by Beverly Bird
“Or pit passes.”
A race fan, he thought. Just his luck. How long would it take her to remember that the Hawk was temporarily off the circuit? “Hey, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run.”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll see you here again some morning.”
Maybe, he thought. Joint custody.
Now that he had a few choices regarding what little girls did with their extracurricular time, his next order of business was to find out what Victoria Rose’s preferences were. He turned away from Adele and in a split-second time frame that froze him, he saw his daughter get off one of the buses.
Her black hair was all done up in a braid with red calico ribbons tied through it. She wore jeans, red sneakers and a red denim jacket. She lugged some sort of duffel bag that had the words MUSTANG RIDGE RIDING ACADEMY printed on it in peeling white letters—the satchel obviously got a lot of use. She also carried a guitar case.
A guitar and horses. Not so far removed from pianos and ponies at all. Adele Trawley was a genius.
Hunter turned back to her. “Can I ask you one more question?”
She smoothed her hair in an entirely female gesture. “Sure.”
“Do the kids get music lessons in school?”
She nodded. “It’s part of the curriculum. Boy, you are new at this.”
“Yeah,” Hunter said. “I am.”
He left her again and went back to the SUV. So the guitar was for school hours and the riding stuff was probably for after, he decided. He got behind the wheel just as the little girl with the red ribbon in her hair headed up the steps into the school.
He stared at her. She had Liv’s stride. A little arrogant, but there was that hint there that said maybe she was forcing it. Maybe there was a bit of marshmallow inside that she didn’t want anyone to find.
Then someone must have said something behind her because the little girl turned around suddenly just as she reached the doors. She flashed a grin and Hunter saw…himself.
“Ah. Ah, God.”
In an instant he could no longer breathe. His heart stretched, yawned, pulled to new capacity, and it hurt. She had his black hair, he thought. His blue eyes. All of that he could bear. But in that second, with that grin, he’d seen something else in her eyes, something he recognized intimately and it undid him. Come on, dare me. See if I’ll do it.
In an instant Victoria Rose dropped the guitar case and the bag. She leaped for one of the stone pillars holding up the porte-cochere entrance of the school. She wrapped herself around it like a monkey and shimmied up, then—one hand groping and grasping—she pressed her palm to the roof. She was laughing when a teacher came to scold her and pull her down again. She tucked her head, pretending to be abashed, but before she did, Hunter saw the devil’s own grin in her eyes.
She was his. His blood. His flesh. That beautiful little dare-devil was his child.
Hunter sat there long after she had finally gone inside, his hands gripping the steering wheel. His eyes hurt. A lot. He finally loosened a hand to rub one of them. And he realized that he was crying.
Liv was late getting to Mustang Ridge.
Over the years it had become a point of pride for her that she never missed an afternoon tea at the inn. She hadn’t done it after a nasty fall out of the barn loft when they’d been renovating out there, or through a relatively minor bout with pneumonia. Kiki was the accounting brain and the scrumptious food behind their operation. Liv had vowed from the beginning that her contribution would be more than just the money needed to get the place off the ground—and it was.
She was a hostess, and she was a good one. She’d learned the art first on horseback then in the bar, and finally in hotel operations in Flagstaff. Her gift was her charm…even when it hurt.
She was not going to let a little thing like Hunter Hawk-Cole’s arrival in Jerome knock her off her stride.
She’d just keep things short and sweet with the guests, she decided. She didn’t want to leave Vicky alone at her riding lesson while he was in town. Liv glanced at her watch. It was five minutes before three. She leaned closer to her vanity mirror to slash lipstick over her mouth and fluff the long layers of her hair. Then she stepped back to inspect herself. Her blue chambray shirt had been pressed to within a wrinkle of its life. She rolled the sleeves up a little. She wore jeans and a braided belt and boots, and tiny, dangling copper roses in her ears. She dressed for tea…but she didn’t. She was, after all, just welcoming guests into her home.
