I shudder and shake against Hunter, unafraid to show him just how much he affects me. He seems pleased, kissing me as warm water splashes over us. I’m still shaking when he lets go, pushing hard and deep into me, his fingers digging into my rear as mine dig into his shoulders.
“Wife to be,” he says breathlessly. “I love you.”
“And I love you,” I reply, just as short of breath. “Husband to be.”
“It’s up to you if you want to wear your ring,” he tells me before we leave our hotel room for the television studio.
“You don’t want me to?” I imagine it’s because he wants to tell his family or his friends first, and I think the same thing, that I should let my parents know before they see it on TV.
“I do want you to,” he says, his arm around me, his face so close to mine, “but I don’t want you to think I’m trying to prove something or make a show of this on TV. It’s not some stunt.”
“I don’t think that.”
“Good. Because I can’t wait for you to be my wife, Alli. You made me the happiest man in the world when you said yes.”
I smile. “Did you think I’d say no?”
“Honestly?”
I nod, touching my finger to the tip of his beautiful nose. “Yes. Honestly.”
He sighs and looks down before bringing his eyes back up to me. “I was afraid you’d think it was too fast, that it wasn’t enough time for you to figure out if this was the right choice for you.”
“Of course it’s the right choice,” I say, giving him a quick kiss on his lips to make sure he knows I’m being sincere.
His eyes are closed when I pull my lips from his. He’s smiling, but then his lips turn down as he opens his eyes again. “There are still things I haven’t told you, Alli, things I guess I’m ashamed to admit to you.”
I lay a hand on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be ashamed to tell me anything.”
“These things I am.”
“Well, you haven’t cheated on me, have you?” It’s the only thing that comes to mind as something he’d be truly ashamed to admit to me, knowing I’d been through it before.
“No. Of course not,” he says, sounding almost hurt.
At his answer, a tension that had just grown in my stomach relaxes. “So, then, whatever it is you feel ashamed to tell me, you can tell me in time, okay? It doesn’t have to come all at once.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. You have ten years on me, Hunter, so there’s a lot of life you’ve lived before me, and I think it’s better if you spread that out.”
A slow smile spreads over his handsome face. “I’d never tell you things about my past to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“I know you wouldn’t, but I can be just as jealous as you can.”
The smile continues, and is followed with a hug that is warm and protective. “I love you.”
“I love you too. And Hunter, I’m wearing the ring.”
“I’m glad,” he admits. “I really am.”
The producer for the morning show loves that we’d gotten engaged last night and says it will make for great TV. Hunter reminds me I can change my mind if I don’t want to be made a spectacle of, but I don’t have any desire to backtrack on my commitment to him.
With a ring on my finger, our less than ten-minute appearance on the show is met with gushing from the two female co-anchors and a more congratulatory note from the male co-anchor sitting closest to Hunter. I’ve seen all three of them on TV, so there’s a surreal nature to being this close to them in person, talking to them and answering their questions. But I keep my nerves in check, mostly because of Hunter’s steadying influence, but also because it’s so important that people tune in to our taped interview with Jessica Moore tonight.
“Hunter and I share tragedies, accidents that took our loved ones, but we think the one that killed Hunter’s mom and aunt might not have been so accidental,” I tell the anchors who look on with the kind of interest I’m sure they have to show all of their guests. “So we hope that when people watch tonight, if anyone from our area can provide any extra information, that they’ll get in touch with us.”
In preparation for Jessica Moore’s special, Sheila and I set up a tip line and website the network agreed to share. Daniella would work at disseminating any information that might come in, and we were hopeful we’d get something genuine, one person who had a real answer.
“How interesting,” one of the anchors says before another jumps in, saying, “I’m just so glad you found each other, and that you’re going to get married!” She squeezes my hand before turning her attention to the camera and reminding people to tune in tonight for the full interview.
And then our segment is over.
After the interview, a lot of the production staff wants pictures with Hunter, especially the women. I excuse myself, ducking away from the excitement for a few minutes to call my dad.
“Hi, Dad. I hope I didn’t wake you up,” I say after he picked up on the third ring and said an exhausted, “Hello.”
“I’m not doing a lot of sleeping these day, honey. I’m actually sitting at the kitchen island having coffee, getting ready to go see your mother.”
“How is she?” I’m aware that I’m biting at my fingernails, tension rising in the muscles of my stomach.
There is some trepidation in his breath, and I begin to wonder if he’d been wrong about not asking me to come home. I’d have gone, would have been there instead of in New York. It would have been for him because I’m not sure I’m the best person for my mother to see right now. She blames me for a lot of her sadness, for not falling in love with Micah and suturing the wound of our family’s loss.
“She’s doing well,” he finally says. “They have her on medication, something that’s allowing her to see beyond her grief.”
“That’s good, Dad,” I say, dropping my fingers from my lips, “but I’m not sure you sound happy about it.”
“Oh, it’s not that. I’m very glad that she’s beginning to feel better. It’s only that I always thought I’d be the one to give her enough hope, that my prayers for her healing would be answered.”
