Hunter's Vow

She stooped to her son’s level. When she put her hands on his small shoulders, he gave all his attention to her. “Honey, this man is Hunter Wyman.”

As if in slow motion, Abby’s little boy lifted his gaze away from her up to Hunter. Instead of seeing the explosion of happiness she expected to see on her son’s face, Abby found herself looking at gray-green eyes full of fire.

“Hunter is your father,” Abby added slowly.

Tyler’s lips thinned and his chin lifted. Because Abby knew her son so well, she easily recognized the look that expressed the bottom line to everything he felt.

Condemnation.

“I know. You told me Hunter Wyman was my father.”

“Well, this is him,” Abby said brightly. “He’s moving back to Brewster County because he’s partners with Grant Brewster. So now he really gets to be your dad.”

Though he spoke directly to his mother, Tyler never took his gaze from Hunter’s face. “He didn’t want to be my dad before this?”

“He was away,” Abby began, but Hunter interrupted her.

Hunkering down to Tyler’s level as Abby had, Hunter captured Tyler’s attention. “I didn’t know you existed. I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry,” he said honestly, humbly. “Sometimes adults do things that don’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, and people who shouldn’t get hurt do.” He paused, giving Tyler time to digest that. “I shouldn’t have left town without finding out for sure what had happened to you…and your mother.” He glanced at Abby for emphasis. “Because I didn’t, we didn’t get a chance to know each other. This is my fault. I will fix it.”

“How?” Tyler asked simply.

Yeah, how? Abby echoed in her head.

Calm, cool, collected, Hunter said, “I don’t know yet. But if we take this one step at a time, everything will work out. For right now, though,” he said as he rose and walked back to the table, “it’s enough to finally get to meet you. If you want to go up to your room or go outside with your friends, I understand.” He paused and smiled. “You can do whatever you normally do.”

Tyler peered at his mother. “Can I go outside?”

“I’d rather you changed into play clothes first,” Abby said, feeling ridiculous making the inane request, given that she had just introduced her son to the father he had never met.

Tyler nodded and raced from the room. Abby turned and gaped at Hunter. “Well, that was warm and fuzzy.”

“We’re boys, Abby, not girls.”

“You didn’t even hug him!”

“He didn’t want me to hug him,” Hunter replied.

“Hell, he didn’t even want me to touch him.” From the quiver in his voice Abby might have believed that bothered Hunter, but his next words were again detached and indifferent, making her think she had imagined the emotion. “It was almost as if somebody might have told him things about me that made him afraid of me.”

Abby gasped incredulously. “What?”

Hunter faced her. “Did you hate me so much that you had to poison his mind against me?”

Abby might have actually appreciated his accusation, if he had said it with some feeling. Since it was delivered with complete composure, she didn’t trust it.

“First, I didn’t hate you,” Abby quietly replied, so confused she knew she didn’t dare lose her temper for fear she had misinterpreted something and would make a worse mess out of this situation than it already was. “Second, I didn’t tell him anything but good things about you.”

“That’s not how it looks to me. There’s no other explanation for how he could hate me even without knowing me….”

Before Hunter could say anything else, Tyler slid into the room again. “You hurt my mom,” he said simply, his chin raised defiantly.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your mom,” Hunter quickly retorted. But Tyler didn’t listen. He grabbed another cookie and shot out of the back door.

“You still expect me to believe you didn’t say anything to him?”

Abby only stared at Hunter. She understood that Tyler’s jumping in and out of the room—and the conversation—was only his way of dealing with his anger, and typical behavior for a six-year-old. But she couldn’t get herself to explain that to Hunter because his insinuation was infuriating. And personal. All these years of sacrifice and struggle, she had never once said anything hurtful or hateful about Hunter. She couldn’t stand here and let him make the accusation as if he had the right—as if he had every right in the world to everything he wanted after deserting them.

“Do you really think me capable of trying to get him to hate you? And if I did, why?” she demanded. “To what end?”

“Your parents got rid of me seven years ago by lying to me,” he said. “What was their reason for that? To what end?” he asked, mimicking her, but he shook his head as if to stop himself. “Okay, let’s just calm down.”

