“Hunter…don’t.”

He ought to heed the warning, but couldn’t. “Don’t what?”

Claire pursed her lips. “You know what!”

Inside, he ached to laugh. Claire Dent didn’t pout very often, but when she did it was the prettiest little pout this side of the Mississippi. Reluctantly, Hunter released her.

“I just needed a ‘Welcome back home.’And,” he admitted, “maybe a little hug.”

“I’m not the one to offer it, Hunter. We both know that.”

“Claire, the first half of my life you were my best friend. I don’t want to spend the last half of my life thinking I’ve made you my enemy.”

“I’m not your enemy,” she denied. “I just want to walk out of this awkward situation with some class, that’s all.”

“Fine. I’ll let you,” he said. “But before you walk out that door, let’s resolve our hard feelings. I say we kiss and make up.”

Dear Reader,

From hardworking singles to loving sisters, this month’s books are filled with lively, engaging heroines offering you an invitation into the world of Silhouette Romance…where fairy tales really do come true!

Arabia comes to America in the sultry, seductive Engaged to the Sheik (SR #1750) by Sue Swift, the fourth tale of the spellbinding IN A FAIRY TALE WORLD…miniseries. When a matchmaking princess leads a sexy sheik and a chic city girl into a fake engagement, tempers—and sparks—are sure to fly. Don’t miss a moment of the magic!

All work is lots of fun when you’re falling for the boss—and his adorable baby girl! Raye Morgan launches her BOARDROOM BRIDES miniseries with The Boss, the Baby and Me (SR #1751) in which a working girl discovers the high-powered exec she thought was a snake in the grass is actually the man of her dreams.

Twin sisters are supposed to help each other out. So when her glamorous business-minded sister gets cold feet, this staid schoolteacher agrees to switch places—as the bride! Will becoming The Substitute Fiancée (SR #1752) lead to happily ever after? Find out in this romantic tale from Rebecca Russell.

Rediscover the miracle of forgiveness in the latest book from DeAnna Talcott, A Ring and a Rainbow (SR #1753). As childhood sweethearts they’d promised each other forever, but that was a long time ago. Can these two adults get past their heartbreak to face the reality of a life together?

Sincerely,

Mavis C. Allen

Associate Senior Editor

A Ring and a Rainbow
DeAnna Talcott

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my father,

whose keen mind and limitless imagination

allowed him to see every possibility.

Books by DeAnna Talcott

Silhouette Romance

The Cowboy and the Christmas Tree #1125

The Bachelor and the Bassinet #1189

To Wed Again? #1206

The Triplet’s Wedding Wish #1370

Marrying for a Mom #1543

The Nanny & Her Scrooge #1568

Her Last Chance #1628

Cupid Jones Gets Married #1646

Fill-In Fiancée #1694

A Ring and a Rainbow #1753

DEANNA TALCOTT

grew up in rural Nebraska, where her love of reading was fostered in a one-room school. It was there she first dreamed of writing the kinds of books that would touch people’s hearts. Her dream became a reality. In her writing career, DeAnna has earned the National Reader’s Choice Award, the Holt Medallion, the WISRWA Write-Touch Readers Choice Award and the Booksellers’ Best Award for the best traditional romance. All of her award-winning books have been Silhouette Romance titles!

DeAnna claims a retired husband and three children make her life in mid-Michigan particularly interesting. When not writing, or talking about writing, she scrounges flea markets for vintage toys, attends sporting events and fosters adoptable puppies for occasional weekends away from the animal shelter.

THE LEGEND OF THE DOUBLE RAINBOW

One day the skies parted and an unknown hand drizzled colors of unfathomable brilliance in a wide, sweeping arc. The people wondered at such beauty and gaped in awe at the masterpiece.

Each color soon became known for a virtue, hope or expectation. Red for passion, yellow for inspiration, orange for courage, green for prosperity, blue for love, violet for beauty. None of the colors could stand alone—yet together they appeared indomitable, and even as they faded away they heralded a new lush life of warmth and promise. The people named these colors the rainbow and knew that when the rainbow touched the earth goodness would flow into the soil and bless those who discovered the rainbow’s foothold.

Soon, the unknown hand painted a second sweeping arc across the heavens, creating two rainbows in a single sky!

From then on, those who witnessed such a rare event discovered riches of the body and spirit that knew no bounds and could never, ever be stilled.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Prologue

“Rain’s stopped,” six-year-old Hunter Starnes announced.

Beside him, Claire Dent, five, huddled on the back stoop of the Starnes’s cabin, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her skinny legs.

Claire shrugged, and set her chin, fixing her gaze on the wispy dark clouds overhead. Momma and Daddy had been fighting again, and she guessed that was the reason they’d spent the afternoon at the cabin outside of town, talking to Hunter’s mom. She’d heard Momma say Daddy had lost his job again, and Claire knew what that meant: She wouldn’t be able to take treats to school next week for her birthday, and she probably wouldn’t get any presents, either. Her mother would mix water in the tomato soup instead of milk, and they’d have to start eating that pukey oatmeal again, instead of cereal.

Claire kept studying the skies, watching, waiting. “Look,” she said suddenly, straightening. “A rainbow.”

“So? Last time we saw a double one.” Hunter started picking at a scab on his knee, as if he didn’t care about some silly old rainbow.

“You s’pose there’s really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Hunter?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” He stopped picking and looked up, out of the corner of his eye.

“If we found a pot of gold, what would you do with it?”

“Me? Heck,” he swore, wiping his hands on his shorts, “I’d buy everybody in Lost Falls ice cream. And you and me? We’d share one of those big sundaes with all the whipped cream and cherries and stuff. Twenty-seven scoops of ice cream. Just for us.”

Claire smiled, thinking of it. “We’d have a party.”

“Heck, yes. With balloons, and a band, and everything. And we’d invite everybody. Even that crabby Mrs. Harris.”

Claire turned to look up at him, surprised. “You’re not still mad at her?”

He shrugged. “Nah. I didn’t mean to step on her stupid old flowers, no matter what she says. I mean, it was the only baseball we had. And since the rest of the guys were afraid to go in her backyard it was up to me to get it back.”

“You’re pretty brave. I wouldn’t have done it. Not for nothin’,” Claire said.

“Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. That’s what my dad says.”