“But maybe they’re being answered now.”
He sighs, and it’s the sound of him coming to new understandings about our world. “Maybe you’re right.”
I smile over the phone, wanting to share something concrete with him, something I hope will lift his tired spirits. “Dad, I didn’t call just to check up on you and Mom. I’ve also got some news.”
There’s another pause at his end of the line, but it disappears when he says, “Did Hunter ask you to marry him?”
If my father could see me, he’d note the wonder that must be showing in my eyes. “How did you guess?”
He chuckles. “Not a guess, Allison. He called me a couple of weeks ago, and we talked for what must have been an hour.”
“You did? He never mentioned it.”
“He didn’t want me to tell you. He said that he wanted to propose to you, but he wasn’t sure you’d be ready to get married again after what happened with Wyatt.”
I put my hand over my mouth and stifle a cry.
“You know, he said he’s not a perfect man but that I could be assured that he loves you, that he’d do everything he could to be a husband and a son-in-law to be proud of. I told him I couldn’t speak for you, that he had my blessing, but that only you could know if you were ready.”
Now I’m really crying, unable to stop the tears.
“I hope these are tears of happiness I’m hearing?”
I nod, clutching the phone close to my ear. “They are, Dad.”
“When your mother is feeling up to it, I hope you’ll both come and see us. This is good news, Allison.”
“You might need to warn her, Dad. I wore my engagement ring for our interview this morning.”
“No television on the unit she’s on, but I’m just heading out, and I’ll let her know. I’m sure she’ll be thrille
d.”
“I hope so.”
“I love you, Allison.”
“I love you, too, Dad.”
Hunter finds me the moment after I’ve ended the call, just as I’m still wiping a few tears from my cheeks.
The crying stops him in his tracks, his expression worried. “Why are you crying? What happened?”
“It’s not anything bad,” I say, shaking my head. “I just talked to my dad, and he pretty much guessed that you asked me to marry you.”
His shoulders relax, and a sheepish grin forms on his lips. “Oh, yeah.”
“That was really sweet of you to call him.” I move forward and wrap my arms under his, leaning my head on his shoulder.
In turn, he folds his arms around me and kisses my forehead. “Before my mom died, I remember us having this conversation about marriage. I mean, it’s not something I could really comprehend when I was seven or eight years old, but I definitely remembered it. She said that someday, when I was all grown up and found the girl I wanted to marry, I’d have to ask her dad for permission the way my dad asked hers.”
I smile, ready to start crying all over again at the sweet image.
“I know it’s old fashioned, and I know you’d say you don’t really need your dad’s permission, but I had to do it. I felt like I had to tell your dad who I was and what you mean to me, and I guess I was trying to honor something my mom would have wanted too. You don’t hate me for it, do you?”
I let the kiss I give him be his answer.
No, I don’t hate you, Hunter.
I love you with all of my heart.
Chapter Twenty
HUNTER
I am the happiest man in the world, even if sometimes I’m not sure I have any right to be. I haven’t been a great man in the last ten years of my life, a man with flaws and regrets and a wish for at least a few do-overs. And yet Alli still looks at me with love, has given no indication that she’s seen into my past and now wants to change her mind about becoming my wife.
There’s still a great deal I want to confess to her, but she’s given me time, has said I can tell her things when I’m ready, and I haven’t argued this point. Even if I were ready to tell her some of my unsavory truths, there hasn’t been time. We’ve both been so busy in the week and a half since I proposed, Alli taking some time to check up on her parents, us working on that party we’ve got planned for Logan, then dealing with the responses to our interview with Jessica Moore and trying to do our jobs in between all of that. There’s barely more than one waking hour of time to talk with her each day, and that’s not enough for Alli to be able to digest the things I need to tell her.
“You know, you don’t have to walk me to the elevator if you don’t want to,” she says as I drive into the parking garage under her and Sheila’s office building.
“You should know by now that I do want to,” I say, slipping my car into a spot, then lifting and kissing her hand.
She laughs. “I guess I do kind of like it. I was only trying to give you an out so you don’t have to pay for parking just to see me to an elevator I can get to on my own.”
I give her a sideways glance. “Maybe it’s just my excuse to get more time with you.” Then I lean in and kiss her, heavier than I probably should, but there never seems to be enough time in the day to do just that.
“You’re going to make me late,” she says, the first to pull away and gently push at me. She looks down at my crotch and says, “We already did it this morning, Hunter.”
“What can I say? I’m a horny bastard for you. But I can hold off until tonight. You get to work and—”
She puts her fingers to my lips. “Work with me here,” she says. “I’m going to try to do this in five minutes, okay?”
“Come on, you don’t have to do that,” I say, watching as she unbuckles and unzips me, but I sure as hell want her to.
“I know I don’t have to,” she says, mirroring what I’d say earlier, “but I want to.”
Her lips are over my hard cock before I can protest any further. I put my hand on her slim back, rubbing semi circles as she goes down on me, as quiet as can be. I think about how sexually innocent she’d been that first time and how eager she’d been to learn, not to be slutty or be something she wasn’t, only wanting to please me and please herself at the same time.
