Hunter's Bride and A Mother's Wish: Hunter's Bride / A Mother's Wish

She’d tossed and turned for most of it, trying not to wake Miranda, who’d slept serenely in the other twin bed in the room they’d shared most of their lives. She hadn’t been able to erase the memory of those moments on the porch. She’d continued to feel Luke’s strong shoulder as he pulled her against him, continued to hear his voice as he called her his “right arm.”

Right arm. Not what a woman wanted to hear, but it was an accurate description of how he felt about her—and she’d better remember it.

“Directions?” Luke stopped at Caldwell Cove’s single traffic light and looked at enquiringly.

“Sorry.” She felt her cheeks grow warm and was glad he couldn’t read her thoughts. “Just go straight along the water. See the church steeple? Gran’s house is next to the church.”

“Tell me something, Chloe.”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you want me to come with you this morning?”

So much for her belief that he couldn’t read her thoughts. She seemed to be transparent where Luke was concerned. “I just…it’s hard to keep up this charade with Gran. I’ve never kept secrets from her.”

“Never?”

She glanced at him, sure he was mocking her, but found only curiosity in his eyes. “Well, hardly ever. A lot of times it’s easier to talk to a grandparent than a parent about things. You know how it is.”

“No.” He bit off the word, then shrugged. “I don’t remember my grandparents.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine life without Gran. She’s a strong woman. One of a long line.” She seemed to see all those Caldwell women, looking disapprovingly at the current bearer of the name. Maybe, if she’d been able to be alone with Gran today, she could have told her the truth.

“This house?”

When she nodded, Luke pulled to a stop by the gate in the white picket fence. She got out quickly before he could come around to open the door, then joined him on the walk. “Gran has a green thumb, as you can see.” She pushed the gate open, and they walked up a brick path between the lush growth of rosebushes. “Hers is one of the oldest houses on the island.”

The white-frame cottage was like Gran—strong, functional, enduring. Before they reached the black door, Gran opened it, seeming to accept Luke’s presence as routine. She handed him a galvanized bucket filled with seedlings.

“Mind you put that someplace shady. I don’t want those petunias wilting before we get them in the ground.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Luke smiled and held out his arm, as if he spent every day escorting an elderly woman wearing a chintz dress and a battered man’s straw hat. “We’ll take good care of them. And of you.”

Chloe fell in behind as they started down the walk, foreboding growing. Luke being charming was something to behold, and her grandmother, flirting outrageously from under the brim of the straw hat, was even worse.

Please, Lord, just let me get through this morning. The verse Gran had given her popped into her mind and wouldn’t be dislodged. If God did have plans for her future, she suspected those plans didn’t include Luke Hunter.

“And that’s Chloe’s great-great-great-aunt Isabelle.” Gran pointed to the worn headstone. “She kept her family fed and safe right through the war, and that was no small thing.”

Chloe wondered if Luke realized Gran was talking about the War between the States, and then she decided it didn’t matter. He was being polite and acting interested in Gran’s litany of family graves, and that was the important thing.

“Your family’s been here a long time.” There was a note in Luke’s voice that she didn’t recognize, and she wondered what it meant.

“Back to the first settlers,” Gran said with satisfaction. “Caldwells belong here.”

Chloe stirred restlessly. “Some of us have found lives elsewhere, Gran. Maybe we don’t belong here any longer.” Did she? That thought had been in her head too often since she’d been back.

Gran patted her hand. “You belong, all right. Your roots run too deep here to forget, even if you do run off to outlandish places.”

“Matt will be safe.” She knew her grandmother was thinking of Matt’s early morning flight. “We’ll hear from him again soon.”

Gran nodded, then fanned herself with her hat. “Chloe Elizabeth, I’m going to set a spell on the bench. You finish, all right?”

“We’ll take care of it, Gran. You relax.”

“Are you sure she’s all right?” Luke frowned, watching as Gran tottered off to settle on the wrought-iron bench under a live oak. “Maybe we should take her home.”

“She’s not tired.” Chloe knew her gran too well to be fooled. “She’s matchmaking. Giving us a chance to be alone.”

She waited for a sarcastic response, but it didn’t come.

Instead Luke gestured toward the gray stones, tilting across the long grass. “You do this often?”

“What?”

“Come here, plant flowers. Read off the names.”

He obviously didn’t understand the Southern attitude toward cemeteries, and she wasn’t sure she could explain it in a way that would make sense to him.

“Gran would say it’s a shame to the living if the family graves aren’t taken care of properly. I’ve been doing this since I was a little girl. We all have. It feels natural to me.” She touched a worn stone, and it was cool beneath her fingers. “This was the first Chloe.”

Luke knelt, frowning at the faded words. “What’s that beneath the dates? I can’t make it out.”

“Her Bible verse. ‘May God grant you His mighty and glorious strength.’ All of us have our own verses.” She shrugged, a little embarrassed. “It’s a family tradition—a scripture promise to live by. Gran gave each of us a verse on our baptism, just as her grandmother did.”

He stood, and he was very close to her. “What’s your verse, Chloe?”

She looked up at him, wanting to turn the question away with a light comment. His blue eyes seemed to darken, staring into hers with such intensity that she couldn’t escape, and he took both her hands in his. Her breath caught in her throat.

“It’s from Jeremiah.” She forced the words out, trying to sound natural. “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.’”

“Hope and a future,” he repeated softly. “That’s a nice promise, Chloe Elizabeth.”

The lump in her throat was too big to swallow, and she could only nod. It had been a mistake to bring Luke Hunter here. She should have known that it would be. Things had changed between them. They’d never be the same again.

But they’d also never be the way she sometimes wished they would be. Somehow, she had to accept that.

He had to stop letting these people affect him so much. Luke drove toward the inn after dropping off Chloe’s grandmother, trying to dismiss the feelings that had crept over him in the cemetery. Trying to tell himself the whole thing was maudlin, or quaint, or silly.

It didn’t seem to work. He glanced sideways at Chloe. She wasn’t really that different here than she was in Chicago, was she? Maybe not outwardly, but inwardly…He felt as if he’d opened an ordinary-looking package and discovered something rich and mysterious.

He couldn’t erase the sense that she’d introduced him to a new world, a world where family meant something other than a collection of strangers held together by law. Those moments in the cemetery had moved him in a way he’d never experienced, and he didn’t know what to do with those feelings.

He’d like to categorize this whole visit as an expedition into the sticks. It could be an amusing story—something to entertain his acquaintances at the next cocktail party or gallery opening. He tried to picture himself talking about Chloe’s family and their quaint customs. He knew instinctively that he never would.

Okay, he’d accept that. But he’d also accept the fact that none of this fit into his real life—not Chloe, not her family. He didn’t understand them, and they’d certainly never understand what he came from. He had to get things back to business, and he definitely had to trample the insidious longing to share more of himself with Chloe.

“Looks as if your father’s just coming in.” He drew up opposite the dock and watched Chloe’s father jockey his boat into position.