Liv left her rooms and trotted downstairs.
The week’s group was an eclectic bunch. She joined them in the parlor that she and Kiki had had gutted and enlarged to accommodate a sideboard and two separate seating areas. The nuns from St. Joe’s in Brooklyn—two of them—were holding court on the navy-blue divan with two teenagers from Myanopie, Louisiana. The girls had been a temperamental handful since their arrival late yesterday. Jade was sixteen, Ruby was seventeen, and they clearly did not consider a family vacation to be their lifelong dream. But now Ruby’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparked. She was in a heated debate with Sister Ann over the value of confession.
The girls’ parents enjoyed the brocade sofa on the opposite side of the room with a widowed writer from Oregon and a pair of newlyweds from Kansas. Liv joined that group. She never argued politics or religion.
“These brownies,” Mrs. Endelmen, mother of the teenagers, gushed. “There must be some secret to keeping them so moist. You’ll share it with me before I go.”
“No, I won’t.” Liv grinned, helped herself to one and poured the tea. “I really don’t know it. At least not entirely.”
“You don’t do the cooking?” asked the writer.
Liv flailed mentally for his name. She didn’t usually forget, but it had been an extraordinary few days. Ed something-or-other, she thought. Ah… “No, Mr. Stern. That would be my partner. She actually has her doctorate in science. She earned it while she was working here.”
“She must be a bright woman. And she cooks for a living?” asked Mr. Endelmen, clearly startled.
“She says her success is based on the molecular breakdown of each ingredient and the ghosts of campfires past.”
“Ghosts?” Jade piped up. She left the divan to join their conversation. “You have ghosts here?”
“Sure. Jerome is a bona fide ghost town.” And Liv was off and running.
She told them about the jail that had relocated itself by sliding downhill in a mudslide and the clanging chains that could still be heard there at night. About the woman in red who could be seen higher up on the cliff face under just the right conditions—a full moon in warm weather. And about the young girl of ill repute who had once lived in the inn when it was still a brothel, who occasionally made her presence known in the attic where she had reportedly died at the hands of a jealous lover who hadn’t a clue what she did for a living until he found her there with another man.
“Can I see it?” Jade asked avidly. “The attic room?”
Liv shook her head. “Sorry. No can do. That’s my partner’s quarters.”
“Doesn’t she mind sharing it with a ghost?”
“Kiki doesn’t spend the night here often. But she’s a force to be reckoned with. When she’s in residence, Sweet Sarah tends to mind her manners. It’s only when the room is empty that we can hear her crying. The sound echoes down the stairs.”
Ruby came to join the conversation. The nuns looked a little disapproving of the subject, Liv thought. She glanced at her watch—3:15. She needed to get out of here and head down the hill to the riding academy. The bus would land Vicky there at 3:30.
“You mean the stairs there off the third-floor hall?” Ruby asked.
“Right. The door at the very end goes to the attic,” Liv said. “You can sit there and listen for a while tonight if you like.”
“Your partner won’t be here?”
“Probably not.”
“What do we do if we hear her?” Jade asked.
&nb
sp; “Run like hell,” Ruby advised.
Ed Stern cracked up. Mrs. Endelmen looked resigned. The newlyweds seemed relieved that they did not have a room on the third floor. Liv polished off her tea and hitched her position in the general direction of the door.
“I do a horseback tour of the area every morning, if any of you are interested. We can check out the sliding jail, and I can show you where the lady in red turns up on a good night. There are lots of other interesting things, too.”
“Like that stock-car-driving hunk?” Ruby asked. “Talk about sweet. I heard he’s vacationing here.”
Liv’s heart vaulted for a beat, then it froze. Now Hunter was invading her home—her livelihood, her sanctuary—if only by topic of conversation. But before she could react—or school herself not to—the girl’s mother spoke up.
“That’s not him,” she said.
“How do you know?” Ruby demanded.
