SUSAN MEIER - Hunter's Vow

“Well, they sure don’t look comfortable to me,” Abby insisted, her gaze roaming up and down his body.

Hunter felt an instant, instinctive reaction, which didn’t amaze him as much as it overwhelmed him. No matter how much his logical thoughts kept reminding him to cool off and settle down, his instincts were screaming that this was his woman. He didn’t need to cool off or calm down. She was his.

Looking at her the same way she’d just appraised him, he couldn’t suppress a burst of jealousy thinking she dressed this cute, this sexy for her guests all the time. And if she did, why?

But if she didn’t, why tonight?

“So, where’s Tyler?” he asked, setting his suitcase on the floor beside him and turning his attention away from her and onto the proper matter at hand, before his curiosity and his unwarranted jealousy got the better of him.

She shrugged, then glanced around questioningly. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding truly confused.

She looked adorable standing in the center of her dark wood foyer. Her bright hair sparkled from a recent shampoo. Her gorgeous legs were exposed beneath the short skirt. Her face was scrunched in confusion. She was nervous and flustered and simply irresistibly dressed, and before Hunter could stop the natural conclusion from forming, it formed. Adding the nervousness and her sexy little outfit together, Hunter couldn’t help but think that she might still have feelings for him.

If she had dressed this way specially for him because she found him as attractive as he found her, maybe there was more than attraction between them….Maybe she had actual feelings for him?

Immediately on the heels of that, he realized that he still had feelings for her. Lots of them. Attraction. Desire. And the need to be a parent with her. They had a relationship that resulted in the creation of a child and he wanted to raise that child with her. With her. Because she was good, kind and genuine and he knew their personalities complemented each other. He would never be so foolhardy as to think he still loved her after a seven-year separation, particularly since he had been through an ugly divorce and didn’t believe love of the poetic, romantic kind existed. But all things considered, if he were to try again with another woman, Abby would be that woman. She was sweet, she was sexy and she had his son.

As all those thoughts rolled to their obvious completion, and Hunter acknowledged that sexual attraction was not the only thing he felt for Abby, he wondered if the impulse he had tagged instinct wasn’t actually good, sound logic.

“You know what, Abby?” he said suddenly, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “This is starting to make sense to me.”

“This?” she asked breathlessly, confirming what he had been thinking all along. She did find him as attractive as he found her.

“Well,” he said slowly, his logical conclusions urging him on. He refused to be guided by uncontrollable impulses, but sound reasoning couldn’t be ignored. Because it was sensible, it had to be right. “I don’t want to be forward, but it looks like you probably dressed up for me.”

She gasped, but he held up his hand to stop her from commenting. “And I still think you’re the sexiest woman on the face of the earth. Adding our attraction to the fact that we have a son, the very best thing for everyone involved would be for us to marry and raise Tyler together.”

Abby was speechless, flabbergasted and embarrassed—mostly because he’d guessed she had dressed up for him because she was attracted to him. She considered that he was teasing, or didn’t fully understand what he was saying because he said it so calmly, so efficiently. But then, for the first time since he’d entered her foyer, she noticed the suitcases at his side.

“What’s this?”

“I decided that the quickest way to get to know Tyler would be to stay here—in the bed-and-break-fast.” He paused and caught her gaze.

Their eyes locked, and Abby swallowed hard as a hundred possibilities assaulted her. Hunter Wyman would be staying in her home. The man she adored. The man she hadn’t been able to resist since she was eighteen. The man she had pined for the past seven years. The man who had just asked her to marry him.

“I hadn’t intended to stay for free,” he advised pragmatically. “I’ll be a paying guest.”

His straightforward announcement left her even more flabbergasted than she had been at his proposal, and Abby stared at him. Where were the sensitive bones that used to be in that wonderful body? Not only was he rolling into her world like a bulldozer on one of his construction sites, but he offered his proposal like a waffle cone without ice cream. It held so much promise, so much potential, but there was no love behind it. She wanted to feel the wonderful, heavenly hope that someday he could love her. Instead, she felt only emptiness.

It seemed she was nothing more to him than a hotel proprietor, who just happened to be raising his child.

Where was her Hunter?

At a complete loss for what to say, Abby took the only route available to her. She couldn’t afford to refuse a paying customer and his staying at the bed-and-breakfast was better than having him file for custody. So she checked him in, gave him a key, and left the room. Tyler hadn’t come down to meet with his dad yet, but he would eventually and Abby decided that since Hunter was so good at figuring things out, he would figure out what to do with Tyler when he arrived.

Hunter was baffled, too. Since he only said what was so very obvious, he couldn’t believe he’d made her mad. Her leaving angry didn’t make sense.

His mind a jumble of confusion, he sat down on the sofa to wait for Tyler but almost before his backside hit the seat he heard, “My mom likes flowers.”

Startled, he looked behind him and there sat Tyler, scrunched between the back of the couch and thick velour drapes that enveloped him in darkness.