Claire thought about that for a few moments. “If there was anything I ever felt like I had to do, it would be to make sure my Momma had a real nice house, and that she wasn’t cryin’ all the time. And I’d make my Daddy a doctor or somethin’, so people looked up to him, and that way he’d always have a job.”

Hunter looked at her, and his eyes went kind of soft, like toffee that was melting in the sun. He slipped off the porch rail and came down to sit beside her on the steps. With one grimy hand, he awkwardly reached over to pat her bony knee. “Your daddy could be a doctor, Claire. If he wanted. Look how nice he stitched up Rufus, when he got hit by that car.”

Claire nodded, and instead of thinking about how her father had sewn the jagged cut on Rufus’s back leg, she fixed her gaze on the rainbow, vaguely wondering if wishing on it would be enough to make her dreams come true. Every time she was with Hunter, she thought she was the luckiest girl in the whole wide world. Last week she’d even gotten him to play “wedding” with her—even though he’d made her promise not to tell.

She’d worn her Grandma’s long white fuzzy robe—the one that she’d dug out of the ragbag—and Hunter had worn the top hat that he’d gotten at the circus last year. Although they couldn’t remember all the words, Hunter figured if they said the “till death do us part” stuff, that ought to do it.

Thinking back on it, Claire impulsively leaned over and gave Hunter a dry-lipped peck on the cheek.

“Yuck!” Hunter drew back and wiped at the spot. “Claire! Quit it! Girls don’t go around kissing boys.”

“I wasn’t kissing boys,” she said defensively. “I was kissing you.”

As if that made all the difference, Hunter forgot about it and sat back. The rainbow grew brighter, the colors more distinct. “Okay. Hey? You wanna find it?”

“What?”

“The gold at the end of the rainbow.”

“You bet,” Claire said, unconsciously echoing her daddy’s favorite phrase.

Hunter bolted off the steps. “Finders keepers!” he yelled, racing ahead of her and into the woods.

Claire ran after him. They clambered over the split rail fence and scrambled through the thicket. They splashed through the creek and dashed over the sodden ground and into the field.

“Over there,” Claire pointed. But when they looked up, the rainbow had dimmed.

They ran harder and faster, until Hunter held his side and Claire was out of breath.

“Wait. It’s—it’s gone….” she faltered, her face pinched. They both looked at the place the rainbow was supposed to be and turned around—and around. Until they were dizzy, and they were certain it was gone.

“We waited too long,” Hunter said finally. “Maybe next time.”

There was nothing left to do but trudge back to the cabin.

“I thought for sure if we found it everybody would be happy,” Claire said finally. She blinked back one hot tear before Hunter saw it and called her a crybaby. “At least for my mom and dad, and everything.”

“You know, Claire,” Hunter said, when they got to the fence, “I’ll bet if we buried a little gold, the next time we had a double rainbow, it would make more. Lots more. And then all we’d have to do is just go dig it up, and we’d have all we’d ever need. We could do all the things we ever wanted to do. We could help everybody.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

Claire stopped and looked at him, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Hunter? I know where to get some gold.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“I do.” She climbed over the fence and started walking faster. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

The car still stood in the driveway, and her mother’s purse was still in the front seat. Claire climbed in and zipped open the little side pocket. Then she pulled out the ring. “See. Momma showed me this morning. It was Grandma’s. And it’s real gold.”

“Hey. Neat. That’ll work. I’ll get a can from the garbage and we’ll bury it out in the woods. Nobody will ever find it but us.” Hunter smiled widely, exposing a space where a tooth ought to be. “Claire, I’m telling you. We’ll have everything we ever wanted. We’re going to be rich. And we’re going to make everybody happy.”

Claire chose the deepest, darkest spot in the woods to bury the can, and as she patted the last handful of dirt atop it, had no idea that the only thing she was going to be was in trouble. Great big fat trouble.

Chapter One

In life there were supposed to be beginnings and endings, and when Claire Dent looked back over her thirty-four years in Lost Falls, Wyoming, she realized she’d had very few of either. Her life was like a story with a great big middle. It didn’t have a particularly fascinating beginning, and it didn’t appear to be heading toward any remarkable ending.

Today, however, changes were in the air.

If things went as she expected, she’d finally put “the end” on one of the most painful chapters of her life—and she’d be happy to do so.

She yanked open the oven door. She let 350 degrees of dry heat smash her in the face as she gazed in at the chicken pot pie. The gravy bubbled around the edges of a perfectly browned crust, and the scent was heavenly.

Heavenly.

Huh. What an ironic comparison to have, especially today. Claire had lived next door to Ella Starnes for as long as she could remember. The woman had been a paradox. As outspoken as a candidate on a bipartisan ballot, as charitable as a saint. It didn’t seem possible that she was gone. She’d just slipped away in her sleep two nights ago. Of course, if there was a woman to make the heavens sing, it would be Ella. She was probably up there now, orchestrating some kind of plan.

Ella’s oldest daughter, Beth, had called this morning, to tell Claire all the kids were coming home. There were five altogether. Beth, and her sisters—Mindy, Courtney, Lynda—and her brother, Hunter. Every one of the girls had married and moved away, yet they all came home at least once a year, sometimes more often. Claire knew their lives as intimately as she knew her own.

Hunter, on the other hand, was a different story. He hadn’t found his way home in twelve years, and rumor had it that he was single, filthy rich and managing a reputation that alternated between reckless and restrained. Hunter was a venture capitalist, and Ella joked that he lost everyone’s money but his own.

Claire could have cared less—but the idea of Hunter coming back rankled.

He was the last man on the face of the earth she ever wanted to see. Not for all these years, and not after all these years—and certainly not when she was messed up with grief about his mother. They’d parted ways when she refused to wait any longer for the wedding he’d promised her, and he insisted on going off to make something of himself. Their breakup was one notch short of ugly, but Claire had gone on about her business and held her head up—even though she knew everyone in town talked about how he’d jilted her.

Jilted, as in never a ring, only a promise.

Still, she had an obligation to the family, and as a good neighbor, she’d see that obligation through. She’d take the pot pie over and leave it on the table so they could have a hot meal when they got in. She’d purposely avoid Hunter, even as she made him aware of her presence.

She’d let him know that here, in Lost Falls, people kept their promises to one another. That they ate pot pies, not beef Wellington and parsleyed potatoes.

It would be enough. For today.

Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, he’d discover that she’d gotten him out of her system. He’d see firsthand that she wasn’t impressed with him, or what he’d done with his life—or how much money he’d made. By the time it was all said and done she’d make sure he knew that she didn’t regret staying in Lost Falls, not for one minute. In fact, by the time she was done, she’d make him wonder why he’d ever left.

Claire took out the pot pie and glanced out the side window. The kitchen windows of the Dent and Starnes homes faced each other, separated by a shared blacktop driveway. No one was home yet; the driveway was conspicuously empty.

She stepped outside, crossed the driveway, then hurried up the back-porch steps. Hesitating at the door, she fumbled with her key and balanced the hot dish. Ella’s back-door lock had a personality all its own, and Claire had long ago learned to jiggle the key and pull it back before turning it. The lock turned, the hinges creaked and the door swung open.

Claire tiptoed in. Even though she’d been treated like part of the family for most of her life, stepping into the eerie, empty silence today made her feel like an intruder. Ella’s coffee cup was beside the sink where she’d left it, and her favorite sweater hung over the back of a chair. Her reading glasses, bows crossed atop the weekly newspaper, still sat on the kitchen table, just as if she’d been reading and had left the room for her afternoon nap.

Yesterday, when the sheriff had called her over, Claire had debated putting some of the things away, but she’d chosen not to. It would be good for Ella’s kids to feel their mother’s presence in the house, just as she had. She knew from experience how hard it was to lose your mother, and she didn’t want to take one thing away from them. Not one. No, she’d leave everything the way it was, and then they could do as they wished.

Ella’s medicine bottles—including the one Claire had just had refilled for her on Friday—were clustered in the center of the table, looking more like condiments than prescriptions. Moving a couple of them back, Claire put the chicken pot pie on the table before slipping off the oven mitt. The writing pad and pencils were in the junk drawer, upper left, so she turned away to get them. Tearing off a sheet of paper from the lined tablet, she fished out a pencil.

The pencil was an old red one from the station. Starnes’s Oil and Fuel. Let Us Take You Places. A rueful smile lifted the corner of her mouth. Huh. The only place it had ever taken her was to hell and back. She’d wasted half of her youth watching Hunter change oil filters, pump gas and wash windshields. She’d leaned over the hoods of the cars he’d tinkered with and listened to his dreams.

And never, not in a million years, had she ever considered that his dreams wouldn’t include her. Nobody else had, either. Maybe that’s why it had come as such a shock to both families when they’d broken up. It was the dreams he’d nurtured in college that had done them in. She’d had no idea someone’s dreams could be that big, that consuming.

“Smells good. Very good.”

Claire startled, as if she’d been shot from the sheer impact of the familiar honeyed voice. Her shoulder slammed against the wall, the pencil skittered from her grasp and rolled across the countertop.

“I…” Her explanation, as well as any rational thought, fled.

Hunter stood there in the doorway, barefoot, shirtless, the waist of his jeans sagging in a half-moon below his belly button. He had a white cotton T-shirt bunched in his fist, and his pose was edgy, as if he’d been ready to light into her.

Claire’s heart hammered, her mouth went dry. His untimely entrance vaporized all the coolly polite greetings she had rehearsed. “You scared me,” she accused.

“Didn’t mean to.” Hunter’s burning gaze skimmed her, then dropped to the toes of her shoes and slowly worked its way back up.

Claire didn’t wilt under the inspection and, strangely, she wasn’t offended, either. She stared right back, returning the favor in full.

Damn him. He was everything she remembered and more. He was ruggedly handsome, and so masculine that, if measured, the virility quotient would likely pop the top off the charts. Why couldn’t the man be stoop shouldered and paunchy, with glasses and a receding hairline?

But, no, that would have been too easy. No, he had to come back as a six-foot-four hardbody. At thirty-five, Hunter Starnes could live up to any trendy description and still manage to be a man’s man. He was everything that filled her dreams and sleepless nights. Everything that haunted and teased her.

It surprised her a bit that he’d filled out, into the epitome of strength and resilience. He’d never looked like this at twenty.

The last decade had given him a sexier, bolder look. His face was wider, squarer. His forehead was broad and smooth, while smile lines bracketed his mouth, sculpting age and experience into the tanned expanse of his cheeks. The blunt curve of his jaw—and the sawed-off, notched chin—were sooty from a day’s growth of stubble. It was the sort of look most women found mysteriously intoxicating—the look of a bad boy waiting to be tamed.

Most women. Not her.

And then there was his hair. Dark. Tousled. Sparse on the sides and decadently spiked. Clipped to precision, and trimmed to arch so perfectly over the flat shells of his ears that it made Claire realize he groomed his image just as much as he did his career.

His hazel eyes, which had always been flirty and fun, had subtly changed. Now a shrewd quality filled their depths, putting his expression somewhere between piercing and ponderous. It scared her a little and made her feel inexplicably vulnerable, as if he could see right down to the bottom of her soul. She saw a grief there, too…a grief that, this time around, she didn’t know how to handle.

He still had the whitest, straightest teeth—and, she guessed, a mouth that occasionally twitched when he teased. A mouth she once knew as soft and sexy and seductively sinful when he kissed. A mouth that had once taught her about French kisses and hickies and the delicious rapid-fire rapport between men and women. Now his mouth was solemn, sad, the corners turned down.

If there was one compromise to perfection, it had to be his nose, she silently conceded, gratified to at least find something physically wrong with his looks. It still leaned a little off-kilter, his reward for playing smash-mouth basketball his senior year in high school.

“I meant it. Didn’t mean to scare you, but—” he lifted an eyebrow as well as an apologetic shoulder as he sauntered into the room, pausing at the edge of the kitchen table “—I wasn’t expecting the girls yet, so I figured I ought to check out the noise, make sure no one broke in. I was ready to take you out.”

“Sorry. I should have knocked,” she said stiffly, straightening. Funny, the last time he’d suggested taking her out it had been for a date. “I’m so used to just coming over. But I wanted to leave dinner for your family, so it would be here when they got in.” She didn’t want him to think she’d made the meal solely for his benefit. She waggled the slip of paper. “I was going to leave a note, Hunter, along with my condolences.”

His gaze narrowed, eyeing the blank sheet of paper as if it was an unsigned sympathy card. The muscle along his jaw tightened. “Thanks.” The single word was rough, husky with unspent grief. “I appreciate it.”

