Hunter chuckled, muttering a curse under his breath. “Wish I’d have seen that.”
Mia tilted her head, her eyes searching his as she replied. “Good thing we’ve got it all recorded. You’ll just have to stay tuned to watch when it uploads.”
He looked down, a reddish color pooling into his cheeks.
“Yeah, except Hunter never watches,” Connor hollered from the table.
“Ooohhh,” the other men said, dragging the word out while looking at Hunter.
Mia walked the salad to the table.
“I’ll get the pizza,” Gramps announced. “Bill, how about you bless the food.”
Heads bowed. Hands clasped. And Mia clenched her eyes shut. But a few words into the prayer, she glanced over at Hunter. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see. Only knew that she hadn’t expected him to be looking back at her. But he was.
Heat flooded her face, and she clenched her eyes shut once more. Before the prayer came to an end, she could swear she heard Hunter chuckle under his breath.
Talk about annoying. If Hunter could get away with it, he’d single-handedly choke the life out of both Skinny freaking Alex and Bill. At least until they passed out. The pathetic duo was glued to Mia once more. Talking with her about this. Asking her about that. All the while flirting so shamelessly he might just lose the pizza he’d eaten.
After dinner, the group had opted for a round of games in the living room. Connor divided the teams, putting him, Alex, and Mia on one side with Karen, Bill, and Hunter on the other. Wayne said he’d switch teams as the score progressed, helping wherever he could be useful. Players took a card, then drew a picture explaining the card to the rest of their crew. Such games were at the top of Hunter’s most-hated-things-to-do list, but he shut his mouth and played along.
“Does anyone have a charger for my phone?” Mia asked once they’d finished up their millionth round.
Connor and Alex eyed the phone for a blink. “Hunter will. He has the same type of phone.”
“Yeah,” Hunter agreed with a nod. “I’ll go get it. Wayne? You mind filling in for me?”
Wayne gave him a thumbs-up. “Gotcha covered.”
Hunter strolled down the hall quickly enough, but slowed as he entered his room. He wasn’t sure he could take another minute of annoyance that evening. He’d only missed two days of being with the group, but already they seemed to have more inside jokes than he could sling a rope at. And man, was it ever irritating.
He sat on the edge of his sloppily made bed before falling back, musing he could drift into a much-needed sleep; he hadn’t been sleeping too well since … since the kiss and the dreams and the decision to steer clear of Mia.
“Hello?”
Hunter’s eyes shot open in surprise, revealing a tired-looking Mia in his doorway. Perhaps she hadn’t been sleeping either.
“Sorry.” She offered an apologetic grin. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to follow you in here or …”
In here? Whoa. “Uh, okay.” His pulse quickened. His palms broke into a sweat. He hadn’t had a girl in his room since …
Mia stepped farther inside, cupping her phone in one palm, and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed as well. Before Hunter could think to scoot over—he was in the center, after all—she fell back onto the mattress and sighed.
“Oh, this feels like heaven.” Her eyes drifted shut. Black lashes and pale pink lids. Her cheeks were flushed, and a glisten of moisture lined her hairline. She’d removed her hat during the game—probably since the front room had overheated with all the bodies.
Hunter held his breath as Mia breathed in and out. Slowly. Naturally. She seemed relaxed, which was quite the contrast to the energy stirring within him. He pulled in a shallow breath, exhaled too quickly, and resisted the sudden urge to reach out and twist one of her braids around his finger.
“You’re a pretty good artist,” she said, her voice lazy. “When you were drawing the cat food one, I totally knew what it was before your team guessed it.”
“Oh yeah?” he said cautiously. Was the compliment sincere or sarcastic? Either way, he could offer one back easily enough. “I was amazed by the way you knew what those guys were scribbling in there. I thought they were making some bird’s nest, and you figured out it was a chocolate chip cookie. It’s like you’re a mind reader.”
“No. Women can spot cookies from a mile away,” she said, the bed bouncing as she laughed.
Quiet took over for a blink or two, and the light overhead started to hum.
