Читать книгу All The Way - Beverly Bird - Страница 11

His doctor was a small man with a nervous Adam’s apple. Watching the thing bob up and down was beginning to irritate Hunter in a big way.

“Just say whatever it is you’re trying to say,” he warned the man. His voice was still vaguely raspy from the effects of yesterday’s anesthesia. He was in pain.

“I simply can’t clear you to get behind the wheel of a race car in four hours.” The doctor stepped back quickly at the change in Hunter’s eyes, something that could only be likened to a sudden, solar flare.

“Explain to me why I need your permission.”

“I’m your doctor—”

“Do better than that.”

“You had surgery for a ruptured spleen twelve hours ago!”

Hunter made a sound of disgust. “I’m driving.”

“Actually,” said Pritchard Spikes, his longtime friend and team owner, “you’re not.”

“It’s our season! Are you going to throw it away over some stitches?”

“The stitches don’t bother me too much.” Pritch poured a cup of water from the jug on the nightstand in Hunter’s hospital room. “But throw in the fact that you’re now spleenless—and it’s going to take even you some time to adjust to that—I’m not going to let you drive my car.”

“Don’t overlook the seriousness of four broken ribs and a concussion,” the doctor warned hastily.

Hunter glared at him again, then back at Pritch. “Ricky Stall is only sixty-two points behind me in the Cup race.” There was a calm to his voice now, as though he was confident that he could win this by pointing out the obvious. “If I don’t drive today, he’ll gain the lead.”

“Has anyone told you that you’re insane?” Pritch asked. “Stall might well take home the Winston Cup this year. You’re not getting in a car again for at least another month.”

The idea was so absurd that Hunter didn’t even hear it. “I’ll hang back in the pack today. I don’t have to win. Anywhere from fifteenth to twentieth place will do me. I just have to finish so I can keep the points close going into next week.”

“I talked to Alan Carver this morning about running your car. Damn it, Hawk, you’re going to need four weeks to recover from all this—six before your body could tolerate another crash.”

“I heal fast.”

Exasperated, Pritch put down his paper cup. “People won’t forget you if you come in second for the Cup. Is that what you’re afraid of?”

It wasn’t fear, Hunter told himself. It was loathing. Free time was the antithesis of everything he was made of. He hated being still.

Especially now.

Free time meant not losing himself in the pressures of the race as he had done for more than a week now. Free time meant that there would be nothing to quench the fire of fury that burned in his gut whenever he thought about Liv and that little girl.

People wouldn’t forget him because of a few weeks off—and if they did, he could remind them again in a hurry. But he was afraid of what he would find when—if—he had time on his hands to corner Liv Slade for a few answers.

Damn you, Livie, what did you do?

“Find Chillie for me,” he said to Pritch, his throat more raw than ever.

“Your business manager? Why?”

“If I’ve got to take a month off—”

“Six weeks would be my recommendation,” the doctor interjected.

“Stay out of this,” Hunter growled. Then he turned back to Pritch. “I need Chillie to find me a place to stay in Arizona for a little while.”

He’d checked into it once, years ago. She was still living there. She’d left Flag and had opened up a bed-and-breakfast in Jerome with a partner.

It was time to pay Livie a visit.

Liv let her mare choose her own footing down the trail off Cleopatra Hill. Daisy was a champion climber, and all she needed from her rider was to leave her alone and let her do her thing. Liv gave her her head and kept her own attention on the sixteen people riding single file in front of her.

Six of them were guests of the inn. The others were tourists visiting town for the day or staying at one of the more modern hotels. The tours were a side business she’d begun two years ago after being peppered by questions about the area at the tea they served each afternoon at the Copper Rose. Liv knew a lot about Jerome, about Arizona in general. Her knowledge came free with a stay at the inn, but then she started wondering, why not charge the other tourists? Why not combine local lore with a little Western riding?

Riding had never been her strong suit, but she was better at it than most, thanks to Hunter’s relentless tutoring. Her horseback tours of the area had become a thriving success.

