by Beverly Bird
She left Kiki and Vicky frowning after her and went to the swinging door that led into the hall. She pushed it open a crack and peered toward the front door. There was no sign of him. That didn’t mean anything. He could well be sitting in her parlor, smoking one of those skinny cigars he’d gone crazy over for a short spell during his stint in Louisiana.
She’d lied in the courthouse coffee shop last week. She remembered everything about him.
Liv left the kitchen and moved quietly up the hall. She realized that she was holding her breath. She peered into the parlor. His suitcase was still there, but he was gone.
Liv glanced at the staircase. Even Hunter wouldn’t knock on doors, disturbing her paying guests, until he found an empty room. Would he? She decided she would have heard a complaint by now. Still, she headed for the stairs just to make sure.
By the time she got back to the kitchen, Vicky was helping Kiki stack plates in the dishwasher. “Didn’t you promise Bourne you’d check Nutmeg’s tendon before bed?” Liv asked her. The injured filly was one of Vicky’s favorites.
“I will. Bed’s a long way off, Mom. It’s not even eight o’clock yet.”
“By the time you check the filly and take a bath, it will be nine.”
“I’m speedy!” Vicky protested.
“You haven’t sped since Bourne took after you with that riding crop for spilling a whole fifty-pound-bag of sweet feed,” Kiki reminded her.
“Ouch,” Vicky said. “That was an accident. I was trying to help.”
“He might forgive you someday if you take good care of his filly,” Liv said.
“Right.” Vicky grabbed her jacket off a peg in the mudroom and hit the back door.
Liv breathed again and started loading pots and pans into the other dishwasher, the high-powered restaurant model. “He’s gone,” she said.
“Of course he’s gone,” Kiki agreed. “If he hadn’t left, he’d have been sitting at the table with us. Give the man points for delicacy.”
Liv choked. “He barged in here three days early!”
“Well, he always did prefer the upper hand.”
Liv leaned back weakly against the counter. “I guess you’re going to have to clear out your room after all. I don’t know where else we can possibly put him.”
Kiki turned the knob and started the dishwasher. “It won’t take me half an hour to get my stuff together. And to have a word with Sweet Sarah.”
“You’re going to tell our resident ghost to mind her manners?”
“I’m going to tell her not to.”
For a brief, priceless moment, they grinned at each other. Then Liv’s smile wobbled. “I hate him.”
“There’s a very, very thin line between love and hate.” Kiki grabbed a dish towel and dried her hands. “That’s because it’s difficult to work up such an intense feeling as hatred without an equally strong emotional foundation.”
“I haven’t loved him in a long time.”
Kiki studied her face. “I’m not sure if you’re lying to me or yourself.”
Liv felt the room spin a little. “I can’t.”
“Lie or love him?”
She shook her head back and forth, helplessly. Something like desperation was beginning to chug through her veins. “I don’t know if I can do this, Kiki. I don’t know if I can live with him here. I don’t think I can survive it. Ninety days!”
“You can do it because you love your daughter. And because you owe it to yourself.”
Liv narrowed her eyes. “Stop talking like a philosopher. The love-hate thing was skirting the line as it was.”
Kiki combed fingers through her long hair and knotted it at her nape to keep it out of the way. Then she pushed her sleeves up for the job of loading her personal possessions from the attic room. “You never had closure on this, Liv.”
“Of course, I did! He walked out. That was a pretty loud door banging shut!”
“He left on a lie of your own implication.”
Liv felt her skin going cold. She didn’t answer.
“And that’s why you went to Delaware. I’ve thought about that a lot lately.”
“Stop this,” Liv hissed. “Stop this right now.”
“No. Because I can’t sleep over and share brandy with you for the next three months, so I’m going to say what I’ve got to say right now.”
“You can sleep on the sofa in my sitting room. You can’t leave me here alone with him!”
“Thanks, no. I prefer a bed.”
“Traitor.”
Kiki tapped her forehead. “I’m the proud possessor of a 160 IQ. There’s a difference.”
“I did not go to Delaware because I needed closure!”
Kiki headed for the door, but she stopped and looked back. “You two were so young before. You were just kids playing at being in love.”
“He was twenty-two.”
“And you were nineteen. With all the worldly wisdom of a teenager, you thought you knew what you wanted. What your baby needed.”
“I’m not liking this, Kiki,” she warned. Please, she added silently, stop now before you hurt me. She had enough on her plate at the moment.
But Kiki didn’t relent. “Now you’re going to be forced to interact as adults with one precious little girl at the center. Do you see the irony? This court-ordered arrangement is unwelcome territory, just like the Res was for both of you all those years ago. You’ve been forced into this the way you were forced back then. And like before, you’re either going to have to link hands and get through it together, or you’ll kill each other.”
“My money’s on the latter.”
“I’m going to go clean out my room.” Kiki started to push through the door, then she turned back once more. “You know, this time if you part ways, it will be forever.”
Liv opened her mouth to argue. There was no if involved. Then Vicky careened through the back door again.