Hunter turned his face to the ceiling, his eyes wandering to a cobweb in the corner. A dark speck hovered there. Probably a fly. The irony didn’t escape him; that’s just what he felt like—a fly trapped in a well-designed web. Mia’s web. And he wasn’t sure how to get out.
Or if he even wanted to try.
From his periphery, he saw Mia shrug onto her side to face him. She cleared her throat. “So …” she said, drawing out the word. “Do you make a habit of hiding from a woman once you kiss her?”
Hunter wanted to slap a hand to his forehead. He resisted, but couldn’t hide the cringe that crinkled his face as he risked a glance at her. “Is that what it seems like?”
She laughed. A small sound at first, and then it grew bigger, her amusement either genuine or well feigned. “Oh,” she said with a sigh. “Yes, that’s exactly what it seems like. Do you regret it that much?”
Regret? He didn’t like the word on her lips. He propped himself on one elbow to face her, backing up to put space between them. “Do you regret it?”
A smile pulled at her full lips, but it wasn’t her real one. He’d seen it enough to know better. “You first,” she said.
“All right. No, I wouldn’t call it regret. Just …” He shrugged. “You’re leaving. I mean, you don’t even live here. So why invest, you know?” There. That made sense. She couldn’t argue with that.
“That was a really lame answer.”
Hunter shifted his weight to sit upright. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Yes.” Mia sat up as well, still facing him as her expression fell flat. “Pathetic, actually.” She reached out, slipped her silky hand around his arm, and ran the soft tips of her fingers along his bicep. “Hunter …”
Warmth stirred in his belly. His pulse hammered like the speakers in his truck when he cranked up the beat. “Yeah?”
Her lip twitched. “Goodbye.”
“Huh?”
She climbed off the bed and headed for the door.
“Mia, wait.” Hunter followed after her, but slowed when he heard the ranch hands coming down the hall.
“Did you get lost in there?” Bill asked.
“Why are you still holding your phone?” he heard Alex ask next.
Hunter rolled his eyes. Jeez, they were like watchdogs.
Squelching heat smothered his chest as he considered going after her, but a quick glance at the clock said it was already close to midnight. It was just what he needed to chicken out completely—an excuse. It was time for them to leave anyway. Wayne was no doubt ready to wrap it up and call it a night.
The sounds echoing down the hallway confirmed that thought. The boys were saying their goodbyes, probably giving the ladies hugs like they were long-lost friends. Hunter hurried over to his blinds in time to see Wayne open the passenger doors of his SUV for Mia and then Karen. The automatic porch light went out, and Wayne started up the engine.
Taillights glowed in the darkness as they headed down the drive, Mia’s final word echoing in Hunter’s head. Goodbye.
Chapter 12
Hunter didn’t remember feeling so restless in all his life. Sure, he’d had a lot of sleepless nights before, but none had made him feel like he needed to … to take such immediate action.
With one fast kick, he flicked the sheet off his body and groaned. Whether with no blankets, more blankets, an extra pillow, or none at all, Hunter couldn’t get comfortable.
While propping himself onto an elbo
w, he set his eyes on the glowing alarm clock beside his bed and cursed. “It’s not even one?”
That was it. He had to move. Get out of the dang house at least.
He climbed off the bed and huffed out a breath as he walked, fighting the surge of vertigo falling over him. He stood before his closet, reached for a pair of jeans, and slid them on without knowing where he’d go.
That wasn’t exactly true, he admitted, tugging a shirt off its hanger. A blue T-shirt he bought months ago and hadn’t yet worn. He was going over to Wayne’s. He was. He and the ladies would still be up. Heck, they’d left not much more than an hour ago. And he knew just how long a woman’s nighttime routine could take, being married to Vanessa as he’d been.