“I-it’s not?” Liv asked.
“I heard a couple of women talking about him in the drugstore when I stopped in this morning to pick up some things,” Mrs. Endelmen said. “One of them actually met him. She says he only looks like the Hawk, but it’s not really him. He said so himself.”
What the hell game was he playing? Liv felt her heart begin moving again with an ache that was both old and new. Then it bounced with something like panic.
He was up to something.
Liv glanced at her watch. She had to go. It was nearly 3:30.
She took another step toward the door. “Enjoy yourselves, everyone. I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow. If any of you would like to join the tour ride, you can let me know then. I think we still have three or four mounts available.”
“Sidesaddle?” asked one of the nuns.
Liv looked at her quickly. “Um, I don’t think we have one of those.”
The nun looked down at her habit and sighed. “I’d like to try it, but it would be difficult with this skirt.”
Liv understood. “Let me see what I can do.”
It was going to cost her another few minutes, but she jogged to the barn to talk to Bourne before she left. He was wrapping the bowed tendon of a filly that had been really promising. She might still do for children under Bourne’s healing ministrations. “Where can we lay our hands on a couple of sidesaddles?” she asked him.
He answered without looking up from the stretch-wrap he was applying. “How ’bout the place you’re heading out to right now?”
He was still annoyed with her for bucking the insurance guidelines and sending him on alone with the tour group yesterday. Liv closed her eyes briefly as a feeling like helplessness rolled over her. What else could Hunter possibly interfere with? Now he had her help ticked off at her, too!
“Mustang Ridge,” she said, her voice sounding a little strident, even to herself. “I should ask at Mustang Ridge. That makes sense.”
“’Bout the only place I can think of might have one or two,” he said.
Liv turned away and headed to the garage. Nuns sidesaddle on a trail ride. What next?
She was halfway down the cliff road that zigged and zagged back and forth on its way down the slope when she came to the overturned semi. Trucks weren’t even supposed to be on this road, but once or twice a year one of them thought they could get away with it and gave it a try. The result was usually predictable.
“Damn it.” Liv put her car in park and took her foot off the brake. Her nerves were coiled.
She thought of turning around, of going back up the slope and heading down the other road at the opposite end of town. It would take her forty minutes to get to Mustang Ridge that way. She glanced at her watch again. Now it was a quarter to four. If they cleared this mess within forty minutes, it would still be faster for her to just stay put and wait it out.
A police cruiser came whining down from town. She inched the BMW closer to the shoulder to allow it to pass.
It was 4:15 when traffic started moving again. She’d get there just as Vicky’s lesson was over, Liv figured, grinding her teeth. She cursed the semi driver, then felt instantly contrite because this one might well have been really hurt. Her foot punched the accelerator.
Vicky was dismounting in the ring when Liv pulled up in the parking lot. Liv scanned the area and saw nothing amiss. No Hunter. Her heart settled down for the first time in an hour. Her panic had been ridiculous. He couldn’t possibly know that Vicky took riding lessons or when.
She let herself into the arena and crossed to Vicky. “Sorry I’m late. How did it go today?”
“I got tossed.”
Memory rained through Liv, of Hunter and a barn in Flag and what they had done there after he’d scraped her up off the ground. She had to stop remembering. She snatched herself back from the brink. “Are you hurt?”
“Nah. Landed on my butt.”
“It’s been a long time between falls,” said Lila Severn, the instructor, stepping over to join them. “She was due.” She tugged affectionately on Vicky’s braid.
“Lila,” Liv said. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Likewise. Vicky, you know the routine. Cool that pretty lady down.” She motioned at the horse.
Liv frowned as she watched Vicky lead the mare off. She looked back at Lila. “You need to talk to me? Is there a problem?”
“I’m not sure. You tell me.” She inclined her head to the left.
Liv looked that way. And saw Hunter.
