Claiming The One (Meadowview Heat 3; The Meadowview Series 3) Page 6

  She snorted.

  Theo pushed past her, bent into the Mercedes, and pulled out the keys from the ignition. He stood in front of her again, dangling them from his fingertips. “You may not believe me, but it’s true. And I’ll prove it. Now go get in my SUV and be prepared for fun. It’s time to party, small-town style.”

  “Beer and skinny dipping?” she asked, trying to drip sarcasm from her tone but ending up laughing at Theo’s cheesy grin.

  “You bet.”

  Hunter strode along the grassy path in the dying light of the day, following Elderberry Creek as it meandered through Meadowview. Hunger and the need for a beer had driven him out of the room he’d rented at the local B&B and into town.

  His stomach growled. He’d been too angry with Liz after their encounter and had skipped lunch, stopping off at his former fire station to talk with Chief Brentwood, who he remembered from his high school years when he’d served as a volunteer firefighter. One of the firefighters would be going on maternity leave in a couple of weeks and she was taking a full two years off to raise her baby. The chief was eager for Hunter to apply for the position. The thought of returning to Meadowview permanently held a certain appeal, and he’d promised to give the chief’s request some thought.

  Once he met Abbie, she might like spending some time in the place where her birth parents had grown up.

  A splash in the creek caught his attention. In the deepening gloom of evening, it took a moment before he saw what had caused the noise. A pair of river otters gamboled about in the water. Hadn’t the fundraiser to protect the otter’s habitat occurred this afternoon? He stopped, bent low, and caught a handful of granite pebbles, worn smooth by the creek, keeping an eye on the pair as the otters slid from rock to rock, tussling with each other every few feet.

  River otters were a rare sight in Meadowview, and a mated pair at that. A memory, long buried, tugged at him. He and Liz had once said they’d be like eagles, or swans—mated for life.

  A swell of emotion hit his chest, catching him off guard. Anger? Frustration? The sexual encounter with Liz had done a number on him—had left him reeling and confused.

  The otters moved on, disappearing into the dark depths of the creek. He tossed a rock into the water, watching ripples form and spread out on the glassy surface. While he understood Liz’s rationale for seducing him and attempting to leave him wanting, their frenzied and passionate encounter after her seduction act was what had thrown him a curve ball.

  What had Liz done with her life to make her so angry? Why would she marry a man who didn’t care if she screwed some other guy? Why would she engage Hunter in a power play? He knew from her desperation and absolute loss of conscious thought as they’d made out that Liz had succumbed to passion, had experienced deep emotion.

  As had he.

  He and Liz hadn’t just come close to screwing earlier. They’d… He struggled to find the correct definition for what they’d experienced. Almost made love?

  Maybe.

  Yet she’d left to go back to her fiancé as if Hunter had been just a fun romp, easily forgotten. Then she’d gouged him even deeper when she refused to meet their daughter. He made it clear he needed her, yet Liz had still hung him out to dry.

  Abbie had made her one stipulation clear: she wanted to meet her mother, too. Without Liz, he might not be able to meet his daughter.

  And ask for her forgiveness and put an end to the guilt that had eaten away at him for years.

  Fuck. Liz had to listen. She had to understand how much meeting Abbie meant to him. How much he needed Liz to get to Abbie.

  The path veered to the left and he followed the trail, heading into downtown Meadowview. Old-fashioned gas lamps lit a tree-lined main street. Tourists and locals alike strolled along the wooden sidewalk. Low-pitched conversations filled the humid night air, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter.

  The door to the Goldpan Pub stood open, a welcoming sight. He stepped inside, and his eyes took a moment to adjust to the light. The place was crowded, but there was room at the bar. He could order a plate of ribs and a couple of beers and sit alone, drowning all the irritating thoughts of Liz.

  “Hunter!”

  Across the crowded and boisterous room, seated in a booth, was Michelle Engle. Dan sat next to her, his arm wrapped protectively around his wife. Both waved wildly, beckoning him over. A half-formed grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Dan seemed as hulking as he had in high school, and judging from the wide smile on his face, just as goofy.

  And insistent.