Don’t think about him, she warned herself. But her mind had worried over him ever since he had disappeared from the Michigan hospital two days ago. News reports said he was “recovering” at an undisclosed location.

Hunter wasn’t the type to lie about and heal. Liv had the nagging, unsettling feeling that he was up to something.

The walkie-talkie at her waist suddenly crackled and spat noise. Bourne was riding at the head of the pack and his voice came through. He thought that an overweight woman wearing a voluminous pink blouse was starting to seem short of breath. Her poor horse was doing all the work, Liv thought, but she also suspected that the woman’s nerves were screwed up just about as tightly as they could go. She decided it was time for a scenic break.

She told Bourne to stop the group at the next clearing. A few minutes later the riders gathered in a rocky enclave with a spectacular view of the Verde Valley beneath them. In the opposite direction, the homes and buildings of Jerome climbed up the hill like diligent ants.

Liv dismounted. “A hundred and twenty-five years ago, this area was nothing more than a settlement of tents,” she began conversationally. She’d learned never to sound as though she was lecturing. “Our Native Americans were the first miners on these hills, then the Spanish came along, looking for gold but finding copper instead. Along about 1876, Anglos staked the first legitimate claims and Jerome sprang to life. It called itself the wickedest town in the West.”

“Why?” someone asked as Bourne began handing out juice packs.

“The men who came here were—for the most part—young and single and rowdy. They were drawn from all over the world—Mexico and Croatia, Ireland and Italy and China—by the prospect of finding their fortunes here. Jerome became the darling of investors, and there was always some corporation willing to buy these guys out. Then, of course, the men needed something to spend their money on, so more people moved in to provide that. At one point Jerome boasted twenty-one bars and eight houses of…well, ill repute.” She grinned. “And where there are liquor and loose women and men of different cultures, there are bound to be a few fights and a handful of murders.”

“Especially if one of those women played her man like a fiddle.”

The voice was smoky, an idle notch above dangerous. Recognition jolted through Liv. She turned quickly.

Hunter.

Liv had the bizarre thought that at least she knew where he was now. He sat on a black horse just at the mouth of the path. Already his hair seemed vaguely longer than it had on television a week ago. But everything else about him was treacherously familiar.

How many times had he ridden up to her hogan looking just like this? With that careless, masculine slouch on a gelding with no saddle…his movements making his hair shift and catch the light. But this time he didn’t grin at her. She had the half-hearted hope that he was in pain—it hadn’t been that many weeks since his accident—and maybe that glare didn’t mean that he had every intention of destroying her for what she had done.

Liv flipped her own hair behind her shoulder. “If she got what she wanted, then I’d say she was a wise woman.”

“Or the man was a fool. I’m no fool, Livie.”

“Don’t call me that.” No one but Hunter had ever called her that.

“Folks are ready to move on here, Liv,” said Bourne.

Liv glanced at him helplessly. It occurred to her that he had no idea who Hunter was. She planned to keep it that way. “Start out again without me.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea. The insurance—”

“Do it.” Liv swallowed carefully and softened her tone deliberately. “Please.”

“You’re the boss.”

She looked back at Hunter. She heard Bourne’s saddle creak as he mounted again behind her, then the plodding sound as seventeen sets of hooves hit the rocky soil, moving out.

Something strange was beginning to happen in the area of her chest, something airy and light that almost felt like relief. They’d settle this now. Liv discovered that she was ready for combat. It was better than living in dread. She couldn’t go on leaping out of her skin every time the phone rang.

“Boss,” Hunter repeated so softly his voice might have been a caress, but there was nothing warm about it.

“You knew that or you couldn’t have found me. Someone had to have told you I was leading this ride.”

“The desk clerk at the Connor suggested where I might find you. You have a few of his paying customers astride.”

“Yes.” It seemed safest to keep things simple until she could gauge his intent.

“I’m staying there.”

She forced herself to nod. “How nice.”

