by Beverly Bird
He cracked a grin. One of his incisors was gold. She’d always wondered how he’d afforded that, and why he so rarely smiled to show it off. “She wraps the rest of you ’round her little finger,” he said. “I’m just making sure she has a harder sell with me.”
“Which is why she goes out of her way to irritate you.” Liv coughed into her hand. This time she let Bourne take the mare, but she followed him up the barn alley.
“Truth to tell, I love that kid to pieces,” he said roughly.
Liv managed a smile. “I know.”
“Is this a good thing? This business of her daddy being here?”
“For her, maybe.”
“Not for you.”
“No, Bourne. Not for me.”
“You ain’t been yourself lately. Now I get it.” He unsaddled the mare and threw a blanket over her back.
“I was trying to contain the situation, but then it blew up in my face,” Liv admitted hoarsely.
“How come he’s here?”
“A judge ordered it.”
“Well. Nothing you can do ’bout that. Whiskey, honey and tea,” he ordered, changing the subject. “Go inside and get yourself some. It’ll help calm that throat of yours some.”
He wasn’t going to thank her for the confidence, Liv realized. He was too crusty for that. But he was back to his old footing with her.
Liv glanced at her watch. She had two hours until tea. Maybe she would just lie down for a while.
She left the barn and was nearly to her room when Hunter came down the stairs from the attic room. When he saw her, his stride slowed until he stopped completely.
She supposed it was inevitable that they’d bump noses sooner or later. Liv realized that she had stopped, too. She forced herself to move again, as far as her door.
“You look like hell,” he said bluntly.
“Thank you.”
“You’re sick.”
“I’ll fight it off.” She closed her hand around the knob. But for some reason she couldn’t open it.
“That’s always been your problem. You don’t know when to back down.”
“Please. Don’t fight with me now.” She hated the quaver in her voice.
“It’s your way or the highway,” he said relentlessly.
“Hunter, this isn’t necessary. I always knew that if you felt any of my virtues were redeeming, you would have stayed with me.”
She was rewarded by a tightening of his jaw. “I thought we agreed that we were going to leave the past out of this.”
Liv shook her head weakly. “We agreed that that would be damned near impossible.” She thought briefly of what Kiki had said, about them having to link hands again to get through this or they would kill each other. And she knew, too—suddenly and with sick certainty—that they probably wouldn’t be able to do that until they hashed out all the old grudges and the hurt.
But not now, she thought desperately. Just not now. “I’ve got to lie down.”
“What else do you have to do for the rest of the day?” he demanded as though she hadn’t spoken.
“Tea. But that’s not until three o’clock.”
He’d noticed the way she made it a point to mingle with her guests then. “I can do that for you.”
He watched her drag her spine straight. “No. You cannot.”
Hunter frowned. “I can hold my own in polite company.”
“Right. I forgot. The California ritz and glitz.”
“Why the hell does that bother you so much?”
“Because I knew you when!”
“We’ve both grown up, Liv. We’re not what we were.”
No, she thought again, but those kids were still buried inside them somewhere…hurt and broken and desperate to drag all the old feelings out for airing. “I always do tea,” she said rather than acknowledge his point.
“And I always finish out the season, too. But you’ve got to know when to throw in the towel.”
“You just don’t give up, do you? You’re a stubborn—”
“Leave name calling out of this and let me do tea.”
“I never miss it. It’s a matter of personal pride.”
His eyes glinted with frustration. “You always were a stubborn—”
“Let’s leave name calling out of this,” she interrupted quickly.
This time he smiled. Almost.
“And I’m not stubborn,” she argued.
“As a mule.”
“I only stop in briefly at tea on Fridays, anyway. Fifteen minutes or so, tops.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to get over to Mustang Ridge for Vicky’s lesson.” Then she saw the look on his face and her heart sank.
“All right,” he said. “You do tea and I’ll do the riding lesson.”
Liv opened her mouth to argue. And closed it again. Because that, too, would be flying in the face of the judge’s intentions. If he wanted to pick up his daughter at the riding academy, she had to let him.
But she hated it.
Liv pressed her hands to her cheeks. She was feverish. He took her arm and she yanked back from him. “I told you not to touch me!”
“I want to choke you!”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You didn’t have to. It’s all over your face. I’m not going to hurt that child! Damn you, Liv! I’d cut you to the bone in a heartbeat, but not her! I’ll pick her up.” He stepped around her and moved off down the hall. “End of discussion.”
Liv watched him go until the top of his black head disappeared down the stairs. Then she let her spine slide down her door until she sat on the floor. She put her forehead to her updrawn knees and let herself wallow in misery, both physically and the kind that came from broken dreams.
Liv felt no better after a nap. In fact, she realized that it was entirely possible she felt worse.
She swallowed a handful of ibuprofen and forced herself into the shower at two-thirty. By three, she’d changed into a denim jumper and a long-sleeved white turtleneck. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail because she was too woozy to fuss with it. She had high hopes that makeup would erase the drawn, pinched look about her eyes, but she was disappointed.
