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“But you didn’t,” Grant said, sounding old and wise and enough like Norm Brewster that Hunter’s head came up sharply. “You might have been twenty-four, but you were fairly immature. Forgive yourself and move on.”
“That’s approximately what I told Abby we needed to do.” Hunter paused, then began to pace again. “I meet Tyler this afternoon. We’re not putting it off or hedging the truth.”
“Good for you.”
When several seconds passed without Hunter making any further comment, Grant prodded, “But…”
“But I’m scared to death.”
“Don’t be. Tyler’s a great kid. Abby’s been a fabulous mother. In spite of some very difficult years.” Grant shifted on his chair. “If you want the truth, I’d say your return is perfect timing. She needs help.”
Hunter turned. “What kind of help?”
“Every kind of help. She’s working as a waitress at the diner to supplement her income because the bed-and-breakfast doesn’t make that much money, and her parents’ illnesses exhausted every cent her family had. She’s overworked and underappreciated.”
Hunter took his seat in front of Grant’s desk. “So, she needs money? I can pay child support….Hell, I can pay back child support….I want to pay back child support.”
Grant caught Hunter’s gaze and held it. “You owe more here than child support. If you’re going to survive your return to this community, people need to see your integrity. You can’t just talk about it. You can’t just toss money around.”
“Are you saying that in order for our construction company to make the transition from Savannah to Brewster County I have to make amends for my past?”
Grant shrugged. “Only if you want people to respect and trust you.”
Knowing Grant had deliberately hit a nerve, Hunter laughed. “You’re a dog.”
“I’m an honest, forthright dog because that’s what my father taught me.” Glancing down at the paperwork on his desk, Grant dismissed his partner. “Now, go do the right thing.”
“Come in, Hunter,” Abby said with a smile, as she held the screen door for him that afternoon. “Tyler’s not home from school yet, but that’s normal when it rains. Unless I missed my guess, he and his friends are probably jumping in puddles.”
Laughing nervously, Hunter stepped inside and shrugged out of his coat. Though it had insulted him that Abby’s family had never let him beyond the kitchen, right now being in the kitchen gave him a homey, welcome feeling. A sense of rightness, a sense of comfort.
A sense that he belonged here.
Memories of the love and laughter they had shared all those years ago lured him but Hunter fought them. Thinking this through after his talk with Grant, he had actually considered that to the residents of rural Brewster County, Pennsylvania, “doing the right thing” by Abby meant that he should marry her. He had even considered that if he and Abby could pretend the past seven years hadn’t happened, pick up where they left off, and get married, they would be the happiest two people in the world. The picture was so appealing that the temptation to believe nearly dragged him under.
But he also knew the truth about life, people and relationships. There was no such thing as a sure thing. Though he believed Abby had loved him, and he also believed she understood he left because her parents had lied to him, she was only eighteen when they were dating. Not only could her feelings about him have changed as she matured, but she had seven years of hating him under her belt. God only knew what that might have done to her. God only knew how that might have colored the way she had raised their son.
So what he planned to do in his meeting with Tyler, his relationship with Abby, was expect nothing from either of them. He would let them give what they wanted at their own paces, and accept whatever he got as enough.
No expectation, no disappointment. It was a good rule to live by.
However, when Abby turned and smiled at him, Hunter’s heart lurched and he once again got the sudden urge to just ask her to marry him and force them into a position where they would have to rekindle their old love. He could still feel the heat and the fire, the passion, of making love to her. It suffused him, seared him with memories he thought long forgotten. Memories that made him ache for the commitment he thought they could have made seven years ago.
However, if circumstances precluded them from attempting marriage then, plain, old-fashioned intelligence precluded it today. Hunter knew so much more about love and matrimony now than he had at twenty-four. And he refused—absolutely refused—to jeopardize his relationship with Tyler because he still had a few flights of fancy about Tyler’s mother.
But he had to admit she was beautiful. He had forgotten that. Somehow over the years he convinced himself that she was the red-haired, freckle-faced rich kid who had money but no looks, who had more or less befriended the shy farmer’s son because they were both outcasts. Seeing her stunning hair, shot with fire by the afternoon sun, her shimmering green eyes, her smooth alabaster complexion, he remembered things the way they really were. She might not have been popular in high school, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t attractive. The more he thought about it, the more Hunter realized she had been an outcast by choice. She wanted more, and to Abby he had been more.
Her faith in him had puffed him up and boosted him at a critical point in his life. Her confidence literally made him who he was today. And though he couldn’t risk a try at the fairy-tale world they dreamed of, he could give her honesty, justice and money. Genuine, hands-on, spendable reality. Not fantasy. If they were going to resolve the problems that faced them, they had to stay away from fantasy and stick with reality.
