by Beverly Bird
“Thank you.”
The lawyer frowned. “I’ve got to admit, though, that I had a hell of a hangover that next morning. And I really didn’t drink much.”
Liv bit her lip. Hunter had admitted later that he’d even added whiskey to the eggnog, just to be on the safe side with the kitchen disaster. “Sorry about that.”
Ingrid shrugged. “Everyone needs to kick up their heels now and again. I had fun. I’ll be there again next year for sure.”
But Liv wondered if Hunter would be around to spike the eggnog. Ingrid might just be disappointed.
She made it back in plenty of time to see him off, even with a side trip to Mustang Ridge to collect Vicky from her riding lesson. He’d wanted to leave by five o’clock, Liv knew. He’d drive all night and hit Pacific Palisades well before dawn. Half of her wanted him to spend the night—one more night. The other half knew that having him leave her bed before dawn and hit the highway would kill her.
By unspoken accord they’d agreed that having him go right before dinner was best.
When Vicky and Liv entered the kitchen, Kiki was just rattled enough that Liv forgot her own pain and stared at her in pure surprise. “What’s wrong?” she asked. She looked wildly at the sink. No geysers this time.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again!” Kiki burst out.
“Do what?”
“I’m going to go find Dad,” Vicky said, and ran off. Liv’s heart cramped. One last time.
“Don’t ever leave me to do tea by myself!” Kiki almost shouted.
Liv frowned. “I had to. I had to sign that thing before Hunter could leave, and it was the only opening Ingrid had. You’ve done tea before, albeit rarely.”
“Well, I don’t like it.” Kiki began banging baking trays into the sink. “Besides, you’ve always done tea. It’s your thing. You always used to find a way never to miss it. Now every time I turn around, you’re running off.”
Yes, Liv thought. Somehow, lately, other things had become more important. “I still don’t understand why you’re so upset. Did someone take offense to your photon theory?”
“Yes,” Kiki ground out from between clenched teeth.
Liv couldn’t believe it. They had a very mild group of guests this week. “Who?”
“Frisco Carre.”
She felt her brows climb. “Frisco-the-chef-from-the-Connor?”
“He said he was checking out the competition. Just sailed right in as smug as you please.”
“Well.” Liv couldn’t think of one single thing to say to that.
“And he made suggestions.”
“What kind of suggestions?”
“A little butter between the phyllo of the tarts.”
Liv almost grinned. “How dare he.”
“That’s what I said.”
“What’s going on down here?” Hunter asked, coming into the kitchen. “I could hear you banging all the way up in my attic room, Kiki.”
Kiki was in an exceptionally foul mood. “My attic room, buddy. And now it’s time to adios, amigo. Next time around, you can damned well share her bed.” She thrust a thumb at Liv. “I’m not coughing up my space.”
“They don’t do that,” Vicky said, sailing into the room behind Hunter. “They’re a mom and dad not together anymore.”
The room pitched into silence.
Liv couldn’t look at Hunter. She knew—she knew—her agony would be in her eyes. She couldn’t look at Kiki because she knew Kiki would rue every word that had just come out of her mouth in temper, words that Vicky had overheard. She couldn’t look at Vicky—because Vicky was right.
“Hey, pigtails,” Hunter said finally. “What’s up?”
“I brought your suitcase down.” She turned to pull it through the door. It was almost as big as she was. Liv watched her bend over to slide it across the floor. She stopped at Hunter’s feet.
“Throwing me out?” Hunter asked. His voice sounded odd, Liv thought. Tight.
“I’m a minor,” she reminded him. “I’ve got no say in this.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Her bottom lip was sticking out.
Liv wasn’t sure she could identify the sound that came from Hunter’s throat in response.
All she knew was that in the next moment, he was on his knees and Vicky was in his arms. And her own heart was cracking. She could feel it happening, in an ever-widening rift. Liv pressed a hand there against the pain.
“I told you how we’re going to do this, pigtails,” he said, his voice husky. “And why we have to.”
She yanked free of him. “How much stupid money do you need?”
Liv watched him open his mouth and close it again. When he held his arms out to her again, Vicky burrowed back in.
“I’m just going to go home tomorrow to take care of some business. Then tomorrow night I’ll fly to North Carolina and see Mr. Spikes. I’m only going to stay there for a day or two. Then I’ll be back here on Friday. You and your mom are going to drive down to Phoenix and pick me up at the airport.”
“What about your car?” Vicky sniffed.
“My car?” He looked at Liv, as though for guidance, she thought. She shrugged.
“Where’s that going to be?” Vicky persisted.
“In the garage at my house in California.”
“I like that car.”
“I like it, too, pigtails.”
“Can’t you just leave it here?”
Hunter looked mystified. “Why?”
Then Liv understood. Vicky wanted to hold on to a piece of him. She herself had done it too many times to count.
“Well, if you have it,” Vicky thought aloud, “then you could just drive straight back here from North Carolina. So maybe don’t leave it in California.”
Hunter rallied. “That would take at least two days, pigtails, even as fast as I drive. If I fly instead, that’s two days I could be spending with you and your mom.”