He was standing with one shoulder against the far side of the barn, his arms crossed over his chest. The open barn door had blocked her view of him when she’d pulled up. The earth suddenly vanished from beneath her feet and her energy, her bones, her very being spiraled down into the vortex that was left. Liv opened her mouth to respond, but no words would come.
“Do you know him?” Lila asked.
“Yes.” Liv finally hissed the word.
“Well, he’s been here for most of the hour, watching your daughter.”
“Did he approach her?”
“No.”
Liv crossed to the edge of the ring without another word. She climbed the fence and landed hard on the other side, then strode toward him. By the time she reached him, her blood was humming. She shoved him hard in the chest. “You’re way out of line.”
His expression had been dispassionate as he watched her approach. Now something happened to his eyes. Temper leaped there then got cold. “Calm down. I didn’t say a word to her.”
“I don’t care!” Liv realized she was shouting.
“So what you’re saying is that you would prefer it if I didn’t even observe her?”
“I would prefer it if one of your escapades would wipe you off the face of this earth!”
“Won’t happen, Livie. I have the devil’s own luck and, anyway, I would only come back to haunt you.”
She found her fist wrapped in his shirt front at just the same time she heard Vicky call out from inside the barn. “Mom?”
“One word,” Liv spat at him. “One single word to her and I’ll kill you myself.”
“You did that a long time ago, Liv.”
Her heart clenched. Damn him for making her feel regret! “This isn’t about you. Or about us.”
“Isn’t it?”
She dropped her hand and stepped back quickly. “No. You were never big on insight.”
“I could always see straight through you. Except that last time. I still can’t understand why you did what you did.”
She was shaking. Damn it, he was making her shake again.
“Mom!”
Vicky’s voice went through her, sharp and demanding. “I’ve got to go see what she wants,” Liv said.
“I’ll wait.”
“You need to leave.”
“Not when the show’s just getting interesting. Go on, Livie. Let me see what kind of a mom you really are.”
Vicky catapulted out of the barn and found them. She caught Liv’s hand and tugged. “Mom, I put the horse on the hot
-walker to cool down. Lila said that was okay. I can go now.” Then she grinned up at Hunter. “Hi, Mr. Car-Driver. What are you doing here?”
“It’s not the same guy,” Liv said quickly. Her heart was pistoning. “He just looks like the man we met in Delaware. He told someone so today.”
Vicky frowned. “Really?”
Liv begged him with her eyes. For one of the few times in her life, she begged. Once had been with the social worker after her family had died, a woman intent on sending her to some alien land, an Indian reservation. Once she had done it with her God and all her grandmother’s deities that this man would fight for her, would not walk away when she was carrying his child.
None of that had worked at all.
“Please.” She mouthed the words at him silently. “Don’t.”
He ignored her and looked at Vicky. “I’m the same guy. I just told some people today that I wasn’t because I didn’t want them to recognize me.”
“Damn you,” Liv spat. “Damn you.”
“How come you don’t want to be recognized?” Vicky asked.
“Sometimes life is easier when I’m not.”
“We’re going,” Liv said. She pulled on Vicky’s hand hard enough that the girl almost stumbled. An apology would have jumped to her lips, but she was too busy swallowing back helpless tears.
Vicky let Liv lead her away but she looked back over her shoulder. “Catch you later, Mr. Car-Driver. What’s your real name, anyway?”
Daddy. Liv’s heart stopped, waiting for him to say that, too.
“Hunter,” he said. “Keep my secret for me, okay?”
Vicky giggled and pressed the fingers of her free hand to her lips. “Sure. Hush-hush-hush.”
“There’s a girl.”
Liv looked back at him, and her eyes shot daggers. Then she hurried off, dragging Vicky with her.
Dear God, he could have just grabbed her and taken off with her. She’d been an hour late, Liv thought. He could have taken Vicky, could have kidnapped her. He could have—
“Stop it!” she grated aloud at her own spiraling and desperate thoughts.
“What?” Vicky asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Get in the car.”