She glanced at her watch five times before she went downstairs.
She heard the distant rumble of the Monte Carlo leaving the inn at 3:10. She poised for its return, her ears begging for the sound, even as she knew she couldn’t possibly expect them back before 4:45.
Ed Stern had finally gone, and this week they had a quartet of elderly women in residence. Agnes was vaguely senile and Katherine Joan felt strongly about people addressing her by her full name. Liv was reasonably sure that the youngest—Isabela—was every day of eighty-three. And Dee was a borderline kleptomaniac. Normally Liv found them amusing, but today every cell in her body hurt. She kept her distance, knowing that at their ages her germs might well be the death of them. She should just say hello and go back upstairs, she thought, but she wasn’t sure she could hear Hunter’s car from her third-floor room, at least without opening her window, and she couldn’t get warm as it was.
By five o’clock, as the ladies were finally departing, he still hadn’t brought Vicky home.
Something was wrong, Liv thought fretfully as she watched Dee surreptitiously tuck one of Kiki’s plum tarts into her pocket. Maybe Hunter had been driving too fast and they’d cracked up against the cliff side and they were both in the hospital. She pressed her fingers to her temples. Where were they?
Liv gathered up the tea service and took it to the kitchen. “I’ll clean up today.” It would give her an excuse to stay downstairs.
Kiki looked up from something simmering on the stove. “Mother Theresa’s shoes are going to be hard ones to fill.”
Liv winced and coughed. “Don’t talk in riddles today. I’m not up to it.”
“My point exactly. I made you my Ama’s stew with a twist.”
Liv scarcely heard her. She went to the window and looked out.
“They should have been back by now.”
“Veal cubes instead of mutton,” Kiki explained as though she hadn’t spoken.
Liv nodded. She hated mutton. It reminded her of the Res, the one and only place she had ever eaten it—and then she had eaten it often. Even after centuries, it was still a staple of the Navajo diet. “I don’t feel like eating.”
“You will, assuming they ever get back.”
Liv spun on her, and the move left her dizzy. “You think something’s wrong, too!”
“I didn’t say that.”
She looked at the kitchen clock. “It’s 5:15. It doesn’t take forty-five minutes to come back from Mustang Ridge!” He was running with Vicky. With his financial resources, no one would ever be able to find them, she thought hectically. They could land in Bora Bora or Iceland. They could—
“He’s not going to leave the NASCAR circuit,” Kiki said as though reading her mind.
“Why not?” Liv countered harshly. “He’s left everything else.”
Kiki opened her mouth and closed it again. It took her a moment to think of a logical response to that, Liv thought, because it was absolutely true.
“He hasn’t done that for a long time,” Kiki argued finally.
Liv looked out the window again. “Leopards don’t change their spots.”
“No. But when they grow old, they do tend to fade a bit.”
“Nothing about him has faded.” Liv hugged herself. Come home, come home, come home.
And then she heard the car.
She was out the back door before she realized that she was giving him an edge. By rushing out, she’d let him know how worried she’d been. He’d exploit it.
He drove into the garage and before Liv could get there, Vicky came tearing out. “I got a new bridle!” She held it high in one hand.
Liv stared at it. Her brain wouldn’t work. “I just bought you a new bridle,” she said finally. “Not more than two months ago.”
“This is the red one.”
“You don’t need two bridles.”
“Mom, would you look? This is the red one!” she said again.
Liv felt the pain in her head explode. She remembered the bridle. It had been thirty dollars more than the one she’d bought when Bourne had advised her that the old one was every bit as bad as Vicky had said. She’d been planning on splurging on the red one for her for Christmas.
“Go inside,” she said hoarsely.
Vicky frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to have a word with your—with Hunter.”
“About the bridle?”
“About the sunset! Go inside! Kiki has stew.”
“Aunt Kiki cooked tonight? Cool!” She was off like a shot.
Hunter came out of the garage and lowered the door, then he turned around and saw her. Liv didn’t let him get in the first word. “How dare you?” She marched toward him.
“What did I do now?”
“You’re buying her!”
His face went dangerous. She remembered that look. It made his cheekbones seem more stark. It made his eyes go almost black. It was the look that said someone had crossed a line at his expense.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he said too quietly, stepping around her.
She was beyond caution. She pivoted to shout after him. “Where do you get off buying her things without even talking to me about it first?”
“You weren’t in the car when the subject came up.” He kept walking.
Liv went after him and skirted around him to poke him in the chest. “Well, here’s a parenting lesson, pal. Kids don’t need every damned thing they ask for! And there’s a word for the ones that get them! Spoiled! It means they have a father trying to purchase their affection!”
“What the hell are you afraid of, Livie?”
That she’ll love you more than me because you never say no! “That you’ll turn her into something despicable before you go!”
“You have so little faith in your own child? In yourself?”
“I don’t have anything to do with this,” she grated. “Stop turning this around.”
“If you think I can undo eight years of lessons you’ve taught her in three months, then yeah, you have a lot to do with it. You’re doubting yourself.”