Claire hesitated, swallowing the lump in her throat. If he shed as much as one tear, she’d fall apart—and then she’d fall straight into his arms. “And I—I want you to know I’ll miss your mom a lot.”

He nodded, his eyes shuttering closed for the briefest of moments. His head tipped slightly forward, and then he drew a ragged breath. “Thanks, Claire. But…well…I imagine it was as much of a shock to you as it was to any of us.”

“It was.” Yet Claire knew that in the social scheme of things, she wasn’t deserving of sympathy. She was only the neighbor, not one of the children, not one of the in-laws. Still, Ella Starnes had been like a mother to her.

“I knew, like you probably did, that she hadn’t been feeling well lately, but…” He let the explanation drift.

“I saw her just the day before. Her color was fine, and she seemed better than she’d been all winter. She was even talking about taking a cruise this fall.”

Hunter snorted, and shook his head, as if his mother’s antics would never cease to amaze him. “Up until this last year, she sure knew how to enjoy life,” he grudgingly admitted. “Beth said maybe it’s a blessing, that she went quickly like that. She never would have stood for being sick, or being a burden day in and day out.”

Claire nodded, momentarily thinking how strange it was that they could talk about anything at all, even his mother’s death. “I know. If anything, your mother taught me how to fight back.” He looked at her quickly, making Claire immediately wish she could retract the words. But she couldn’t, so she amended them. “Your mother knew how to take things in stride. She was too feisty to let her arthritis get her down, and too strong willed to have anything but a smile on her face.”

Hunter made a funny little noise in the back of his throat, as if he was choking up and couldn’t risk saying anything.

Instinctively Claire knew he didn’t want to cry, or look weak, in front of her. So she tried to make a joke—as feeble as it was—to give him an out. “Of course, she did have a thing about the driveway,” she said. “She kept telling me that shoveling it was good exercise, that it would keep me young. She bought me a new shovel every fall. I, on the other hand, kept hinting about a snowblower….”

He laughed, hard enough to explain away the red-rimmed, watery eyes. He swiped at them with the back of his hand, as if it was her poor joke that had brought tears to his eyes.

But they both knew better.

Claire longed to give him a hug and tell him she was really, truly sorry. But rational thought warned her that would be a particularly bad idea, given how she felt about him.

So they stood there, grappling with a strained moment of silence. Claire realized she should make some kind of excuse and leave, but couldn’t bring herself to do so. It had been years, what were a few more miserable minutes? Especially if she could share them with Hunter.

“So you caught me,” he said finally, changing the subject as he shook out the T-shirt. “I was about to jump in the shower before the girls and their families got in.” He pulled the shirt over his head, shouldering into the sleeves before yanking down the hem, and stretching it taut against his chest. Hunter’s biceps moved as though he was a day laborer, not a pampered entrepreneur. Claire suspected he probably popped the seams out of his designer suits. “Left my car in the street, so that’s why you probably didn’t notice it. I figured they’d be unloading playpens and high chairs and stuff.”

Regret unexpectedly went zinging through her middle, and she looked away, refusing to let him see the longing she couldn’t control. She was slowly coming to terms with the fact that she’d probably never have a family, never have a child, but some days were more difficult than others.

When she and Hunter were eighteen, and full of hope for the future, they’d impulsively picked out baby names. She wondered if he still remembered. April Michelle for a girl. Tyler Worth for a boy. She’d once written them in all the margins of her spiral-bound notebooks and imagined the beautiful babies they’d have. Now all she had was empty, empty arms.

“My mistake,” she said, forcing a calm into her voice that she didn’t feel. “To tell you the truth, if I’d known you were here, Hunter, I certainly wouldn’t have walked in. I would have stopped one of your sisters in the driveway and handed them the casserole.”

Both of his eyebrows lifted, and he regarded her perceptively. “Still mad, huh?”

She stared at him, considered the blunt question, and reminded herself that maybe she was one lucky woman. She could have married him twelve years ago and been saddled with him for the duration. “Why would I be mad? We haven’t talked in a dozen years. We don’t have anything in common. You have your life in California, I’ve kept mine in Lost Falls. We clearly don’t have anything to say to each other. You’re just one more part of my past.” She held up the key. “Look. Here’s your mother’s house key. I’m sure you’ll want it back.”

His eyes dropped, flicking over the brass key. “Keep it.”

“There’s no reason to keep it. Not now.”

His gaze went hard, penetrating, the green flecks in his eyes fading to bronze. “Mom appreciated everything you did for her, Claire. You were here for her every day when none of the rest of us were. None of us will forget that. No matter what happened between you and me.”

Claire chose to ignore the last sentence. “Your sisters came as often as they could. It was hard for them, living so far from home, and I was happy to fill in when I could. But, your mother, she’s gone now…and…”

Claire tried not to strangle over the words. For herself, for Hunter, for even the awkwardness of the situation. Yet with Ella gone, Claire’s ties to the Starnes family were forever severed.

The sudden, helpless feeling that she was all alone made her shiver with the strangest sense of claustrophobia. She wouldn’t think about the anxiety that had been building in her all day, she wouldn’t even consider it. There were worse things in life than being alone.

Finally, she said, “Experience tells me you’ll want to pull in all the stray keys, Hunter. Or at least change the locks.”

He still didn’t reach for the key, and Claire, left holding it, stared at him.

“You’re as good as family, Claire.”

Claire’s hand dropped slightly. She let the palm of her hand swallow the key and curled her fingers tightly around it. “Blood’s thicker than water, we both know that.”

A second slipped away. His gaze was pinned on her. There wasn’t a hint of sexual suggestion behind his eyes, just a steady evaluation. “You look good, Claire. Really good.”

How could he say something like that, she fumed. How? Why couldn’t he just politely thank her for the blasted pot pie and show her the door?

Tension sizzled, and she insanely thought of the key Benjamin Franklin had threaded on the kite string to conduct a little electrical current. Right now, Hunter Starnes was like that, offering her one fantastic lightning bolt after another. “I also wanted to let you know,” she said evenly, “if you need anything—”

“A truce?”

Claire’s eyelids involuntarily went half-mast, and her heart fluttered. “Don’t.”

