by Beverly Bird
Liv dragged her eyes off it. She met his. Somewhere in her throat were words. Somewhere in her heart there was a thank you. She couldn’t quite get them out.
“Merry Christmas, Livie,” he said.
“I…got you something.”
“Did you, now?”
She realized suddenly that there was no one else in the room with them. Vicky chattered. Kiki opened another gift. But there were only his eyes, midnight blue. There was only his crooked smile. What had she done?
Yes, she’d fallen in love with him all over again, Liv thought.
In the next moment she shook her head unconsciously. No, she thought, no. Because he was right—he had changed. This wasn’t “all over again.” Because this wasn’t the way it had been between them before. There had been no issues back then…just sex and fun. He was a different man now.
This was a man who understood picket fences. He might not ever need them, but he acknowledged that she did.
This was a man who had stayed in one place for nearly ninety days. Without prowling.
This was a father who clamped his hand down on top of Vicky’s head now when she started to rise to skate off in her Heelies.
“Plant it, pigtails,” he said without taking his gaze from Liv. “We’re not done here yet. I get to open one of my own.”
Vicky sighed and sat down again. Liv cleared her throat. “I…need to get it.” She stood, though she was sure her legs wouldn’t hold her. She went to her desk and got the little box. When she turned back to him, he was grinning.
“You tucked it aside just in case I didn’t get you anything,” he guessed accurately.
“Just in case you seriously ticked me off before this moment.” Somehow, miraculously, her voice was still there.
Hunter laughed. “Hand it over.”
She did. She couldn’t sit. She fretted with the last tossed-aside wrappings, but her ears were tuned to the sound of paper being pulled away by his strong fingers. She couldn’t look at him. But she felt his silence like a touch.
“It has all its feathers,” he said finally.
Her mouth twitched. “I couldn’t find a bald one, or a boy with those feathers sticking out of his pocket.”
“I don’t get it,” Vicky said.
Hunter closed his hand over the tie tack. “I do.”
This was the part where she was supposed to say it didn’t mean anything, Liv thought desperately. Because she needed to keep distance between them. She needed to keep herself safe. She only had to get through two more weeks!
“Thank you, Livie.”
“Uh, yes. You’re welcome.”
“Great cookbook,” Kiki said.
Liv pivoted to look at her vacantly. “What?”
Kiki held up Liv’s gift to her, a collection of old miners’ and wagon train recipes. “This should be a challenge. They didn’t know about ions or molecules back then.”
“I, uh, thought you might rise to the occasion, anyway.”
“Open yours,” Kiki said. “Then I’m going to loll in luxury and go back to bed for a little while.” They didn’t do an early breakfast on Christmas morning. Brunch was hours away yet.
Liv found the gift from Kiki and unwrapped it. And her heart stopped all over again. It was a framed snapshot of the three of them—Liv and Kiki and Hunter—young, fresh-faced, untouched by heartache, taken way back during their days on the Res. Why had Kiki kept this? She wasn’t sentimental.
There was such hope in all their eyes, Liv thought. When had it gone? When had they stopped believing that anything was possible?
When things began to hurt.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“Let me see,” Hunter said.
She handed it over to him.
He was quiet for a long time. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s good.”
Liv realized that Vicky was staring at all of them, her gaze hitching from Kiki to Hunter to her. Liv wondered what was about to come out of her mouth, and she cringed a little in anticipation of it.
“What?” she finally prompted her daughter.
“I was just thinking,” Vicky said. “Didn’t Atlanta burn or something? You know, back in the Civil War? Hey, Dad. The red might work. For the party tonight, you can be Rhett coming out of the fire!”
Chapter 12
H unter’s welts had calmed down considerably by midafternoon. No one was more relieved than Vicky, who kept insisting that she didn’t want a lobster for a “date.”
“When did dating start to cross her mind?” he asked as they saw to last-minute preparations for the party.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it.” Liv glanced at him as she set out the warming plates for the buffet. “Did you finish trimming the parlor tree?”