  So much for drinking alone.

  Hunter wound his way between filled tables and hurried wait staff to join the couple.

  “Hey man, it’s great to see you.” Dan, once his defensive lineman, beamed at him. “Michelle told me you were back in town.”

  Hunter gave Dan a quick punch in the bicep—the football player’s equivalent of a hug—and and sank down in the plush leather seat across from the Engles. “Glad I ran into you both. I just caught sight of a pair of river otters in the creek, about five minutes ago. Heard you headed up some fundraiser this afternoon.”

  Dan nodded. “Good times. Theo Courant and the Courant Foundation did us a solid. Got a bunch of donations, plus people offering their time to haul trash out of the river.”

  Michelle snorted. “And Theo had to haul your ass out of the river, too.”

  “I fell in,” Dan admitted to Hunter. “It was after the fundraising event. We went with Theo and a few others upriver to skinny dip and I slipped on moss and went in, cooler full of beer and all.”

  Michelle laughed. “You looked all awkward, with your legs sticking straight up. You almost took out Liz, what with all your flailing about.”

  “Liz?” Hunter couldn’t help it—he spoke before thinking. So Liz had gone to the fundraiser at the river instead of straight home. Wasn’t his business, anyway. What did he care?

  Dan sobered, giving Hunter a searching look. “Uh, yeah, Theo brought her along. Michelle said you were looking for her—did you have a chance to speak with her yet?”

  Hunter nodded. A waitress walked up to the table, tossed down a cocktail napkin and took his order. He thumbed the napkin, staring at the pan of gold imprinted on the front. “Yeah, I found her.”

  “At Tina’s, right?” Michelle added, pushing a bowl of peanuts in his direction.

  He cracked a peanut and threw the shell on the already littered floor. “What happened to the place?” he asked. “And what happened to Tina? The house seemed deserted.”

  Michelle said, “You haven’t heard, then.”

  He looked up. “Heard what?”

  “Tina died. Several months ago.”

  Hunter’s chest squeezed tight. Liz hadn’t mentioned her mother’s passing. Of course, he and Liz hadn’t quite had the opportunity for conversation. “Tina wouldn’t have been that old. What happened, car accident? Cancer?”

  Michelle and Dan exchanged glances. “Alcohol,” Dan said, finally. “Tina tried, but she never could quit the bottle. Liz did all she could to keep her mother away from the stuff, but in the end, there wasn’t much anyone could do. Tina’s liver was shot.”

  An ache formed in his chest. He and Tina hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but she hadn’t deserved such a crappy death. Hunter propped his elbows on the table and leaned his chin on an upturned palm. “Liz isn’t hooked, is she? She seems so…thin. Frail, almost. ”

  “That’s because she doesn’t eat. She’s not hooked on alcohol,” Michelle stated baldly. “She’s hooked on being the perfect woman. Sandie Maddox, the checker at Camden’s Grocery, said Liz went under the knife to make herself beautiful so she could hook a rich man. Boob job, nose job. She also changed her name to Elizabeth Picard. She told me doesn’t want to be called Liz anymore.”

  He felt a stirring inside his belly. Some emotion was making him feel uncomfortable. But for the life of him, he couldn’t determine whether the emotion was disgust or compassion. “But why w
ould she do that? Why change herself so drastically? Become someone else?”

  Michelle raised an eyebrow. “If you grew up in a small town and had her reputation, wouldn’t you do all you could to be someone else?”

  Her words hit him in the gut.

  “Beer’s here,” Dan said, interrupting his thoughts.

  Hunter chugged his draft down within minutes. He spent the rest of the evening talking to Michelle and Dan, catching up on all the Meadowview news and eating his fill of ribs and garlic fries, but as he walked back to the B&B, Michelle’s words still rang loud in his ears.

  Liz’s reputation in Meadowview had indeed defined her: the redheaded slut. She’d been vilified, teased, and tormented by her peers in high school.

  And it had been all his fault.

  For years, he’d yearned to find his daughter and beg her forgiveness in giving her up for adoption, to alleviate the guilt he had over failing to be there for her. But his role in what had happened to Liz in this town weighed on him just as heavily. He’d never apologized to Liz for what he’d said that day. He’d never accepted responsibility for Liz’s downfall.

