Deanna Talcott - A Ring And A Rainbow

Claire grimaced. Okay. She didn’t want to be responsible for that. “Then maybe Mindy. Or Lynda…”

“I don’t know. Mindy’s husband is a lovable guy, but an uncontrollable slob. And frankly, they bicker all the time. But you probably already know that, too. Lynda’s better half works nights, and when he isn’t working he’s up banging around the kitchen, making omelettes and frying up hash browns.” He lifted his broad shoulders. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

She stepped back inside the kitchen. “No. Not a good idea. It wouldn’t look good for you to be in my house.”

“Why not?”

She sputtered. “Because—because someone might think we were taking up where we left off.”

“So?”

“So it matters to me what people think—and I don’t want you in my home.”

To his credit—or amazing acting abilities—Hunter recoiled, as if he’d been hurt. “I just thought it would be the best all-around solution,” he said. “For both of us. Since you were willing to help us out, and I simply want to fly under the radar with my sisters’ families.”

“Hunter, we both know it goes way beyond that.”

He gave her a long, assessing gaze, one that made Claire waffle. She needed to dismiss those tawny-colored eyes, that suggestive slant of his mouth. He wasn’t going to talk her into this. He wasn’t! But even as her mind was saying ‘no,’ her body was saying ‘yes.’ She could feel herself gravitating to him, as much as she wanted to deny it.

“I was only taking you up on your offer for a place to stay because I wanted a little peace and quiet. Just while the girls are here. Then I’ll move out, I swear. Nobody even needs to know I’m there, if it embarrasses you.”

Claire paused, her blood growing even hotter—and for anentirely different reason. Hunter didn’t know what embarrassment and humiliation was. But she’d faced it down. For twelve years after he’d left, she’d stared it in the eye and risen above it. If he thought he could just move in with her and resume their old comfortable relationship—

“Hey, I’ll sneak in after dark and leave before dawn.”

The implications sent a curling sensation through Claire’s middle—making her feel as if he was intentionally taking that impulsive kiss one step further. “Now that would be an even worse idea.”

“Look, Claire,” he reasoned, “we’re going to have to get past this. I’m going to be here for a while to settle Mom’s estate. We’re going to be neighbors for a few weeks, like it or not. But as soon as the girls leave to go home and get all their kids back in school and their activities, my energies go to putting this place in order. I don’t even have time to make nice with you. I want to get the job done and get out of here.”

Claire should have been hurt. But she wasn’t. In fact, it was almost a relief to know where he stood and what he intended to do. In the meantime, she’d bash back her inclinations and brace up her defenses. She’d drive him out of her mind and banish him from her soul. She would not let him get the best of her.

For she knew, without another word between them, that in the next few hours she’d relent and Hunter would move into her home as a houseguest. But she’d absolutely, positively draw the line at letting him move back into her heart.

Hunter moved in with a matched set of leather luggage, and an apologetic smile. He stood uncomfortably in the kitchen of the frame home she’d inherited from her mother and eyed the new wallpaper with the whimsical birdhouse border. His gaze flitted over the remodeled kitchen. The oak cabinets were a far cry from the dark avocado-green ones he probably remembered. The refinished claw-foot table now had four matching chairs, instead of five spindly castoffs. “I didn’t mean to strong-arm you over this, Claire.”

“Sure you did,” she said easily, putting the coffee carafe back on the burner. At the same time, she wondered whether he was having second thoughts. “The coffee’s all set for tomorrow morning. If you get up before me, all you have to do is turn it on.”

“Thanks.”

“Help yourself to whatever you need,” she said breezily, wishing the moment she uttered the words she could take them back. What could the man possibly need? Intimate confessions at midnight? Another stolen kiss behind closed blinds? A little pleasure in the pantry? “Bread’s in the bread box,” she said, “eggs in the fridge and cereal’s on the top shelf over the stove. I don’t do much more than yogurt for breakfast—and I eat that in the car.” She paused. “I’ll be out early tomorrow, Hunter. I’ve got a house to show. So I’ve left a key on the table. I’ll be in and out, so our paths probably won’t even cross. Don’t worry about that.”

He looked. The key ring, an advertising piece for Falls Company Real Estate, offered a single brass key. “Sounds like you’re trying to avoid me.”

“No. I’ve got a house to sell and a living to make, that’s all.”

He nodded slowly. “Funny to think of you as a real estate agent now. I remember the time you had to beg Mrs. Montgomery for the receptionist’s job. So? You like it?”

“It was probably the single best thing that ever happened to me.” Polite conversation, she reminded herself, that was the only thing they needed to make together. Yet the phrases make time, make music, make love went zinging through her head.

He nodded again, his attention fixed on the pot rack over the work island.

“With a kitchen like this I know you’ve learned how to cook.”

“Enough to get by. But I don’t like to eat alone.” Hunter shifted his big, muscular frame, nailed her with a look, then let the implication slide. They should have been husband and wife by now, she thought miserably. She should have been making him eggs and kissing him out the door in the morning. They should have had sleeper-clad feet padding to their bedside before dawn.

“You’ve changed things around here so much, Claire, I wouldn’t have recognized the place.”

“Things don’t stay the same, Hunter. Of course, people don’t stay the same, either. But I guess you’ve figured that out.”

He snorted, inclining his head slightly. “I would have recognized you, though.”

“Really?”

“Mmm. I could have been a block away, on Main Street, and picked you out of a crowd.” She waited, feeling her eyelashes drop a coquettish fraction of an inch, wondering what he meant. “You’ve got this tilt in your get-along. It’s the way you walk.”

“A tilt in my get-along?” Claire repeated, acutely conscious that Hunter’s comment was slightly suggestive.

He chuckled. “And the way you twist yourself around. You have this distinctive way you lean back from the hip and look over your shoulder. You did it on the back-porch steps today. Just like I remembered.”

“I think the explanation for that is startled. I was startled that you’d think my invitation included you.” She grabbed a tea towel off the counter, folded it and hung it over the oven door. “I certainly never saw that coming.”

“Hey. I always did like to keep you guessing, Claire.”

“No guessing games this time around, Hunter,” she warned. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he started teasing her again, not like the old times. He wouldn’t, of course. Because his eyes were shadowed, and his grief was palpable. No, his mind was on another kind of loss.

“Well—” he lifted a shoulder “—I appreciate you putting me up anyway. Being around the girls and their families makes me feel like an outsider. Like I’m the odd man out, the one who’s in the way.”

“Hunter, your sisters wouldn’t make anyone feel like an outsider. And I doubt you’re in the way.”