“Done. I don’t want her dating until she’s at least nineteen.”
Liv went to the parlor, anyway, to check on it. “I was pregnant with her when I was nineteen.”
Hunter punched a fist against his heart as he followed her, as though to restart it. “Twenty-one, then.”
“Good luck. Once she goes away to college, I kind of figure it’s out of our hands.” She looked around the parlor. “We need more seating in here,” she decided.
“And where would you like me to find it at three o’clock on Christmas afternoon?”
“The same place you found the Yule logs this morning?” she suggested hopefully.
“I got lucky on that one. The guy happened to stop by his store for something and I was there banging on the door when he did. He took pity on me and sold me the logs.”
“You probably gave him the look.”
“What look?”
“That fierce thing you do when you lower your brows. You probably scared the death out of him. That’s why he opened for you.”
“Nope. He wanted an autograph.”
Her heart stopped for a moment with the reminder of who—and what—he really was these days. And that he would soon be going back to it. “I think we’re done in here,” she said quickly.
“No cracks about my money this time?” he asked, following her out of the parlor.
“Not as long as you send Vicky to college with it so she can enter into that errant world of dating you can’t control.”
“Do convents cost anything?”
Liv’s mood passed. There was no way she couldn’t laugh at that. “Vicky? A nun? Please! I’m going to go get dressed now.”
Hunter watched her head up the stairs and entertained some serious visions of what Liv would look like dressed up as a madame. Then he went to the kitchen to see if there was anything he could do to help Kiki.
“Sure,” she replied. “You can shuck the oysters.”
Hunter cringed inwardly. “Uh…what does that involve?”
“Just open the shells. Leave the oysters on one half. We’ll serve them like that.”
“Raw? Uncooked slime on a shell?”
She stopped what she was doing to stare at him. “I thought you were so worldly these days. Don’t tell me you’ve never encountered oysters on the half shell.”
“I may have encountered them.” He frowned. “But I didn’t look at them too closely. Hand them over. I’ll do it.”
Kiki laughed. “Never mind. I was just testing you.”
“For what?” he asked warily.
“To find out if you were the one who dumped half a dozen of them in my trash about a month or so back.”
Hunter grinned slowly. “You knew all along.”
“I knew Vicky sure didn’t toss them.” Kiki grinned. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell Liv.”
So, he thought, she didn’t know everything. It gave him a good, strong feeling of warmth in the center of his chest that Liv had never confided in Kiki about this.
Then Lisa Scalantino sailed into the kitchen.
“There you are!” She let it out on a gasping breath and made a beeline for him. Hunter backed up to the window.
“Uh, yeah. Here I am. But the kitc
hen’s not open to guests.” He looked pleadingly to Kiki for help, but she was apparently getting even with him for the oysters. She raised a brow, started humming and went back to cooking.
“You’re a guest.” Lisa was closing in on him with that sexy hip-twitching stride.
“No. I’m not.”
Lisa paused, confused. “But I thought—”
“I’m one of the family.”
She frowned. “In what respect?”
“I’m married to one of the owners.”
He got his own revenge. At the stove, Kiki choked in mid-hum.
Hunter left the window, skirting Lisa neatly on his way to the door, satisfied with himself. And that was when it hit him.
He wanted to marry her. He wanted to marry Livie. He wanted them to be a real family. He wanted them to be what he came home to. He just wasn’t sure she would agree with him.
But when had he ever been passive? When had he ever sat back and let the things he wanted come to him? He could convince her to see things his way. He knew how.
No judge in the world would hold it against him if he tried to get his woman back, he thought, heading to his own room, even if he ticked her off a little in the process.
“I need boobs,” Vicky decided.
Liv’s eyes popped wide as they stood side by side in front of the mirror in her bedroom. They’d just finished dressing for the party. Hunter would drop dead, she thought, if he heard that comment.