“Ha!” Her voice came up another notch. Liv heard it and hated it, knew she was being irrational. She was picking a fight. Or trying to. Trying desperately. “You’re admitting that you’re going to vanish again when these ninety days are up!”
His own temper finally snapped. Heat flared into his eyes. “I’m not admitting any such thing! I’ll return to the circuit! But I’ll be back!”
“You’ll just flit in and out of her life bearing gifts, is that it? She didn’t need that bridle! And I was going to get it for her for Christmas!”
His face cleared slowly. “Ah. Stepped on your toes, did I?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
“Then I’m sorry.”
Liv was shocked enough to take a step back. “You never apologize.”
“I do when I’m wrong.”
“You’re never wrong.”
He flashed a grin. “Thanks for that.”
“You never think you’re wrong,” Liv amended.
He took in a deep breath and let it out again very slowly. “I keep telling you, I’m not twenty-two anymore.”
The comment reminded her too much of what Kiki had said about closure, about the fact that they’d been so young before. Liv hugged herself without answering.
“You need to grow up, too,” he said calmly.
She reeled back as though he had slapped her. “I grew up the day I took responsibility for another human life!”
“No offense, Livie, but marrying Guenther was pretty juvenile.”
How could he do this to her? How could he stoke her temper into such a fury with only a few well-placed words? She’d spent more than eight long years safe from this kind of emotion, and now it blazed through her all over again as though not a moment had passed since he’d left her. “Don’t you dare judge me!”
“Your decision changed my life. I have a right.”
“You weren’t in my shoes. How can you say what’s right or wrong when you’ve never been in that situation?”
He rubbed his jaw. “I’ll tell you what, Livie. If all the rules of life were suddenly changed and I had been the one carrying that little girl, I would have told you. And I wouldn’t have married someone I didn’t love just to glom on to a white picket fence.”
It struck ice at the very core of her. “I’m going in now,” she said, half turning. “I’m going to have dinner with my daughter.”
“Uh…too late.” He held up a hand and for the first time she noticed a crumbled, empty fast-food bag in it. “We hit a drive-thru on the way home.”
“I hate you!”
“Keep telling yourself that, Livie, until you believe it.”
“You can’t just keep doing these things without consulting me first!” She shouted after him as he went toward the inn again.
His steps slowed, then he turned back. “You’re sick. I couldn’t imagine how you’d feel like cooking tonight. So I fed her for you. The proper response would have been ‘thank you.’”
This time when he turned back to the inn, she let him go. Liv couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that.
She’d robbed him of one of the most precious things a man could call his own, Hunter thought four hours later—his child. She would have kept the secret of Victoria Rose from him forever if he hadn’t stumbled into them in Delaware against all odds. That still made his gut twist, and he still hated her for it. He blamed her for fighting him when he’d come to Jerome and for forcing them into a court scene that had landed him here. He despised her for watching him every moment of every day he’d spent in her home, expecting him to do something to break his daughter’s heart.
And he knew her too well to forget that the last thing Livie
Slade would ever do when she was frightened was admit it.
She’d skipped around Guenther and had created for herself what she’d always needed—a safe haven, a civilized home. And now she thought he was somehow going to fracture all that—even as she tossed recriminations at him for not staying around long enough to do it. Yeah, he hated her. And he had never learned to hate her enough.
He thought fleetingly of tracking her down in her rooms, but he wasn’t sure there was anything more either one of them could say. His stomach growled, but he didn’t feel like driving back into town to find a restaurant. Besides, it was nearly ten o’clock. He wasn’t sure if he could find anything open.
Time to raid the kitchen, Hunter thought. He’d put it off all week, mindful of Liv’s rules, but enough was enough. Most of her rules were irrational, anyway. And a man had to eat.
He started for the door and out of the corner of his eye saw a light shift. Hunter turned back fast. The far corner, he thought, there under the south eave, the same place he had noticed it before. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what he thought he’d seen. Not someone. But movement as though someone had been there.
“Damn it,” he muttered. Liv was really getting to him. He was seeing things.
He left the room and went downstairs. And found manna from heaven on the kitchen counter.
There was a loaf of bread, an unopened jar of mayonnaise, a knife and a note in Kiki’s strong, slashing handwriting:
Spread the bread with the mayo. Look in the deli drawer in the bottom of the smallest refrigerator for cold sliced beef. Layer beef on bread over mayonnaise. Apply salt and pepper—they’re on the table. Press bread slices together. PS—If you tell her I did this, I still have that dull knife.
Hunter laughed aloud.
“What’s so funny?”
He was genuinely spooked. Maybe it was an after-effect of the weird light in his room, but Hunter came out of his skin and jerked around to find Liv. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and lifted a brow. “I live here. The better question is, what are you doing in my kitchen?”
“You said I could have access to it anytime, except between noon and one, and six and seven o’clock.” He moved to put his back in front of the sandwich stuff so she wouldn’t see it. He never betrayed a friend.