A Ring And A Rainbow. Deanna Talcott
tilt in my get-along?” Claire repeated, acutely conscious that Hunter’s comment was slightly suggestive.
He chuckled. “And the way you twist yourself around. You have this distinctive way you lean back from the hip and look over your shoulder. You did it on the back-porch steps today. Just like I remembered.”
“I think the explanation for that is startled. I was startled that you’d think my invitation included you.” She grabbed a tea towel off the counter, folded it and hung it over the oven door. “I certainly never saw that coming.”
“Hey. I always did like to keep you guessing, Claire.”
“No guessing games this time around, Hunter,” she warned. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he started teasing her again, not like the old times. He wouldn’t, of course. Because his eyes were shadowed, and his grief was palpable. No, his mind was on another kind of loss.
“Well—” he lifted a shoulder “—I appreciate you putting me up anyway. Being around the girls and their families makes me feel like an outsider. Like I’m the odd man out, the one who’s in the way.”
“Hunter, your sisters wouldn’t make anyone feel like an outsider. And I doubt you’re in the way.”
“Mmm, no,” he said dryly, “not when it comes to lifting and carrying.” He leaned against the countertop. “They already put me to work. I hauled in two high chairs, a bunch of diaper bags, a playpen, and then, before I came over, I put a portable crib together.”
Claire’s gaze drifted to the empty spot against the far wall. She’d intentionally saved that space for a high chair. It didn’t look as if that was going to happen. “At least you made yourself useful,” she said coolly.
“The girls wondered when you were coming over.”
“I thought about it. But I wanted to give them some time alone. It’s always hard, going into the house for the first time, realizing the people you love aren’t there anymore.”
He thoughtfully flicked the zipper tab on the shaving kit tucked under his arm. It was a muscular gesture, one that put a curling sensation through Claire’s middle. “They appreciated the hot meal, Claire. Said it was just like you, to do something like that.”
Claire ignored the praise. She couldn’t bear it if he was nice to her; she’d rather be dismissed. She’d learned how to deal with that.
“They also said you should be there with us, eating.”
A lump formed in Claire’s throat as she imagined taking her place at the Starnes family dinner table. She once thought that those girls would be her sisters-in-law, that she would be part of the family. “How’s everybody holding up?”
He looked away, considering. “Lynda’s family is staying with friends, so I haven’t seen much of her. But Courtney’s pretty upset,” he admitted. “She was planning a trip back next month, and she feels guilty, like she should have arranged her trip sooner, to get here before…well, you know.”
Claire nodded. Courtney was the sensitive one. The one who nursed the sickliest-looking plants back to health. The one who chased flies out of the house rather than pick up a flyswatter. “The last thing your mother would have tolerated was Courtney’s guilt. You find a way to tell her that.”
Hunter offered her a searching gaze; one Claire was totally unprepared for. She remembered the last time he’d looked at her like that—when he’d told her he was moving out of town, and he’d wanted her to say it was okay.
“You always had a way of making people feel better, didn’t you? I remember you offered up a few suggestions I listened to.”
“No. Not always,” she said, avoiding the magnetic color of his irises. “I can think of one in particular you didn’t listen to.”
Once more, the reminder of their broken love affair skittered through the room.
“I wasn’t ready, Claire,” he said finally. “It wouldn’t have worked. Not back then. Not for either of us.”
Claire pinned him with a look. “Don’t tell me something I already know, Hunter. I would have been miserable with you, and we both know it.” Hunter’s eyes narrowed; obviously that was not the answer he expected. Not from her. She had loved him so desperately, he’d believed she’d always wait for him. But the waiting game had long been over. She didn’t want to talk about it, either, not with a man who still turned her inside out with a want she couldn’t control. “Come on, let me show you to your room,” she invited, heading into the hall. “It’s a little fluffy for you, but I’m sure you’ll get along.”
“Fluffy?” he inquired, tossing his garment bag over his arm and dragging his suitcase along behind him. “That sounds like something you’d name a cat, not do to a room.”
Claire smiled, in spite of her resolve not to. “No, the cat’s name is Zoey, and she has very little patience for anyone who does not come bearing tuna.” She paused at the foot of the stairs, in the front foyer.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, noting that the newel post, banister and balusters had been replaced with turned oak. The bare lightbulb was gone, replaced by an oak and glass fixture. Everything was warmer, more inviting. Without all the laundry piled on the stairs, or the space by the front door clogged with worn-out tennis shoes and book bags and jackets, the foyer looked ten times bigger than he remembered—and, for once, it looked loved.
Claire started up the wide staircase, now carpeted in a rich, oyster-colored hue.
“I made my room over into a guest room and took Momma’s room. Because it was bigger and in the front of the house,” Claire said.
Hunter hesitated, momentarily unnerved to think he’d sleep in Claire’s old room, the one she’d had as a teenager. He hadn’t expected that. He’d only wanted to be in the house with her, alone, to reinforce, in his own mind, that he’d made the right decision all those years ago. Yet he was already questioning it. Why, that single kiss had only served to remind him that there was such a thing as cataclysmic chemistry.
“It’s probably a whole lot less than what you’re used to,” she went on, pausing at the top of the steps, “but it’s the best I’ve got.”
“It’ll be fine,” he answered, moving up the last two steps and toward the open door of her room. It took him three steps to cross the hall, and then he stopped short on the threshold, wondering at the time warp that had fashioned the differences in their lives. He remembered a broken-down twin bed, cheap, torn shades on the windows, and walls with a few odd posters and tons of pictures torn from her mother’s magazines. “Huh.” His shoulders slumped, taking it all in. “Looks a little different without the posters.”
“That was a kid thing, a stage. Now I call this the ‘garden room.’”
“My.” The rough plaster-and-lath walls were painted eggshell, a mere backdrop for blue and salmon colors. Gauzy white curtains hung behind the plaid tab-top drapes and complimented the floral and checked bedding. It was a remarkable makeover, of bold strength and delicate fragility. He walked into the room and put his suitcase at the end of the bed. “You are either a chameleon or an escape artist, to change a room like this.”
She laughed behind him, as if she found something about his statement genuinely funny. “I’m not the escape artist. You are. I stayed here to make something of myself.”
He rolled the implication over in his head. She was hurt, and by golly, she was going to take every opportunity to remind him that he was responsible for it. “That was a poor choice of words, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I’d say so.” She tipped her head and walked into the room. “Okay. There’s plenty of hangers in the closet, and I cleaned out a drawer for you. Extra blankets and towels on the top shelf of the closet. No phone, no TV, no amenities.”
He tossed his garment bag on the bed, atop