A Ring And A Rainbow. Deanna Talcott

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СКАЧАТЬ lump formed in Claire’s throat as she imagined taking her place at the Starnes family dinner table. She once thought that those girls would be her sisters-in-law, that she would be part of the family. “How’s everybody holding up?”

      He looked away, considering. “Lynda’s family is staying with friends, so I haven’t seen much of her. But Courtney’s pretty upset,” he admitted. “She was planning a trip back next month, and she feels guilty, like she should have arranged her trip sooner, to get here before…well, you know.”

      Claire nodded. Courtney was the sensitive one. The one who nursed the sickliest-looking plants back to health. The one who chased flies out of the house rather than pick up a flyswatter. “The last thing your mother would have tolerated was Courtney’s guilt. You find a way to tell her that.”

      Hunter offered her a searching gaze; one Claire was totally unprepared for. She remembered the last time he’d looked at her like that—when he’d told her he was moving out of town, and he’d wanted her to say it was okay.

      “You always had a way of making people feel better, didn’t you? I remember you offered up a few suggestions I listened to.”

      “No. Not always,” she said, avoiding the magnetic color of his irises. “I can think of one in particular you didn’t listen to.”

      Once more, the reminder of their broken love affair skittered through the room.

      “I wasn’t ready, Claire,” he said finally. “It wouldn’t have worked. Not back then. Not for either of us.”

      Claire pinned him with a look. “Don’t tell me something I already know, Hunter. I would have been miserable with you, and we both know it.” Hunter’s eyes narrowed; obviously that was not the answer he expected. Not from her. She had loved him so desperately, he’d believed she’d always wait for him. But the waiting game had long been over. She didn’t want to talk about it, either, not with a man who still turned her inside out with a want she couldn’t control. “Come on, let me show you to your room,” she invited, heading into the hall. “It’s a little fluffy for you, but I’m sure you’ll get along.”

      “Fluffy?” he inquired, tossing his garment bag over his arm and dragging his suitcase along behind him. “That sounds like something you’d name a cat, not do to a room.”

      Claire smiled, in spite of her resolve not to. “No, the cat’s name is Zoey, and she has very little patience for anyone who does not come bearing tuna.” She paused at the foot of the stairs, in the front foyer.

      “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, noting that the newel post, banister and balusters had been replaced with turned oak. The bare lightbulb was gone, replaced by an oak and glass fixture. Everything was warmer, more inviting. Without all the laundry piled on the stairs, or the space by the front door clogged with worn-out tennis shoes and book bags and jackets, the foyer looked ten times bigger than he remembered—and, for once, it looked loved.

      Claire started up the wide staircase, now carpeted in a rich, oyster-colored hue.

      “I made my room over into a guest room and took Momma’s room. Because it was bigger and in the front of the house,” Claire said.

      Hunter hesitated, momentarily unnerved to think he’d sleep in Claire’s old room, the one she’d had as a teenager. He hadn’t expected that. He’d only wanted to be in the house with her, alone, to reinforce, in his own mind, that he’d made the right decision all those years ago. Yet he was already questioning it. Why, that single kiss had only served to remind him that there was such a thing as cataclysmic chemistry.

      “It’s probably a whole lot less than what you’re used to,” she went on, pausing at the top of the steps, “but it’s the best I’ve got.”

      “It’ll be fine,” he answered, moving up the last two steps and toward the open door of her room. It took him three steps to cross the hall, and then he stopped short on the threshold, wondering at the time warp that had fashioned the differences in their lives. He remembered a broken-down twin bed, cheap, torn shades on the windows, and walls with a few odd posters and tons of pictures torn from her mother’s magazines. “Huh.” His shoulders slumped, taking it all in. “Looks a little different without the posters.”

      “That was a kid thing, a stage. Now I call this the ‘garden room.’”

      “My.” The rough plaster-and-lath walls were painted eggshell, a mere backdrop for blue and salmon colors. Gauzy white curtains hung behind the plaid tab-top drapes and complimented the floral and checked bedding. It was a remarkable makeover, of bold strength and delicate fragility. He walked into the room and put his suitcase at the end of the bed. “You are either a chameleon or an escape artist, to change a room like this.”

      She laughed behind him, as if she found something about his statement genuinely funny. “I’m not the escape artist. You are. I stayed here to make something of myself.”

      He rolled the implication over in his head. She was hurt, and by golly, she was going to take every opportunity to remind him that he was responsible for it. “That was a poor choice of words, wasn’t it?”

      “Yes. I’d say so.” She tipped her head and walked into the room. “Okay. There’s plenty of hangers in the closet, and I cleaned out a drawer for you. Extra blankets and towels on the top shelf of the closet. No phone, no TV, no amenities.”

      He tossed his garment bag on the bed, atop the sprigged duvet, and ran a hand over the foot of the iron bed. “Nice and quiet, though.”

      “Mmm, we do have plenty of that around Lost Falls.”

      There were fresh flowers on the table, but Hunter quickly realized she hadn’t brought them in for his benefit. It was Claire, filling up her life and redoing all the things that had been absent when she was growing up. She paused to smooth a crease from the pillow slip and Hunter watched, mesmerized by the gentle, feminine gesture.

      “Recognize it?” she asked.

      “Excuse me?”

      “The bed,” she prompted.

      He looked down, frowning. It was an old-fashioned double bed, the iron frame painted ochre, the headboard high and round, the footboard like a cameo on its side.

      “Your mother gave it to me,” she went on. “From the cabin.”

      His jaw slid off center. “No? That old bed frame we had in the barn? We propped it against the door one summer, to keep the dog in.”

      “I found all the parts and pieces, and she was cleaning out and wanted to get rid of it….”

      His hand trailed over the joints of the iron rungs. “Beautiful. What you’ve done to it, Claire.”

      “I was glad to have it. Kind of like a hand-me-down, to remind me of the cabin.”

      He snorted, smiling on the inside as the distant memories crowded into his mind. “We had a lot of fun out there, didn’t we?”

      “It was my favorite place ever,” she said. He watched her doe-dark eyes go soft, and reluctantly admitted there wasn’t a woman on the face of the earth to compare to Claire. “I felt like a new person every time I was out there. Of course, there was that one time…”

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