“Get out of there,” Hunter said gruffly, grabbing Tyler’s hand and pulling him a little farther out in the open so he could see more of him than the light of his pale eyes. “What the heck are you doing anyway?”

The little boy crawled out from behind the couch. On all fours in front of Hunter, he raised his gaze and said, “I been hiding.”

“All this time?” Hunter asked curiously.

Tyler nodded.

The absurdity of it made Hunter laugh. While he and Abby looked for Tyler, he was right under their noses. “Hiding, huh?”

Tyler said, “Yeah. You know,” he added, shifting his legs until he was sitting instead of kneeling, though Hunter sensed he’d done it more as a way to avert his attention, than to make himself more comfortable.

“Other girls get flowers,” he said, his focus skewered on a ball he gripped like a lifeline. “Lily got flowers the one time she stayed at the bed-and-breakfast. Chas brought them.” He looked at Hunter. “But my mother never gets flowers. She told Lily she would like some flowers, too.”

In a peculiar sort of way, Hunter knew exactly what Tyler was saying. He had walked into Abby’s life unannounced and turned her whole world upside down. It was no wonder she behaved irrationally.

“You know, Tyler,” he said, rising from the sofa, “I think you’re right.” Not only would taking Tyler’s advice start to form a bond between himself and his son, but it also wouldn’t hurt to get on Abby’s good side. Because he’d been trying to manage a bunch of uncontrollable instincts by presenting a logical, rational case, he’d just asked a woman to marry him, but he’d done it as if he were proposing a business deal, instead of marriage.

The kid had a point.

Abby deserved flowers.

“Let’s go,” he said and began to lead Tyler to the door. But remembering Abby’s frame of mind when she left the foyer, Hunter thought the better of it, and said, “Go tell your mom you’re leaving with me.”

Believing Tyler would walk into the kitchen, Hunter’s brows rose when the little boy only ran to the door and shouted, “Mom, me and Hunter’s going out.”

Hunter didn’t for one minute consider that appropriate notice, but when Abby called, “All right,” as if she were glad to be rid of them, he frowned. Nothing in this household went the way he thought it should.

On the front porch, he turned to Tyler. “Are you sure this is okay?”

Tyler nodded. “Yeah, you made her mad. She’s probably in the kitchen trying to bake something.”

“Bake something?”

Tyler shrugged and added mournfully, “Yeah, probably coffee cake, and we’re going to have to eat it for breakfast or she’ll get mad again.”

Hunter laughed out loud at the observation until it struck him that he and his son were having a normal, honest conversation. About Abby. Their common bond. Though he might have thought his marriage proposal abrupt, and Abby might have downright hated it, Hunter truly believed he was on the right track.

And Abby would come around.

Given that Brewster hadn’t changed much in seven years, Hunter wasn’t surprised to find that the Petersons still owned the florist shop. He was even less surprised to find them resting on their back porch in the fading rays of the sun.

“Evening,” he said to the old couple who rocked back and forth on a swing that hung from hooks in their porch ceiling. “Lovely night.”

“Great night,” old man Peterson agreed. “You new around here?”

Hunter shook his head. “No, I’m Hunter Wyman. My dad and I owned the old place on Church Road. I’m Grant Brewster’s business partner now.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Matilda Peterson said, her crochet needle stopping mid-stitch. “Hunter Wyman. Will miracles never cease.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hunter said, though he wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that. Was it a miracle he’d done so well for himself, or a miracle he was home? “I’m sure you know my son, Tyler,” he added, first, to include the boy and, second, to head off any speculation. Brewster was a small enough town that everyone surely knew about Abby’s child. But more than that, Hunter didn’t want any question about his plans. Not only was it important that his intentions were clear to everyone, but it was more important for Tyler’s sake that the boy understood he had not been abandoned—and neither had Abby.

“I’m here because I need some flowers. You wouldn’t happen to be able to open your shop to take my order to have flowers delivered to Abby tomorrow at the diner?”

“Don’t need to open the shop,” old man Peterson said. “Still got a mind like a steel trap,” he said, pointing at his temple. “I’ll remember. What do you want to send?”

He looked down at Tyler. “Any idea what your mom likes?”

Pleased to have been consulted, Tyler grinned. “Chas bought Lily roses.”

Mrs. Peterson gasped. “Filled the room,” she said with an appreciative sigh. “Those Brewsters know how to treat a woman.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Hunter agreed, realizing his friends had a penchant for the extravagant, flashy gestures that typically swept a woman off her feet. Unfortunately, since Hunter knew he had already tossed enough surprises Abby’s way by his proposal, he also knew it wouldn’t be wise to go overboard with this.

“I think I’ll just stick with a dozen.”

“Red?” Mrs. Peterson asked speculatively.

Hunter considered that. He knew that the color of a rose you sent to a woman meant something. He could also see from the look of anticipation on Mrs. Peterson’s face that red meant something really good.

“Make them red,” Hunter decided. “You can bill me or I can stop by tomorrow afternoon and pay for them, but I want to make sure she gets them first thing in the morning.”