  In the dark, he tripped over a rock in the path, wincing when pain shot up his leg. Karma, he figured. Maybe now would be a good time to own up to his gigantic mistake. His major fuck-up.

  If only he hadn’t chased Liz out of town.

  * * *

  Abbie hung up the phone, threw it onto the bed next to her, and clutched an unfamiliar pillow to her chest, heaving wet and gulping sobs. She stared out a window, the Rockies a blur in her field of view. Why couldn’t she be in her own bedroom, with her own pillow, instead of at her aunt’s house? This pillow sucked—it wasn’t fluffy and comforting and didn’t conform to her head the way hers did at home.

  “It’s not as though your dad doesn’t love you,” Bay said, crawling over the pages of homework littering the bed.

  “Of c-c-course he doesn’t love me!” Abbie choked out between hitches of breath, then shoved her face deep into the polyester puff she held in her hands. “He wouldn’t leave me here all alone for weeks and weeks if he loved me. He’d come back.”

  “But…it’s only two weeks, right? And you aren’t totally alone. You’re staying with your aunt and she’s massively cool. Besides, you have me—”

  “You don’t get it! You just don’t get it. My dad chose her. My stepmom. He always does what Ember wants. He never listens to me. He said they’d be home by this weekend so he wouldn’t miss my first soccer game, but he’s not. He’s going to be in Tallaha-ha-ha-ha-ssee.” Abbie’s voice pitched upward and a wave of sobs hit her. She rode them out, sniffled, then raised her head, casting her gaze about the room in search of a box of tissues.

  Great. Her aunt hadn’t even bothered to put tissues in the guest room. If Abbie were at home, she’d have stashes and stashes of tissue boxes all over the place to choose from. Here, she’d probably have to use toilet paper. Didn’t her aunt ever cry? Or even sneeze?

  “Abbie, I think maybe you’re taking this a little too personally.” Bay bit her lip and looked away when Abbie scowled at her. “I mean, your dad and stepmom aren’t ditching you forever or anything. Ember wants to see her family before the baby comes. Seems understandable.”

  Abbie wiped her wet face on the pillowcase. “It’s not. It’s not understandable. It’s always been me and my dad and then she had to come along and ruin everything.” She leaned back on the bedstead and curled into a tight ball. Bay patted her leg, her brow wrinkled in worry.

  “You know, if Dad doesn’t want me anymore,” Abbie added slowly, “I know someone who does. Some people who do.”

  “Abbie…” Bay said her name slowly, the wrinkle in her brow going from worried to warning. “You don’t even know those people. All they did was make you, give birth to you. They aren’t your parents. Your dad’s your parent.”

  Abbie huffed. Bay could be so stupidly irritating, what with her fake maturity act and all. “My dad doesn’t want to be my parent anymore. If he did, he’d be here. He’s got a real daughter coming now. But Hunter Thorne wants to meet me. He’s even gone to where I was born to find my birth mother. Look,” she said, sitting upright and scrambling around the bed for her phone.

  “Seriously, Abbie—”

  “See?” She pointed to an email. “He’s gone to Meadowview to meet my mother. He’s gonna tell her about me, about how I found them on the Internet.” She tapped the phone with a finger, staring off absently to the corner of the room. Suddenly, she smiled. “And you know what? I’m going, too. I’m going to surprise them and show up at Meadowview. Just think…” She gazed up dreamily at the stucco ceiling. “How happy my mom will be to see her long-lost daughter right at her door.”

  Bay groaned. “This isn’t going to go well.”

  Abbie shook her head. “Actually, it’s gonna be epic.”

  Chilled by the damp, night air rolling off the Pacific into Marin, Liz hugged her arms close to her chest as she trudged up the marble staircase to her bedroom. The entire south wing was hers—Gerald had the north wing. Worked out well that way, with each able to come and go and not disturb the other. Exhausted from the emotionally charged trip she’d taken to Meadowview earlier in the day, all she wanted was to go to bed.