He brushed his teeth, slapped on some aftershave, and slipped out of the quiet house. Stray pebbles skittered across the dirt as Hunter strode purposefully toward his truck. The first hint of doubt crept in when he noticed that all the lights were out in the basement. If that rowdy bunch had already gone to bed, perhaps Mia had too. He gazed across the field; there wasn’t much light coming from Wayne’s. Just a tiny glow above the sink in the kitchen. Of course, the other side of the home, where Mia’s bedroom was, might tell a different story.
He gripped the wheel, circled around the drive, and headed toward Wayne’s. If she was already sleeping, he’d have to come back home and be miserable the entire night long. But it was possible he’d miss her in the morning. Perhaps they had plans to get up early and head out.
Hunter rolled down the window, his racing mind making it hard to breathe. He sucked in a deep breath of the fresh air as the house came into view. It looked dark and lifeless from a distance, but surely as he neared that would change. He’d catch evidence of a warm light glowing in the kitchen where Wayne and the girls would be chatting until the wee hours of night.
But as he neared, Hunter couldn’t find even a scrap of light in the place. Dark, darker, and darkest described the three front windows. The one in the middle was Mia’s. Gravel crunched beneath his tires as he slowed to a stop and killed the engine. Sounds of a distant train echoed from behind, the rhythmic click something he’d often fallen asleep to over the years.
He creaked open the door, stepped out, and started walking toward the house, the same way he had walked to his closet—like his subconscious knew what he was doing before he did. He hunched down, gathered a few pebbles, and walked to the middle window where Mia slept. He wouldn’t sit out in the car all night. And he wasn’t about to return to hours of fretting over how he’d offended her. Hours of seeing that face and hearing her one-word response to his excuse for dodging her. She’d given him a word, all right, and now she’d have to hear a few words from him.
Mia shifted from her side to her back, readjusting the pillow beneath her head. She should have known better than to travel without her own pillow. No matter how puffy or flat or in between, no other pillow felt right.
She pressed the back of her head into it, the puffy sides rising up around her cheeks. She exhaled slow and deep, determined to fall asleep at last, when a clink sounded at her window.
Mia’s eyes popped open. She lifted her head, wondering if she was only hearing things, when the sound came again. A tinny ping against the glass. Could Karen hear it too, or was it only against Mia’s window? The clink came again. Her heart galloped into a speeding beat. It was definitely her window.
She pulled the covers up to her chin. The natural thing to do in this situation was clear: get up, go to the window, and see just what was happening on the other side of that glass. But in the dark of the night, the odd sounds sending a chill down her back, the idea seemed far from natural. Crazy was more like it.
“Mia,” came a hissing voice. The combination of a whisper and a shout, like the one her mom used when Mia acted up during a sermon. A series of thuds came to the window before her name sounded again. “Mia, are you up?”
She’d imagined the three amigos standing out front in a fumbling bunch, wanting her and Karen to go toilet paper the ranch house down the road. But that final question revealed a bit of rasp in the voice of the visitor. A voice that sounded an awful lot like Hunter’s.
She shot up from her bed, stubbed her toe on the rocking chair, and grumbled under her breath as she lifted a slat in the blinds. It was lighter outside than it was in, the glow of the moon spilling over the night.
There stood Hunter. Was she dreaming?
She patted around for the cord to the blinds before locating the small knobs dangling at the ends. With one long pull, the slats lifted, exposing the full window. It took no more than seconds to find the lever to slide it open. Yet as she did, Mia could only imagine that something had gone wrong. Hunter must need to talk to Wayne.
“What’s wrong?” she hissed after cracking it open.
“Wrong?” He shook his head. “Nothing.”
Her shoulders dropped. She tilted her head. “Nothing?”
Hunter tucked his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “I just wanted to talk. Apologize, actually. For being so …”
“Childish?” she offered.
“Yes,” he mumbled. “Can you come out here for a minute? It won’t take long. I just … I really want to talk to you.”
And though a part of Mia really wanted to write him off, a bigger part wanted to talk to him, too. With a nod of her head, she pulled in a deep breath of bravery. He’d made an effort to fix things, after all. Come out here in the middle of the night, in fact.
