LITMIR.BIZ

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than the Res.

      Sometimes, in their last years together, he’d marveled that a half-breed troublemaker like himself could find her in his arms, skin to skin, that she was his. It had all been a mirage, but it had overwhelmed him while it had lasted.

      As Liv paused to look for him in the Spirit Room, she reminded him of an unbroken filly trapped in a corral for her first saddling. He knew that when she stepped closer, he’d see a certain wildness at the edges of her eyes. She’d tremble so imperceptibly that it would be little more than a hum in the air around her. Livie had known fear, but like a proud and wild horse, she would never let it show.

      He had trapped her tonight, Hunter thought, as surely as he had ever herded a mustang into a pen. He’d given her the choice of meeting him here or playing this out in front of her daughter. His daughter.

      She was right to be afraid.

      The mirrors behind the bar were smokey and bronzed. The whole room was brown and gold and dimly lit. Watching her reflection as she spotted him and approached, Hunter thought it looked a little like a tintype. He rolled his stool around to face her as she stepped up beside him and dropped one hip onto the neighboring stool.

      “Punctual, Livie. As always.”

      She’d already told him not to call her that. She wouldn’t give Hunter the satisfaction of protesting again. She scraped her hair back as the bartender approached and stared at the bar in front of Hunter. It was bare burnished walnut. She wondered how long he had been waiting. “Who’s paying for this little shindig?” she asked.

      “I am.” Hunter glanced at the bartender. “Remy. Straight.”

      “No more Boone’s? You’ve come up in the world.”

      “I’ve always burned it as fast as I earned it. Now there’s just more to burn.”

      “In that case, make it two.” She thought Hunter almost smiled, but his mouth was too hard to allow it.

      Liv felt dazed. She couldn’t believe she was here with him like this. In a bar. Again.

      She’d known he’d come to Flag even though she’d told him not to. Liv willed herself, schooled herself, to be cold when she saw him walk in the door. She could show nothing. Hunter was like a wild cat when it came to scenting doubt, fear, pain. And he’d always known what she was feeling.

      He couldn’t know it this time. Her baby’s future depended on it.

      She was still angry at him, so angry that it hurt with a physical pain. Maybe that was all he would sense.

      It had been a month since he’d left her bed for California, and Liv had already worked her way up from cocktail waitress to tending bar. No more frou-frou for her. She’d graduated to black trousers and a silk vest that nipped her waist and plunged down to her cleavage. She leaned forward when Hunter sat at the bar, giving him a good view of what he would be missing.

      If he let her go.

      “I told you not to come,” she said, her tone flat. Then her heart sank. He was watching her eyes. Trying to read them.

      “Yeah, well, I couldn’t figure out why so I stopped to see for myself.”

      “North Carolina is a long way away from Arizona, pal. Better hit the road.”

      “After you tell me what’s wrong.”

      You won’t stay put. You won’t just stay put and love me! Liv straightened from the bar as someone gestured for another beer. She went to draw the draft.

      He was still waiting for her when she came back.

      All she could do was take a deep breath and plunge in. A lot had happened since he had left.

      “I’m getting married, Hunter. I’ve found someone who can give me a home, a family, everything I’ve always needed. You said when that happened, you would go away. So go.”

      Oh, dear God, the pain on his face. It snatched at her air. She couldn’t bear to see it, so she went to wash glasses instead. But his voice followed her.

      “Not you, Livie. You were the only one who ever knew when I was gone.”

      She looked up from the sink and steeled herself. “Are you still here?”

      “Talk to me.”

      “I just did.”

      “Why?”

      “I’ve thought about it. I’m not going to chase the wind with you, Hunter.” Fight for me. Oh, please, God, let him fight to keep me.

      His face went to stone. Any emotion there was just suddenly gone, as quickly as he blinked. He stood from the bar stool. Things screamed inside her.

      “I really wanted you to come with me this time,” he said.

      “I never had your wings. I just plummet to the ground again when I try to fly. It’s where I belong.”

      He’d gone. He’d moved on to North Carolina and a spot on one of Pritchard Spikes’s pit crews, and she hadn’t laid eyes on him again until the weekend in Delaware. Now he was back and he looked…dangerous.

      She’d never feared him before, she realized wildly, but she did now. Even that first day when he’d turned up on a piebald gelding in Ama’s grazing yard, his dark-blue eyes narrowed to slits against the sun, his long black hair tickling itself in the wind, looking as heathen as her worst nightmares. Even then, she hadn’t been afraid. He’d asked her if she wanted some help. She’d said sure. She had loved him. Instantly, childishly, with a wild excitement and an obscure yearning for things she didn’t yet understand.

      Now the golden light in the bar turned his dusky skin to amber. His hair was swept back off his forehead, but it was long enough in the back to nudge his collar. His cheekbones were still slashes, and his eyes were still narrowed against something, but this time it wasn’t the light. It was her.

      “What do you want from me?” she asked bluntly.

      His mouth didn’t exactly soften, but he grinned like a shark. “Once you wouldn’t have had to ask me that.”

      Heat slid through her. Liv gulped Remy and coughed a little. “That was then. I don’t know you anymore. Now you’re some kind of national sports icon, used to getting his own way.”

      “I’ve always gotten my own way.” Except once. But Hunter couldn’t let himself think about how she had sent him away. Not now. It would buckle something inside him. And this was war.

      “This brings us back to my original question,” Liv said. “What is it you’re after with this little surprise visit?”

      “You weren’t surprised.” He’d thought about it a lot since their meeting that morning. She’d been jarred, yes. But surprised? No. She’d known he’d come.

      He watched her open her mouth as though to deny it, then she did that thing with her shoulder. A hitch, then a dip. On any other woman, it would have been called a shrug. With Liv, it meant, I’m not giving you an inch unless you earn it.

      So he started back at the beginning. “Tell me about Johnny. The guy who didn’t father your daughter. Tell me why you never mentioned a baby that last night I passed through Flagstaff. Damn it, Livie, you never said anything about being pregnant at all!”

      He knew because he remembered every word.

      “I never had your wings,” she said. “I just plummet to the ground again when I try to fly.”

      No. She belonged in the sky with the sun, Hunter thought, burning bright while he flew. Why couldn’t she see that? “Who?” he rasped. “Who is he? Who had you?” His fists hurt, cramped tight, ready to kill.

      “No one.” She brought her chin up to challenge him. “Yet.”

      “You’re going to marry someone you’ve never even been with?”

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