“I thought the Copper Rose might be a little…too close for comfort.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you.”

He made no move to go. She hadn’t expected him to. “Where’s Johnny Guenther? Back at the inn cleaning the toilets?”

“Don’t you dare disparage him!” Outrage hit her with enough force to take her breath away. “He did more for me than you ever did!”

It was cruel, and his eyes showed it. “I thought he might be the type who would jump to do your bidding. That’s what you wanted, right, Livie?”

She clamped her jaw hard, refusing to rise to the bait. “Right.”

“So where is he now?”

She was all out of lies. And there was no sense in them anymore, anyway. She’d devised them all to keep him away. “Flagstaff, I would imagine. We’re not together anymore. You knew that, too. From Delaware.”

He nodded. “Get up on your mare, Livie. Let’s ride a bit. We need to talk.”

“I have to catch up with my group.”

“Do it later.”

She brought her chin up. “No. You need to go.”

He was off his horse in a flash. She’d forgotten how he could move like that, as though he were part of the wind. Liv back-pedaled quickly enough that she almost stumbled. When he reached out to catch her, she jumped again. “Don’t touch me!”

“Scared you might still like it?”

Yes. “I got over you the day I knew you weren’t coming back.”

“Why would I bother? You were the only thing in Arizona worth seeing, and you closed the door.”

It cracked something inside her and she made a sound she despised, something low and throaty and pained. Liv turned away from him. “I’m leaving.”

“Fine. Then I’ll see you at the Copper Rose tonight.”

It stopped her in her tracks. “Don’t come there!”

“Why? Do you think I’ll figure out that that little girl is mine?”

Liv felt her knees fold. Hearing him say it aloud had her reaching quickly for the saddle horn to regain her balance. Her mare sensed her tension and skittered cautiously out of reach. Liv fisted her hands and turned back to Hunter.

She was many things, but she had never been a coward.

“I’m afraid that she’ll figure out she is.”

It stopped him like stone just as he began to approach her again. Liv wanted to see his eyes, had to know what she’d find there. But when he reached up and pulled off his ultradark sunglasses, all she saw in that dark, dangerous blue was betrayal.

“I could kill you for this.” He nearly snarled the words.

Things inside her went cold. It happened gradually, starting in her heart, then spreading out through her limbs. If he had loved her once—and that was a big if—then he clearly hated her now.

Liv told herself she didn’t care. Not anymore. “Cut me a break, Hunter. You’re the last man in the world likely to spend time shaking a rattle over a bassinet.”

“I never knew I had a bassinet worth rattling over.” He moved in her direction again.

Liv rounded to the other side of her horse. Fast. “Don’t you dare take another step toward me.”

“I want to choke you.”

There was enough of a vibration in his tone to tell her that he meant it. “Which is precisely why I want you to stay right over there.”

“I’m not leaving, Olivia. Not until we settle this.”

“You already left. Eight and a half years ago.”

“That was your choice. This time around, I’ll decide.”

It snatched the air right from her lungs. Liv looked into the dark-blue midnight of his eyes. Midnight was when all the most dangerous animals came out in the desert, she thought, the ones that could kill. “If you drag Vicky into this just to tell the world you had a part in it, I will hunt you down and destroy you.”

“Spoken like a mama protecting her cub.”

“I am.”

His grin was slow and cruel. “Damn, Livie, could it be that you’re capable of loving someone after all?”

Then he closed the distance between them. The mare skittered away, spooked. He brought his hand up to close it around Liv’s throat.

His palm was calloused as it had always been, the splay of his fingers broad, and that was the same, too. The thumb stroking under her right ear made something inside her convulse.

“I’m not Johnny Guenther, babe. I don’t know what you did to him or where he went, but I won’t let you snap your fingers and tell me where to go.”

“I’ve got a few good suggestions.” She couldn’t breathe.

“It’s too hot where you’re thinking. And even the devil won’t have me there.”

“He might be afraid of the competition.”

“With good cause.”

