Pictures of him and Liz as infants in diapers, of them together on the swings, the teeter-totter, in the sandbox, surrounded the space. A photo of them as adolescents, grinning and holding hands, was tacked above the crib. “Your Mom and Dad” were penciled in above each photo.
There were more: photos of him in high school with his jock buddies. Newspaper clippings of his high school and college football games. And a clipping of an article on wildland firefighters by a Montana newspaper in which he’d been quoted. That article had been printed about two years ago. The word “Daddy” had been traced over each photo and clipping.
His heart pounded in like a pneumatic drill in his chest and his mind went numb. For a while he simply stood there, absorbing what he was seeing.
Comprehending.
Understanding.
Liz was far from the uncaring, cold bitch she had made herself out to be. She’d had him and the rest of the town fooled with the careless attitude she’d adopted after they’d broken up. The same attitude she’d shoved in his face when he asked her for help with Abbie.
She cared. She’d always cared. This collection proved it.
Realization slapped him hard: Liz had more than cared…for the last thirteen years, she’d been living with a completely shattered heart.
Liz lay on her back, the meadow grass soft underneath her head, and watched the beautiful billows of white clouds ease their way across the sky. If only she could climb a magical staircase and jump aboard, sail away to a place where her past didn’t exist. If only magic really did exist and wishes could come true.
If only she had the strength to make it through the day.
A shuddering, hiccup-y sigh staggered around in her chest. Tears formed and her nose threatened to run. Enough. She’d had enough crying in her lifetime, and especially over the last hour. She had no clue what she was thinking when she’d gone up into the attic and unlocked that padlock.
She let out a sharp laugh. That’s the point: she wasn’t thinking.
Bad enough that she would be seeing her baby—the girl, she mentally corrected—later on today, but did she have to rub her own face in all the old pain? Feel all over again the fear and misery and defeat of losing Hunter and her baby?
A crackling sound in the woods brought her upright. The mother deer and her fawn? Certainly no human knew their way to her secret hidey-hole. As the creek made a sudden turn in its path, a small inlet had formed with a little pond and an adjacent meadow, all hidden and blocked by blackberry bushes on almost all sides.
While out hunting for frogs one summer evening when she and Hunter were kids, they’d found a narrow pathway, probably made by deer, to the hidden meadow. They’d named it The Magic Meadow and would play for hours, chasing frogs, catching minnows, and making wishes. One summer, they’d even built a fort out of surplus lumber from a nearby construction site. The fort, nothing more than a lean-to, had collapsed under a three-foot load of snow several winters later. They’d mourned its loss, vowing to repair the fort the following summer.
But when summer came again, they rarely came out to the meadow. They had other things besides meadows to explore: namely, each other’s bodies.
A large “crack” sounded, then another. Followed by a loudly uttered, “Shit.”
Hunter.
Liz covered her face with her hands. So much for having a good crying jag alone in a peaceful meadow. No sense in trying to run or hide. Hunter was bulldozing his way along the only exit route.
“Damn, Hunter, make a little more racket, why don’t you? They can’t hear you in the next county over,” Liz called out. Her voice sounded hoarse and choked with emotion.
“You have such a wonderful way of greeting me. So warm and sunny.” Hunter stumbled through the overgrown woods and into the sunlit meadow. She wanted to laugh when he tripped on a rock, feeling like he deserved the humiliation, but found her breath had been taken away by the sight of him.
In a light blue button-down Oxford shirt, faded jeans, and with his tousled dark brown hair, no matter how the man had treated her, he still turned her on. And made her heart ache.
“We need to talk.” Hunter bent to dust leaves off his jeans. His hair, thick and full, fell in a curled wave over his forehead when he stood up, making him look like a comic book Superman. With his bulging biceps, narrow hips, and muscled thighs, he could easily have played the role. She couldn’t help it—she giggled.