“Be out in a minute,” she whispered loudly. And with that, she closed the blinds once more.
To say Mia took a decent amount of time to get outside was an understatement. Brushing her teeth was first on the list, an act that was accompanied by thoughts of the kiss they’d shared on the porch out front. The night cream she’d smothered on her face had turned clear, but the thick layer cracked when she smiled, so it had to go. Her eyebrows had to be darkened a bit, and since when did her face look so flat? A bit of blush to accent her invisible-unless-she-was-grinning-ear-to-ear cheekbones. And Hunter had already seen her with a rat’s nest for hair; no need to repeat that travesty.
That’s about the moment the guilt sank in. She’d have to settle for the clothes she was already wearing. A pair of cutoff sweats and a sloppy T-shirt. Of course, she did strap a bra on beneath it. Ready.
The front door opened with a creak. The porch light, which she’d learned was on a motion-sensor, glowed bright on the wooden slats of the deck. She pushed open the screen door next, and stepped onto the scratchy rug with her bare feet.
She didn’t see him right off, but she had a feeling he might be waiting on the patio swing they’d shared the other night. Just before they kissed, she reminded herself. She glanced over, saw him resting there with one arm across the length of the swing, and sucked in a stunned breath. He was incredible to look at. Incredible. Without the hat, his dark hair held a loose wave that accented the rugged look of his facial hair. And those eyes. Those green wonders that seemed to hold mysteries she might never unfold.
The idea caused a small ache in her heart as she stepped over the weathered surface, the wood creaking beneath her feet. Her mind drifted back to the conversation they’d shared in his room earlier. She hadn’t planned to confront him about avoiding her; it had slipped right from her lips. Mia was used to asking questions when they came to mind. It’s what helped her when interviewing people about their jobs. Sure, she had a list of things she intended to ask beforehand, but some of the best questions would come to her only once she started to do what they did for a living.
“Are you going to sit?” Hunter asked, patting the cushion beside him.
Mia nodded. “Okay.” The air was warm. It felt nice against her skin. And it smelled nice too. The smoky hints of a fire mingled with pine. And his spicy aftershave she’d come to recognize.
She lowered herself onto the corner of the swing, pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. She hadn’t realize
d she was leaving so much space between them, but as she looked down at it, noticing that Hunter was eyeing the space too, it seemed close to the size of the Grand Canyon.
“You cold?” he asked, his voice low and husky and sexier than she could believe.
She shook her head.
He nodded. “Good.”
Mia looked out beyond the porch banister, giving him a slow nod in return. The word awkward floated to mind. Crickets began to chirp. Or perhaps they’d been doing so all along.
“I’m sorry that I offended you earlier.”
The sentence took her by surprise. Had her shifting her gaze to see if the sincerity she’d heard was there on his face, too.
It was. His deep green eyes were sad. Apologetic. “I didn’t mean to do that. I just …” He huffed out a breath and leaned his elbows onto his knees. “Have you heard about my ex-wife?”
Wife? The word repeated full blast in her head until it fell off her lips. “Wife?”
He gave her a one-shoulder shrug. “The marriage was annulled, so technically I’m not divorced. I mean, it’s sort of like it’d be if we’d only been engaged. On paper, anyway. Her name is Vanessa McKlainy. Have you heard of her?”
Mia’s eyes widened. “That’s who you were married to?”
“So you knew I was married before?”
She shook her head. “No. No, I totally didn’t. But I know who Vanessa McKlainy is, of course. Who doesn’t? She’s …” Mia stopped herself from gushing, realizing it was probably a touchy subject. “She’s a big Hollywood name right now.”
Hunter nodded. “Yep.” And then he was on his feet, pacing toward the banister. He spun around, leaned back against it, and folded his arms. “I haven’t dated anyone since. And I know you were offended by what I said about you leaving and why bother getting involved. But the thing is, after having someone leave you the way she left me—for her career, never giving it a second thought—I’m not dying to revisit that place, if you know what I mean.”
Once Hitched Twice Shy Page 8