Liv slapped his hand away. “I’m not nineteen anymore. You don’t impress me, and you can’t touch me and make me crumble and forget everything I need.”

“We’ll see.”

She spun away from him to find her horse. This time she managed to get hold of her saddle horn. Liv swung into the saddle.

“Eight o’clock,” he said. “Tonight. We’ll finish this then. Meet me in the Spirit Room at the Connor Hotel. I’ll buy you a drink…for old time’s sake.”

Her gaze whipped to his face. “There really wasn’t anything worth commemorating, Hunter.”

“If you’re not there by eight-thirty, I’ll come looking for you.”

Liv didn’t acknowledge the threat with an answer. She put her heels to her mare and trotted past him, then she let the horse break into a canter when they reached the trail. But no matter how fast they moved, she couldn’t get past the fact that he looked much better in person than he ever had on TV—and so much more volatile.

God help me, she thought. I’m in trouble.

Hunter watched her go. That long dark hair of hers, all woven with gold, bounced against her back with the horse’s jog, just the way it had all those years ago. She wore a tight red tank top that told him she hadn’t put on a pound in eight years, except maybe in the right places. Her legs were still trim and lean and long, clasped in denim as her thighs gripped her mount.

What a shame that she could still make his mouth water, Hunter thought, because he had every intention of unraveling her lie, thread by thread, piece by piece, even if it hurt her.

“You’re sitting on that pony like you’ve got one of Dinny’s broom handles down the back of your shirt!” he shouted at her as she rode the horse in circles around him. “Loosen up!”

“I’m loose!” But then the horse broke into a faster gait and she squealed and grabbed the saddle horn.

She’d been afraid of horses from the first moment he’d met her, Hunter thought. Her father had been a college professor, her mother an artist. Though she’d been born and raised in Phoenix, Livie had never set foot near a horse until she landed on the Res.

He’d done his best to ease her out of her fear, if only for the sake of her survival. It had been a long distance from point to point back there in Navajo land. But Liv had always preferred to walk or stick her thumb out whenever she needed to go somewhere.

Now her new job demanded that she know how to manage a horse. She’d been hired by one of the major Flagstaff resorts to work in their stables and guide their group rides. She’d let her past speak for itself, implying that a girl from the high-country could gallop with the best of them. She needed the job, so she hadn’t bothered to mention that she preferred her heels planted solidly on the ground. She’d written him a frantic letter for help instead.

So Hunter had come back from New Mexico. He’d picked her up at dawn at her apartment and they’d slipped out to this isolated ranch north of the city. The owner was the father of a guy he’d crossed paths with in the Army.

Hunter was suddenly struck by inspiration as he continued to watch her critically. “You know what you’re doing wrong?”

“Besides sitting on top of a thousand pounds of unpredictable animal?” But her fingers loosened on the saddle horn.

Hunter grinned. She was the only person he’d ever known who could make him do that—grin himself right out of frustration. “It’s in your hips, Liv.”

She wiggled her brows at him. “You like my hips.”

“Not on a horse, I don’t.”

She sighed and reined the animal in. “Okay. Tell me what’s wrong with them. I’m all ears.”

“You don’t move them right. You’re all rigid. Move them like you do when I’m inside you.”

Her reaction delighted him. Her breath caught and her eyes went wide, then she looked around quickly to see if anyone was close enough to overhear them. They were alone.

She grinned wickedly. “Um, I forget exactly. Better remind me.”

He hadn’t been angling for such an invitation…and for the life of him he couldn’t walk away from it. Hunter started toward her horse with slow, deliberate strides. She made a move as though to dismount. Then something—maybe the snap of a twig as his heel came down on it, or the sudden tension that he could only imagine was zinging through her body—made the horse spook. It reared, and Liv went head over heels off the back of the saddle.

Hunter shouted and closed the rest of the distance at a run. When he reached her, she had a wild look in her eyes and she was breathing hard, but he knew in an instant that she was unhurt. She was spitting mad.