  Truth be told, what she really wanted was to put on her old flannel PJ bottoms and a T-shirt and throw back a long-necked beer in front of the television.

  Yeah, right. Liz Pritchard drank beer and wore threadbare jammies. Elizabeth Picard wore silk negligees imported from France and sipped champagne—also imported from France—while reading Herodotus or Sophocles in a bubble bath.

  Liz sighed. A bubble bath would probably help relax her more than TV anyway. And she did like Herodotus. Besides, she had a serious conversation with Gerald to prepare for in the morning.

  She stopped dead on the stairwell, unable to lift her foot up to the next step, completely overwhelmed. The day had been more than exhausting—the six-hour round-trip drive to Meadowview and back, combined with the intense emotional response she’d had at seeing Hunter again and learning her daughter was looking for her, not to mention the explosive sexual experience she’d shared with Hunter—had all sucked the life from the very marrow of her bones.

  At least skinny-dipping at the Maidu River with Theo, Michelle, and Dan had helped wash away some of the day’s drama.

  She’d tried to stay in the background during the fundraising event out at the river, the one that Theo had dragged her to after finding her crying in her car on the side of the road. Theo, full of himself as usual, had stood in the middle of the bridge and made some speech about how they all could pull together to save the river habitat and protect the future for all critters. Dan had made an appearance dressed in a river otter costume, entertaining the kids. Then Michelle had discovered Liz hiding out between a couple of large granite boulders and had put her to use, circulating through the crowd with a clipboard and sign-up sheet for river clean-up volunteers.

  Surprisingly, no one had made any nasty comments to her. Instead, people who recognized her had expressed concern about the loss of her mother, inquired about her engagement, and in general, made her feel at home. Chessie Gibson had even given her a hug. Maybe everything that had happened earlier in the day had shifted something inside her. Because suddenly, she no longer felt like she had her back up when people approached. She hadn’t acted defensive or protective or—

  She barked out a quick laugh as realization smacked her upside the head. She hadn’t acted bitchy.

  Maybe trying to play the role of Elizabeth Picard, perfect socialite, had softened her somehow. Had trimmed down and cut away some of the thorns that Liz Pritchard used to hide behind.

  Elizabeth Picard.

  Pressure coiled in her gut as the name slid through the curls and twists of her brain. She still wanted to be Elizabeth Picard. But could that happen now?

  Because after almost sleeping with Hunter and after finding out Hope knew abou
t her and wanted to see her, Liz knew she couldn’t fake the engagement any longer. She’d have to tell Gerald they had to “break up.” Had to apologize.

  Then figure out if she could keep this new identity of Elizabeth Picard…and where she could move to when she moved out of Gerald’s house…and what she could afford.

  The boob job had wiped out her bank account. Funny, how people thought she’d paid to enhance her breasts, but in reality she’d done the opposite. After the pregnancy, her breasts had shot up to a Double E—making it painful to work out or even jog. Backaches had become a daily issue. She’d tried dieting, trying to reduce the size, but as skinny as her ass had become, her breast tissue seemed to be there to stay. Two years ago, she’d had breast reduction surgery, taking them down to a D cup size.

  The relief had been huge.

  No more backaches. No more ice packs after working out. Freedom.

  But at a cost.

  The nose job to correct her deviated septum had at least been partially covered by her insurance, but breast reduction? Apparently, the medical community viewed snoring as something one should do without, but living with constant back pain was something women had to put up with, like cramps.

  She was broke. Maybe selling 35 Nightingale Lane would generate enough cash for her to put a down payment on a condo somewhere.

  Somewhere far away.

  Because she sure as hell couldn’t marry Gerald, and she most definitely couldn’t go back to Meadowview.

  There was no way she’d ever risk seeing Hunter again.

  She pulled herself up the remaining steps and stepped into her bedroom where light flickered, cast about by artfully placed beeswax candles. Charming, but the candles made the room dim. She reached out and flicked the light switch. No light came on. She pushed the switch off and on again but found the same result. No electricity.

  Damn. She pressed her eyelids closed. Not tonight. Gerald couldn’t want her to perform tonight, not after she’d performed all day.