“C’mon, Claire. This is ridiculous,” he growled, imperceptibly moving toward her. “We haven’t even said hello. Not a real hello. You’re standing on your side of the room, I’m standing on mine. We both know we aren’t going to take up where we left off, but we can at least be civil.”

“I think this is probably best. Before we let that other stuff cloud our vision.”

He frowned, his eyebrows going into a straight, hard line. “Other stuff? What other stuff? What the hell are you talking about?”

She needed to tell him? Stuff like stolen kisses and intimate discoveries and necking out on Pine Lake Road. “Teenage hormones,” she said succinctly. “Teenage encounters of the worst kind.”

“Oh, Claire, come on! We were kids!”

“Exactly. I’m older and wiser now.”

A heartbeat skipped away as his gaze flicked over her. “You’re better.”

She heard just enough of the husky approval in his voice to know he meant it, and that unnerved her. “Hunter, don’t. Don’t take me at face value. You don’t know me at all. Not anymore.”

He took a tentative step toward her. “What I do know is that in all these years, you never let my mother down.” Claire steeled herself to dismiss his words, to dismiss him—but Hunter took another step in her direction. “I know she thought the world of you, Claire. I know I’ve never forgotten you, no matter how badly we parted.”

Claire scrunched her eyes closed. She didn’t want praise. She didn’t want explanations. She’d only wanted to do the right thing by Ella, as hard as it had been, and as hard as Hunter had made it for her. “Hunter—”

Before she could reply, he looped his arms around her back and drew her full-length against his chest. “Hush. Just for a minute,” he whispered against her ear. “Because there’s a part of me that needs you now.”

Ripples of longing, of empathy, coursed through her, and Claire struggled to repulse each and every one of them. It would have been so easy to sag against him, to absorb his heat, his strength, to let herself go…but she stoically refused to do it. “Hunter…” she said softly, gently pulling back and trying to extricate herself, “…don’t.”

Claire Dent, Hunter realized, was the epitome of strength. In his arms, she was as willowy as a sapling, as resilient as a rock. Her hair was longer now, at least four inches past her shoulders, in a wavy, loose style that was invitingly silky, sexy. In high school she had curled and crimped her hair into submission. Now he wondered why she’d ever bothered.

He also wondered why the hell he’d never realized what she’d grow into.

She was a beauty. Simple as that. Everything about her was seductively simple. From her khaki slacks to the powder-blue T-shirt top she wore. Pearl studs in her ears and the sheerest of makeup. Her skin was flawless, and her high cheekbones carried a natural blush.

She didn’t have the hollowed-out, starved look of a cover model; her face was firm and full, the curve of her jaw solid. Her nose was so straight and perfect that she could have posed as the scale model for a plastic surgeon.

But it was Claire’s darker-than-mocha gaze that leveled a man. Her deep-set eyes were so luminous that he’d caught himself searching for a reflection in their depths. She’d always had a brooding, thoughtful quality shadowing her eyes, but then, that was no wonder, given what she’d been through.

“Hunter…don’t,” she repeated.

Claire’s lower lip, which was provocatively fuller than the top, had always had the most incredible way of working around a word. It worked that way now. With that single word. Don’t. He ought to heed the warning, but he couldn’t help goading her. “Don’t what?”

Claire pursed her lips and spat out the answer, “You know what!”

Inside, he ached to laugh. His mother used to claim Claire Dent didn’t pout very often, but when she did it was the prettiest little pout this side of the Mississippi. He was inclined to agree.

Hunter slowly, reluctantly, released her.

She’d found herself. He could see it in every mannerism, in the way she carried herself and the way she talked. She was a woman, confident and assured. She’d grown up—and he experienced a glimmer of regret that he hadn’t been around to see it.

“I just needed a ‘welcome back home.’And,” he admitted, “maybe a little hug.”

“I’m not the one to offer it, Hunter. We both know that.”

“Claire, the first half of my life you were my best friend. I don’t want to spend the last half of my life thinking I’ve made you my enemy.”

“I’m not your enemy,” she denied. “I doubt thoughts like that will keep you up at night. I just want to walk out of this awkward situation with some class, that’s all.”

“You want to go out of this with class?” he repeated. “Fine. I’ll let you. But first, before you walk back out that door, let’s resolve our hard feelings. I say we kiss and make up.”

Chapter Two

Hunter’s mouth brushed over hers. She should have stopped him, Claire thought dizzily, before she allowed his powerfully sweet kiss to addle her brain and destroy her defenses.

Yet Hunter didn’t overpower her, and his mouth made no demands. Instead he expertly touched and tasted, meeting her hunger halfway. In a gesture of comfort that did seem to have some inexplicable healing power.

Years and burdens fell away as he magically carried her back to her youth, to memories that were steeped in expectation and hope. He lifted her, and she soared, weightless for the first time in years.

No hard feelings? she thought woozily. Everything about him was hard. The way he held her, the way he cradled her. The way his fingers pressed into her back, drawing her to him, the way his knee instinctively sluiced between her legs, taking possession.

It would have been easy to give herself up to the kiss. Remarkably easy. But she restrained herself, slapping a conscious rein on her emotions, willing her tongue to still, her lips to cease their explorations.

Hunter pulled away, the coarse stubble on his cheek grazing hers. “Now that,” he whispered huskily, “makes me feel like I’ve come back home.”

His arms dropped loosely to her sides, his fingertips sliding down the length of her forearms and her wrists. She imperceptibly drew back, shaking him off.

“Hunter,” she said shakily, “that won’t happen again. You can joke and say that we’ve kissed and made up. But all we will ever be toward each other is polite. Anything else is out of the question. We can be neighbors for the few days you’re here. But anything more than that is—”

“Out of the question?”

She took a step back, regret nipping at her heels. “Yes. I think maybe we understand each other now.”

“Don’t count on it, Claire. I never did things the easy way. You, better than anyone, should know that.”

“The whole town knows that, Hunter. Because you didn’t just walk out on me, you walked out on your dad and your mom. They expected you to run the station, to keep it going.”

“It wasn’t what I wanted,” he retorted, dismissing her reproach.

“Apparently, neither was I,” she pointed out softly. She turned to go, then stopped at the back door, the key still in her hand. It was all she could do to walk away from him, but she forced herself to do it. “I meant to tell you. I know you’ll be crowded here, and there’s no good place to stay within thirty miles. So, if you decide you need an extra bedroom, someone’s welcome to use the guest bedroom at my place. You can let them know.”

