“Yup.”
Hunter nodded. He didn’t have the heart to force the issue. “Okay, then. Well, I guess since you’re all ready, you can help me get the rest of your toys put away so this place doesn’t look like a cyclone hit it.”
Apparently feeling dressed up made the little boy agreeable because he didn’t balk at that suggestion the way he usually did. Instead he turned and went right to work.
“Who’s this lady again?” Johnny asked as he picked up his toys.
Hunter hadn’t known how to explain Terese Warwick. Johnny knew he was adopted; Hunter and his wife had decided when he was still an infant that they would be open and honest with him on the subject. Despite that, the whole concept seemed slightly out of his grasp yet. Whenever they talked about it Johnny seemed only concerned with the fact that Hunter was his dad no matter what.
Hunter hadn’t wanted to confuse him by trying to explain that Terese Warwick was the sister of Johnny’s birth mother, so he’d opted for a more simple description. Which he repeated now.
“She’s a friend who knew you when you were only a baby, and she’s the person who has the same kind of blood that you have, so she gave you some of hers when you were in the hospital.”
“When I was bleedin’ on accounta the hemolilia.”
“When your nose was bleeding so badly because of the hemophilia, yes.”
“Is she your girlfriend like Mindy Harper wants to be my girlfriend and kiss me?” Johnny asked, being silly.
“When did Mindy Harper want to kiss you?”
“Before last week. At preschool. When we were havin’ graham crackers and yogurt. She told Mikey she loooved me and she wanted to kiss me and I said yuk.”
Again Hunter suppressed a smile. “No, the lady who’s coming to stay with us for a while is not my girlfriend and there won’t be any kissing going on. She’s just a friend who’s a girl. And really she’ll be here to see you more than to see me.”
“Oh, no!” Johnny shouted in a panic.
It was an indication of how on-edge Hunter still was about his son and his son’s health that that simple exclamation was enough to tense his entire body and make him spin around to face the boy.
But Johnny’s current crisis was far less distressing than the one the week before.
“I forgetted about my hair and put my hat on!” the little boy informed him, holding up his cowboy hat. “I gotta fix it!” Then he dashed back upstairs.
“Don’t put any more soap in it,” Hunter called after him. “Just use a little water if you have to.”
Hunter shook his head and laughed to himself at his son’s antics. Then he returned to straightening up the living room.
He knew that it wasn’t Terese Warwick herself that had Johnny so excited. The little boy didn’t know her, after all. It was merely the novelty of having someone come to stay with them.
Hunter, on the other hand, was a different story. For him it was the woman he was looking forward to seeing again. And he was none too happy about it.
In fact, wanting to see her again was what had caused him to drag his feet about calling her to arrange this visit.
Wanting to see any woman hadn’t happened to him since Margee. It sure as hell hadn’t happened to him since Margee’s death.
But with Terese Warwick it had happened. And it had Hunter feeling pretty unsettled. And confused. Why her, of all people? he kept asking himself.
Of course, she didn’t seem anything like her sister. But maybe the difference between them was actually the problem.
For all her money and high-class social circles, Terese still had a sort of girl-next-door thing going for her. And flashy, overly made-up, beauty-shop-perfect women—like Eve Warwick—put him off. Who wanted somebody who looked as if they needed to be kept on a pedestal and dusted once a week? Somebody who might as well have a hands-off sign posted on her forehead?
But the girl-next-door thing? That had more appeal to him. Give him Terese’s long, thick ponytail over her sister’s helmet hair any day. That ponytail was the color of red oak and shiny and neat and clean.
Give him those few freckles that dotted Terese’s pale porcelain skin, keeping her from being too perfect and putting a hint of mischief into her appearance. And there was no doubt that he preferred Terese’s pert nose to that surgeon-fashioned one her sister sported.
Plus, Terese’s eyes didn’t need all that glitter and fake stuff on the lids, he thought as he tossed a few more of his son’s toys into one of the cupboards that lined a wall of the living room. Terese had eyes that were incredible on their own. Warm, sparkling, iri-descent, vibrant blue eyes, with lustrous dark lashes. He’d rather be looking into those eyes any day of the week than into those cold baby-blues of her sister.
Oh yeah, given a choice, he’d vote for the natural, fresh-scrubbed beauty. And when it came attached to a tight little body with breasts that were just the right size…
“Geez,” he muttered to himself in disgust, knowing he didn’t have any business thinking about her breasts. Not now and not the other ten dozen times he had in the last several days.
It was just that something about Terese had gotten to him.
But it wasn’t only the way she looked that kept coming back into his head to taunt him. Or the way she looked that seemed to set her apart from her twin sister. Terese also seemed sweet and kind and unselfish, though not in a doormat sort of way. After all, she’d stood her ground with her nasty sister and that was saying something.
But at the same time, Terese’s sweetness and kindness and unselfishness had seemed natural, too. Innate. And bolstered by a strength of character her twin clearly lacked.
And so there he was, Hunter thought as he jammed more toys into the cupboard and had to force the door closed. He’d taken two showers in one day, he’d gotten himself dressed up, and he was having problems holding down his own excitement at the prospect of Terese Warwick arriving on his doorstep any minute now.
Excitement he was none too happy about at the moment.
All it did was get him riled up for no good reason.
And why?
Because of the who and the when.
The who being that she was Terese Warwick. Which meant that no matter how much appeal she might have, it came in the shadow of her sister and the fact that her sister was Johnny’s birth mother.
And if that shadow wasn’t enough, Hunter also knew he needed to keep uppermost in his mind the fact that though Terese seemed like the girl-next-door, she wasn’t. She was someone who operated on a whole different level than he did. She was someone who lived in a whole different world than he did.
Oh yeah, who she was was sure as hell something he needed to keep in mind.
And as for the