Glancing around the comfortable kitchen, Hunter recognized that was probably the reason she was keeping them in her kitchen, the room he was accustomed to being in, rather than the living room. This was reality for them. He had to remember that and stay the hell away from daydreaming. He was much too smart for daydreaming anyway. He had gotten over that years ago, and couldn’t believe he was slipping back into that bad habit now. He had to be as practical as Abby was.
Right at that moment, Abby wasn’t thinking about anything practical, reasonable or even sensible. Not only was she too nervous to be analytical about the finer points of introducing her son to his father, but it hit her full force that she didn’t know the silent stranger standing in her kitchen.
She had loved Hunter Wyman all of her adult life, but seeing him again after seven long years, she had to wonder what happened to him. He was as handsome as when he left—maybe more so—but his sedate, businesslike demeanor didn’t fit. She couldn’t reconcile her Hunter to this composed and quiet man. He had been much too passionate about life to be so…well, stuffy.
“You’ve certainly changed,” she said, wanting him to look at her so she could see his eyes. When her efforts were rewarded by his glance in her direction, Abby’s heart sank. He even lost the friendly warmth he had that morning when he first showed up at her door.
“I had to change. I wanted a better life.”
She knew that. Part of what drew her to him had been his desire for a better life and the courage and drive she knew would get it for him. “It appears you got everything you wanted.”
“And then some,” he agreed, taking a seat at the table when she offered it with a wave of her hand.
“Would you like tea?”
He smiled. “You remember.”
She acknowledged that with a slight tilt of her head. “I remember a lot of things.”
“So do I,” Hunter agreed, gazing around the room.
She expected to see at least a shadow of anger, if only because he had hated being banished to her parents’ kitchen. But not one iota of sentiment crossed his face. His brow didn’t crease. He didn’t frown. No memories haunted his eyes. She told herself to be glad that he had grown up and grown beyond his history, but that didn’t satisfy the emptiness that seemed to seep into the room by degrees as she came to terms with the new man that he was. He had definitely moved beyond his past, and though she had wished that for Hunter a million times, suddenly she wondered if that wasn’t a mistake.
In growing out of his past, he had outgrown her. In moving beyond his roots, he behaved as if he had none.
She handed him his tea. “Here you go,” she said, sounding more like a waitress than a friend. She just barely stopped the instinct to reach into her apron for a customer receipt, and the near slip almost made her laugh, but one look at Hunter’s serious countenance stopped her. Where was the happy man she’d loved? Where was the smile she had lived for?
“So, you’re partners with Grant Brewster now?”
He nodded. “Grant actually saved my construction company. I had hit a rough spot, and he had come to Savannah looking for a place to invest some money. We were a match made in heaven.”
Watching him while he talked, Abby was struck by the emotion in his voice. The first real emotion she had heard since his warm hello that morning. He loved his company, but she couldn’t help but remember a time when he thought they were the match made in heaven. Now he used the phrase to describe a business.
“That’s…interesting,” she said, then grimaced because her tone conveyed exactly the opposite meaning of what she intended.
Hunter chuckled. “The truth is, Abby, I’m probably not very interesting. I more or less became successful by changing. I’m not wild and rebellious anymore. Not hot-tempered anymore. I don’t lose my cool. I handle things.”
“That’s good,” Abby said but she was oddly disappointed. Not that she wanted him losing his temper, particularly around Tyler, but she couldn’t stop herself from wondering how this remote stranger could enjoy the prosperity that had once been so important to him.
Forced into a strained silence, Abby peeked at him and the very act of looking at him took her breath away. His dark, dark hair accented the smooth angles and planes of a face that would have made him the perfect candidate for modeling. He was still so damned sexy and gorgeous, it was impossible not to think of him as the guy she had loved all those years ago. Recognizing this really was Hunter—Hunter Wyman in her kitchen!—shot an unexpected ripple of tingles down her spine, which she quickly squelched. This might have been the boy who had wanted to wrap up the world and give it to her gift-boxed, but the man he had become had new beliefs….
Before she could complete her thought, Tyler burst into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom!” he said and immediately reached for a cookie.
With the moment of truth at hand, Abby froze. She glanced at Hunter and saw that he, too, seemed paralyzed. Reserved, composed, he sat motionless, waiting for her to do what had to be done.
She cleared her throat. Gazing at her dark-haired, grayish-green-eyed little boy, the picture of Hunter in elementary school, she was swamped by fear. It was a good thing—a very good thing—for Tyler to meet his father, but she suddenly had the feeling they could have timed it all a little better. At the very least, they could have prepared him.
However, now that the wheels were turning, it was too late to stop, too late to try to think of a way to make this easier. Hunter was in her kitchen. Tyler was staring at him with wide-eyed curiosity. The ball was in her court.
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.”