She opened the door and had one foot on the steps.

“Thanks, Claire. I’ll bring my stuff over later.”

She swung around to face him, unable to wipe the surprise off her face. “You’ll what?”

“I’ll shower first, then bring my stuff over,” he said nonchalantly, “after the girls get in.”

“I didn’t mean you,” she stammered. “I meant Courtney or Lynda or—”

“You’ll want me,” he said decidedly.

Her eyes widened.

“That is, I’m the one that’s the best houseguest. The girls and their families are loud and noisy and on a schedule that runs counterclockwise to the rest of the world.”

“I can adjust.” She’d have to adjust, because there was no way she could live in the same house with Hunter. Not even for a few days.

“But Courtney’s baby is colicky. Beth’s little boy has asthma and—”

“I know that.”

“But he’d probably be allergic to your cat.”

“What! How do you know I have a cat?” Claire bristled, incensed that he knew even one intimate detail about her. Huh. He probably regarded her as an old maid who had nothing to do except sit around carrying on conversations with her cat.

“Mom mentioned it. Said you found the kitten in her garage.”

“Well, she couldn’t take care of it,” she said defensively. “That was the winter she went on that whale-watching cruise.”

He chuckled. “Mmm, nice of you to take it in, though. Even so, it would most likely send Brendon into an asthma attack. Cat dander, and all that.”

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.”

“Mmm, no,” he said dryly, “not when it comes to lifting and carrying.” He leaned against the countertop. “They already put me to work. I hauled in two high chairs, a bunch of diaper bags, a playpen, and then, before I came over, I put a portable crib together.”

Claire’s gaze drifted to the empty spot against the far wall. She’d intentionally saved that space for a high chair. It didn’t look as if that was going to happen. “At least you made yourself useful,” she said coolly.

“The girls wondered when you were coming over.”

“I thought about it. But I wanted to give them some time alone. It’s always hard, going into the house for the first time, realizing the people you love aren’t there anymore.”

He thoughtfully flicked the zipper tab on the shaving kit tucked under his arm. It was a muscular gesture, one that put a curling sensation through Claire’s middle. “They appreciated the hot meal, Claire. Said it was just like you, to do something like that.”

Claire ignored the praise. She couldn’t bear it if he was nice to her; she’d rather be dismissed. She’d learned how to deal with that.

“They also said you should be there with us, eating.”

A lump formed in Claire’s throat as she imagined taking her place at the Starnes family dinner table. She once thought that those girls would be her sisters-in-law, that she would be part of the family. “How’s everybody holding up?”

He looked away, considering. “Lynda’s family is staying with friends, so I haven’t seen much of her. But Courtney’s pretty upset,” he admitted. “She was planning a trip back next month, and she feels guilty, like she should have arranged her trip sooner, to get here before…well, you know.”

Claire nodded. Courtney was the sensitive one. The one who nursed the sickliest-looking plants back to health. The one who chased flies out of the house rather than pick up a flyswatter. “The last thing your mother would have tolerated was Courtney’s guilt. You find a way to tell her that.”

Hunter offered her a searching gaze; one Claire was totally unprepared for. She remembered the last time he’d looked at her like that—when he’d told her he was moving out of town, and he’d wanted her to say it was okay.

“You always had a way of making people feel better, didn’t you? I remember you offered up a few suggestions I listened to.”

“No. Not always,” she said, avoiding the magnetic color of his irises. “I can think of one in particular you didn’t listen to.”

Once more, the reminder of their broken love affair skittered through the room.

“I wasn’t ready, Claire,” he said finally. “It wouldn’t have worked. Not back then. Not for either of us.”

Claire pinned him with a look. “Don’t tell me something I already know, Hunter. I would have been miserable with you, and we both know it.” Hunter’s eyes narrowed; obviously that was not the answer he expected. Not from her. She had loved him so desperately, he’d believed she’d always wait for him. But the waiting game had long been over. She didn’t want to talk about it, either, not with a man who still turned her inside out with a want she couldn’t control. “Come on, let me show you to your room,” she invited, heading into the hall. “It’s a little fluffy for you, but I’m sure you’ll get along.”

“Fluffy?” he inquired, tossing his garment bag over his arm and dragging his suitcase along behind him. “That sounds like something you’d name a cat, not do to a room.”

Claire smiled, in spite of her resolve not to. “No, the cat’s name is Zoey, and she has very little patience for anyone who does not come bearing tuna.” She paused at the foot of the stairs, in the front foyer.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, noting that the newel post, banister and balusters had been replaced with turned oak. The bare lightbulb was gone, replaced by an oak and glass fixture. Everything was warmer, more inviting. Without all the laundry piled on the stairs, or the space by the front door clogged with worn-out tennis shoes and book bags and jackets, the foyer looked ten times bigger than he remembered—and, for once, it looked loved.

Claire started up the wide staircase, now carpeted in a rich, oyster-colored hue.

“I made my room over into a guest room and took Momma’s room. Because it was bigger and in the front of the house,” Claire said.

Hunter hesitated, momentarily unnerved to think he’d sleep in Claire’s old room, the one she’d had as a teenager. He hadn’t expected that. He’d only wanted to be in the house with her, alone, to reinforce, in his own mind, that he’d made the right decision all those years ago. Yet he was already questioning it. Why, that single kiss had only served to remind him that there was such a thing as cataclysmic chemistry.

“It’s probably a whole lot less than what you’re used to,” she went on, pausing at the top of the steps, “but it’s the best I’ve got.”

“It’ll be fine,” he answered, moving up the last two steps and toward the open door of her room. It took him three steps to cross the hall, and then he stopped short on the threshold, wondering at the time warp that had fashioned the differences in their lives. He remembered a broken-down twin bed, cheap, torn shades on the windows, and walls with a few odd posters and tons of pictures torn from her mother’s magazines. “Huh.” His shoulders slumped, taking it all in. “Looks a little different without the posters.”

“That was a kid thing, a stage. Now I call this the ‘garden room.’”

“My.” The rough plaster-and-lath walls were painted eggshell, a mere backdrop for blue and salmon colors. Gauzy white curtains hung behind the plaid tab-top drapes and complimented the floral and checked bedding. It was a remarkable makeover, of bold strength and delicate fragility. He walked into the room and put his suitcase at the end of the bed. “You are either a chameleon or an escape artist, to change a room like this.”

