Claiming The One (Meadowview Heat 3; The Meadowview Series 3) Read online

  She wandered through the ground floor, taking mental notes on all that should be done before the house went on the market: windows power washed, living room repainted, cabinets and hardwood floors polished.

  Little furniture or décor remained. She remembered her mother’s infamous yard sales, where Tina would put all but the kitchen sink out on the front lawn to sell. Money for cigarettes and cheap vodka. Probably drugs…maybe even meth. She let out a sigh.

  Michelle, apparently tired of waiting while Liz toured her past, stepped up next to her. “So, Liz, long will you be staying in town?”

  Not long, she hoped, but more than the couple of hours she’d promised Gerald. “I don’t know. There’s more work to be done than I’d thought. You know,” she murmured, gliding a finger through dust an eighth of an inch thick, “it’s Elizabeth, actually. Elizabeth Picard. I legally changed my name earlier this year.” She stared at the tip of her finger, now thickly coated in grey. Good God, had Tina never bothered to dust?

  “I doubt you’ll get any of the locals to call you different,” Michelle said. “You’re our Liz, and nothing else.”

  She frowned. “I don’t think folks around here want to claim me as their anything.”

  Michelle sucked in a quick breath.

  Bingo. Liz had hit the nail on the head. In Meadowview, even after all these years, she still was persona non grata.

  “That all was such a long time ago. Most everyone’s forgotten about what happened.”

  Liz let out a bark of a laugh. Right. No way had people forgotten her sin. In a town as small as Meadowview, everyone saw everyone else’s shadows. And no one ever forgot the past.

  “No sense in trying to mollify me. I know I’m still the town’s slutty redhead. The pregnant teen.”

  Michelle placed a hand on her forearm, the soft touch startling her. Liz looked down at the Realtor’s hand, then up to her face. Forgiving eyes met her gaze. Her throat squeezed tight.

  “Liz,” Michelle said quietly, “that’s the way you saw things, not how everyone else did. Besides, have you ever stopped to think that Hunter had as much responsibility as you?”

  Liz’s stomach churned. All she’d wanted to do was to return to the house, pick through Tina’s things, and make a list with Michelle of what needed to be done before putting the house up for sale. Then Michelle could list the house and Liz could disappear, forever.

  Goodbye to Liz Pritchard.

  Why was it that everyone in this damned town had to shove her face in her past?

  “How soon do you think this place will sell?” she asked, purposefully avoiding Michelle’s question.

  “Sell?” Michelle’s voice rose. “I must have misunderstood. I thought you wanted to rent the place.”

  Months ago, when Liz first contacted the real estate office after learning she’d inherited 35 Nightingale Lane, renting her former home had seemed a wise idea. Shabby and downtrodden as it was, the house was hers—the only item she owned that she hadn’t received from a man. She’d inherited the place fair and square and planned to keep her one piece of property.

  Then Gerald proposed his unique idea of marriage, and she’d accepted. But with the ring came the role of Elizabeth Picard, and also the order to destroy all remnants of Liz Pritchard. And that meant she had to sell her home. Had she forgotten to tell Michelle?

  “My plans changed,” she said. “I’m not renting this place. I’m selling. Then I’m gone for good. Dusting this two-bit town off my hands. Liz Pritchard will disappear forever.”

  Quiet air met her blunt statement. Then Michelle spoke. “You know, I have to wonder…are you moving forward, or running away?”

  The question caught Liz by surprise. She shot a quick look at Michelle who stood, hands on hips, with an expression of compassion blended with a hint of a challenge.

  Oh, hell. They both knew Michelle had hit the nail on the head. Of course she was running away. But at least she had something to run toward.

  The life of Elizabeth Picard. False as it may be.

  “Does it matter?” she asked, turning away, then peering into a kitchen cupboard crammed with months-old cereal, cans of ground coffee, and almost a dozen containers of powdered creamer: Holiday Bliss. Probably some big sale at the local discount supermarket.

  “Some of us might actually miss you. We like having you around. I like having you around,” Michelle said. “And I’m not the only one—there’s someone here in Meadowview right now who wants to see you.”

