by Beverly Bird
Too? He’d kissed her the first time to grab the upper hand in an argument, she reminded herself desperately. He’d done it the second time to protect Kiki. He hated her after what she’d done to him—he’d never get past that enough to want to kiss her. But they’d both fallen into those kisses as though they’d never been apart even a day.
Liv stopped dead in the middle of the florist shop with the thought. She forgot what she was doing there.
She shook herself and recovered enough to pick up her order. She wandered outside and stashed the poinsettias in her trunk and the back seat. Then she moved on to the gift shop to pick up the party favors they would give the guests at the door. She was waiting to pay for them with two people in line in front of her when her gaze fell to the display case she was leaning against. Her breath caught.
It was less than half an inch across. A tie tack, intricate, special. It was an eagle. Liv closed her eyes.
It could well be her answer to the gift problem. Except…
She’d never seen Hunter wear a tie, other than at the court hearing and last year’s televised Winston Cup awards. So he did do it occasionally. But still, what use would he have for such a thing, really?
It was too personal, she thought. An eagle was what had brought him to the Navajo res where they’d ultimately landed in each other’s arms—that ill-fated hunt on Hopi land when he’d antagonized both his alcoholic father and the authorities.
It was what had brought them together.
“Liv, how are you? Hold on, I’ve got your boxes right here under the counter.”
Liv jolted at the salesgirl’s voice. She looked around dazedly. The other two customers had paid up and gone. She cleared her throat. “What do I owe you?”
“$364.20.”
Liv frowned. “That’s all?”
“We’re giving them to you at cost this year. It’s our contribution to town tradition.”
Liv dug in her purse for a business check. “Thanks.” The florist had done the same thing. The inn’s Christmas gala had really caught on in recent years. There were those who swore it actually brought in tourists—and tourist dollars.
She wrote the store’s name on the check, then she paused. “How much is that tie tack?”
“The eagle? Let me check.” The girl bent and pulled it out of the case. “$39.95. Do you want this, too?”
“No, I…yes.” If Hunter gave her something and she didn’t have anything for him, Vicky would be upset, she reasoned.
If he didn’t give her anything, she could return it.
If he said anything about the significance of the eagle, she could just lie and say it never occurred to her.
“Yes,” Liv said again.
By the time she left the store, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was standing on a cliff much like the one Hunter had once fallen off. Waving her arms. Teetering over an abyss that would destroy her.
Hunter found himself prowling around downstairs for the better part of an hour after she left. He helped Kiki transfer roast goose and Yorkshire pudding in and out of the oven and strung additional garland over all the door frames until the place looked as gaudy as it must have once looked as a brothel. Kiki told him that was the point.
Whenever he heard a car outside, he found himself drawn to the kitchen window. Once he turned back to see Kiki watching him.
“Just keeping an eye out for Lustful Lisa,” he explained. “When she gets back, I’m going to have to head upstairs.”
“Guests use the front door,” Kiki replied.
“Yeah, well, you never know. She’s determined.”
Kiki snorted.
Hunter finally went upstairs, anyway. He found Vicky in her bedroom and lured her into helping him wrap presents. They finished too soon. He found himself at loose ends again, pacing his attic room. The strange light shifted in the corner as he moved back and forth. He was used to it now. He’d decided it had something to do with the way the sun hit the windows. He was pretty sure it glinted off the brass pieces on the ballet bar on the other side of the room. He wasn’t prepared to explain how the phenomenon could happen at night.
Finally, he heard a car behind the inn, not stopping at the apron on the side. He went to the windows, to the one he had somehow managed to leave open despite the fact that it was barely forty degrees outside and the inn’s furnace was pumping heat. Kiki with her business books would never know, he told himself.
He hunkered down to peer out the window and watched Liv tuck her still-battered car into the garage.
She got out a moment later and sprang her trunk open. As she unloaded poinsettias, her long golden-brown hair kept falling forward. She raked her hand through it time and time again. She blew out her breath. When everything was unloaded, she went to the middle of the drive, planted her hands on her hips, and shouted toward the inn for Vicky.