She laughed behind him, as if she found something about his statement genuinely funny. “I’m not the escape artist. You are. I stayed here to make something of myself.”

He rolled the implication over in his head. She was hurt, and by golly, she was going to take every opportunity to remind him that he was responsible for it. “That was a poor choice of words, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. I’d say so.” She tipped her head and walked into the room. “Okay. There’s plenty of hangers in the closet, and I cleaned out a drawer for you. Extra blankets and towels on the top shelf of the closet. No phone, no TV, no amenities.”

He tossed his garment bag on the bed, atop the sprigged duvet, and ran a hand over the foot of the iron bed. “Nice and quiet, though.”

“Mmm, we do have plenty of that around Lost Falls.”

There were fresh flowers on the table, but Hunter quickly realized she hadn’t brought them in for his benefit. It was Claire, filling up her life and redoing all the things that had been absent when she was growing up. She paused to smooth a crease from the pillow slip and Hunter watched, mesmerized by the gentle, feminine gesture.

“Recognize it?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“The bed,” she prompted.

He looked down, frowning. It was an old-fashioned double bed, the iron frame painted ochre, the headboard high and round, the footboard like a cameo on its side.

“Your mother gave it to me,” she went on. “From the cabin.”

His jaw slid off center. “No? That old bed frame we had in the barn? We propped it against the door one summer, to keep the dog in.”

“I found all the parts and pieces, and she was cleaning out and wanted to get rid of it….”

His hand trailed over the joints of the iron rungs. “Beautiful. What you’ve done to it, Claire.”

“I was glad to have it. Kind of like a hand-me-down, to remind me of the cabin.”

He snorted, smiling on the inside as the distant memories crowded into his mind. “We had a lot of fun out there, didn’t we?”

“It was my favorite place ever,” she said. He watched her doe-dark eyes go soft, and reluctantly admitted there wasn’t a woman on the face of the earth to compare to Claire. “I felt like a new person every time I was out there. Of course, there was that one time…”

He turned, intentionally arching an eyebrow at her. “Only one time?” he asked. “We had the craziest things happen to us out there. Remember the time you said ‘move over’ and I fell out of the hayloft?” He shook his head. “I wore that cast for six weeks. And it was the middle of summer. Wrecked my whole baseball season.”

“So? It wasn’t my fault. What about the time we played cops and robbers and you tied me up and left me there? Out in the woods.”

“I was coming back.”

“Yeah. Right. If Beth hadn’t come along, I’d probably still be there.”

He couldn’t stop the slow, amused smile that eased across his face. “You were spittin’ mad. Had to bribe you with a quarter candy bar just to get you to talk to me again.” He laughed, remembering how much it had meant to him to earn his way back into Claire’s good graces. “And then there was that treasure hunt you concocted to find the gold at the end of the rainbow.”

“Me? You were the one who wanted the gold.”

“Well, you were the one who dug it out of your mother’s purse and gave it to me.”

Claire rolled her eyes, remembering. “Oh, I got in so much trouble. In my whole life I’ve never gotten in so much trouble as I did that one time, for losing that ring.”

“We didn’t lose it,” he reminded, “we buried it. My folks turned that place upside down looking for it.”

“Back then I had no idea what it meant to my mom. Or else I wouldn’t have done anything so stupid.” She paused. “A month’s worth of rent and a summer’s worth of groceries.”

Hunter rapped the iron bed frame with the back of his knuckles, pensively remembering all they had once shared. Even with all the struggles, it had been an idyllic childhood, very much removed from the real world.

“It was a world away,” he allowed, marveling that for moments they could reminisce and talk and laugh as they once did. “I’ve thought about the place a few times since I’ve left. But it’s the strangest thing…I don’t miss it. I wanted to leave so badly that I don’t think I’ve missed anything at all about Lost Falls.” His head swiveled, as he realized what he’d said, expecting her to be angry. “Except you.”

Chapter Three

As astonishment rolled through Claire’s eyes, all he could recognize was his blunder. “I meant,” he revised quickly, “that I’ve missed having you as a friend.”

“We haven’t been friends for a long time, Hunter,” Claire reminded him. “You went your way, I went mine.”

“You didn’t go anywhere, Claire. Like you said, you stayed here.”

“And was that so bad?”

“Maybe not. Not for you. You worked your way up in the company.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “My life here is more than working my way up in a real estate office, Hunter,” she said evenly. “My life is not just about a job. It’s about commitments, and a sense of community and belonging.”

“Funny. I seem to remember a time when you didn’t feel that way at all. I remember when you talked about seeing the world, when you talked about shedding the old memories and trading them in on some new ones. Ones that you’d created—not the ones that you were saddled with.”

Claire winced. Hunter’s reminders of the rough times her family had endured hurt. “I’d rather you didn’t bring that up,” she said, her eyes flashing. “My father—”

“I’m not talking about him,” he said. “This is about you, Claire. You always held your head up, no matter what happened. You never had anything to be ashamed of, and you made sure people knew it. But by staying here, you have a bundle of baggage attached to your backside.”

“That was a long time ago, Hunter,” Claire reminded. “And I let go of it a long time ago.”

He paused, his gaze narrowing, his expression thoughtful. “Why, then,” he asked, “can’t you do the same with us?”

The unexpected question stopped Claire cold. Apprehension gripped her middle, making her heart pound and putting an ugly pain behind her breastbone. “You misunderstand,” she said finally, carefully. “There hasn’t been an ‘us’ for a long, long time.”

“But you still can’t let go of it.”

“Because…” She pressed her lips firmly together, and let the moment of weakness and indecision pass. She couldn’t allow herself to tell him he had been her everything, that he’d been her world, her life, her passion. Instead she settled for, “You were different. That’s why. I trusted you.” She stepped away, to the dresser, and picked up the faded family photo that she’d framed. Skimming her thumb over the top of the frame, she wiped away any trace of dust, then handed it to him. “I remember the day this picture was taken.”

He studied it, his expression quizzical. Her father wasn’t even looking at the camera, and her mother was frowning, her mouth clamped tight. It looked as if they’d been arguing. “But…you couldn’t have been much more than seven or eight.”