  Liz started emptying the contents of the cupboard out onto the stained Formica countertop.

  She did have a few former friends here, sure, but most of them were men. And as of late, most of those men had paired up with women who’d never much liked her. Heck, in the case of Sadie Courant—correction, Sadie Sawyer now that she’d married Ethan Sawyer—some had vehemently hated her.

  Not that Liz had ever done anything to earn Sadie’s respect. Playing the part of the town bitch had been the only way to stay sane. It wasn’t enough that she’d built up emotional walls—nope, she put razor wire and live grenades around the damned thing.

  Jack Gibson, Ethan Sawyer, and Theo Courant—those were her remaining friends in Meadowview. The guys she went to when she came home on one of her meaningless attempts to get Tina into rehab. But by now Ethan was married, Jack engaged, and Theo? Well, who knew with Theo—the man was a sex hound. But she doubted either Ethan’s wife Sadie or Jack’s fiancée Lia would want her around, and knowing both men, neither would go behind their loved one’s backs to see her.

  “Right,” she drawled, waving a tin can of coffee in the air. “Besides you, who in this blip-on-the-map town would want to see me?”

  “Hunter Thorne.”

  Liz’s heart thudded in her chest. The tin fell out of her suddenly weak hand, the weight slamming onto her foot. She bit back a cry and then bent low, taking her time, willing breath to return to her lungs.

  Hunter was here? In Meadowview? And he wanted to see her?

  No fucking way.

  “He’s back. For a day or two, at any rate. First time back since high school. He arrived in Meadowview yesterday.” Michelle rummaged under the sink and came up with a carton of black vinyl bags. “Here, use these for the garbage,” she said, holding one out.

  Liz grabbed the bag, dully aware of her movements, acutely aware of the pain in her heart.

  “He’s looking for you. I told him you’d be here today. He’s coming to the house this afternoon.”

  The beat of her heart spun into an unsteady rhythm. “No…” she moaned, the word cracking as it came out her tightened throat.

  Michelle leaned against the kitchen counter and reached out her hands to Liz. “It’s time you stopped running. If Hunter Thorne has something to say to you, you should listen.”

  “But—”

  “But what? Yes, he was an irresponsible jerk. And cruel. I remember. I was there in the classroom that day. But he’s willing to talk now, and my sense is that he wants to apologize for what he did. For what he said. I think you should listen. It’s been, what, thirteen years? Time to settle the past.” When Liz wouldn’t accept Michelle’s offer of a hand, Michelle opened a heavyweight trash bag with a loud pop and placed it on the counter.

  Oh, God, this couldn’t be happening. Liz’s mind swirled, as if invaded by dense tulle fog. She struggled to think. She couldn’t see Hunter. Not now. Not ever. Not when the past was something she desperately needed to avoid.

  To eliminate.

  To kill.

  She shoved the fog out of her head. Time to take action. “You know what?” she bit out. “Hunter Thorne can kiss my ass before I’ll let him talk to me.”

  “Oh, Christ, Liz,” Michelle snapped. “Don’t you ever get tired of playing the martyr?” She shot Liz a hard look, then turned and stormed out of the kitchen and stomped down the hall. Moments later, the front door squeaked and then slammed shut.

  Liz stood alone.

  She hadn�
�t been playing the martyr, had she? She had every right to avoid Hunter. After what he’d done to her, she’d earned the privilege to hate his guts.

  She ground her jaw tight. Why the hell did Michelle tell Hunter how to find her? He was the last person she wanted to see. She cast a quick glance at her wrist, noting the time on her Cartier watch—a gift from a past boyfriend. Almost noon. According to Michelle, Hunter would arrive this afternoon. Christ.

  Several long and breathless seconds passed before Liz realized she had to get the hell out of Dodge. And pretty damned quick. She had to leave before her past could catch up to her and ruin her future.

  But there was something she needed to do first. Something she could never leave behind.