Again he hauled back his anger and controlled himself, but Abby’s eyes narrowed. She would have welcomed the opportunity to argue any of this out with him, but because she believed it was better not to fight, she reined in her temper just as he had. However, the part of her that was hurt and upset, the part that had been abandoned, knew they would never resolve any of this without an opportunity to clear the air, because they both had feelings they had to deal with. Though Hunter kept leading them in the direction of a real, honest discussion, as if he understood that, too, he never let them finish. Seven years ago he not only would have let her have her say, he would have encouraged it.

And he would have had his say, too.

“The bottom line is that I want a relationship with my son,” Hunter said, removing his coat from the back of the kitchen chair. “So if I can’t form a decent connection with Tyler while he’s in your custody, I’ll file for custody myself.”

Without another word he strode out of the kitchen and Abby stood, openmouthed, staring at her back door. Now where had that come from? After the great pains he took to make sure they didn’t argue, it didn’t make any sense to threaten to file for custody.

For a few seconds, she considered that he might not care to get his say or to hear hers, because he was simply going to push until he got what he wanted—to bulldoze his way into their lives. But she honestly hadn’t seen signs of his being unreasonable in either of their conversations. Actually, she hadn’t seen signs that he wanted anything at all until his parting shot.

The truth was she had absolutely no idea what to think. She didn’t have a clue who he was or how to deal with him. She didn’t know how to keep the peace with him, resolve the past, or even come to a halfway decent agreement, because any time an emotion entered the picture, he quickly quashed it.

But one thing was clear. He’d changed. He’d really changed.

And she wanted her fantasy back.

Chapter Two

Since Abby knew less was more with her son, she said very little about Hunter that night or on the walk to school the next morning, except to reinforce that Hunter was basically a nice guy who had missed out on being part of their lives. She told Tyler she genuinely believed Hunter would have been there for them if he had known of Tyler’s existence. She didn’t lay blame on her parents. She couldn’t. She didn’t want Tyler to hate the only family he had known because of a mistake.

And for her own sanity, Abby had to believe it was a mistake. She had to believe her parents never would have tricked Hunter out of town if they had realized how very desperately she’d loved him and how very much he’d loved her.

Thinking about how much Hunter had loved her, walking from Tyler’s school to the diner, Abby smiled. He had been wonderful. Funny. Effervescent. Handsome. And passionate. Incredibly passionate! He had loved life and refused to be beaten by a horrible childhood. He’d intended to be something…someone. And he’d promised to take her with him.

That had been the plan. Lying naked in the back seat of his old car, cuddling after making love, he would tell her his dreams and the very resonance of his voice could convince her he was right. He would have it all. They would have it all—together.

She almost couldn’t equate the withdrawn stranger with the extraordinary man who had loved life, who had seen the future as bright and beautiful in spite of his humble, disheartening beginnings, and who couldn’t wait to make love to her.

Even as Abby served breakfast to the residents of Brewster at the diner, she kept thinking about the way Hunter made love to her. The memories, replete with feelings and sensations, haunted her. The pictures in her mind were so vivid and so complete, she was abundantly grateful for the distraction when the wives of all three Brewster brothers entered the restaurant, each carrying a toddler triplet.

Both little girls, Taylor and Annie, wore pink dresses with ruffle-rump tights and Cody wore a navy one-piece romper that looked like a sailor suit. The babies, now over a year old, got a refill of milk in their “sippy” cups and each woman ordered toast.

Though they tried to make it look as if they’d decided to bring the kids into town for a treat, Abby knew they’d come in to hear about her meeting with Hunter. Evan’s wife, Claire, a stunning brunette, was the only one of the women Abby had actually known since childhood. But Kristen, Grant’s wife, and Lily, Chas’s wife, had become close to Abby in a very short time. When the Brewster brothers became guardians of their father’s triplets, Evan met Claire and married her. Lily was hired to be the triplets’ nanny and Chas fell in love with and married her. Then when Kristen, the triplets’ aunt, came to Pennsylvania to try for custody of her nieces and nephew, she and Grant fell in love. Now all three Brewsters were married. Each of them had responsibility for one of the triplets and Abby had three friends. She decided not to spare the details of her meeting with Hunter. Lord knew the truth always got out eventually.

“He said what?” Lily asked, her big blue eyes wide and round with confusion. A breathtaking blonde with a sharp mind for details, Lily was the most sensitive of the three.

“He threatened to file for custody.”