“That nasty beast tossed me!”

“Did it hurt?” He helped her sit up, brushed her off.

“Of course it did! It jarred the breath right out of me!”

“Will you live?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ll never touch me again if you don’t show a little sympathy here.”

“Sorry. But think about it. The worst happened. You got thrown. If you’re going to ride, it had to happen eventually. But how bad was it? Something to be so terrified of that you can’t do this job they’re offering you?”

He could tell by the way she refused to let herself smile that he’d made his point. “I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“Some days less than others. You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You spooked my horse to make a point.”

“Nope. It was an accident.”

She finally let herself grin. “I’m still not exactly sure how to move my hips.”

He had her flat on her back before she could breathe again. “Ah, Livie.” There was no one like her, no other woman who could make him crave and ache and smile during long nights alone in the barracks.

As they began fumbling with each other’s clothes, Hunter maneuvered her to her feet. “Not here.” They weren’t on the Res anymore.

“The barn,” she gasped against his mouth.

They headed that way, trying to walk decorously, but her mind was on other things and she stumbled once. Liv giggled. He caught her elbow and propelled her inside, into a stall. And they laughed and touched and feasted and it ended too soon because he had to leave again, but for that one high noon, everything was the way it had been before. He slid inside her as they rolled on bales of hay, and he whispered the truth in her ear, that she was all he ever needed.

There was never any doubt that she would go to the Spirit Room.

Liv prowled her sitting room at 7:30, her hands scraping restlessly through her hair then fussing with the belt of her robe. Her stomach was alternately a knot, then something squishy and weightless. She tried a glass of wine to calm her nerves, but it only made her nauseous.

“Okay,” she whispered aloud to walls that undoubtedly knew many more secrets than her own. “I’m fine.”

All that mattered was Vicky, Liv reminded herself. She would die to protect her, would keep any of this from affecting her, and that was that. Liv paused in her pacing to swig more wine, then her throat closed and she found it hard to swallow.

She had lied to Hunter all those years ago for one reason—to make him go before he realized she was pregnant. She’d known by then that he wasn’t ever going to stay with her, and she would not subject their child to a fly-by-night father slipping in and out of their lives. He would do the same thing now—fade in and out, a tantalizing wish—if she let him. So somehow she had to make him go away again, once and for all.

Kiki was right. She’d given Vicky a reasonably stable life. Maybe it wasn’t everything she’d ever dreamed of for her child, because in the end, she hadn’t had it in her to stay with Johnny. But it was enough. She would not let Hunter change that.

Liv moaned aloud, her stomach heaving. She had never been able to make Hunter do anything he hadn’t wanted to do. That was how she’d known that he’d never really been in love with her. Because when she’d told him to leave, he’d gone.

Liv was so grateful to be out of the stables, she almost didn’t mind the hokey uniform they’d given her for her promotion to barmaid. She ducked into the rest room to check her appearance before her shift started, reminding herself that this was actually a step up.

She’d lasted with the riding operation for five months until it had closed for the season right before Christmas. Hunter had come back three more times to hammer the tricks of the trade into her. She’d done well because she’d made it a point to do well. She’d hadn’t been thrown again. But she wasn’t about to spend the remainder of her life on horseback and mucking out stalls.

In January the resort had transferred her to their child care facility. The tips from road-weary parents anxious for some time to themselves had been great. The children, for the most part, had been impossible. Still, Liv had stuck it out for ten months until this opening had come up in the bar.

She intended to learn the hospitality business from the ground up, from the stables to the food and beverage facilities to the head office. Tonight she would entertain a few drunks and begin to learn the workings of the back of the bar. Unfortunately, she was going to have to do it looking like a cross between a beauty pageant queen and Annie Oakley.

The cowboy boots weren’t bad, she decided, except they were red. Her legs were good enough to tolerate the very short skirt. Personally, she thought the boots would look better with shorts, but it wasn’t her call to make. If she ever had her own place, she thought, the barmaids would wear boots with shorts. And the boots wouldn’t be red.