  * * *

  Liz stood at the top of the staircase, surrounded by dust motes floating lazily in the hot attic air. Her chest ached. The intensity of the adrenaline rush after hearing Hunter wanted to talk to her had made her heart slam hard in her ribcage, but controlling her breath had settled the adrenaline back down, giving her a chance to think.

  She’d head back to Marin and return another day to go through Tina’s house. But before she raced out of Meadowview, she had to see if her inner sanctum remained. The tiny closet tucked away under the eaves held all that was precious.

  As soon as she knew for sure the contents of the attic closet were still safe, she’d collect what she could and leave. She could come back in a few days to finish readying the house for sale, once she knew Hunter Thorne had taken off again for parts unknown. She sure as hell wasn’t about to be here when he showed up. But for now, she had a little time left before Hunter showed up.

  Time for herself.

  Time to face her past.

  She pushed the attic door open and her vision blurred, then adjusted to the filtered light. It had been almost a year since she’d been brave enough to enter the attic, but nothing seemed to have changed. She squinted, but was too far away to see if her mother had removed the padlock from the closet door.

  Possibly Tina had never even known about the closet. Her mother had hated the attic, saying the cobwebs freaked her out and that the floorboards might give way to send her crashing into the bedrooms below.

  Because Tina hated the attic was the precise reason why Liz had loved the space as a kid, spending hours curled up on an old horse blanket by the window, reading Nancy Drew mysteries, and later, sexy romance novels stolen from the grocery store.

  Once, the local storeowner, Mr. Camden, had caught her with a paperback and an apple stuffed down her cowboy boots. Instead of calling the cops, he’d pulled her into his office and told her she could borrow the books but that she had to return them in mint condition so he could sell them to paying customers.

  He’d also pointed out that boxes of leftover produce were left around back on alternate days. She’d spent the summer pouring over trashy romance novels and eating rejected fruit.

  As she stepped forward, the attic floor creaked. A breeze outside sent the oak next to the house nodding, the soft scrape of a branch against the glass pane a familiar sound. A gentle light suffused the room as she stepped under the slanted rafters.

  There—a bright gleam of light refracted off the heavy steel padlock, still firmly locked in place. She let out the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. No one had entered her secret spot.

  A low rumbling growl coming from outside caught her attention. She held motionless, listening. The growl grew louder—a vehicle of some kind, motorcycle maybe. The chug-chug of the engine slowed, coming to a stop in front of her house.

  A jolt of fresh adrenaline shocked her system. Hunter? She edged her way over to the grimy window. At the front gate, a man in a skullcap helmet, white T-shirt, and faded jeans swung off a motorcycle, his back to her. She blew out a breath of relief. No way would Hunter ever ride a motorcycle. He’d called them sui-cycles. But her mother had been friends with more than a few bikers—fellow alcoholics. Druggies.

  Damn. She hated breaking the news about her mother’s death to anyone, even one of her mom’s former druggie friends.

  She dragged a finger through the long-accumulated grime on the windowpane and hoped the man would leave, but he headed up the cracked path, straight for the front porch. She sighed. She’d have to check her secret room later, after the guy left. Right now, she needed to deliver the bad news.

  She was halfway back down the cramped staircase when the grating ring of the hand-cranked doorbell sounded. “Be right there,” she called out. The sound repeated, twice. She winced. As a child, she’d loved the bits and pieces of history that made up the Victorian home. Today, the antique doorbell made her back teeth ache.

  Under her heels, one of the steps wobbled, and she found herself tumbling forward to land at the bottom of the stairwell on her hands and knees.

  “Jesus.” A sharp pain stabbed her lip and her knees ached. She nudged the tip of her tongue against the side of her mouth and tasted copper—blood. She cast a glance down her legs, where a thick ooze of blood trickled. Hell. She’d skinned her knee. So much for wearing tennis skirts and skimpy cocktail dresses for the next week or so.

  The bathroom, she assumed, probably still held bandages and antiseptic spray, but before she could bandage herself up, she needed to get rid of the biker still pounding on the door.