“The race car driver is back! He wants to know where he should put his truck.”
“In the Styx,” Liv grated.
“Where’s that?” Vicky frowned.
“Never mind. I’ll take care of it. Go upstairs and hit the bathtub.”
“Mo-o-o-m.”
“Now.”
She rarely used that tone of voice with her. Vicky took a quick step backward, maybe in hurt, maybe in surprise. “Sorry. I’m going.”
“Thanks, muffin.” Liv deliberately toned her voice down.
“I’m not edible,” Vicky complained, but she headed for the hall door.
Liv clenched her hands and unclenched them. She breathed in. Breathed out. She pushed her shoulders straight and headed for the back door.
He was standing in front of the garage next to the shiny, red SUV that had pulled up behind her on the main road the night she’d met him at the Connor. The way the moonlight slanted across his face made him look dangerous. Or maybe that was just her perception. Maybe she felt threatened because so very many of her memories with him had taken place beneath the glittering stars just like these. Liv crossed to him. “Guests park on the asphalt apron to the side of the inn. Over there.” She pointed.
“How many of them stay for three months?” he countered.
“You’ll never make it that long.”
“Want to bet?”
Her pulse skipped. “Just move that thing.” She thrust a thumb at the truck.
“You’re not using your head.”
“You have no idea what’s going on inside my head!”
“Sure I do. You’re conniving ways to make this as miserable for me as possible.”
The thought of Sweet Sarah popped into her head again. Oh, Liv thought, what she wouldn’t give to have the ghost act up this very night and send Hunter Hawk-Cole hightailing it out into the night and out of her life again!
“Look,” he said with enough patience to scare her a little. “This is a rental vehicle. I’m going to turn it back in to the company on Monday since I’m going to be here for an extend
ed period of time. Chillie is going to have my Monte Carlo brought up from home over the weekend, and it’s customized. I don’t want it sitting out in the rain.”
“I guess you should have thought of that before you asked him to send it. Where’s home?” Oh, God, had she asked that? Liv hugged herself against a chill.
“Pacific Palisades. California.”
She snorted. “I guess you fit right in there. The half-breed bad boy and the rich folks.”
He didn’t react. “I’m rarely home. And I haven’t stolen anyone’s hubcaps yet.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
Her eyes flew open again. “No. I’m not! Because you wouldn’t settle down for me, and now you’re holed up in some kind of millionaire paradise!”
“I don’t live on the beach. Does that help?”
She clapped a hand to her mouth before she could laugh giddily. “Who’s Chillie?”
“My business manager.”
Something else she could sink her teeth into, Liv thought. “You’d have one of those. Can’t get too tied down with details, can we? That would clip your wings.”
“I’m not good at details. I never was. I need someone to handle the endorsements and channel the money so I don’t botch it up.”
Liv dropped her hand. “Why won’t you fight with me?”
His face changed. For a moment he just looked broken again, the way he had when she’d sent him from the Flagstaff bar. She turned half away from him so she wouldn’t have to see it.
“Don’t worry, Livie. We’ll get around to it sooner or later.”
She took a steadying breath. “We need to work out some details. Set some ground rules.”
“Beginning with where my car goes.”
“As I said, the guests—”
“The last time I warned you there was an easy way and a hard way to do things you wouldn’t listen. Don’t make the same mistake twice.”
She jerked back to him. “Don’t you dare threaten me!”
“Then act civil.”
It stung. And she hated him for that, for getting one in on her. Then Liv opened her mouth and honesty tumbled out. “If I start giving an inch now, you’ll walk all over me by the time this is finished. I know you.”
He looked genuinely startled. “I never walked all over you.”
“You owned me! Every breath I took was yours, even when you were away!” And that had been most of the time, she reminded herself.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and looked up at the moon. “We’re not going to be able to separate our past from this, are we?”
Liv made a choking sound. “Our past brought us to this.” And, she thought miserably, there was no way to untangle it.
“I want it to be just about our daughter.”
Our daughter. She wanted to shout at him again that he hadn’t been here, not through the pox or the disastrous dance recital, not through any of it. But she knew how he would answer. She knew he would only remind her that he’d never had a choice.
He was right about one thing. It was time to let that part go.
Liv gathered her dignity. She pulled her spine straight again. “There are four stalls in the garage, and Kiki and I only use two. You can have the third. But leave the last one for Vicky’s mechanical bull.”
“Her what?”
“She went through a stage of wanting to be a rodeo queen. I wouldn’t let her practice on a real bronc so I picked it up at a bar down in Sedona that was going out of business.”
“A mechanical bull,” he repeated.
“She hasn’t touched it in six months, so I suspect I’ll be able to move it out soon. In the meantime, don’t crowd that space. I don’t want her using it again, flying off the damned thing and going noggin-first into a Monte Carlo.”
Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “I’d die before I hurt her, Liv.”
“Good. Here’s your chance to prove it.”
Their eyes met. This time there were no memories there, just challenge.
He looked away first and peered into the open garage stall. “Do you have mats down in there for her? Around this bull?”