At the moment, however, she was stuck with petticoats—bustling white petticoats, layers of the damned things—under the full short denim. Liv turned this way and that in front of the mirror, but the contraption really didn’t afford her a good side. It was topped by a tiny denim vest that was laced up the front with red ribbon. In all her years on the reservation, she’d never once seen fit to put on a cowboy hat, but she wore one now.

Liv stuck her tongue out at her mirrored image to show what she thought of the whole getup.

“Yeah, but it presents some interesting possibilities for getting you out of it again.”

Liv squealed and spun away from the mirror. “Hunter!” He stood in the rest room door. “Where did you come from? You didn’t say you were coming back! You can’t be in here!”

“Nobody stopped me.”

“You can’t go through your whole life just…just doing things because no one locked the door on you!”

His face changed. For a crazy moment while it felt like the bathroom tilted on its axis, he actually looked confused, Liv thought. She realized that she had never commented on his life before, on the way he flew higher and danced faster and did everything better simply because it was there to be done.

But she had never needed so desperately for him to calm down and stay put before, either.

She wasn’t ready for him, Liv thought, her heart jumping oddly—and that was new, too. She’d always been just purely elated to see him again, but this time nerves scurried in her stomach. She’d been planning to buy a pregnancy test kit this weekend, to be sure. Then she’d thought she would write him, either asking him to come back so they could talk, or putting it right down in her letter.

Hunter, I’m pregnant.

She hadn’t anticipated that he would just show up like this out of the blue.

The rest room tilted back again and Liv felt light-headed. She closed the distance between them unsteadily, framed his face with her hands and kissed him soundly. “Sorry. You just surprised me.”

He wrapped his arms around her, the moment forgotten. “I had some time off so I came back. The guy out at the bar said you were in here. He said it was okay for me to come after you because they hadn’t opened yet.”

Liv lifted her left arm behind his shoulder to see her watch. “I’ve got five more minutes before they throw the doors open. Come back to the kitchen with me. My locker is there. I’ll get you the key to my apartment. You can wait for me at home.”

“What time do you get off?”

He was nibbling on her mouth, making it hard for her to think. “Um, midnight. But it will be one o’clock before I clean up my station here and get there.”

His lips claimed hers fully. “I can’t wait that long.”

“Then maybe you should stop going away.”

She hadn’t meant to say that, either. Maybe it was just hormones making her shaky. Or maybe it was just that night after lonely night, she watched her friends with their men, aching inside for her own as Hunter chased wild dreams a continent away. He’d spent the past month in New England on a fishing boat. And she’d slept by herself, and sometimes she’d cried with frustration. Why couldn’t she just have a normal relationship? Why couldn’t he love her enough?

Unconsciously she put a hand to her tummy, wondering if a baby would make the difference. She pulled out of his arms.

“Let’s go. I can’t be late starting my first night.”

“Liv, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just wish I wasn’t working tonight, now.” She managed to grin for him. “Why didn’t you write that you were coming back?”

“Because I didn’t know until two days ago, and then I just hit the road. I figured I’d get here before the mail could.”

“There’s always the telephone.” She scowled at him. “Did you get fired?”

“Actually, I quit.”

“You didn’t like fishing?”

“I found something I might like more.”

Her heart lurched. Please, please, please let it be me.

“It’s a long story,” he continued. “I’ll tell you when you get home tonight. You’re going to be late, babe. Better get moving.”

Liv had no choice but to agree. Her shift had started one minute ago.

They went to the kitchen and she gave him her key. She kissed him goodbye at the back door and somehow she got through the night. She didn’t learn much about the bar business, but then, she hadn’t expected to under the circumstances. Everything inside her tugged her toward the door, toward home and Hunter and whatever it was he had finally found. Only a tiny corner of her mind was on the patrons, the bar, the tips she shoved relentlessly and absently into the pocket of her gruesome petticoated skirt.