Hunter lifted his head up at the sound and grinned at her. At the sight of his green eyes and broad smile, Liz’s mind snapped back to attention. He wasn’t wanted. Not by her, not here, not now. “What is this, role reversal?” she said, snorting. “Isn’t the woman the one who begs the guy to talk, not the other way around?”
He shot her a look. “Stop avoiding the subject. You’re deliberately twisting the conversation.”
“Bite me.” She laid back down on the meadow, clenching the soft grass between tight fingers.
Hunter crossed the meadow to sit by her, his hip nudging her own.
“Time to listen, then,” he said.
Liz rolled over onto her stomach, cradling her head in her arms folded under her. Hiding her tears. Damned things kept dripping. “Seriously, go away, Hunter.”
He sat silent and she watched an ant carry a stick three times its length over a blade of grass. Still he waited.
Curiosity got the best of her. “How did you know I was here?”
“I went by the house,” he said. “I was worried when the door swung open, so I went on a hunt. Your car was in the driveway and the house wasn’t locked. When it was clear you weren’t in the house, I figured you either had walked to the grocery store or ended up here. I gambled on you running to our Magic Meadow.”
“Why’d you bother to come out here? Oh, yeah—to get me to talk.” She tried scoffing but the words came out shaky.
“No. I was worried about you.”
“Right. Like I believe that. The last time you worried about me was when we were teenagers humping in my bedroom and you didn’t want my mom to catch us.”
Hunter didn’t respond. Her throat felt too tight, as if she couldn’t get enough air. She coughed before speaking again. “But given what you later revealed about how you thought of me, it’s highly unlikely you were worried about me then, either. You just didn’t want to get caught because you’d get grounded and lose your place on the football team.”
She could feel Hunter roll to his side to face her. She ignored him.
“The last time I worried about you,” he said with a voice low and paced, “was a few minutes ago when I thought you might have injured yourself. I hauled ass turning your house upside down looking for you.”
Liz couldn’t help it—she peeked at him. He’d worried about her?
A crooked smile formed on his face. He reached out slowly, then stroked a strand of hair behind her ear and blew out a long breath. “Before that, the last time I worried about you was when you took off that summer you were pregnant. I spent an entire week being eaten up inside, not knowing where you’d gone, or even why. I was worried beyond sick.”
Liz raised her head off her arms and gave it a little shake. “What do you mean, when I took off? You knew I was spending the rest of my pregnancy at my aunt’s in Sacramento.”
His lips pulled together, pursed. He seemed intent on her ear, stroking the hair behind it, tracing the folds with a finger. He said, quietly, “I think something happened years ago. Something neither of us knew about.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She edged up onto her elbows.
Hunter looked her in the eyes. “Liz, I never knew where you went. The last time I saw you was the day before summer vacation, at school. Then you were gone and I had no clue where.”
She straightened up, her spine going rigid. “But I told you. I wrote a note I left with my mom to give to you, explaining everything. Besides, my mom said you’d left for that stupid job with your uncle, anyway.”
Hunter swore
. Her gut twisted. Something wasn’t right.
“Why did you decide to stay in Sacramento that summer?” Hunter’s jaw clenched tight and he wouldn’t connect his gaze with hers.
“I went to Sacramento to spend the week with my cousin. I was pouting, because you’d ditched me to go earn money. But then after everything changed between us and I was alone, Tina thought it would be best if I kept hiding the pregnancy from everyone in Meadowview. She said it would be easier for me to return with the baby instead of living through having everyone laugh at me while I was pregnant.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “We’d agreed on facing anyone who said anything bad about us together. But you left anyway.”
“Wait a minute,” she huffed. “Don’t go blaming this on me. You were the one who took off for that weeklong job at your uncle’s farm without even telling me. You’re the one who dumped me to go out with Becky Slattery. So don’t be pissed at me.”
Hunter plucked a grass stem from the earth and twirled it in his fingers, then stuck it in his mouth, the way he used to when he was a kid. Her heart fluttered underneath her ribs.
