For Love and Family (18 page)

Hunter pushed himself off the couch then and made a beeline for the telephone.

He couldn't very well wake up his son and drag him with him, so he needed someone to come to the ranch and stay with the sleeping Johnny while he did what he suddenly couldn't wait to do. He called Willy and arranged for him and Carla to come back.

Then he went up the stairs two at a time and charged into his bathroom to shower and change out of the clothes he'd traveled home in.

Wondering the whole way if there was any chance he could get Terese back here before this night was through.

“F
inally! I thought you were going to make us late for our table again.”

When Eve Warwick opened the front door to the Warwick mansion it was clear that Hunter was not who she thought to find standing on the doorstep. He wasn't thrilled to see her, either, but he had more manners than to let it show the way Eve did.

Her overly made-up face dissolved into a sneer and she said, “You again.”

“I'm afraid so,” Hunter confirmed.

“You're making me very sorry I ever allowed an open adoption.”

“Relax. I'm not here to see you,” he informed her unceremoniously.

He'd thought about Eve as he'd driven to the Warwick estate, about the fact that if this visit accomplished what he wanted it to accomplish, he—and Johnny—would end up with Johnny's birth mother in their life. It wasn't a scenario that sat well with him.

But he'd come to the conclusion that the positives of having Terese in their lives outweighed the negatives of having Eve.

Besides, he'd believed Terese when she'd said she seldom saw her sister even though they shared the same house, that Eve traveled and only made pit stops in Portland. He had hopes that if Terese lived with him and Johnny at the ranch they could have the same kind of relationship with Eve that he had with his brother—basically a nonexistent one that involved rarely, if ever, seeing each other. And since he felt sure that was the way Eve would want it, too, he'd decided to forge ahead in spite of her.

“I'm here to see Terese,” Hunter said then, stepping into the foyer without an invitation and thereby forcing Eve to give way.

“Surely the blood bank has replenished its supply of AB negative by now and you don't need a direct donor,” the haughty woman responded.

“This isn't about her blood. It's personal.”

That made Eve laugh. An ugly laugh. “Personal,” she repeated facetiously. “As in what? Something
romantic?
Now wouldn't that be too droll? Don't tell me that Plain Jane has roped herself a hunky
cowboy? Just between you and me, you could do a lot better.”

“Is that so? And that would be according to you—the expert on things like that?”

Eve missed his sarcasm. “Your wife, for instance,” she said. “Your wife was better. She was a model, wasn't she? And very beautiful, if I'm remembering correctly. After that, surely you don't expect me to believe you're attracted to Terese.”

Hunter tried to hold on to his temper but it wasn't easy. “There was a lot more to my late wife than just the way she looked. In the same way, there's a lot more to Terese. She has qualities some other people should envy,” he ended pointedly.

“
Other people
being me?” Eve sneered again, catching his meaning. “I don't need the qualities Terese has. My qualities are obvious. And well appreciated.”

“And all on the surface,” Hunter added. “But me? I'll take someone with more substance, thank you very much. So, I'd like to talk to Terese.”

“Let's see…It's Saturday night…Where would Terese be? Out on the town with men clamoring just to sit next to her and gaze into her beautiful face? No, that doesn't sound like Terese. Hmm…Oh, yes, now I remember. She's in the library. Alone as always.”

“Do you want to let her know I'm here or just point me in the right direction?”

“I'm about to be picked up by my date. The library is down the hall, third door on the left. Be my guest and surprise her.”

 

Hunter couldn't surprise Terese because she was within hearing distance of the foyer and had realized he was there when he'd come into the house.

But she hadn't left the library. Instead she'd stayed just inside the half-open door, listening to the exchange between Hunter and her sister. And wondering what to do.

Just knowing he was so near made her heart beat fast and hard and her head go light.

But she couldn't let herself get carried away. She had to keep in mind why she'd left the ranch in the first place. She had to keep in mind that she was pregnant and that she didn't want him to know it, didn't want him offering a future possibly only because of it.

