it now. Hunter had given her the nickname when, as an awestruck thirteen-year-old, Gaylynn had used henna on her hair to impress the “only man in the universe” for her. Hunter hadn’t known that he was that man. He’d been eighteen, five years older than her. In her idolizing eyes, he’d seemed like the perfect man.
Seeing Hunter now, she realized how wrong she’d been. Now he was a man. Not perfect perhaps, but definitely rather awesome. The years had honed him to a sharp edge, as was illustrated by the fine lines at the outer edge of his green eyes. His level brows intensified his elemental attractiveness. His face was too powerful to be handsome, yet it held a woman’s attention longer than any surface good looks would.
When, at age thirteen, Gaylynn’s plain brown hair had turned a vivid red as a result of her henna experiment, Hunter had started calling her Red. She’d tagged after him and her brother, anyway. She’d fallen in love—with capital letters and all the fervor of a teenager.
And when Hunter had gotten married at twenty-five, she’d shed a tear or two. It was the last time she’d cried. Until last month.
“What are you doing here, Hunter?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he eyed her with a frown. “What’s-wrong?” he said bluntly. “You look awful.”
Her cheeks burned. She knew her clothes were rumpled, and her jeans had dirt marks at the knees where she’d bent down to feed the stray cats. She’d planned on taking a shower after she’d eaten her late lunch, but had gotten distracted. Her hair hadn’t been brushed in hours and probably had a twig or two sticking out of it from her exploratory walk along the edge of the woods. “I wasn’t expecting company right now. Go away,” she muttered with self-conscious irritability, trying to move him toward the front door.” Come back later.”
She might as well have tried to move Mount McKinley. “I’m not going anyplace until you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m on vacation, okay? This is the way I look when I’m on vacation. If you don’t like it you can leave!” Her famous Hungarian temper flared as she stomped off to the bathroom and slammed the door. Looking in the mirror, she saw that he was right. She did look awful. After washing her face and brushing her hair, she put on some lipstick before opening the door.
Of course, Hunter was waiting right outside, just as she’d known he would.
“There, is that better?” she asked, complete with a mocking pirouette.
“I wasn’t talking about your hair. I was talking about your eyes.”
“I didn’t get a lot of sleep…”
“That’s not it,” he interrupted her. Taking her chin between his fingers, he tilted her face up. “There’s something about the expression in your eyes.”
She closed them. Tight. But that only made the feel of his warm fingers on her skin all the more powerful. In an instant it was as if she were thirteen and in the throes of her ardent crush on him all over again. Her world became centered on the point of contact between them. Heat traveled from his fingertips to her skin, racing to her heart. Her senses were in a turmoil as he practiced his black magic on her with nothing more than the merest brush of his hand.
Disconcerted, she snapped her eyes open and stepped back from. him. “Did Michael send you over here to check up on me?”
“He told me you were coming.”
“I’ll shoot him.”
“Now hold on.”
She wanted to hold on, all right. She wanted to hold on to Hunter’s broad shoulders, wrap her arms around him and never let go. Great. This was not the time for her to remember the stupid crush she’d had on him. This was the time to get rid of him. Before she said or did something foolish.
“I’m fine. You don’t have to waste any more time checking up on your friend’s nuisance sister.”
“You’re not a nuisance.”
“That’s not what you used to say.”
“You were five years old then.”
“Nine,” she corrected him, remembering the very day his family had moved in next door. At first she’d hero-worshipped him.then she’d fallen for him. “What exactly did my brother say when he called you to come check up on me?”
“It wasn’t like that. He was just warning me that someone—you—would be using the cabin for a while. I’ve kind of been looking after the place.”
“You don’t mean you’ve been staying here, do you?” she asked, horrified by the image of sharing the compact cabin with him.
“No, of course not.”
“Good.”
“I’ve got my own place a stone’s throw away.”
“Stone’s throw?”
He nodded. “You can’t see it from here, but it’s just over the ridge there. About a two-minute walk from here.”
“Great.” A two-minute walk from temptation. Wonderful.
“Michael didn’t tell you that we went in together right after our academy days to buy this property and the two cabins on it?”
“No, he didn’t tell me.” The rat.
“So how about you? Are you going to tell me what’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened. Well, that’s not exactly true. Michael and Brett got married yesterday. Actually, it was the second time they got married, it’s kind of a complicated story,” she noted dryly. Made more so by a Gypsy love-charmed box, which was sitting in a cardboard container next to the couch at this very minute.
Too bad Hunter couldn’t have been the first man she’d seen when she’d opened that box. Unlike Michael, who’d been the practical one in the family, Gaylynn liked to think there was some magic in the world.
At least, she always had in the past. Now she wasn’t so sure. About anything.
“Yeah, I know about the wedding,” Hunter was saying. “I was sorry I couldn’t make it, but I was working.”
Gaylynn nodded. She knew he worked as a police officer. In fact, Hunter and Michael had gone to the police academy together. Her brother hadn’t finished the program, preferring to work on his own in the world of corporate security. But Hunter had graduated near the top of his class and been hired as one of Chicago’s finest. He’d looked dashing in his uniform and had been considered the ultimate bachelor, dating a number of women over the next few years. Then he’d up and gotten married the month Gaylynn had started college.
“So how’s your wife doing?” she asked with forced cheerfulness.
“I haven’t got the faintest idea. We were divorced almost five years ago.”
The news took her by complete surprise. “Michael never told me you were divorced.”
Hunter
