by Beverly Bird
“I’ve always gotten my own way.” Except once. But Hunter couldn’t let himself think about how she had sent him away. Not now. It would buckle something inside him. And this was war.
“This brings us back to my original question,” Liv said. “What is it you’re after with this little surprise visit?”
“You weren’t surprised.” He’d thought about it a lot since their meeting that morning. She’d been jarred, yes. But surprised? No. She’d known he’d come.
He watched her open her mouth as though to deny it, then she did that thing with her shoulder. A hitch, then a dip. On any other woman, it would have been called a shrug. With Liv, it meant, I’m not giving you an inch unless you earn it.
So he started back at the beginning. “Tell me about Johnny. The guy who didn’t father your daughter. Tell me why you never mentioned a baby that last night I passed through Flagstaff. Damn it, Livie, you never said anything about being pregnant at all!”
He knew because he remembered every word.
“I never had your wings,” she said. “I just plummet to the ground again when I try to fly.”
No. She belonged in the sky with the sun, Hunter thought, burning bright while he flew. Why couldn’t she see that? “Who?” he rasped. “Who is he? Who had you?” His fists hurt, cramped tight, ready to kill.
“No one.” She brought her chin up to challenge him. “Yet.”
“You’re going to marry someone you’ve never even been with?”
“Sex isn’t everything.”
He laughed, and the reflex was flame-hot sand in his throat.
“I need a picket fence, Hunter. Will you give it to me? Stay here? Get a job?”
“I’ve had jobs, Livie! I’ve always had a job. Is that what this is about? What do you think I’ve been eating with and buying gas with to drive back here all the time?”
Her eyes said it was the wrong answer. They went to charred black. “Go to hell, Hunter Hawk-Cole.”
He was reasonably sure he was already there.
“I called Flagstaff City Hall for your marriage license,” he said now, watching her expression. “About a year later.”
Liv felt bony, white knuckles grab her heart and squeeze. “Apparently, you never bothered checking for the divorce decree, too.”
“I figured you had enough grit to make it last. But I was wrong about a lot, wasn’t I, Livie? Did he know the baby wasn’t his?”
Johnny had known. It was why he had married her. Johnny had been her knight in shining armor. He’d loved her and was decent enough to try to give her what she’d needed most—a father for her child. “That,” she said hoarsely, “has no bearing whatsoever on this conversation.”
She saw him clench his jaw. “I really have a keen interest in finding out whether or not you passed my daughter off as someone else’s.”
She’d never done that. “You have a really rock-bottom view of my integrity, don’t you?”
“Why should my opinion be higher?” He saw her flinch and was glad. But Hunter had always loved the way she could recover.
“He knew.” Her chin came up. Her eyes narrowed haughtily.
“Does she?”
“She has a name.”
“Victoria Rose. I looked that up, too.” He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but the words were out before he could stop them.
“When?”
“Two weeks ago. Just to check. She was born eight months and twenty-nine days after the last time you and I were together.”
“Bingo.”
“You’ve still got that attitude, don’t you? The world can kiss your butt and you’ll give them directions to find it. Why that name?”
He wanted to know everything, he realized, and that surprised him. He had never wanted a child. He knew what adults could do to a kid. His Anglo relatives had dragged him to their churches when he was little. He’d been caught between three cultures—Christian, Hopi and Navajo. But all three of them had one theme in common. The sins of the father…
He had never intended to visit his own shortcomings upon progeny. He was damaged, baggage-laden, and he had always craved anything that would make him forget that for a while. Speed. Alligators. Spitting in death’s face. But whether he’d looked for her or not, Victoria Rose was here.
And he wanted to know about her. Every detail.
“The name,” he said again when Liv didn’t answer. “It’s not in your family, it’s not in mine. Was it his? Guenther’s?”
Liv hesitated, then she got that glint in her eyes. “Desert Rose was a little avant-garde for the life I envisioned for her.”
“So it was supposed to be Desert Rose.”
Again she hesitated. “Yes. But Victoria was more traditional.”
“Was she ever one of those kids who hated her name?”
He watched her expression spasm. “You don’t need to know this.”
“I do.”
“Damn you, Hunter, just go away again!”
He could do that, he thought. Maybe. Maybe. Because letting himself love the daughter meant being near the mother. But he needed to put more pieces together. “Tell me, damn it.”
He watched her gasp for breath, then the words tumbled out. “She always liked the Hawk bit better than Slade. She never took Johnny’s name.”
Hunter sat back suddenly, though there was no part of the stool to support the reflex. Something punched him, something unseen. “Then she does know.”
“She hasn’t watched racing. She makes no connection to you.”
“She will.”
“Over my dead body.” Liv felt things riot inside her. “Leave her alone. What do you have to gain by any of this?”
“I need to see her.”
“Why, Hunter, why?” Liv played her last ace card. “Is what you think you want more important than what she needs?”
“Yes. Because I’m the adult here. Her father. And I have a right to decide what’s best for her.”
“You’ve been gone her entire life!”
“Not my choice.”