He sucked in a deep breath before blowing it out slowly and saying, “I’m not pissed at you, Liz. I’m pissed at your mom.” Hunter looked at her then, his eyes a hazy blue, shadowed by something indefinable.
“Why? I mean, I have loads of reasons to be pissed at Tina—deadbeat boyfriends, smoldering cigarette butts all over the house, dumping me with relatives every time she went on a bender—but what did she do to piss you off now? She’s dead.”
“She lied. Back then. She lied to you and she lied to me.”
No. Liz reeled back. Tina could be a lot of things—a bad mother and poor role model figured in the forefront—but she didn’t lie. She couldn’t have. Not about Hunter and the baby.
“She lied?” Liz asked, her voice small.
Hunter’s face tightened, a pulse throbbed along the vein in his neck. “There was no job at my uncle’s. I didn’t blow you off to go earn money. I never went out with Becky Slattery. And I certainly wasn’t the one who ended our relationship.”
Oh, God. She didn’t want to hear what Hunter was saying. Didn’t want to know what her mother had done. To her. To Hunter.
To their baby.
“But when I called my friends,” she said, her voice shaky, “they all said you were going out with Becky. That you’d hooked up with her at some party. I didn’t believe them, but when I asked Tina, she said she hadn’t wanted to tell me but the rumor was true. You took up with Becky and never even gave me the decency of dumping me in person.” She felt a sob begin to build. Not now. She could not lose control now.
“I know there were rumors out there about me and Becky, but I loved you. None of the rumors were true. I wanted to be with you. But Tina said—” He stopped speaking and blew out a breath.
“Said what?” Liz asked, dully, the familiar hollow ache forming in her chest. She’d lived with that ache since the day her mom confirmed her boyfriend had moved on. That he no longer wanted her. That he’d snagged the head cheerleader—the banker’s daughter—the town princess.
The perfect socialite.
Hunter cupped her chin in the palm of his hand and lifted her face upward until she looked him in the eye. “Tina lied to us. She set all this up. She told you I’d blown you off, let you think I was dating Becky. And she told me you’d gone to Sacramento because you wanted to break up but couldn’t face me.”
She couldn’t stop the tears. They came pouring out of her eyes, making cold tracks down her cheeks. Tina had lied. Her own mother had lied to her. And not some small, insignificant lie, but one as big as the universe. “But…when did she tell you this? Why did she tell you?”
Hunter slid his fingers into her hair and ran his thumb along her jaw line. A shiver crawled up her spine. Her body shifted, angling toward him, like a sunflower tracking the path of the sun.
“I went to your house at night the way I always did. It was empty. Tina’s car was gone, the lights were out. I left a note on the door, then came back the next morning. Still no Tina, and no you. For a week, your house was empty and I was going ballistic. Then Tina showed up, drunk. She’d probably been on a binge. She told me that lie about you wanting to break up with me.”
“You believed her. After all we’d been through, you chose to believe Tina.” She looked away, then back at Hunter. “Of course you did. I believed her, too.”
Hunter nodded, his gaze flicking over her face, as if he were memorizing her features. “Yes, and I’ll never forgive myself. I didn’t want us broken up—I loved you. You were my best friend and my soul mate. And I listened to your mom and lost everything.”
A wave of emotion slammed into her. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He’d loved her. He hadn’t wanted to let her go.
“Oh—” A soft sob escaped her mouth, then another and another, until she found herself with her head buried in Hunter’s warm chest, sobbing like there was no tomorrow. “Y-y-y-you loved me,” she bawled into his shirt.
His arms wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her tight. “Yeah, I loved you.”
“I loved you, too.”
He chuckled, the sound warm and welcoming, washing over her like a gentle, lapping wave, and then she felt his lips caressing her forehead, warm and soft. He trailed kisses down her cheek. When his mouth reached hers, he hesitated, as if allowing her to take the next step forward.
Her body trembled, her bones turning to liquid. She yearned to melt her mouth to his. But if she did, if she so much as brushed her lips against Hunter’s, everything would change.