Vicky was in the garage. She came up behind Liv, tiptoeing exaggeratedly. Just on her heels, she stopped and yelled, “Boo!”
Liv jumped high enough to touch the sky.
Hunter laughed aloud. And that was when it hit him.
He loved them. He loved both of them. With his body and his soul and the very air he breathed.
The anger that came next scalded him. It tried to claw his heart right out of his chest. This was the way it should have been. Livie, him, their child—together. This was the way it would have been every day of the past eight years if she hadn’t stolen it from him. Then something moved inside his head, a pain that squirmed there. Because it wouldn’t have been this way if she had told him eight and a half years ago…and he knew it.
It wouldn’t have been like this at all.
There would have been no inn. No sweet scenes in front of the garage—unless it was a stock car bay. The three of them would have moved on and on and on, maybe traveling the circuit, calling hotel rooms and Winnebagos home. Or maybe stopping in this town for a while, then in the next one, in rented digs, as he chased other dreams. Because he knew, suddenly, that if he’d had them with him, by his side, he might not have fallen so completely into racing. He wouldn’t have needed anything to anchor him the way NASCAR had finally anchored him, because he would have had his Liv and she’d always done that for him.
If he’d had them, he could have kept roaming.
Something grabbed his heart and twisted. It was entirely possible that he might even have left them and just kept coming home to love them, he realized, to gather them close, before he took another leap into the unknown. Just as she had accused him of.
Hunter stood unsteadily from the window.
She’d been wrong in what she’d done to him. Damn it, Livie had been so wrong. Not telling him was bad enough, but marrying Guenther was unforgivable. Still, he thought, one of them had to have done the unconscionable. If she hadn’t done what she’d done, Hunter knew his answering response would have been abysmal as well.
They’d been doomed. And where the hell did that leave them now?
“Hunter!”
Her voice carried up his attic stairs, startling him. He wasn’t ready for her right now. He needed time to come to terms with his feelings. Hunter went to the door anyway and opened it.
“What’s up?” he called down. The stairs were steep. He could just see her legs from the knees down. Who besides Livie Slade could get away with pink suede boots?
“I need you,” she answered.
He ran a hand over his eyes. “I need you, too.” Always. It never ended.
“What?” she called back. “I can’t hear you!”
“Never mind.” He raised his voice, got a grip on himself.
She was waiting for him when he reached the bottom of the steps. “They delivered the Christmas tree,” she said. “It’s so big. Kiki and I can’t get it inside. And they just dumped it on the front porch.”
Hunter scowled. “There’s already a tree in your sitting room. What do we need another one for?”
She raked her hair back again, harri
ed, beautiful. “The one in my sitting room is ours. This is the one for the parlor, for tomorrow night.”
Ours. “Most establishments would just stick an artificial thing in there,” he said, his voice unaccountably hoarse.
She looked at him as if he had just uttered a blasphemy. “Which is why they’re not the Copper Rose.”
She strode off ahead of him to the staircase, tall and elegant. Hunter followed her to wrestle with a tree the size of Arizona, trying not to notice the way she moved.
She’d known him since she was twelve, Liv mused on Christmas morning, and never once had she realized that Hunter was allergic to Christmas trees. Then again, there hadn’t been many evergreens in their area of the Res—at least none that she’d ever known him to tangle with.
Vicky was literally shivering with excitement as she knelt beside the tree in Liv’s sitting room, waiting for him to join them. Santa’s gifts spilled halfway across the floor; family gifts in special blue paper were interspersed. Hunter’s tokens were wrapped in black and gold. He’d admitted that a fan had sent him the paper, sparing him the chore of buying it. It matched the colors of his NASCAR car.
Kiki was curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee, her eyes at half-mast. She wore red long johns, something Liv was reasonably sure only a gorgeous sprite of a woman with a waterfall of black hair could get away with. She’d stayed over last night.
