by Cora Seton
“Thank you,” she said finally.
“For what.”
“For being honest. For treating me like… an equal. Like just any other man you might share an evening with.”
He nodded gravely. “I have a lot of respect for the way you protected your family. I’d be honored to have you by my side if trouble broke out.”
Pride swelled her heart, although she tried to squash it. She might not like it that the General sent him, but Hunter was a warrior and she respected him.
“But if you think I see you as any man I might share an evening with,” Hunter went on in his honey-smooth Southern drawl. “Well, Jo Reed, you’re mighty mistaken.”
Chapter Six
‡
Hunter kept himself from smiling at the telltale signs of Jo’s surprise—and interest—at what he’d said. Sitting so close together, the night cooling down as the shadows deepened, he noticed the flicker of her eyelids and the straightening of her shoulders.
She turned to him, and he met her mouth with his own, sliding his lips over hers softly at first, then cupping her head with his hand and bringing her closer for a real kiss when she didn’t protest.
Jo tasted… good. Toothpaste fresh—minty and sharp with a tang that was hers alone. He wanted much more than this, but as his fingers tangled together the collar of her jacket and strands of her hair, she chuckled beneath him.
He pulled back. Cocked his head.
“You’re pulling my hair.”
“Sorry.” He let go immediately.
“Don’t be. It’s just so… normal… in the middle of something so…” She searched for a word.
“Amazing?” he supplied.
“Yeah,” she said simply, and Hunter couldn’t help himself. He pulled her close and kissed her all over again. “You’re pretty good at that,” she told him when he next drew away.
The simple compliment warmed him in a way few statements ever had. He was good at kissing? That was gratifying to know. “You’re pretty good yourself.”
Jo shrugged.
Hunter knew he could push things along, but this opportunity for togetherness was too good to squander. He could get laid—which would be nice—or he could build a foundation for a life with Jo. As hard as it was to ignore the ache of his desire for her, he decided to exercise a little restraint. For now.
“Should we set up for the night? It’s getting late.” He braced himself for a quip from her about how eager he was to get her alone, but Jo just shrugged again, rose to her feet and moved indoors.
The stables were pungent, but Hunter was no novice to the smell of horses. Plenty of fresh air came in from the open front door, and besides, he’d dealt with far worse quarters lots of times. They’d carried down some camping equipment Jo had rustled up from the cellar of the main house, and Hunter got to work pumping up two air mattresses that would make the night far more comfortable. When he was done, they unrolled their sleeping bags.
Hunter wasn’t sure what Jo expected, but he stripped down to his boxer briefs, placing his pistol nearby, ready to hand. Normally he slept in the buff, but out here, he was the first line of defense. If those kids—or anyone else—came back to bother the horses again, he’d have his boxer briefs on in case the night called for swift action.
After pulling off his boots, stripping off his pants and yanking his shirt up and over his head, he found Jo watching him unabashedly. She stripped down, too, after placing her own firearm on the floor nearby. First her boots and jeans. Then she unhooked her bra and, with a few complicated motions, extricated it from under her T-shirt. Hunter waited, hoping against hope for more, but she bent to crawl into her sleeping bag, still wearing her panties and shirt. He stifled a groan, knowing he’d never sleep tonight, but reminding himself that patience was a virtue. Someday soon, he promised himself, he’d make love to Jo over and over again until he’d taken his fill—and left her so satisfied she never wanted another man.
For now, however, he needed to learn more about her, and let her discover more about him.
“I haven’t done something like this since I was a kid,” he began.
“Sleeping in a stable?”
“Sleeping out on a ranch in general.”
“Did you grow up on one?”
He settled into his own sleeping bag and linked his fingers behind his head. They’d brought pillows with them. His Navy SEAL teammates would laugh if they could see him. “I grew up beside one, but I might as well have lived there.” He explained about Marlon and the rest of the Franks. “Sue-Ann was like a second mother to me. I ate at their table every night I could get away with it. The Franks were like my siblings.”
“So you grew up with a bigger family than I did.”
He thought about that. “In a way. But I still had to go home most nights.”
“What was that like?”
“Quiet, mostly. Mom kept to herself, so our life was pretty dull. She read a lot. Wrote her poetry. Watched some TV. She liked police procedurals.” He smiled at the memory.
“She was a poet?”
“Yes. Even won a prize or two.” He’d never quite gotten her poetry himself, but he was proud of her for it.
“I’ll have to look her up. What about your dad?”
“He wasn’t in the picture. Not really.”
Jo’s touch brought him back to the present. “That hurt a lot,” she whispered. “Not having a father.”
He realized missing a father was something Jo understood in a way few people did. Once, it had hurt him really badly—so badly he’d considered…
“I’m okay now,” he assured her.
But she was still touching him, and her fingers tightened around his wrist. “Don’t—” Pain laced her voice. “If it ever gets hard again, don’t—”
Hunter pulled away from her. “I won’t,” he said sharply. He knew exactly what she meant, although he had no idea how she could know he’d once thought of ending his life. “I was young. I had no idea how hard life could get—or how you have to stick with it for the times when it’s sheer heaven.”