  She tugged the heels off and tossed them to land in a pile at the bottom of the stairs, then stood. With a slight limp, she made her way barefoot to the front door and threw it open. She saw a man walking away, headed back down the cracked concrete walk, mounded muscles on his back apparent even under the thin white cotton of his T-shirt. Apparently, the man had given up on anyone answering his knock and was about to leave.

  “Listen,” she called out, “if you’re here to see Tina, I’m really sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but—”

  Partway down the pathway, the man stopped. Slowly, he turned to face her. Her throat closed tight and her breathing went shallow.

  Hunter.

  Oh, God. Hunter.

  Older, and well filled out, but completely him. Hunter Thorne.

  She sucked in breath slowly, steadying the inflow of air. Now was not the time to go fuzzyheaded. Now she needed all the spit and fire she could muster. Fighting against the oncoming blank slate, she pulled strength from deep within. She couldn’t let him see her pain.

  “Liz,” Hunter said.

  “Fuck off.”

  He reversed his direction and came to stand in front of her, hip thrust to the side, one thumb hooked insolently in a belt loop, a lopsided grin on his face. “Not the friendliest greeting I’ve ever received.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the living room. “Planning on inviting me in?”

  She worked to bring her focus back. To use the pain of seeing him to generate the anger that always simmered deep inside her—that should give her strength, right? But her tummy seemed to be tying itself up in knots and oxygen seemed to have disappeared from her immediate surroundings.

  Finally, she managed to make words come out of her mouth, and said, “I thought you were one of my mother’s druggie friends, or I never would have opened the door.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Great. You’ll let a meth addict inside, but not me?”

  “I refuse to open the door to my past, and that means you,” she said, fighting to keep tears from forming in her eyes. Struggling to keep the heavy emotion out of her voice. Grasping at something cruel and biting to say.

  Because if she went soft, if she so much as released one iota of emotion, it would all be over and she’d be a blubbering, snuffling mess…and no way would she let Hunter see her that way.

  “Take a hike,” she managed to force out, then stepped backward, dragging the heavy oak door with her.

  But not before Hunter slammed his hand against the door and shoved it wide open.

  God damn the man.

  There. Finally the anger had come, overtaking the weakness. Liz could use anger—she always had. Ang
er made her bitter, bitchy. A shrew. But better to appear bitchy than to expose her soft underbelly…to let her vulnerability show. She tugged at the door, but Hunter wouldn’t release his grip.

  A muscle in Hunter’s jaw jumped before he spoke. “Knock it off, Liz. I have to tell you something, and I’m not leaving until you hear what I have to say.”

  Fury stormed through her. They hadn’t spoken more than a few words since that horrible day all those years ago. What could he possibly have to say now that she’d want to hear?

  Nothing.

  Even if he got down on his knees before her and begged for forgiveness, she wouldn’t want to hear it.

  Right. As if Hunter would ever beg for anything. Or believe himself guilty for what had happened. For the pregnancy, or for what he’d done to her afterward. She wasn’t about to hear whatever it was that was on his mind. Not today—not ever.

  Firmly, she placed one foot out onto the porch, almost between his legs. With one arm braced against the doorjamb, she reached beyond him and grabbed the door handle, bringing her to within a hair’s breadth of Hunter himself. Close enough to catch a whiff of his scent.

  It took a second for her brain to register that he smelled the same as he had when they’d been teenagers: a touch of sweat, limes, and cedar.

  Her stomach clenched and her hands started shaking. Huge mistake, getting that close to him. Damn her for going all wimpy. She needed to show him she was in control, not flutter about like a pansy-assed wimp. To hell with Hunter. This was her house. And her future she needed to protect.

  She pulled the door toward her, slowly and deliberately, and in as low and sultry a tone as she could muster, she said, “Bite me.” The door eased shut with a quiet click. She cranked the deadlock, then melted against the wooden frame.

  She knew she should step away. Hunter would realize she still stood there if he didn’t hear her footsteps. But her body went suddenly cold. Weak knees and numb feet held her rooted to the spot. Allowing her eyes to droop shut, she leaned her forehead against the painted wooden door, grateful for the warmth generated by the full morning sun.