The sexual connection they’d had the other day had been triggered by her need for power and revenge and fueled by the sexual attraction of two people starving for one another’s bodies. Hot, heavy, hard. Something they could both walk away from. But if they came together now, would they be able to walk away? Would she be able to say goodbye to the only man she’d ever loved?
* * *
Hunter forced himself to keep from kissing Liz, although the need and desire to capture her lips with his and entwine his tongue with hers nearly overwhelmed him. He needed Liz to come to him. She had to make the decision to step forward or pull back.
His pulse raced, triggered in part by his body’s sexual attraction to Liz and in part by the adrenaline that shot through his veins when he’d realized what Tina had done.
Liz’s mom had broken them up. Made him lose his best friend and the mother of his child.
Made him hate Liz.
At least…he’d hated Liz until she’d tried to seduce him a couple of days ago.
Somehow that attempt to gain power over him, both pitiful and courageous at the same time, had touched him, made him melt a little. The hatred he’d had for Liz after she’d given up their child, that resentment and anger that he’d held onto so tightly for so many years, had begun to seep away.
Liz turned her head slightly, merging her exhales with his. He counted breaths in an attempt to slow his body’s accelerating heartbeat. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers as he spoke.
She remained still, much to his disappointment. He’d give her another few seconds to kiss him and then he would concede defeat. He’d pull away, stand up, and head back to the house to wait the few hours until Abbie showed up. Liz could follow him or stay out in their hidden meadow. He wouldn’t push her.
Liz shifted, bringing her mouth closer to his. She inhaled and held her breath for what seemed to be an eternity, then placed her lips on his.
Need punched him in the stomach. He wanted to rip her clothes off and merge himself completely with her. Hold her to him and never let her go. Instead, he followed her lead, gently kissing her, lightly skimming his hands over her arms, his thumbs only barely touching the sides of her breasts.
He slanted his head slightly and flicked the tip of his tongue against hers. Asking, questioning, but not pushing. Liz moaned and opened
her mouth to his. He fought the urge to take her hard, to plunge his tongue into her mouth. Instead, he explored and tasted, slowly and gently. He slid one hand around her back, then up underneath her blouse, enthralled with the silky sensation of her skin under his fingertips. He spread his hands wide, letting his thumbs sneak forward to brush the undersides of her breasts. Liz moaned.
He opened his eyes at the sound, taking in the sight of them, limbs entwined, panting, rolling around in a meadow. He pulled his mouth from hers, a chuckle breaking loose.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, burying her mouth against his neck.
“We’re making out.”
“Isn’t this called foreplay?” Liz kissed his neck, tonguing the hollow of his throat.
“Um…” He fought to concentrate. God, but did her tongue ever feel good. “Foreplay is when you know you’re about to have sex. Making out is when you hope to have sex.”
She licked him again, her tongue hot on his skin. He shuddered. “And you’re hoping we’ll have sex?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah. Hoping big time.” He nuzzled her neck, breathing in the familiar scent of freesias and lilies.
Liz laughed, a rush of breath against his chest. “We are in the Magical Meadow, you know. Where hopes and dreams can come true. If you wish hard enough.”
Still in make-out mode, he fiddled with the fastener to her bra. “I seem to remember both of us wishing we’d get bikes from Santa one year.”
“And I remember you were the one who got a mountain bike with a big red bow under your Christmas tree. I didn’t.” The catch to her bra released and Liz let out a sharp gasp. Her hands roved, coming to a stop at his chest. Slowly, she worked the buttons of his shirt out of their buttonholes and tugged his shirttails out of his pants. Bare, his pectorals flexed.
“And I rubbed that fact in your face, claiming I’d wished harder than you.” He pulled his hands away from her breasts to unbutton her shirt, then bent his head to her kiss her again, pleased with Liz’s moan of pleasure. “I’m sorry your wish didn’t come true,” he murmured.
“None of them did.”
Claiming The One (Meadowview Heat 3; The Meadowview Series 3) Page 10