Liv turned to him vacantly, belting her robe. “What are you talking about?”
“The stock car circuit. This chance. This is it, Livie, I feel it in my bones.”
She stared at him. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Liv went to the bathroom to throw up.
Liv found herself leaning against the bathroom sink now, fighting nausea again. Only this time she wasn’t pregnant. She hadn’t been with a man since…that night.
She’d done the test kit that weekend after Hunter had gone again. It had turned up positive. That had been in October.
He’d written, once, to tell her that Pritchard Spikes had indeed liked the way he handled his cars. He was going to give him a shot in his NASCAR garage in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Not driving, not yet, but in the background, learning. Hunter told her that starting in February, he’d spend the next ten months in a different part of the country every weekend, on the race circuit.
He’d said he would stop in Flag on his way to the East Coast. She’d told him not to bother. It was over for them.
She had a child to raise. So she had married Johnny Guenther. He’d given her security, a home, everything she’d always needed. She had given him…nothing.
What she had done to Johnny out of sheer desperation had been cruel and despicable. She’d never been able to be a wife to him. She’d ended up alone after all. But she’d raised her daughter in one place, in one home, if not conventionally.
Shuddering, Liv went back to her bedroom and slipped out of her robe. She pulled on a pair of khaki slacks and a sleek, black top. Shoved her feet into black sandals.
She was ready for the Spirit Room now. Hunter had made his choice. She had made hers. There was nothing left now but to say goodbye—for good this time.
Chapter 3
Hunter wished he didn’t remember the look Liv wore when she entered the bar, but he had seen it before.
Elegant, he thought. She’d always been able to look elegant, even in cutoffs and work boots, with dust coating her skin. It had been in the way she moved, in the dip of her shoulder when she would glance back with a cunning grin, in the way she tunneled her fingers through her hair, pulling it straight back from her forehead, then letting it fall. Everything about her said that she’d been born for a better life than the Res.
Sometimes, in their last years together, he’d marveled that a half-breed troublemaker like himself could find her in his arms, skin to skin, that she was his. It had all been a mirage, but it had overwhelmed him while it had lasted.
As Liv paused to look for him in the Spirit Room, she reminded him of an unbroken filly trapped in a corral for her first saddling. He knew that when she stepped closer, he’d see a certain wildness at the edges of her eyes. She’d tremble so imperceptibly that it would be little more than a hum in the air around her. Livie had known fear, but like a proud and wild horse, she would never let it show.
He had trapped her tonight, Hunter thought, as surely as he had ever herded a mustang into a pen. He’d given her the choice of meeting him here or playing this out in front of her daughter. His daughter.
She was right to be afraid.
The mirrors behind the bar were smokey and bronzed. The whole room was brown and gold and dimly lit. Watching her reflection as she spotted him and approached, Hunter thought it looked a little like a tintype. He rolled his stool around to face her as she stepped up beside him and dropped one hip onto the neighboring stool.
“Punctual, Livie. As always.”
She’d already told him not to call her that. She wouldn’t give Hunter the satisfaction of protesting again. She scraped her hair back as the bartender approached and stared at the bar in front of Hunter. It was bare burnished walnut. She wondered how long he had been waiting. “Who’s paying for this little shindig?” she asked.
“I am.” Hunter glanced at the bartender. “Remy. Straight.”
“No more Boone’s? You’ve come up in the world.”
“I’ve always burned it as fast as I earned it. Now there’s just more to burn.”
“In that case, make it two.” She thought Hunter almost smiled, but his mouth was too hard to allow it.
Liv felt dazed. She couldn’t believe she was here with him like this. In a bar. Again.
She’d known he’d come to Flag even though she’d told him not to. Liv willed herself, schooled herself, to be cold when she saw him walk in the door. She could show nothing. Hunter was like a wild cat when it came to scenting doubt, fear, pain. And he’d always known what she was feeling.
He couldn’t know it this time. Her baby’s future depended on it.
She was still angry at him, so angry that it hurt with a physical pain. Maybe that was all he would sense.
It had been a month since he’d left her bed for California, and Liv had already worked her way up from cocktail waitress to tending bar. No more frou-frou for her. She’d graduated to black trousers and a silk vest that nipped her waist and plunged down to her cleavage. She leaned forward when Hunter sat at the bar, giving him a good view of what he would be missing.
If he let her go.
“I told you not to come,” she said, her tone flat. Then her heart sank. He was watching her eyes. Trying to read them.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t figure out why so I stopped to see for myself.”
“North Carolina is a long way away from Arizona, pal. Better hit the road.”
“After you tell me what’s wrong.”
You won’t stay put. You won’t just stay put and love me! Liv straightened from the bar as someone gestured for another beer. She went to draw the draft.
He was still waiting for her when she came back.
All she could do was take a deep breath and plunge in. A lot had happened since he had left.
“I’m getting married, Hunter. I’ve found someone who can give me a home, a family, everything I’ve always needed. You said when that happened, you would go away. So go.”
Oh, dear God, the pain on his face. It snatched at her air. She couldn’t bear to see it, so she went to wash glasses instead. But his voice followed her.
“Not you, Livie. You were the only one who ever knew when I was gone.”
She looked up from the sink and steeled herself. “Are you still here?”
“Talk to me.”
“I just did.”
“Why?”
“I’ve thought about it. I’m not going to chase the wind with you, Hunter.” Fight for me. Oh, please, God, let him fight to keep me.
His
