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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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