There was that, Liv thought. Oh, bless her, he’d never let go of that. “Please. Trust me.”
“Never again.”
It killed something in her soul. “Not as a lover. As a mother.”
“I don’t know what kind of mother you are.”
She felt heat stain her cheeks. “A good one.”
“Prove it. Give us both time to come to terms with this.”
“You and me?”
“The hell with you, Livie. You don’t matter anymore. Me and Victoria Rose.”
He said it tonelessly. Something hot and wet hurt her eyes. She refused to cry.
“If she knows Guenther wasn’t her real father,” he said, “what does it hurt to introduce me into her life?”
You’ll go again. He was still the same man who hadn’t wanted her enough all those years ago to just stay put and make a life with the two of them.
She’d given him the option. He could have grabbed her back from marrying Johnny. He hadn’t done it. The wind he’d chased had been more important to him than catching her as she fell to earth.
“What are you afraid of, Livie?” His voice was suddenly silken with challenge. “That your little girl will tell you that you made the wrong choice in men?”
Her heels found the pine floor. Liv felt a little jarred, surprised by the impact when she slid off the stool with such force. She was even more surprised to find her snifter in her hand. There was little more than a mouthful of Remy left. She tossed it at him.
He came off his stool like lightning. It was one small thing she’d managed to forget about him, how fast he could move when he was angry. Not angry, she thought, feeling something shrink inside her. Furious. This time when his hand caught her chin, his touch hurt. His fingers did not clench. His grip did not tighten. But there was something there that threatened her, a certain heat that terrified her.
Liv wrenched away.
“There’s an easy way t
o do this,” he said, “and a hard way. It’s your choice, Livie.”
“Go to hell.”
She took a step away from the bar, then turned toward him, her whole body flowing into the movement. From her expression, he knew that if she had access to another drink, he’d be wearing that, too. When she finally turned away again, Hunter decided to let her go.
And simmer on it some.
That hadn’t solved anything.
Liv’s hands were like claws on the steering wheel as she rocketed her little BMW back up Main Street toward the inn at the edge of town. Even her heart was shaking. He wasn’t going to go.
She knew him far too well to delude herself into wishful thinking. He just wasn’t going to leave their lives again, at least not without kicking up a good bit of dust first.
Meeting with him had been an utter waste of time. All it had done was stoke more old memories. It had rekindled all the old pain. “Damn him, damn him, damn him!” She banged the heel of her hand against the steering wheel, jumping when the horn sounded. She almost swerved off the road.
She couldn’t drive right now, not like this.
Liv pulled over. She let the fury blaze through her, so immense, so alive it literally made red dots dance in front of her vision. How dare he?
She’d given him every opportunity eight and a half years ago to love her enough to stay put. To fight for her. To give her the simple sweetness of knowing that he’d do whatever it took to keep her from marrying another man. Instead, he’d walked out. Out of that bar and the Flagstaff resort, out of her life. He’d gone.
Now he dared to act as if he had some sort of rights in this situation. As a father. He dared to threaten her. To imply that she had done something wrong.
He wanted a fight? He’d have one, Liv decided.
It took Hunter five full minutes to remember that Liv Slade had never been able to drive worth a damn.
He went upstairs to his room and washed the Remy from his face. He shoved his damp shirt into the bag for the laundry. His blood was pumping.
Over the years he had learned to curb his temper. Bumper-to-bumper, quarter-panel-to-quarter-panel traffic at 180 MPH was no time to give vent to anger over some infraction committed by another driver. A retaliatory tap of metal against metal at that speed could send another man to his death. He’d learned to contain anger, to control it, to wait to finish things off after the race if need be. By then his fury had usually waned.
But now it was liquid fire in his blood, scouring the inside of his veins with something painful and blistering, and it showed no signs of abating. He couldn’t get rid of it.
She’d dumped him eight and a half years ago like a minor inconvenience. She’d gone chasing after her picket fences with his child. He’d taught her to laugh, to love, to ride, to drive—
To drive.
She’d once plowed his pickup right into the side of a barn. And she hadn’t been angry at the time. She’d actually been concentrating.
Hunter rubbed the back of his neck at the remembered whip-lash pain and went to the phone on the nightstand. He picked it up, held it for a long moment, then he slammed it down again. Who the hell was he supposed to call to let them know there was probably a maniac on the road? He didn’t quite hate her enough to bring the cops down on her head.
Well, he did, but that would be a particularly low blow. Not his style.
Damn her. She hadn’t needed him eight and a half years ago, and she hadn’t needed him once in all the time that had passed since then. If she was angry now and erratic, that was her problem.
Except she was somebody’s mother. His kid’s mother.
Hunter swore and grabbed a T-shirt out of one of the drawers. He snatched the keys to his rented SUV off the top of the room’s television. He jogged down the stairs and outside.
As he peeled out of the parking lot, he double-shifted for more immediate speed. The engine of the SUV gave a squeal of pure shock at what was being asked of it. Hunter didn’t know what he was looking for as he sped down Main Street. He didn’t know what kind of car she was driving these days. His eyes scanned the roadsides for a heap of smoldering metal. Mountainsides were harder than barn walls.