“Of course I do. I picked them up used from a gym in Winslow.”
“A mechanical bull.” He shook his head again.
“She’s like you in leaving no possibility unexplored.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Liv would have given her life to pull them back. Because what she saw in his eyes almost undid her. A softness. A yearning. She couldn’t let him touch her heart again. And loving Vicky was the quickest way to her heart.
“More ground rules,” she said, quickly, hoarsely.
“Hit me with them.” It took a moment, but his face cleared.
“The Copper Rose is a large establishment and we should be able to successfully avoid each other without too much trouble, but we’ll need to set some kind of meal schedule. We’re not going to sit down all cozy together, like one big happy family.”
“God forbid.”
“The inn serves breakfast and an afternoon tea to guests. You can have your morning meal with everyone else in the dining room, and I’ll just eat in the kitchen.”
“What about…Vicky?” He’d caught her use of the diminutive form of the child’s name, but he liked Victoria Rose better. Though she was no hothouse flower. He wanted to grin again at that thought. Hunter scrubbed a hand over his mouth instead.
“She can eat with whichever one of us she wants to. I won’t interfere with the court order.”
He thought about it. “Playing your cards, Liv? Strategy? You won’t take the chance of flying in the face of the judge’s intentions with this arrangement.” But he’d never expected anything less from her, not from the girl he’d known.
“Exactly.” Liv brought her chin up.
He shrugged his acceptance of the rule. “Okay. That’s all fine with me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When did you start getting gallant?”
“Somewhere between the Busch and the Winston Cup series when they started pushing me onto television and into the company of starlets.”
It hurt. How could it hurt after all this time? “You probably broke hearts all over Hollywood.”
“Monique Shaughnessy’s comes to mind.”
“You dated Monique Shaughnessy?” She was flabbergasted enough to forget all her ground rules for the moment.
“She’s actually pretty vapid,” he offered. “I ended it before she was ready to.”
She didn’t want to hear this.
“She’s also self-absorbed,” he said.
“Ha. You two should have been like peas in a pod, then.” Her voice went thin.
“Now, now, Livie, we were just getting along.”
“No, we weren’t. We were setting ground rules.”
“You were setting ground rules. I was listening.”
“Then shut up and let me get back to them!”
He shrugged. “You were the one who asked about starlets.”
“You startled me into asking!”
“And you don’t care a whit?”
“Of course not.”
“Liar.”
She wanted to hit him. She actually fisted her hand before she brought herself back. Once, she thought, she would have launched herself at him, tickling, touching, wriggling all over him until she’d made him pay. Her blood sped up at the memory. She felt the heat of it right beneath her skin.
“I hate you,” she breathed.
“Same here, but we’re going to have to live with it for a while. The ground rules?”
Liv dragged her mind back. “After breakfast you’re on your own, mealwise. I won’t ask Kiki to cook for you.”
“Who cooks for you and Victoria Rose?”
“I do. Mostly. Except for the rare occasions when Kiki stays for dinner. I’ll claim the kitchen for my own meals from noon to one, and from six to seven o’clock in the evening. But other than that, you c
an have it. Kiki is cleaning her stuff out of her room now. You can sleep there for the duration. It’s on the fourth floor. In the attic.”
He frowned. For the first time, he really didn’t like what he was hearing. “Where’s Kiki supposed to go?”
“She has an apartment in town. She only stays here occasionally. All my other rooms are reserved well through January.” And his time would be up on January fourth.
“What if Kiki wants to stay over during the next three months?” he asked.
“Then she’ll sleep on the sofa in my sitting room.”
“Sure. That’ll happen.”
Kiki liked her creature comforts. Liv almost smiled again. “Then I’ll sleep on the sofa and give her my bed. What do you care?”
“Or I could sleep on your sofa and leave her room alone.” He grinned.
Warmth rained through her at the very idea of him being that close. It started suddenly at her pulse points and coursed deeper, into central, integral parts of her. “Over my dead body.”
He read her expression, the awareness there. He took a step closer to her and reached a hand to her cheek before he knew he was going to do it. “Not so immune to me after all, are you, Livie?” But then, he’d known that when she’d kissed him back on the roadside.
She smacked his hand away hard. “Go to hell.”
“I’ve got a suite reserved there, but I’m not ready for it.”
“That brings me to my last rule.”
He stepped back a little, making himself do it. Damned if he was going to let her get to him again. “Shoot.”
“Touch me again—like you did on the highway, like you were going to do just now—and I’ll break your face.”
“Point taken.”
“Okay then.” Liv turned away, back toward the inn. Then she stalled. “Hunter.”
He watched the shift of her shoulders, watched her posture go from militant to stoic to just plain helpless. And it hurt something inside him. “What?” he asked gruffly.
“I haven’t told her anything about this yet.”
Hunter thought a moment. “You weren’t going to tell her without someone pressing a gun to your temple first.”
She jerked back to face him. “You’re trying to tear her world up six ways to Sunday! I wasn’t going to let you until someone made me!”
“I think the judge has done that.”