She thought about that. “You’ve got a point.”
Hunter squeezed her tight one more time and stood. His eyes found Liv’s. “I think on that note, I’d better go.”
She nodded jerkily. Yes, she thought, oh, yes, please, before someone cried. “I’ll walk you out.”
She was vaguely aware of Kiki catching up Vicky before their daughter could follow them. She thought she heard her say something about talking to the guy in the parlor and telling him that his patootie was for the birds.
They went out to the garage. “She’s going to…miss you,” Liv said. Her voice cracked. “So much.”
He swore, a dark sound under his breath. “This is what you were protecting her from.”
Her eyes flew to his. “Yes.”
“I didn’t see it back then…I didn’t know.”
She believed that. Liv knew in her soul that he would never do a thing to hurt his daughter. If he had foreseen how painful this was going to be, he would have…well, at least he would have handled their war some other way. He wouldn’t have moved in here.
“Livie, I still couldn’t have turned away from the chance to know her,” he said, as though reading her mind.
She understood that, too. “Hunter, just go. This is killing me.”
“Ah, babe.”
He held his arms out to her. She wanted to be like Vicky. She wanted to be able to melt right into them. She backed up jerkily instead. “See you Friday.”
Pain creased his strong features, if only briefly. “I’ll call you with the flight number as soon as I have it.”
“Right.” Liv fled back to the inn. Without a goodbye kiss. Without a lingering touch. She knew either one would shatter her.
She’d forgotten the agony. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe it had never been this bad before. Because for the first time since she’d been fifteen years old, for the first time since he had graduated from high school, this time…this time…they’d spent every day together. This time he’d been every breath she’d drawn.
Liv wondered how she was ever going to live th
rough this.
Six weeks later she knew the answer. She wouldn’t. She just existed.
They had everything they wanted, Hunter reminded himself six weeks later as he sped down the track at Daytona.
She was the track from hell. She had killed men, and she would kill again. It was his dream to conquer her, something he had never done before. He’d finished second here last year. He had the lead now, 1.7 seconds over the driver behind him, with six laps to go.
This lady, this track from hell, was his.
“Kirby’s on the apron,” his spotter squawked in his ear. “You’ll want to go high on turn three to avoid him.”
“Can’t do it,” Hunter snapped. “Rowlands is on my tail. It’ll cost me two-tenths if I go high, and he’ll gain on me.”
There was dead silence. Then the man pointed out the obvious. “He’s going to have to go high, too, Hawk.”
Of course he was, Hunter thought. Where the hell was his head? The same place it had been for nearly four hours now, for nearly five hundred miles. He was wondering if Vicky was watching and if his daughter knew he had the lead.
He wondered if Liv was beside her on the sofa in her sitting room, watching with her. He had talked to them last night. He called them every day. They had promised they would tune in for the race.
Counting down the last laps, that was all that mattered to him.
Vicky held nothing back so—if they really were watching—she’d be screaming him on. Liv would be…well, she’d be praying, he decided. That he would win, that he would come out of this alive. How did he know suddenly that she’d watched, she’d prayed, through every race of his whole career? It was a certainty in his gut, and it came from the look in her eyes months ago when he had first buried himself inside her again. That look had said she’d been with him through every race, through every year. It said that love—real love, true love—was something huge and never ending, something you couldn’t turn off like a light switch, something that rode you and consumed you through season after season, month after month, decade after decade, whether you liked it or not, whether you were together or not.
His spotter shouted into his headset.
Hunter realized that he was coming up hard on Kirby. He veered around him, putting the man a lap down. Nothing but black track ahead of him now. Dinny Mason in the number six car was going into the far turn, but Dinny—not allowing for the now defunct Kirby—was actually the last man at the end of the line.
Five laps to go.
The crowd was going wild. Black and gold flags blurred in the corners of Hunter’s vision. Their Hawk was back and he was returning in fine style. He was giving them what they wanted.
But it wasn’t enough. What he wanted was to come out of this alive to go back to Arizona.
In seven years of racing, he had never once given any consideration to his life before, he realized, or to the end thereof. He’d never thought about dying. Because he’d never had anything to live for.
Hunter downshifted into the curve. Came out of it, slammed his foot hard onto the accelerator again. And flew. Four laps later he sailed by the green flag for the last time. The next time he came by this way, it would be the black-and-white checkered. The last lap.
He glanced at the nonexistent passenger seat again. Liv was there again.
“Faster and faster, Hunter?” she asked. “What are you trying to catch?”
“I’m not trying to catch. I’m trying to quench.”
“Tell me what.”
“Anger. The fury that came from being pushed place to place by people who didn’t want me.”
“We want you. We never pushed you away. But you’re still going faster.”
He was. According to his crew chief, who passed the news on over his headphones, Hunter had just drawn out his lead over Rowlands to 2.3 seconds.
“What’s the finish line?” Livie asked him.
“You. It was always you.”
“Then come home. You have pigtails who needs you.”
“Do you need me, Livie?”
She didn’t answer. Because, Hunter knew, he’d destroyed her heart again when he’d gone away this time. And maybe this time he’d hurt her more than she could stand.