At 12:45, she fairly burst out the bar door. She jogged to her car and drove home faster than she should have. Hunter, Hunter, Hunter, her mind chanted. He would tell her he was going to stay this time—he had come home unexpectedly, after all, and in the rest room he had hinted that he’d finally figured out what he wanted to do with his life. He would stay, and she would tell him about the baby. Her period was a month late. The test was only a formality, after all.

When she parked her car outside her apartment building, her palms were slick with perspiration and her heart felt as though a riot of microscopic beings was going on in there. She pressed her hand to her tummy again as she raced up the stairs to her second-floor unit. He was asleep on the sofa when she let herself inside.

For a moment Liv just stood, watching him. How could a man be so beautiful? He made something ache inside her. Most of it was loving him, but part of it was pure appreciation. Even in repose, one arm tossed back over his head, the other dangling over the edge of the sofa, he looked as arrogant and magnificent as the hawk his mother’s family was named for. Liv went to kneel on the floor beside him. She kissed his mouth to wake him.

“You look just like those ancestors you used to talk about all the time when we were kids,” she murmured. “You look like a warrior.”

“Maybe a dead warrior.” He sat up. “I was out cold, wasn’t I?”

Liv chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to pass the time until you could see me again.”

His eyes narrowed on her as she stood. “That is the ugliest outfit I’ve ever seen.”

She cocked a hip. “Then get me out of it.”

Her gasp turned to laughter when he leaped off the sofa, caught her about the waist and tossed her over his shoulder. A moment later they were in the bedroom, and the pieces of her uniform were strewn all over the floor. And finally, as her hands flew over his skin and she arched up to press herself against him, her nerves were gone and the only thing that ached for him was her body.

When they were spent and wrapped around each other, Liv decided to tell him about the baby now, right now, while her heart was still thudding from their lovemaking. They were so close, skin to skin, heart to heart. It was perfect.

“Hunter.”

“Hmmm.” His fingers played absently with her hair. “Hey, you cut it.”

She frowned, impatient. “I do that every fall. Listen to me. There’s something—”

“I know,” he interrupted. “The thing I started to tell you about at the bar. You sidetracked me with all that white frou-frou there under your skirt.”

Liv set her teeth. “They’re petticoats.”

“They’re still ugly.”

“Well, I’m not wearing them now, so—”

“Come here.” She’d started to sit up, but he pulled her close again. “There really is something important I need to tell you.”

Okay, Liv thought. He could go first. “Spill.” She laid her cheek against his chest.

“I’m heading for California tomorrow.”

For a moment she lay perfectly still. She wasn’t sure she could move. “What’s so different about that? Louisiana, New Mexico, Maine…now California. You’re always heading somewhere.”

“I have a chance there, Livie, a great chance. I met some guy in Bangor. He’s got a garage in Anaheim.”

“A garage?”

“Stock cars.”

“What’s a stock car?”

“Pared-down, fast-as-lightning, zoom around the race track.”

“Zoom,” Liv repeated.

“Livie, I was talking to him. He thinks I have the right stuff. This could be the one thing I’ve always wanted to do.”

“Chasing alligators was the one thing you always wanted to do.”

“This is different. I can’t explain it.”

“Try.”

He was quiet for a very long time. “From the time I could walk, people were always putting me somewhere. My parents couldn’t stay together. I lived with relative after relative while they tried to sort out their own mess, until I acted up enough and the auntie or uncle of the week would call them home. You know that.”

She nodded against his body, back in his arms again, waiting, praying…for something, some word that would make all this right.

“My father always said I was trying to kill myself.”

She knew that, too.

“When they finally broke up for good, when Mom stayed on the Navajo res and Dad went back to Tuba City, she sent me with him because I was too much of a handful. Then he sent me right back for the same reason.”

“Hunter,” she said, exasperated. “You went eagle-hunting, fell down a cliff, lay there with a broken leg for three days while the whole town frantically combed the mesas looking for you. Then you practically crawled home on your hands and knees and the Feds arrested you for poaching. You were a handful.”