There was a sharp knock on the door and Liv called for Hunter to come in. He did, and his skin was red. Liv was so startled her jaw dropped open.
“What happened to you?” she finally asked.
Kiki pried one eye open. “Those are welts,” she said.
“Who cares? Let’s open presents!” Vicky pleaded.
“Thank you so much, Victoria Rose, for your moving concern,” Hunter drawled as he came into the room.
“How did you get welts?” Liv demanded.
“Since each of them is associated with a scratch, I’d say they came from that abomination of a tree you’ve got downstairs,” Hunter replied. “I must be allergic.”
Liv’s heart dove. “You can’t be Rhett tonight looking like that.”
“Now I know where Vicky got her compassion.”
“Hold on.” Liv shot up from the floor where she’d been sitting beside Vicky. She headed for her bathroom.
“Where are you going?” Vicky wailed after her. “Santa Claus came!”
Liv glanced back once over her shoulder. It amazed her that as worldly-wise as her daughter was, she still believed in Santa. Wholeheartedly and with a passion born of innocence. Last season she’d decked a kid who had tried to convince her otherwise.
Liv had been achingly aware for months now that this could be the last year for the purity of make-believe. She felt a spasm in her chest. She should be at the tree, nurturing that, savoring it. One more glance at Hunter convinced her otherwise. His skin was livid.
“Santa has been around for hundreds of years,” Kiki replied, yawning. “He’ll come again, squirt, and in the meantime, these presents aren’t going anywhere. Chill out and let your mom take care of your dad.”
Liv found the aloe she wanted and returned to stand in front of Hunter. “Take your T-shirt off.” She was looking up at him when she said it, and she saw his eyes change. They flared, then narrowed. Her heart slammed.
“I beg your pardon? I think that’s your role,” he added under his breath.
Liv felt both Kiki and Vicky watching them. “Not now,” she whispered. “Hunter, we can’t talk about that now. It’s Christmas.”
“You’re blushing, Livie. It always amazed me how you could do that. You’re tough one moment, a swooning maiden the next.”
“You’re going to swoon if I slug you.”
“Give me the aloe, babe. I’ll take care of it.”
He hadn’t called her babe since he’d left her. Liv felt the room tilt. She couldn’t breathe. He pried the tube from her clenched fingers.
“I can do it,” she squeaked. “You can’t reach your back.”
“I don’t have scratches on my back.”
“Oh.”
“And if you touch me right now, I’m not sure the result would be something we’d want our daughter to witness.”
Liv’s gaze dropped helplessly. He was wearing sweats. One glance told her he was already aroused.
She was suddenly so hot her robe felt as though it was clinging to her skin. She turned away dazedly. When he spoke again, his voice seemed to come to her from very far away.
He did still want her. He definitely still wanted her.
“Come on, Kiki,” he chided. “Buck up. I know you’re in the kitchen every morning by five-thirty. This isn’t any earlier. Or did Liv make you sleep on the sofa last night? Is that why you’re so droopy?”
“She gave me the bed,” Kiki said. “But then she sat on it all night, talking at me.”
“Yeah? So what was the topic of conversation?”
Liv flushed. She’d been recounting the many, many reasons she felt absolutely nothing anymore for Hunter Hawk-Cole.
“I’m getting impatient,” Vicky whined.
Liv went quickly to sit beside her on the floor. “Okay. Start tearing. Let’s see what you got.”
Vicky dove in. Paper flew. Liv caught most of it, wadding it up and jamming it down into a plastic trash bag. She glanced at Hunter once as Vicky opened a beauty kit.
“She doesn’t need lipstick,” he said, sitting beside Kiki on the sofa. “She’s eight.”
Vicky rolled her eyes. “Da-a-a-d.”
Hunter looked at Liv. “You’re seriously going to let her wear that?”
