. She’d known by then that he wasn’t ever going to stay with her, and she would not subject their child to a fly-by-night father slipping in and out of their lives. He would do the same thing now—fade in and out, a tantalizing wish—if she let him. So somehow she had to make him go away again, once and for all.
Kiki was right. She’d given Vicky a reasonably stable life. Maybe it wasn’t everything she’d ever dreamed of for her child, because in the end, she hadn’t had it in her to stay with Johnny. But it was enough. She would not let Hunter change that.
Liv moaned aloud, her stomach heaving. She had never been able to make Hunter do anything he hadn’t wanted to do. That was how she’d known that he’d never really been in love with her. Because when she’d told him to leave, he’d gone.
Liv was so grateful to be out of the stables, she almost didn’t mind the hokey uniform they’d given her for her promotion to barmaid. She ducked into the rest room to check her appearance before her shift started, reminding herself that this was actually a step up.
She’d lasted with the riding operation for five months until it had closed for the season right before Christmas. Hunter had come back three more times to hammer the tricks of the trade into her. She’d done well because she’d made it a point to do well. She’d hadn’t been thrown again. But she wasn’t about to spend the remainder of her life on horseback and mucking out stalls.
In January the resort had transferred her to their child care facility. The tips from road-weary parents anxious for some time to themselves had been great. The children, for the most part, had been impossible. Still, Liv had stuck it out for ten months until this opening had come up in the bar.
She intended to learn the hospitality business from the ground up, from the stables to the food and beverage facilities to the head office. Tonight she would entertain a few drunks and begin to learn the workings of the back of the bar. Unfortunately, she was going to have to do it looking like a cross between a beauty pageant queen and Annie Oakley.
The cowboy boots weren’t bad, she decided, except they were red. Her legs were good enough to tolerate the very short skirt. Personally, she thought the boots would look better with shorts, but it wasn’t her call to make. If she ever had her own place, she thought, the barmaids would wear boots with shorts. And the boots wouldn’t be red.
At the moment, however, she was stuck with petticoats—bustling white petticoats, layers of the damned things—under the full short denim. Liv turned this way and that in front of the mirror, but the contraption really didn’t afford her a good side. It was topped by a tiny denim vest that was laced up the front with red ribbon. In all her years on the reservation, she’d never once seen fit to put on a cowboy hat, but she wore one now.
Liv stuck her tongue out at her mirrored image to
show what she thought of the whole getup.
“Yeah, but it presents some interesting possibilities for getting you out of it again.”
Liv squealed and spun away from the mirror. “Hunter!” He stood in the rest room door. “Where did you come from? You didn’t say you were coming back! You can’t be in here!”
“Nobody stopped me.”
“You can’t go through your whole life just…just doing things because no one locked the door on you!”
His face changed. For a crazy moment while it felt like the bathroom tilted on its axis, he actually looked confused, Liv thought. She realized that she had never commented on his life before, on the way he flew higher and danced faster and did everything better simply because it was there to be done.
But she had never needed so desperately for him to calm down and stay put before, either.
She wasn’t ready for him, Liv thought, her heart jumping oddly—and that was new, too. She’d always been just purely elated to see him again, but this time nerves scurried in her stomach. She’d been planning to buy a pregnancy test kit this weekend, to be sure. Then she’d thought she would write him, either asking him to come back so they could talk, or putting it right down in her letter.
Hunter, I’m pregnant.
She hadn’t anticipated that he would just show up like this out of the blue.
The rest room tilted back again and Liv felt light-headed. She closed the distance between them unsteadily, framed his face with her hands and kissed him soundly. “Sorry. You just surprised me.”
He wrapped his arms around her, the moment forgotten. “I had some time off so I came back. The guy out at the bar said you were in here. He said it was okay for me to come after you because they hadn’t opened yet.”
Liv lifted her left arm behind his shoulder to see her watch. “I’ve got five more minutes before they throw the doors open. Come back to the kitchen with me. My locker is there. I’ll get you the key to my apartment. You can wait for me at home.”
“What time do you get off?”
He was nibbling on her mouth, making it hard for her to think. “Um, midnight. But it will be one o’clock before I clean up my station here and get there.”