Her voice was always strained whenever he talked to her on the phone. Vicky had said Liv was crabby.
Your work is just one more way of roaming.
And still, even knowing that, she’d let him go again, Hunter thought. Knowing what it would do to her, to Vicky, she’d let him go. And she waited for him to come home.
Home. Yeah, he thought, yeah, the inn had become home. It was the place where she always welcomed him back with open arms, in spite of the pain. It was the back kitchen door his daughter scampered through, holding no grudges for the time he had been gone.
He had everything he wanted, but he had nothing at all. Not when he was away from there. From them.
His car roared past the checkered flag. The fans were on their feet. He heard them chanting his name. And he knew where he was going now, knew what was at the finish line.
He downshifted. They’d want him to do a few donuts on his way to Victory Lane. He’d give them what they wanted.
How much stupid money do you need?
I never stopped loving you, Hunter. Not one minute of one day you were gone.
He yanked the car around, drove onto the infield. Tore it up with his tires, going in tight circles. Then he stopped the car right there.
The crowd went silent. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. He was supposed to drive into Victory Lane. Talk to the newscasters. Climb up onto the roof of his car, wave a champagne bottle. Maybe open it and let it spew on the heads of his crew. Shout, jump up and down, carry on with happiness.
Hunter thought maybe he ought to do the roof-of-the-car thing after all.
He pulled himself through the window there in the infield. The crowd was chanting his name. They figured he was breaking custom just because he was back. They didn’t know he was leaving them again.
He climbed up on top of the car. Raised his arms in victory. Waited for the camera crews to zoom in on him there. Looked into one of the cameras.
“I’m coming home,” he told her, and prayed like hell she really was watching. “To stay.”
Vicky was doing somersaults down the center of Liv’s sitting room. But she went still when Hunter stopped his car in the infield. “He says only hot dogs do that! Only hot dogs stop out there and do all that spinning stuff.”
Liv was staring at his mouth. Trying to read his words. “He never won Daytona before,” she murmured absently.
“Is this what he meant about monkeys on his back?”
“Mmm. Maybe. Probably.”
“Hey, what’s he saying?”
Liv stood unsteadily. Her heart was going crazy in her chest.
“He says come to the airport.”
She shouldn’t have brought Vicky, Liv thought five hours later, cooling her heels at the gate. She couldn’t be sure he’d said what she thought he’d said, and there had been too many moments of hope before. Moments that had passed and withered.
If he didn’t do this, if he didn’t come, it would destroy their child, just as it had destroyed her back in the days when she had been little more than a child herself.
If he didn’t come…
The flight from Daytona was landing. They watched it hit the runway.
“Mom, are you sure?” Vicky asked again.
Of course she wasn’t.
It was half past eight on a Sunday night—but whether he showed up or he didn’t, Liv had already given up on the idea of sending Vicky to school tomorrow. There would either be a reunion…or there would be heartbreak.
Maybe he just wasn’t on this flight. That was a possibility. This flight had left Florida at ten past five, Eastern Time. He might not have been able to make it.
There was another flight coming in from Daytona at four in the morning. They’d have to wait for that on
e, too, if he wasn’t on this one. She’d have to be sure.
Had he meant tonight? Now? Immediately? Yes, she thought, because when Hunter wanted something…he wanted something. He would either be here tonight…or he really wasn’t coming back to stay at all.
She watched through the window as the arriving plane taxied up to the gate. She couldn’t breathe. Passengers began spilling through. Then she heard Vicky’s cry and she saw him.
“Dad!”
Vicky ran. Leaped. He caught her in the air. And held her. And then, over her shoulder, he found Liv’s eyes.
He didn’t say anything. He waited. His gaze was a question. Okay?
Liv nodded. Then she finally let herself cry.
She started to run for him, but he was already carrying Vicky in her direction. They collided. Somehow he found another free arm to hold her, too.
He’d known she’d be here, Hunter thought. She was the only one who’d ever noticed when he was gone.
“Don’t cry,” he said against her hair.
“Mom, this is good!” Vicky squealed. She was already wriggling for Hunter to let her down.
“Yes,” Liv croaked. She framed his face in her hands. “I can’t believe you did this. You really did this.” Was this for real? She was afraid to believe.
“Ah, God, Livie, I can’t do it—the whole circuit—without you.”
Her heart stuttered. “So you just came back to get us? So we can travel with you?” He’d offered her that before, eight and a half years ago, and she’d had to say no then, too. Because she still couldn’t spend Vicky’s childhood dragging her around the country.
“Sometimes,” he said vaguely. “Maybe. Hey, pigtails, where are you going?” She was sliding off.
“You know,” Vicky said, looking back, “I always heard airport food was awful, but I’m thinking, why not give it a try? Do you smell those sausage and peppers? I think it’s coming from over there.” She pointed.
“Not now!” Liv and Hunter chided together.
Vicky held her hands up in a truce and sat down.
Liv gave up on her pride. She clung to his shirtfront. “Please. Don’t tell me this is just a visit between races. You said…” She trailed off. She couldn’t bear to repeat the words she’d seen on television.