LITMIR.BIZ

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      Hunter had hardly noticed the other woman. How could he be expected to see anything but how that strapless black dress Margie was wearing defined her lush body? Now, though, he forced himself to look at the blonde. “Cute.”

      “Damn sight better than cute,” Kane corrected, taking a sip from the beer bottle he held. “That’s my wife, Donna.”

      Staggered, Hunter looked at the man who had gone off to join the Marines at the same time Hunter had enlisted in the Navy. “You? Married?”

      Hardly seemed possible. Hunter and Kane had both been keen on adventure, on seeing the world. Experiencing everything life had to offer and then some. Now Kane was married?

      “Why sound so surprised?” His old friend chuckled. “You took the plunge, why not me?”

      “Yeah, but—” Hunter’s marriage was a fraud. “And you live here in town? Simon didn’t say anything to me.”

      Kane shrugged. “Guess he was just waiting for us to bump into each other. And, yeah, I live in Springville. I’m the sheriff.”

      Hunter laughed now. “Oh, that’s rich. You’re the sheriff? After all the times we got hauled in for a good talking to, the people in this town elected you?”

      Kane gave him a huge grin. “Guess they figured it took a bad boy to catch the bad boys.”

      Nodding, Hunter slid his gaze back to his wife as the music changed from classic rock and roll to a slow slide of jazz. “How long have you been back?”

      “About a year and a half. Met Donna on my last leave. She knocked me off my feet, Hunt.” He grinned and shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it himself. “Never saw it coming, but I’m glad it did.” He paused then added, “So when my enlistment was up, I came home, ran for sheriff and married Donna.”

      “No more adventures for you, then, huh?” Hunter reached out, took his friend’s beer and had a swallow.

      “Are you kidding?” Kane laughed. “Every day with Donna’s an adventure. Best thing that ever happened to me, I swear. But then,” he said, reclaiming his beer, “I guess you’d know all about that.”

      “Yeah.” Hunter watched Margie as an old woman stopped to talk to her, and his chest tightened as Margie gave the woman her complete attention along with a brilliant smile.

      Briefly, he wondered what it would be like to actually be married. To know Margie was his with the same surety that Kane felt about his Donna. Would he resent staying in Springville? Would he end up one day hating the town and the woman who had snared him?

      Hunter frowned at the thought and had to ask himself if maybe Margie hadn’t been more than a little right in everything she’d said to him the day before. Maybe he had been running from responsibility and disguising it with a different kind of duty.

      “Well, good to see you,” Kane was saying. “Stop by the station this week—we’ll catch up. For now, I think I’ll go dance with my wife.”

      “Right, right.” Hunter nodded but barely heard his friend. He was too busy watching Margie as, one by one, everyone in the hall found the time to stop and talk with her, laugh with her, hug her. Something about that woman made her a magnet for people. Was it a con artist’s gift, he wondered, or was it simply that she was a naturally kind person whom people wanted to be around?

      “You know,” Kane said, slapping Hunter on the back, “I really shouldn’t even be speaking to you, all things considered.”

      “Huh? Why’s that?”

      “Because ever since Margie told Donna and some of the other wives about that honeymoon you two had in Bali…” Kane’s eyebrows lifted and he huffed out a breath. “Well, let’s just say, those stories made the rest of the husbands in town come in a sad second place to you in the romance department.”

      Bali, huh? So Margie was making up stories about honeymoons on tropical islands. And, painting him in a very romantic light, apparently. He smiled to himself and wondered just how detailed those stories had been.

      “What can I say, Kane?” Hunter said with a slow smile. “I’ve always been good.”

      “That you have, Hunt.” Kane slapped him on the shoulder again and walked past him. “You’re missed around here, you know. It’s good to have you back, man.”

      “Good to be back,” he said automatically, but for the first time he realized he actually meant the words.

      Margie felt Hunter’s gaze on her as surely as she would a touch. Was he still angry about the things she’d said to him the day before? Not that he hadn’t deserved it, she reminded herself while Jenna Carter babbled about the dessert tray. Margie nodded absentmindedly and remembered the way Hunter had looked at her when she’d called him a coward.

      Even now, she cringed and wished that she’d found a better way to say what she’d meant. Yes, she thought he’d deserted Simon and the town that needed him, but she also knew he wasn’t a coward. He was strong and sure of himself and brave and—arrogant, bossy and irritating, her mind added quickly before she became just a little bit too understanding.

      After all, he hadn’t exactly been kind to her. He was still convinced she was trying to scam Simon, for heaven’s sake. At the thought of the older man, she shifted a quick look at him and spotted him sitting with his friends, laughing and whispering together. And men thought women gossiped.

      Simon. She would miss him when she left. And God help her, she would really miss Hunter. Somehow, that man had wormed his way into her heart, making her want him despite the fact that he thought she was a thief. Margie, you are such an idiot, she told herself.

      Then Mrs. Banks murmured something about having a meeting the following month concerning the elementary school festival, and Margie only nodded. She wouldn’t be there next month, and that knowledge was too painful to allow, so she buried that ache and let it simmer in the heat that Hunter’s stare was causing.

      How in the world was she going to make it through the rest of the night? Her insides were shaking, and her smile felt forced and wooden. She only hoped no one else could tell that her heart was breaking.

      With Kane’s words still repeating in his mind, Hunter left his corner and stalked the perimeter of the crowd. He nodded to those he passed, but he didn’t stop. To stop meant being drawn into conversations, and he wasn’t in the mood to talk. Not to old friends. Not to anyone. His thoughts didn’t make him good company at the moment. Instead, he sought a darker corner, a quiet spot from which to watch and observe.

      The music swelled around him, pulsing with an almost erotic beat, that slow, heavy sound of wailing sax that crept into a man’s soul and wrung it dry.

      He moved stealthily, using his training as a SEAL to help him slide almost unnoticed through a crowd so busy with their partying they didn’t notice much of anything else. Across the room he spotted Simon—who’d decided to attend at the last minute—sitting at a table near the dance floor, holding court with some of his cronies. Old men gathered together to remember the past and plan for a future that most of them wouldn’t see. A pang of something sharp and bitter sliced into him as he realized once again that his indomitable grandfather was old now. How much longer would he be here? How much more time could Hunter reasonably expect to have with the man who was his only family?

      He clenched his jaw and deliberately shifted his gaze from Simon to Margie. As always, she was surrounded by a crowd, laughing and smiling as if she didn’t have a disturbing thought in her head. But then, he thought, why would she? She’d dumped all of them on him the day before.

      That he could acknowledge that just maybe he might have deserved some of her taunts only annoyed the hell out of him. His gaze fixed on her as she greeted all of the people who seemed to move in a stream toward her. She smiled, she laughed, she welcomed people into her warmth. People who weren’t him, of course.

      But

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