All The Way. Beverly Bird

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СКАЧАТЬ and send her right back again if he’s busy.”

      “Not if he wants to see another of my muffins in this lifetime.”

      Liv almost smiled.

      “Here. You need this.” Kiki poured the snifters and handed her one, then she gestured at the television with her own. “So what’s the latest? Did he live?”

      “They took him to the hospital.”

      Kiki nodded. “He’s too mean to die.”

      Liv jerked up from her slouch against the cushions. “He’s not mean. He’s just…” She trailed off at Kiki’s expression. “What? Why are you looking at me that way?”

      Kiki settled on the sofa beside her. “You’ve got to get over this. You were fine before you made that trip back east.”

      Liv took a good swallow of brandy without answering. It burned going down.

      “You’re the strongest woman I know.”

      Liv jolted a little. “Me? Get off it.”

      “I just don’t tell you very often because I hate being overshadowed by you.”

      Liv could only laugh at that, though her voice was hoarse. Kiki was beautiful—tiny, barely five foot tall—with classic Native American looks. She was a dynamo. Liv generally felt pale, clumsy and befuddled beside her. They’d been friends since even before Hunter had entered the picture, from the first moment Liv had set foot on the Navajo reservation.

      Kiki got up to move. Like Hunter, she was always moving.

      “You made your decision when you cut him loose,” she said. “You never looked back—at least not that any of us could tell. You married Johnny and when that didn’t work out, we left Flag and came here to Jerome. We established the inn from a ram-shackle building that nobody else wanted but that you saw the potential in. You’ve built a life for your daughter. She’s happy, healthy, smart.”

      “She lives with a bunch of strangers trooping through her home several times a week.”

      “That’s your phobia, not hers. Don’t foist it off on her, Liv.”

      Liv winced.

      “You’re the one who was always hung up on the traditional nuclear-home thing. You were the one intent on grabbing back everything you lost when your family’s car went over that cliff and you were sent to the Res. So what if Vicky has a mother, a doting aunt and a lot of guests from all over the country instead of a mother, a father and a sibling or two? What does it matter if she’s thriving?”

      Liv found that she couldn’t answer.

      “My point is, you’ve got a lot to be proud of. So be proud of it. Don’t let Hunter Hawk-Cole rock your foundations again just because you made one mistake.”

      “Which mistake are we speaking of here?” Liv asked dryly.

      “Dover.”

      “Ah, that one. And it was Millsboro.”

      Kiki waved her hand, telling her what she thought of that particular split hair. “Don’t let him drag you down the way you were in those days after he left.”

      “You just said I never looked back.”

      “But your eyes didn’t see what they were looking at straight ahead, either.” Kiki put her snifter back on the tray and picked the tray up. “On that note, I’m going back to the kitchen. If you want to keep wallowing in angst, you’re going to have to do it on your own.”

      Liv nodded absently, her gaze swerving to the television again. They were showing highlights of Hunter’s career on the screen now, while crews cleaned up the track from his crash. Liv watched and tunneled back in time, helplessly and without much resistance.

      It was so blasted hot and she had one lamb to go. Without a sheep pen, it was almost impossible to catch the little critter. But her grandmother—the old woman she’d called Ama in the respectful Navajo tradition of “mother”—had stubbornly refused to touch any of the life insurance money her parents had left to make improvements to her land.

      Ama had died in her sleep eleven months ago. By hook or by crook, Liv had managed to keep the authorities at the school from finding out. Ama’s clanswomen had signed her report cards and they had showed up at mandatory events in Dinny’s stead. Liv would graduate in six more days. It was over. Her exile here was done, and there was nothing to leave behind. Even Kiki would be moving to Flagstaff with her to begin college there late in August.

      When she turned eighteen next month, she could collect the life insurance money. Everything would be fine.

      It scared her spitless.

      Why was she suddenly frightened now that the time had come? She’d planned her escape from the first moment her heels had touched down on this arid, forsaken soil. It had taken Social Services and attorneys several days to sort out that she had only one living relative, her mother’s mother, an old Navajo woman on a high-country reservation. From the time she’d been delivered into Ama’s care, Liv had dreamed of the time when she could go again, back to the city where she belonged.

      But she’d been on the reservation for almost six years now, and she worried that she had forgotten how to act in real, conventional society. If she ate in a restaurant, would she even remember which fork to use? She heard Hunter’s truck at the same moment the terrifying thought slid through her mind again, taunting her.

      He was back. Something in her heart leaped, but she was too stubborn to let it show. He always left her as casually as though she were one of the lambs she was about to sell off. But that didn’t stop her from going giddy with pleasure whenever he returned.

      Liv finally got the animal inoculated and she laughed with relief. The last one. She already had a buyer for the herd, so that was that. She finally sat up to look for Hunter.

      “My money was on you,” he said, sauntering toward her, wearing that grin.

      He was so handsome. Liv drank in the look of him. He still wore his black hair long. He revered his Navajo ancestors, the warriors who had once fearlessly taken on Kit Carson at Canyon de Chelly, though he’d always hated being shoved from his home and onto this reservation against his will. Now his hair shifted against his shoulders, more from his movement than the windless air. His cheekbones were arrogant slashes, and his eyes were an incredible blue.

      She never got tired of looking at him, and she never stopped wanting to touch him. Sometimes she squeezed it in, a quick, friendly hug or a touch of her hand to his knee. But he always got so skittish whenever she did that. Kiki said it was because he wanted her, too, but neither of them could quite figure out why he never did anything about it.

      She was nearly eighteen now, hardly a child any longer—especially after living on her own this past year since Ama had died.

      “You don’t have any money,” she said, standing to brush the dust off her bare legs. She was going to fix this problem between them, too, before she went to Flagstaff. “Anyway, that’s it for the herd. You’re next. It’s time to fish or cut bait, Hunter. I’m cleaning up my past here.”

      That СКАЧАТЬ