Page 105 of The Mating Game
He still isn’t moving, staring at the half-done counter as his tiny smile slowly morphs into a frown. “I told you about our tradition, right?”
“You mentioned it,” I say.
“Every year my dad would take us out the day after Thanksgiving to pick a tree.”
“Thedayafter Thanksgiving?”
Hunter shrugs, one corner of his mouth tilting. “I know. My mother was obsessed with Christmas. She wanted to put that thing up the second the turkey leftovers were stowed away.” He absently makes a slow swipe over the counter with his towel as he remembers. “We did that every year. Every single year. Ialwayswent with them…until I went to college.”
I notice there’s something pained about his features now,something about this story that’s obviously causing the hurt reflected there. “Hunter?”
“My mom begged me to come home for Thanksgiving,” he tells me. “But Chloe’s parents had invited me to go on vacation with them, and I…”
I drop my rag and take slow steps down the stairs. “Hunter…”
“I should have been there,” he half whispers. “If I’d come home…” He shakes his head. “It was snowing so hard that day. Maybe if I’d been here I could have talked them into holding off, or maybe I could have driven them, maybe they wouldn’t have…”
I think I surprise him by how close I am, and his words die on his tongue as he watches me approach. I think a lot of things about Hunter and this place are starting to make more sense than they did when I first came here, painting a picture of a man still carrying regret and letting it rule his entire life. His solitude and his surliness feel like they have built up from years of blaming himself for something that absolutely wasn’t his fault—which is obvious even to me.
I’m right in front of him now, definitely getting the refinishing liquid on the wool of my sweater and more on my hands as I scoop up both of his hands, rag and all. “Hey.”
He looks at me now, his eyes a little glassy. “Sorry, I don’t even know why—”
“Stop it,” I cut in. “Don’t apologize.”
“I never talk about this,” he admits.
“Then maybe it’s a good thing that you are,” I answer. “It seems like you’ve let yourself be swept up in this guilt. Like it’s still got a hold on you. I get why you were so against the reno now.”
He nods slightly. “It felt like an insult. Changing things. This was their entirelife, you know?”
“I didn’t know them,” I say, “but I’d feel confident in betting thatyouwere their life, Hunter. They sound like good, loving people. I’d go so far as to guess that they’d be more concerned withyoubeing happy than the state of this building.”
His mouth turns up, but only a little. “Maybe.”
I lean over the counter, making a bigger mess of my sweater but not caring in the slightest as I pull him in by the collar of his flannel shirt to cover his mouth with mine. I linger for a second longer than I should, probably, but I’m getting a little addicted to the soft-to-scruff ratio that comes with Hunter’s kisses. More truthfully, I’m sort of getting addicted to Hunter Barrett and all the layers of him that keep getting peeled away.
“What was that for?” he asks when we finally pull apart.
I smile against his mouth. “Just wanted to.”
“You make it very hard to get work done,” he murmurs.
“Just trying to motivate you to hurry up and finish,” I say with a smug expression as I push away from the counter. I look at the mess on my sweater then, frowning as I pull the material away from my body. “I’ll have to change again.” I give him a sly grin, doing my best to draw him out of his mood and back into the cheerful Hunter who batted his eyelashes at me only a few minutes ago. “Probably need another one of those wipe-down fireplace baths after we’re done.”
And as I saunter back up the stairs to finish my work, his answering groan makes me think that maybe he isn’t the only one who knows how to get the upper hand.
24
Hunter
“I could getused to this,” Tess sighs.
She looks like a quilted armadillo with the blankets wrapped around most of her body, save for the lone ankle that pokes out for my inspection. My fingers press gently into her skin to work out the soreness that’s crept in after a day of whipping this old lodge into better shape. We’re bundled up in our cocoon of the tent, and after spending so many hours trapped here with her, I don’t know how I’ll go back to the real world when all this is over.
In the nine or so hours since we pulled ourselves from the sex-bed-and-breakfast we made for ourselves in the main living room, we’ve managed to shine up the walls of most of the major rooms, clean away the dust and such that she wasn’t able to get to the day before, and even fix the broken railings on the front deck.
Okay, so that one was mostly Tess, but I don’t even feel emasculated by it. Watching Tess with a hammer is kind of an aphrodisiac for me, as it turns out.