It was just that some of what he'd said to her sister kept repeating itself in her mind—the fact that he thought she had a lot of qualities, substance, and that he preferred substance to surface.

It would be embarrassing to have him guess that she'd been listening, though, and when she heard his bootsteps draw nearer to the library she hurried back to the leather chair she'd been sitting in, as if she'd never left it.

A gentle tap on the door announced him and the door opened all the way and there he was.

“Can I come in?”

Terese tried to look surprised. “Hunter. Where did you come from?” she said, all the while devouring her first glimpse of him in two weeks.

Tall and lean, he was wearing boots, tight jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and a denim jacket that all worked together to make him look even better than she remembered—if that was possible.

“Your sister let me in and sent me back to find you,” he said.

He stepped completely into the room then and closed the door behind him, leaning against it as if to block anyone else's entrance.

For a long moment he just stayed like that, looking at her, studying her.

His scrutiny didn't help put her at ease even though she wasn't worried about how she was dressed. Her hair was pulled up into a twist at the crown of her head, and she had on a perfectly acceptable pair of gray slacks and a charcoal-colored cardigan sweater. But he didn't seem to care what she was wearing. She had the sense that his eyes were searching for more than mere appearances.

When she couldn't bear the silence any longer, she said, “Is Johnny okay?”

Hunter was slow to answer and even when he did he preceded it with a nod of his head. “Johnny's fine. Sound asleep at home with Carla and Willy before I ever left the house. He doesn't even know I'm gone.”

“And is everything else all right?” Terese asked, trying not to squirm beneath the intensity in his topaz gaze.

“No, as a matter of fact, everything isn't all right,” he said pointedly. “I came home today as eager to see
you as I was to see Johnny and you weren't there. You were gone. Without so much as a see-you-around.”

“Something came up,” she said quickly—too quickly—wishing she'd thought of a good lie to go with that vague excuse. But it had been enough to get her out of the house the night before and since she hadn't expected to see Hunter again anytime soon she hadn't put thought into expanding it. Especially with so much else on her mind.

“I wondered if you'd had bad news at the doctor's office yesterday,” Hunter said then. “But Johnny tells me you don't carry the hemophilia gene.”

“No, it was good news,” she confirmed, beginning to worry what else Johnny might have told him about her doctor's visit. And wondering why it hadn't occurred to her that her nephew might relay what he'd heard yesterday.
All
of what he'd heard.

“He said you had good news,” Hunter confirmed.

And in that minute, in the tone of his voice, Terese knew Hunter knew the doctor had told her she was pregnant.

She just didn't know what to do about it.

So she remained sitting there, very still, feeling the beat of her heart again.

“Johnny's only four, you know,” Hunter said. “He doesn't always get things right. So how about I tell you what he told me and you can tell me if it's true?”

Terese couldn't sit calmly in that chair another minute. She got up and went to the fireplace as if
the fire needed checking, saying nothing to encourage Hunter.

“Terese?” he said to bring her attention back to him when she'd prodded the burning logs longer than necessary.

You're not going to be able to avoid this,
she lectured herself.
You'll just have to see it through and stick to your guns.

She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and moved to the desk, trying to draw support from it by leaning on it and holding tight to the edge with both hands hidden behind her hips in a white-knuckled grip.

Only then did she look at Hunter again and when she did she could see that he'd come with a clear purpose in mind, that nothing was going to stop him.

And she was right because he said, “Johnny told me that the doctor said you're going to have a baby.”

Terese closed her eyes.

Apparently the shock of hearing that from the doctor had dulled her wits because suddenly she knew her plans for everything since then had been feeble. It hadn't occurred to her that Johnny had taken in what the doctor had told her. Or that he would understand enough to repeat it. But of course he had. Of course he would report what he'd heard. And of course once Hunter had found out, Terese leaving the ranch wasn't enough to keep him away.

And without knowing what else to do, Terese said, “This time Johnny got it right.”