“They’ll come soon enough,” she answered finally.
“Not soon enough to save this dress,” Vicky complained, plucking at the bodice.
“You look adorable.” And she did, Liv thought. The miniature ball gown was a takeoff on the green velvet one Scarlet had fashioned out of Tara’s drapes in a pinch. The neckline was scooped low and off the shoulders, the sleeves voluminous. The skirt was tiered with ivory lace trim on each layer. It had hoops. Vicky had already done a great deal of damage to Liv’s rooms with the hoops. She’d been instructed to stay out of the parlor and the dining room at all costs. Liv had visions of one sweeping turn taking out half the buffet table.
She still blamed Hunter for the Scarlet craze, she thought. She tried to work up irritation but came up empty-handed.
“Mom. Scarlet was not adorable,” Vicky argued.
“She thought she was.”
“She was beautiful.”
“So are you.”
“Hard to be beautiful when you’re boobless.”
Liv leaned toward the vanity mirror to apply lipstick. She dropped the tube just in time to grab the Christmas figurine Hunter had given her when Vicky did an abrupt about-face. The hoops lifted and bounced, nearly knocking it over.
“You really like that, don’t you?” Vicky asked, looking back. She grinned at the figurine in Liv’s hand.
Liv’s heart rolled over. “Yes. I do.”
“You don’t hate him anymore.”
Liv felt her eyes fill with tears. I love him. “No. I don’t.”
“Good.”
Liv blinked the tears back and looked at her daughter. “Good? That’s all you have to say? One monosyllabic word? That’s not like you.”
Vicky drew herself up to her full four feet six inches. “Well, fiddle-dee-dee.”
She twirled again. This time the hoops whacked up harmlessly against the bedroom wall before she swept out of the room. Liv laughed.
She was so happy. Tonight, she thought, just for tonight, she would pretend that it would never end. Wasn’t Christmas a time for miracles?
Hunter was already downstairs, in the dining room, looking over the buffet for anything that might involve a half shell, when Liv swept into the room. He nearly dropped his drink. He should have laughed himself hoarse at the sight. Instead, he felt everything gathering tight inside him.
“Well,” he murmured. “This is a sight.”
Liv did a little pirouette. She wore a black silk sheath that fitted like a second skin and draped to her toes. It had spaghetti straps. He could just make them out beneath the emerald-green, peignoir-type…something…she wore over it. Her breasts were full and lush, a tantalizing glimpse above the low scoop of the sheath’s neckline. The green topper was filmy and sheer and trimmed with feathers. Her hair was done up elaborately, curls layered upon curls on top of her head. Emerald earrings—or a reasonable facsimile—dangled nearly to her shoulders.
She finally slid up beside him. “What’s your pleasure, pal?”
He acted. He didn’t think. He couldn’t have thought if his life had depended on it. Holding his Remy high in one hand, he caught her around the shoulders with his free arm and dipped her until she gave a little cry and had no choice but to grab his lapels with both hands. Then he kissed her.
Hunter did it in a way he knew would drive her wild. He had a mission now, after all. And the first part of it involved getting her naked again, in his bed.
He nipped her bottom lip first to make sure she knew what he had in mind. He watched her eyes flare. Was that panic he saw there? Maybe, he thought, but panic wasn’t bad. Panic said she wasn’t immune. Panic said that his kiss still did things to her—big things.
He closed his mouth over hers, hard and fast. He felt her hands relax on his lapels. Heard the rumble of something, maybe a purr, in her throat. And his head was filled with her—with everything he had ever needed—as he swept his tongue past hers.
Then a voice spoke behind them. “Oh!”
He still wasn’t planning to stop, but Liv uncurled her hand from his topcoat and thumped it against his chest. He took his mouth from hers, but he kept his face close and he didn’t let her stand up. “Problem?” he murmured.
“We have company.”
“I don’t care, if you don’t. Want to keep going?”
That old, old spark shone in her eyes. “No, that was satisfactory. What do I owe you?”