And goddamn, that’s exactly what she’s doing, giving me more pleasure than I deserve, making me convulse and come so hard that light actually flashes before my eyes.
“Thank you,” I tell her when she lifts her head up, and we kiss.
She fixes her makeup in the mirror, and she smiles, finally saying, “You’re welcome.”
I get out of the car first, run around to her side and take her hand as she steps out of her seat. “I’ll return the favor tonight,” I say after I close the door for her.
She tilts her head, smiles, and then slides her arm into mine. “I’m not keeping track, Hunter. I just love you, and I want to make you happy.”
“I want to make you happy too. It’s probably my biggest goal in life.”
She laughs, soft and genuine. “Well, then, I guess we’ll just both be making each other happy forever.”
The happiest I’ve ever been.
When we get to the elevator, the doors open as soon as she hits the button. I kiss her goodbye and watch her step in, the doors closing in front of her. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world to me, in my thoughts all of the time, and I still see her as I walk away.
I head back to the condo, get a shower and then start my day for work. I check in with the team first, go over plans to meet with some of the players tomorrow to go over Sunday’s game. Then I’m on the phone with Daniella who is manning the tip line and website, calls, texts and emails still coming in. She’s doesn’t waste my time when I talk to her, summing up what’s credible and what’s not.
“I got an interesting one last night,” she tells me after quickly ticking off a dozen or so that weren’t so interesting.
“Oh yeah? Interesting as in something we’ve never heard before or interesting as in viable?”
“Well, it wasn’t another crank from Oregon telling me aliens were causing accidents all over the Continental United States, so I’d say viable. The guy sounded completely sane to me. He said that Sheriff Mitchell molested him when he was a kid.”
I nearly drop my phone, cold blood running through my now racing heart.
I hadn’t been the only one. I hadn’t stopped him.
“Really?” I finally manage to say.
“Yeah. He left his first name and told me when it would have happened. He’d be in his mid thirties by now.”
Mid thirties. Older than me. Maybe I had managed to stop Clyde Mitchell.
“Does it have any bearing on the accident?” I can’t decide whether I’m ready to go down this road or not if it has nothing to do with what happened the night my mom died.
“Possibly. It could be an issue of connecting dots, starting with the possibility Clyde Mitchell isn’t the decent guy everyone thought he was. If that’s true, then there’s a chance the things he did as sheriff might not have been on the up and up. I mean, maybe he was protecting someone who had something on him, some drunk who knew just who Sheriff Mitchell really was.”
“Or trying to protect himself. My mother was a teacher, Daniella. What if she knew something? What if he was trying to stop her?”
“You think he ran her off the road and staged the accident?”
My heart is pumping out of my chest at the idea of it. “It’s possible, isn’t it? What better way to shut someone up?”
“Huh. It’s very possible, Hunter. I think I’m going to call this guy back, and then maybe I should have a talk with Micah Mitchell and his mother.”
“I want to come.” I’m already trying to decide what I’ll tell Alli. I can’t exactly discuss this new possibility with her if she doesn’t know the full story of my childhood.
“No. Don’t do that
.”
“No?”
“Micah isn’t going to tell you anything, Hunter. He’s been in love with your fiancé since his brother died. He sees you as an enemy, and he’s not going to tell you anything.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing. I don’t want to screw this up. I already did that when I made a mockery of Allison’s tragedy, and I’m not going to do it again. Trust me to keep working on this on my own, okay?”
I can barely keep my two feet on the ground for as ready as I still am to jump in my car and head back into the mountains. One of my coaches once said that hot heads rarely prevail, and I take his advice to heart now.
“Okay,” I agree. “You’ll let me know if you get anything out of him, right?”
“I will… you and Allison both. Talk to you soon, Hunter.”
It’s hard to let go of the thought now ingrained in my mind, that my mother’s accident might not have been an accident at all, that maybe she—or my aunt—knew Sheriff Mitchell was an abuser. He could have killed them because of it. People kill for less, don’t they? The information buzzes through my body, and I go to my computer and bring up everything Alli and Daniella have compiled about the accident. I look for proof, something—anything—that would now come across as the smoking gun to prove that’s exactly what happened.
But no matter how many times I go over the reports and the records, it’s all a blur, and I don’t have much hope that anything new is going to jump out at me. The most compelling evidence for foul play is still that witness who passed my mother’s car the day of the accident. I’d have loved to talk to the guy, but Alli discovered he’d died three years ago after a long battle with lung cancer.
My heart crashes with disappointment, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I know something but that I have no idea how to prove it. My head fucking hurts and I just want to clear it. I hit the treadmill and hope that will do the trick, and after half an hour of sweating, it at least calms me to the point I can think rationally again.
I jump off the treadmill and head for the shower, deciding I’ll get in touch with Daniella again tonight to see what she’s found out. On my way, my phone rings, and I never let it sit for fear I could be ignoring Alli if I do.
The Ground Beneath (You and Me Book 1) Page 25