“So you are pregnant?” Hunter said, his voice low.

“According to the doctor, the blood test can detect the elevation in hormone levels right away—within days of conception.”

“And you found out and ran?” he asked in disbelief.

“I didn't think of it as
running.
”

“What did you think of it as?”

Terese shrugged. “There were a lot of things going through my mind. It was the biggest shock I've ever had. But mainly I just didn't want you feeling any kind of…obligation.”

“Obligation…” Hunter echoed the word as if it had no place there. Then he said, “Did it occur to you that I might feel other things?”

“Like what?” she said, making it clear through her own tone that she hadn't considered anything else.

“That I might be happy about it?”

“Happy that one impulsive night together produced an unplanned pregnancy? With me, of all people? No, that definitely didn't occur to me.”

“With you of all people?”

“Yes, me of all people. It's not as if you picked me out of a crowd or met me at a party and said ‘that's the woman for me.' I'm the Plain Jane whom you had to let into your life because of unfortunate circumstances and only let into your house because you felt as if you owed it to me after I gave blood for Johnny.”

Hunter stared at her for another long moment
before he shook his head with what looked like more disbelief. “Okay, that was how things started out. But that isn't how they ended up.
You of all people
are the only person I've gotten close enough to in the last two years to think about every waking minute of every day since I first set eyes on you.
You of all people
are the only person I've felt like myself with, the only person I've let down my guard with, the only person I've really let in at all.
You of all people
are the only person who's made me feel alive again. The only person I've wanted…”

Terese hadn't known he felt that way.

Or did he?

He said it all as if he genuinely meant it and she wanted to believe it—more than she'd ever wanted to believe anything. But now that she knew he knew she was pregnant, it was difficult.

“But you wanted a night, maybe, not a baby and a tie to me forever,” she insisted.

“You thought you were just a one-night-stand?”

“I wasn't really thinking,” she confessed. “I was just…feeling. Getting carried away. And so were you. That's the point.”

“And then I spent two weeks without you and things fell into place for me. That's what happens, you know, when you find yourself missing someone so much you can hardly think about anything else. It's what happens when you can't sleep at night because you just want that person there with you. It's what happens when everything you see makes you
think of that other person, when the food you eat, the feel of the sunshine on your face, the smell in the air makes you remember something about them. It's what happens when you count the hours until you can make a simple phone call to hear their voice, when you count the days until you can see them again. When your whole body aches for them…”

He paused to let his eyes bore into her once more and then he said, “What happens is that you come back knowing that you want more than one impulsive night of getting carried away.”

“But not a baby.”

Something about that made him smile a bit wryly. “Okay, so no, a baby is a whole new extreme. But that doesn't mean it's bad. It doesn't change any of what I came home thinking and feeling and wanting.”

“You came home thinking about maybe seeing me again after I left the ranch, not having a baby with me. And that changes everything.”

“Actually, after my four-year-old gave me the news that I was going to be a father again,” Hunter began with a note of facetiousness, “I did a lot of thinking about what a baby changes. But what it doesn't change—what dating you would have proven—is that I don't want just to date you. Dating you wouldn't have brought you back to the ranch. It wouldn't have gotten you there every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to sleep. It wouldn't have gotten you there with Johnny and me every day. And that's
what I really want, Terese. I really want just to have you with me, with Johnny, every day, every minute, in our house and in our lives.”

Again Terese wanted to believe him. But she didn't have any experience with someone wanting her for herself, and so she said, “Because of the baby.”

That made Hunter shake his head—forcefully and with a dark expression on his handsome face. “Because of you,” he repeated, carefully, slowly enunciating each word.

He pushed away from the door then and came to stand directly in front of her. “I know what you're thinking,” he said. “I know you're thinking that that other guy said he wanted you when all he really wanted was your money. I know now you're thinking that I'm here saying I want you only because you're pregnant. But you're wrong. Johnny and I wanted to keep you even before this.”