Hunter felt the laugh come up from his gut. He eased her upright again, onto her feet, and turned to find Lisa Scalantino in the doorway watching them.
“Can we help you with something?” he asked mildly.
“Uh…I just…someone said the food was in here.”
Liv moved away from the buffet table just as the doorbell rang. “You’re in the right place. Eat, drink, be merry.”
Lisa’s mouth crooked into a wry grin. “I think you and your husband have the corner on that last part.”
“My what?”
“We’ve got guests arriving, darling.” Hunter gave her a little nudge toward the door as the doorbell rang again.
Liv tried to turn back to Lisa. “We’re not—”
He shoved her a little harder. Liv looked at him wildly as she let him angle her out into the hall this time. “Did you tell her we were married?”
“Not me. Maybe it was Vicky.”
Liv thought about that and nodded. Vicky had probably introduced Hunter as her dad. The married part followed…or should have, if Hunter had been any other kind of man. Her heart stretched with yearning.
“Speaking of Vicky,” she said, schooling her voice into nonchalance, “you might want to make sure you compliment her on her cleavage.”
“On her what?”
Liv smiled sweetly as she swept on to the front door to greet the guests who were arriving, leaving him gaping.
It was better than last year, she thought, half an hour later. It was better than any year so far. She lost her efforts at a head count somewhere past two hundred. Given the town’s population, she figured she was best off just giving up.
The mayor was there—in fact, the entire city council turned up. Ingrid Small arrived, as well. “Just wanted to see how you were holding up,” she said, taking Liv’s hand. “It’s an open house, right?”
“Uh, right,” Liv murmured, staring at her. The attorney was dressed as a miner. “We’re doing fine.”
Ingrid nodded. “Woodingham’s money was on it.”
Liv didn’t have a chance to ask her what she meant. Another grou
p spilled through the door.
She stayed there for two more hours, greeting people, welcoming them. Her mind returned, over and over, to Hunter’s mouth closing over hers. She didn’t see him again until he brought her a plate of oysters.
“Tell me please,” he said, “how these things constitute 1890s fare?”
Liv slurped one up during a break in the humanity pouring through the door. “They were considered a delicacy. Copper equaled money equaled something ostentatious to spend it on.”
He wiggled his brows at her. “I can think of better things.”
Her heart slugged. “I’ll bet. But Sweet Sarah is probably still in the kitchen.”
“By the way, who is this Sarah? Vicky mentioned her once, too.”
Liv grinned privately. “She’s the lady of ill repute Kiki is dressed up as tonight.”
Hunter laughed. “Yeah, she came to the dining room once, and six men passed out.”
Liv grinned. “That happened last year, too. She’s wearing that red teddy-type thing again, right?”
“She is. But you look better. Kiss me again, Madame Louise.”
Liv eased back against the door. She took a deep breath in, very slowly. “Hunter, what are we doing?”
“Personally, I’m giving up on being stupid. How about you?”
What was stupid? Falling for a man who walked out on her when the wind changed? She opened her mouth to answer, then her jaw fell open entirely when a scream sounded from the kitchen.
She had time to gasp once before she collided with Hunter chest to chest. They both turned back into the inn at the same time. It had been Kiki’s voice. They raced for the kitchen.
She couldn’t think of anything that could have gone wrong to warrant such a sound from a woman who could walk on coals without flinching.
They’d hired six girls from town to keep the food flowing from the kitchen to the buffet tables. They had waiters from the Connor’s dining room circulating with champagne, wine and beer. Had something happened to one of them? Shoulder to shoulder, Liv plowed with Hunter through the kitchen door—and ran in on a geyser.
Liv yelped, too. The water was coming from a place where the sink faucet used to be. It gushed straight up in a mighty spout, hitting the ceiling, raining down again on platters of food. Kiki stood in the middle of it, the faucet piece in her hand, soaked to the skin, her hair plastered to her skull.