He lifted a hand to touch her chin to soften the moment, and when she allowed him to, he leaned in and kissed her. Jo met his desire with her own, and he soon forgot what they were talking about, lost in the feel of her.
It was a long time before they stopped kissing and started talking again. Jo wondered what had happened to her determination to keep him at arm’s length. She wasn’t sure how the SEAL had gotten under her defenses again. All she knew was she liked it when he touched her.
She didn’t know what the morning would bring. Didn’t want to think about the future. For once she wanted to keep to the moment. To simply be here alone in the dark with Hunter.
“I need to apologize to you.” His voice came from the gloom.
“What for?” Had any man ever apologized to her?
Not that she could think of.
“For assuming your plans wouldn’t be as well thought out as mine. I took a look at them, and you did a really good job. I’m impressed.”
She didn’t know what to say to that.
“And I’m sorry I ever doubted you. That wasn’t fair.”
“Thank you.” She’d watched the General all her life and had seen just how hard it was for most men to admit they made mistakes. Hunter was different than most men, she supposed.
She reached out impulsively and touched his arm, needing to be sure his feelings matched his thoughts. He didn’t move, but she saw him watching her, his eyes shining in the darkness.
“Why do you do that?” he asked curiously.
“Just to see what’s going on with you.”
“I just told you what was going on with me.”
“Words and feelings are two different things.”
He nodded. “I want to kiss you again. Just a kiss,” he assured her when she hesitated.
She wasn’t naive enough to believe that, but she found herself inching closer, glad when he closed the gap between
them and pressed his mouth to hers again. He was warm, soft but soon demanding more from her. Jo gave in willingly, wanting what he was offering, wanting to give him what he asked for.
Her whole body shimmered with desire, that sweet ache deep inside her telling her that soon—soon—she’d be with Hunter, whether or not it was wise.
She wanted him. Wanted to be close to him. And touching him, she knew he wanted her just as much. In fact, something was deepening inside him. His desire was turning into something more—something she’d never felt from a man. A combination of heat, want and—
She was afraid to put it into words.
He pulled back. “Jo Reed, where have you been all my life?”
He was falling in love. This wasn’t lust. Nor was it simply a case of being without female company for too long. Hunter had never talked to women he dated about his father—or lack of one. He’d rarely talked about his childhood with anyone, as a matter of fact—not even Marlon after the awful night he’d learned the truth about his father.
Jo stiffened. “What is it?”
He realized she was touching him. Had she felt his distress at the memory?
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Whatever it is goes to the heart of it all.”
He wasn’t sure what she mean by that, but she was right; it wasn’t nothing. That night had been the worst of his life—worse than anything he’d been through since, and that was saying a lot.
“My mother never wanted to talk about my dad,” he forced himself to say, thinking at first he could sum it up in a few lines and brush the ancient pain back under the rug where it belonged. He was grateful for the dark. Grateful Jo couldn’t see how much it all still affected him.
Of course, she could feel it.
He pushed that thought down and kept going. “She put me off whenever I asked about him. So I didn’t ask about him, no matter what happened at school or on the playing field.”
“Playing field?”
“Football. I was a wide receiver. Marlon was quarterback. We were pretty good, but not good enough to get recruited. Still, it was fun.” He thought back to the football games. Friday nights full of testosterone and partying. Sometimes he’d felt like he was like all the other players—when they won. When he was in the thick of a throng of high fives and celebrations.
“I didn’t have a dad growing up. Didn’t even know who he was. You can imagine how other kids were when they wanted to get a rise out of me,” he said. “I tried to shrug it off. Act like I didn’t care. Of course I did.”
“It all blew up?”
“Prom. Junior year. I went with Karen Henderson. Marlon took Marie Jones. Karen was supposed to go with this two-bit thug named James Mitchell. I knew that. I asked her anyway, and she said yes.”
“What happened?” Jo’s voice came out of the darkness. She was still touching him, and Hunter liked the soft pressure of her fingers on his arm.
“James showed up, drunk and ready for a fight. He called me every name in the book to draw me out, and when he called me bastard, he got the brawl he was looking for. Then he said something else. A name. No one had said that to me before, though looking back I’m sure a lot of people had guessed. He probably heard it from his folks.”
“What name?”
“Judge Drake Stone. The man whose courtroom my mother worked in at her first stenographer job—before she was transferred to Finley. I got kicked out of the dance for knocking James unconscious, but I didn’t care. I had a name. I had a connection. I drove straight to the man’s house two towns over and confronted him.”
“What did he say?” Jo pushed up on one elbow.
“He didn’t deny it, although he brought me out on the porch to have his say. Said it had to be clear to me I couldn’t enter his house. He said he’d done all he could for me. He had a family already, and he had to stick to it. I told him getting my mother pregnant wasn’t doing much. He wished me well and said good night.”
Jo waited as if she knew there had to be more.