Liv reached for the kit. It wasn’t just lipstick. It was gaudy, youthful, make-pretend makeup complete with the chemistry instructions to mix more. “Trust me. She’ll be finger painting with it by Tuesday.”
“On her face?”
“Maybe the walls.”
“Mandy wears lipstick,” Vicky said, but she was already ripping paper off the next present.
“Have you met this Mandy’s parents?” Hunter demanded of Liv.
“Yes. They’re sweethearts.”
It was over too fast, Liv thought. It always was. And this year she had that pain in her chest because she wondered if it would ever be this simple again. Would Vicky still believe the next time around? Would business still be thriving? Could they afford all this?
Would Hunter be here?
“There’s still more,” Vicky said impatiently.
Liv looked around. It was the family stuff. “You know the rules,” she reminded her.
“What are the rules?” Hunter asked.
“Vicky takes a bit of a breather now. Kiki and I exchange.”
“Can I get into this part?”
“Of course.” Liv felt her air trying to fall short again. The tie tack was in her desk drawer. She’d wrapped it.
But she didn’t have to take it out and give it to him.
Kiki finally put her coffee mug down. She got up and went to kneel on the floor beside Vicky. “Move, squirt. My turn.”
“What did you get me?” Vicky asked.
“Guess you’re just going to have to wait and see, won’t you?”
Vicky sighed. “It’s so hard.”
“Patience is a virtue.”
“That’s not what Dad says.”
Hunter sat up straight on the sofa. “When did I ever say that?”
“You said if I saw something I wanted, I should grab it.”
He glanced guiltily at Liv. “I didn’t actually say that. And I didn’t mean Christmas presents. I meant when she was an adult. With life in general.”
“Can I grab now, anyway?” Vicky asked.
“No!” Liv and Hunter said in chorus.
Kiki grinned privately.
She handed Liv and Hunter each a package. Then he stood from the sofa and knelt beside the tree, as well. Liv’s heart started beating too hard. Now that all the Santa presents were gone, she could c
ount the black-and-gold ones.
There were five.
All for Vicky? No. He handed one to Kiki. He handed one to her.
“The rest are all for me?” Vicky asked him.
“No. They’re for the homeless waif we have living in the barn.”
“There’s no—” Vicky broke off and giggled. “Mine, mine, mine!”
He’d gotten her a gift. It would be a token, Liv told herself desperately. And the tie tack would be too intimate, too…too something.
Kiki peeled the gold-and-black wrapping off a box that contained a crimson and fairly provocative satin robe. She threw back her head and laughed. “You are the only man in the world who could get away with giving this to me.”
“Yeah, but I still don’t want to know what you do with all those pillows and candles upstairs.”
Vicky squealed, interrupting them. She’d gotten into one of his packages. “Heelies!”
“Hey, pigtails,” Hunter said. “You’re out of turn. Your mom was supposed to open one next.”
“Too late!” she cried, struggling to put the shoes on over her slipper-socks.
“Do I want to know what Heelies are?” Liv asked, staring at them.
“Sneaks! With wheels in them!” Vicky crowed.
“In them?”
“On them,” Hunter clarified. “On the soles. They retract so she can walk like a normal human being when speed is not appropriate or authorized.”
“You gave her speed?” Liv croaked.
“Livie, how fast can she go in shoes?”
He hadn’t checked with her this time, Liv thought. But her fingers were wrapped like claws around her own gift, and she found that she didn’t care.
“Your turn, Liv,” he said.
“Right.” She began tearing off the black-and-gold paper.
It was big. Well, reasonably big. Eight inches high by maybe four across. And heavy. Heavier than she might have expected. What did a token weigh?
She opened the box. It was a figurine. It took her a long time to realize that the reason she couldn’t see it clearly was because she was crying.
“I don’t get why grown-ups do that,” Vicky muttered.
“Hush,” Liv heard Kiki caution.
It was a mother and daughter kneeling by a white picket fence. Surrounded by daisies. It wasn’t a Christmas present. It was understanding.