“I was just looking for…I don’t know, something that made me feel right.”

Tell me it’s me.

“I sort of feel that way when I’m driving. Complete.”

Her heart couldn’t have fallen to her feet any quicker if she had been standing. “This guy let you drive a race car in Bangor?”

“No, no. I gave him a ride home from a bar. But there was nearly an accident and I avoided it and he liked what he saw.”

Liv was quiet for a long time. “You’re not coming home, then.”

“Livie, you’re my home. Wherever you are. That’s all I need.”

But I need more. She punched his shoulder as she sat up. “Home is a place you go to each night to lay your head on your pillow!”

“I lay my head on dreams of you.”

“That’s not enough!”

“I want you to come with me this time. Can you?”

Her heart staggered. “Where?”

“I just told you. To California. You can find a resort to work at there.” He sat up slowly, watching her, looking both sad and confused again, maybe even a little angry. “Babe, you’re really off the wall tonight.”

He didn’t understand.

It hit her then, in all its enormity. She was probably pregnant. And he was going to run off to California tomorrow to try his hand at racing cars. When that failed, it would be something else. God help her, it would always be something else.

She wasn’t—had never been—enough to hold him in one place. Whatever it was that he was looking for to make him feel complete…it wasn’t in her arms.

She drove her hands into her hair. She slid out of bed, shaking. “I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

Raise a child like this, while you chase the wind.

This time she didn’t say it aloud. She snatched her bathrobe off the hook on the back of her bedroom door. When was it going to stop? Never, Livie, never, and you always knew that. The voice in her head mocked her and scoured the life right out of her soul.

She’d accepted him on his terms, and their crazy life together, apart more than they were in each other’s arms. She loved him with all of her heart. But how—oh, God, how?—was she supposed to explain his whereabouts to a child when he was gone for months, here for a day? How could they go with him? How could she tell this child, “No, baby, this isn’t home, but maybe the next stop will be?”

How could she pawn off on this little one the same kind of upheaval her parents had destroyed her with when they had died?

“I’ll have to learn the business from the ground up,” Hunter said from the bed, “and a lot of drivers have a head start on me. They cut their teeth in their daddy’s garages. And, granted, they’re all pretty much a bunch of Southerners, so I’ll break the mold. But this guy—his name is Pritchard Spikes—he says he’ll let me test drive at his track in Anaheim and he’ll see what I can do. If I really have the right stuff, he’ll give me a chance.”

“What?” Liv turned to him vacantly, belting her robe. “What are you talking about?”

“The stock car circuit. This chance. This is it, Livie, I feel it in my bones.”

She stared at him. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Liv went to the bathroom to throw up.

Liv found herself leaning against the bathroom sink now, fighting nausea again. Only this time she wasn’t pregnant. She hadn’t been with a man since…that night.

She’d done the test kit that weekend after Hunter had gone again. It had turned up positive. That had been in October.

He’d written, once, to tell her that Pritchard Spikes had indeed liked the way he handled his cars. He was going to give him a shot in his NASCAR garage in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Not driving, not yet, but in the background, learning. Hunter told her that starting in February, he’d spend the next ten months in a different part of the country every weekend, on the race circuit.

He’d said he would stop in Flag on his way to the East Coast. She’d told him not to bother. It was over for them.

She had a child to raise. So she had married Johnny Guenther. He’d given her security, a home, everything she’d always needed. She had given him…nothing.

What she had done to Johnny out of sheer desperation had been cruel and despicable. She’d never been able to be a wife to him. She’d ended up alone after all. But she’d raised her daughter in one place, in one home, if not conventionally.

Shuddering, Liv went back to her bedroom and slipped out of her robe. She pulled on a pair of khaki slacks and a sleek, black top. Shoved her feet into black sandals.

She was ready for the Spirit Room now. Hunter had made his choice. She had made hers. There was nothing left now but to say goodbye—for good this time.