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

MARTA PERRY

has written everything from Sunday school curriculum to travel articles to magazine stories in more than twenty years of writing, but she feels she’s found her writing home in the stories she writes for Love Inspired.

Marta lives in rural Pennsylvania, but she and her husband spend part of each year at their second home in South Carolina. When she’s not writing, she’s probably visiting her children and her six beautiful grandchildren.

Marta loves hearing from readers, and she’ll write back with a signed bookmark or her brochure of Pennsylvania Dutch recipes. Write to her c/o Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, e-mail her at marta@martaperry.com, or visit her on the Web at www.martaperry.com.

Hunter’s Bride

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.

—Jeremiah 29:11

This story is dedicated with much love

to my daughter Lorie, my son-in-law Axel,

and especially to my grandson, Bjoern Jacob.

And, as always, to Brian.

Chapter One

Chloe Caldwell was in trouble—deep, deep trouble. She tried to stand up straight against the intense, ice-blue stare of her boss, Luke Hunter. He wore the look some of his business rivals had compared to being pierced by a laser. She began to understand the feeling.

Southern women have skin like magnolia blossoms and spines like steel. Gran’s voice echoed in her mind. Have you lost yourself up north among them Yankees, Chloe Elizabeth?

Maybe she had. She took a strained breath and met Luke’s gaze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He arched his black eyebrows. “It’s a simple question, Chloe.” He held up a sheet of off-white note-paper covered with spidery handwriting. “Why does your grandmother think you and I are a couple?”

Possibly, if she closed her eyes, she’d open them to find this was all a dream—no, a nightmare. Oh, Gran, she thought despairingly, whatever possessed you to write to him? Luke must have picked up the mail when she’d been out of the office for a few minutes. If she’d seen it—But she hadn’t.

Luke was waiting for an answer, and no one had ever accused Luke Hunter of an abundance of patience. She had to say something.

“I can’t imagine.” Liar, the voice of her conscience whispered. “May I see the letter?”

She held out her hand, trying to find enough of that steel Gran insisted she had so that her fingers wouldn’t tremble and give her away. Luke held the paper just out of her reach for a moment, like a cat toying with a mouse, and then surrendered it. He leaned back against the polished oak desk that the Dalton Resorts considered appropriate for a rising executive. He should have looked relaxed. He didn’t.

She shot a hopeful glance toward the telephone. It rang all day long. Why not now? But the phone remained stubbornly silent. Beyond the desk, large windows looked out on a gray March day in Chicago, an even grayer Lake Michigan. No sudden tornado swept down to rip the sheet from her hand.

She forced her attention to Gran’s letter. She’d barely begun to decipher the old-fashioned handwriting, when Luke moved restlessly, drawing her gaze inevitably back to him.

She’d long ago realized that Luke Hunter was a study in contradictions. Night-black hair and eyebrows that were another slash of black contrasted with incredibly deep blue eyes. The strong bones of cheek and jaw reflected his fierce tenacity, but the impression was tempered by the unexpected widow’s peak on his forehead and the cleft in his chin.

It didn’t take one of Gran’s homegrown country philosophies to tell her what to think of Luke. A man with a face like that had secrets to hide. He wore the smooth, polished exterior that announced a rising young executive, but underneath was something darker, something that ran against the grain. She’d been his good right arm for nearly six years and had never seen more than a hint of it, but she knew it was there.

She took a breath. “I’m sorry that you received this.” The paper fluttered in her grasp. “I don’t know why Gran decided to send you an invitation to her eightieth birthday party next Sunday.”

“Oh, she says why.” Luke leaned forward, invading her space. “She thinks I’m your ‘beau.’” His tone put quotes around a word she’d never expected to hear from him. “Why does she think that?”

“My grandmother is an elderly lady.” She would try to convey the image of someone frail and confused, while sending a fervent mental apology to her peppery Gran. No one who knew Naomi Caldwell would dare to call her frail or confused.

“She sounds pretty coherent to me.” He plucked the letter back from her, and she had to fight to keep from snatching it. “If she thinks that, it must be because someone gave her that idea.”

Please, Lord.

She stopped the prayer before it could become any more self-serving than it already was. Obviously no heavenly intervention was going to excuse her from the results of her own folly.

“I’m afraid I must have.” She picked her way through the words carefully, as if she were back on the island, picking her way through the marsh grasses. “I think it happened when you gave me those symphony tickets. When I told her about it, she misunderstood. She assumed we went together.”

“And you didn’t correct her?”

She felt color warm her cheeks. “I thought…” Well, that sentence was going nowhere. Try again. “My grandmother worries about me. You have to realize she’s never been farther from home than Savannah. Chicago is another world to her. Once she thought I was dating someone safe, she stopped worrying so much.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Am I safe, Chloe?”

She’d stepped in a bog without seeing it. “I mean, someone she’d heard of. Naturally, I’ve often spoken of my boss.” Probably more than she should have. “I didn’t tell her any lies. I just…didn’t clear things up.” It was time to get out of this situation with what remaining dignity she had. “I’m sorry you were bothered with this. Naturally, I’ll tell her you won’t be coming to Caldwell Cove.”

Luke looked again at the letter, with some sharpening of attention she didn’t understand.

“That’s in South Carolina, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “It’s on Caldwell Island, just off the coast.”

“Caldwell Cove, Caldwell Island. Sounds as if you belong there, Chloe.”

The faint trace of mockery in his voice made her stiffen. “I belong here now.”

“Still, to have a whole island named after you must mean something.”

“It only means that my ancestors were the first settlers. They gave their name to the village and to the island. It doesn’t mean every descendant stays put.” She hadn’t.

She held out her hand, hoping he’d give her that embarrassing missive so she could destroy it. “Again, I’m sorry.”

But he turned away, dropping the letter onto his desk. He glanced back at her, amusement in his eyes. “I’m not. It’s been an interesting break in the routine.”

“Speaking of which—” She looked at her watch. “You have a meeting with Mr. Dalton at eleven.”

“No.” The amusement disappeared from his face. “He was in early and he talked with me then.”

It went without saying that Luke had been in early. She sometimes wondered when he slept. “I see. Are there any meeting notes I should take care of?”

“None.” His voice contained an edge. “Just get me the Branson file, that’s all.”