“I meant to go home. Instead I found myself at the Franks’. In Marlon’s father’s office, where the gun safe was. I knew Marlon’s parents were out of town.” Marlon was the only one who knew this part of the story. Hunter couldn’t believe he was telling Jo. “I also knew where Mr. Frank kept the key. I got it. Opened the safe. Took out a pistol and fetched the ammunition from his desk drawer.”
He hadn’t known whether to kill his father or himself.
“Marlon caught up to me. He’d heard what happened and left Marie behind.” He didn’t want to put the rest into words. “He saved a life that night.” To this day he wasn’t sure whose.
“What did your mother do when she heard?” Jo whispered.
“Talked to me. Finally. Not much, but a little. Told me she’d lost her head over Stone. Told me she’d never regretted what happened, even though she wished I’d had a traditional family. When I got my anger under control and asked her why she’d never found another man, she said… she said she got stuck.”
Jo was silent for a moment. “Do you know what she meant by that?”
“No. Except once burned, twice shy, I guess.”
“Or…” Jo bit her lip. “Is it possible she still loves him?”
“Loves him? She hates him. She has to for what he did.”
“Maybe. We don’t truly know what happened between them.”
“He didn’t even acknowledge me.” Hunter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Didn’t she understand how much it had hurt to have his father—the man who should have loved him more than anyone else—turn his back and shut his door on him?
“Not to the world,” she agreed quietly. “But he did acknowledge you when you confronted him. He didn’t lie about what he’d done. He owned up to being your father. I’m not saying that’s good enough,” she went on when Hunter would have pulled away. “I’m saying he did what he thought he could do. He had a wife already, right? Did he have kids?”
“Yeah. They were a few years older than me. Both of them off at college by the time I figured it out. I’ve never run into them.”
“I wonder if they know about you.”
He’d never really thought about that. He had a brother and sister out there somewhere. A half-brother and sister.
It was unfathomable.
“Have you ever talked to him since you grew up?”
“Hell, no. I don’t want to talk to him. He made his choice. He could have come after me at any time, and he didn’t. I don’t want him in my life.”
“That’s understandable.” She squeezed his wrist. “Besides, you’re your own man now. You’re making your own way in the world. The past is the past.”
He wished that was true. “Not for Marlon.”
He hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but Jo’s quiet nature invited confidences.
“In what way?”
Did he really want to talk about it? Somehow, here in the stable, out on their own, he felt like he could talk about anything.
“He was supposed to propose to Marie that night. Instead, he spent it with me.” Kept him from pulling a trigger and ending a life. Most likely his own. He’d never felt such grief before or since, and he’d never wanted to step out of his body and leave it all behind so strongly. Marlon had walked him through those coal-black hours, talked to him, plied him with coffee, wrenched the gun from his hand, locked it back in its cabinet and pocketed the key. It was weeks before Hunter woke up to the damage he’d done to his friend. “Marie spent that night with James Mitchell, and they were married three months later, before she began to show.”
“Oh, no.”
Hunter was thankful Jo didn’t brush it all off as teenage angst. She was raised in a small town, too, and he assumed she’d seen a number of weddings among her school-age friends. He’d been surprised to find that some of his city counterparts in the Navy scoffed at the idea of marrying young.
“They’re still together. Four kids.” He took
a deep breath and to his surprise he realized he felt lighter than he had in a long time. That story had pressed on him. He’d never felt comfortable with his mother’s choices. He still wasn’t sure why she’d done what she had. And he still felt responsible for ruining Marlon’s life. May was Marlon’s rebound relationship, and they’d rushed right into marriage, both of them searching for something to make them whole. It was no surprise it hadn’t turned out well.
“When did you join the Navy?”
“The very next day. I refused to stay in that town one more night. Marlon drove me to a recruiting office the next afternoon and signed up with me. I didn’t realize he’d already heard about Marie and James. We told each other we were done with Finley. We wanted to see the world. I shacked up at a hotel until it was time to go. Refused to return home. Marlon did all the running around for me and didn’t say a word about his planned proposal or the way I’d ruined it until we were on our way.”
“You blame yourself for what happened between him and Marie?”
“Of course I do.”
“Hunter.” Jo seemed to be considering her words. “Do you really think a seventeen-year-old who slept with another man at the very first opportunity would have made Marlon a good wife?”
“She was angry—”
“Because her date’s best friend went through the biggest crisis of his life?”
“She misunderstood. By the time he could explain to her, what’s done was done.”
Jo sat up. “In other words, Marlon was the one who refused to get back together with her. If that’s true, he must not have loved her very much.”
“She’d been unfaithful to him. She was pregnant.”
“Exactly my point. Look, either she wasn’t that into him, or he wasn’t that into her. Otherwise they’d be together no matter what happened that night.”
Hunter sat up, too, finding he couldn’t pinpoint the problem with her logic. “I… guess.”
“I think sometimes we carry the burdens from our pasts for too long. Maybe it’s time to set yours down and make a fresh start.”