“Even so, I remember it. Because you were standing behind the lilac bushes watching.” He looked up at her in surprise. “You were waiting to see if I could go play. And that’s how I remember you, always on the perimeter. Always there. Always waiting for me, no matter what. And because of that I gave you everything.”

A trace of annoyance touched his forehead, then he slowly, carefully, slid the picture back on the dresser. “We were next-door neighbors, Claire. We grew up together.”

“But I grew up giving you my hopes and dreams. You knew me better than I knew myself. And sometimes I could just look at you and know what you were thinking.” Her voice dropped to a painful whisper. “Hunter, you were my first—”

His palm lifted and his fingers splayed to prevent her from uttering “lover.” “I didn’t take that intimacy,” he emphasized, “lightly. I still don’t. But we were eighteen years old, Claire. Back then,” he admitted, “I was naive enough to think we would be together forever.”

“We could have been,” she countered, painfully aware of his masculine good looks, his deep rich voice. “But of course the ink had to go and dry on your college diploma.”

He let a second slip away, his gaze expressionless. “You could have come with me.”

“I had responsibilities,” she argued. “I couldn’t just leave.”

“I asked you to postpone the wedding and come with me.”

“You remember things a little differently than I do,” she said, nailing him with a look that spoke volumes. “Because I don’t remember being asked, I remember being told.”

“I wasn’t going to turn down that job!”

“So you turned me down instead.”

“Don’t say it like that!” He raked a hand over the top of his head. “I didn’t turn you down, and I didn’t turn away from you.” Claire watched as the muscles in his jaw thumped and his mouth went thin, hard. “I needed to move on. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending the rest of my life in that station, pumping gas, giving directions and filling the paper-towel dispenser every morning. I thought, ultimately, I’d be doing the right thing by you. That we’d both be better off.”

“Well, maybe you did do the right thing,” she said. “Because when you left I found out how strong I was.” She purposely gave herself a moment to pull herself together, to say the one thing she needed to say. “I found out that I could stop loving you.”

Hurt flickered in the depths of his gold-flecked eyes. “Claire…”

She shook her head, remembering him in his youth. She refused to submit to the feelings coursing through her as he stood before her now—a man determined and confident, one who thrived in his single, solitary life. “No. Don’t say anything, because that’s exactly how I feel. Maybe you did do me a favor by leaving. Tonight’s the first night of the second part of our life, and we both need to know where we stand and how far we’ll go toward trusting one another. We had a past…but now we’re just two people sharing the same house. That’s all. Two people thrown together by necessity does not create much of a future, and certainly not a friendship. You invited yourself, and I let you.”

“I do appreciate you putting me up, Claire,” he said stiffly.

She paused, momentarily looking away. “And Hunter? I’m genuinely sorry about your mother,” she said, her voice filling with honest, heartfelt compassion. “But I’m equally sorry that it took your mother’s loss for me to be able to talk to you again. Aside from this situation being awkward and uncomfortable, we both know it’s temporary. Because we’re both going in different directions after this.”

Claire went back to her room with all the dignity she could muster. She grabbed her new pink nightgown out of the closet, mostly to remind herself that she was still feminine, still desirable and—unfortunately—still available. Then she crawled between the sheets of her bed, rolled over, put her face in her pillow and wept. She was mortified and angry and outraged. Mostly with herself—and a little bit with Hunter.

She couldn’t believe she’d spoken to him like that. She couldn’t believe that after all these years the yearning for him was still there, just below the surface. She didn’t know what she’d wanted, but it wasn’t any of what she’d gotten. Maybe she’d intended to prove to him that she was over him, that she was independent and confident.

Instead she’d laid the ground rules for a war, one that neither of them wanted and neither of them would win.

As if she hadn’t suffered enough already, she had to compound her problems by telling him how she felt. About him. About her regrets. About what the intervening years had done to her, and how they’d changed her.

But he was here! In her house. And to add insult to injury, he was sleeping in the bedroom she’d grown up in. In the bed that she’d painstakingly refurbished. In the same spot where she’d lain awake at night and dreamed of all the things they could be, have and do together.

Ten years ago, she’d meticulously shaved that particular room of memories and memorabilia. She’d intentionally wiped away every last trace of Hunter Starnes. And now he was back, putting his individual fingerprints on everything new. She’d never again walk into that room without seeing him there. Without seeing his quizzical expression as she laid out the ultimatums. Or seeing his garment bag draped over the end of the bed. Or the way his gaze appreciatively drifted over to the fresh flowers on the bedside table.

It was more than unnerving. It was going to be her undoing.

Claire sniffed, then impatiently wiped her hot cheeks and wet eyes with the back of her hand and rolled over to stare up at the ceiling. Zoey jumped up on the bed, purring with empathy as she nudged her way under Claire’s arm. She absently stroked the cat, her hand rhythmically sliding down Zoey’s soft fur as she thought about Hunter. Zoey purred louder. The sound, and the repetitive motion, had a calming effect on Claire and her heart began to let go of a little of the pain.

It was unbelievable that she and Hunter were sharing the same house. She vaguely wondered what Ella would think. For a few moments, she imagined the conversation she’d have with Ella, who would have been brusque and no-nonsense.

Do what you have to do, so you have no regrets. You’ve got a lot of history together, Claire, no sense making a mess of what’s left of it.

Why, she could even hear Ella admonishing her to be rational, be responsible and be herself.

It surprised her, how clearly she could hear Ella talking to her, especially about this. Initially, when Claire was raw and hurting from the breakup, Ella had given her advice and encouragement. But as the months passed, Ella skillfully avoided much mention of Hunter. When it was clear that he wasn’t coming back, his name seemed to fade from Ella’s vocabulary entirely. They talked, but their talk centered around their gardens, the weather, Claire’s work at the real estate company, the women’s group at church or Ella’s latest trips. They talked about the girls and their families, but never, ever Hunter.

Ella had laid the parameters, and Claire understood that the subject was off-limits. For years, they’d both accommodated the unspoken agreement. Yet Ella knew Claire had never completely gotten Hunter out of her system. It was something that didn’t have to be talked about. Ella just knew.

Now Ella was gone…and Claire had no one to talk to at all. Not about the weather. Not about her newest listing. Not about how goofy it was to only serve regular coffee at church and not decaf. She’d never again have the opportunity to even avoid mentioning Hunter.

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