A Ring And A Rainbow

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.