Then he spotted the BMW pulled to the side up ahead, just idling there. She was fine. She’d had the sense to pull over.
He stopped behind her. His headlights threw the interior of her car into a glare brighter than full noon on the high desert. He saw her fumbling with her armrest as he jumped down out of the SUV, probably trying to find the lock button. He ran to drag the door open before she could manage it.
She screamed.
“It’s me.” Hunter caught her elbow and dragged her bodily out of the little car. She fought him like a madwoman. Maybe his words hadn’t penetrated. Then again, maybe they had, and she really hated him this much.
He caught her wrists as she pummeled his chest with them. “Stop it!” He shouted this time. “Stop it!”
“I hate you!” she screamed.
Right on the second try, he thought. She’d known it was him. “No problem. You’re real low on my list of favorite people, as well.”
She reared back. “What are you doing here?”
Losing my mind. “You can’t drive when you’re upset. Hell, you can’t drive on a good day.” He sounded like an idiot, even to himself.
“This from Mr. Anaheim,” she spat.
He scowled at her. “Mr. Who?”
“Anaheim! That’s where you went when you left me!”
It took him a moment, but he made sense of it. Pritch’s trial track.
“Let me go.” She tugged against his grip.
“Calm down first. And you left me.”
“The hell I did! But I will now if you’ll get your hands off me!”
Hunter let her hands go but grabbed her shoulders. He wanted to shake her. “You were pregnant when you told me to leave that bar!”
“And you left!” she shouted back.
Then she started shaking.
He felt it under his fingertips, tremors that grew and shuddered. Hunter pulled his hands back fast. For more than eight long, cold years, he’d imagined ways to punish her for leaving him as if he was yesterday’s garbage. Now he couldn’t let her emotion rock him.
“I’m going to be a part of that little girl’s life,” he said more quietly.
For more than eight desperate, aching years, she’d imagined ways to make him hurt as badly as he’d hurt her, Liv thought. Her breath chugged a little, then she finally got her voice back. “No. You’re not. Because I won’t allow it.”
He leaned closer, pinning her back against her car. He stopped only when his face was inches from hers. “You have no options here, Livie. I’m bigger than you are. You can’t stop me if I decide I’m headed somewhere.”
“Try me.” Liv’s fist found his gut. She was rewarded by a grunt of breath.
She started to twist away, but then something in his eyes stopped her. His gaze turned heated and speculative at the same time she realized what she had just said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Why, Livie. Was that an invitation?” He pulled her back and his mouth found hers.
She managed, just managed, to work her hands up between them and get them against his chest. Oh, no. Don’t let me remember this part! It was too cruel, much more than she could stand. But one of his hands found her shoulder and he eased her back against the car again. And his mouth pummeled hers.
Why was he doing this? Had he lost his mind? No, she thought desperately. He’d always been capable of doing anything at any given moment.
And she’d always melted into his kiss as though nothing else in the world had mattered. She’d always been so at home tangling her tongue with his. It all came back to her, flooding, hot, debilitating. The way she used to tease him, pulling back to nip his lower lip. She did it again. The way she’d once loved to stroke her fingers through his hair. Her hands moved up, up, searching to tangle in it.
Th
e way he could swallow her breath.
The way she needed him.
The way he made her whole.
The scent of Liv was different, he realized. The impact of that rolled through him. She smelled spicier, sharper than before. More woman than girl. But the taste of her was the same, dark and sweet and tantalizing. The flick of her tongue was the same, part challenge and part desperation. The heat had only grown, and it damn near drove him to his knees.
Liv felt things coming undone inside her. Unraveling, spinning faster and faster, parts of her hurling off into space with each hot, wet slide of his lips. And she knew she was never going to get those pieces back this time if she didn’t stop this right now.
She brought her knee up.
He felt it, sensed it, just in time, and turned half away from her, breaking the kiss, avoiding the blow. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “Damn you, Livie. You never used to play dirty.”
“Don’t call me that! And don’t you ever, ever, ever do that to me again!”
He wasn’t sure why he had. To make her remember what they had once shared? The memories had been gnawing at him all night.
“Scares you, doesn’t it, that we still strike sparks?” It had taken her three full minutes to think of hurting him, he realized. Something moved in his gut, a triumph of sorts, then it died.
She turned back to her car and slid into the seat, behind the wheel again.
“So where does this leave us?” he wondered aloud.
Liv pulled the door shut hard, almost taking off parts of his anatomy that shouldn’t have been awake in the first place. Hunter stepped back fast. Then she lowered her window.
“It leaves you in whatever city you were planning to call home next weekend,” she spat.
“Guess we’ll be running into each other again then.”
“Hunter, no! This is insane.”
“It’s overdue. We would have gone through this a long time ago if I’d only known the truth then. So let’s just set things to rights this time and be done with it.”
“You should have just asked me to marry you in the first place!”
“How could I? I didn’t know about her!” That, he thought, seemed to be something she refused to get through her head.
Then he watched her expression cave. He saw the tears gather in her eyes, shining and wet.