Chapter Two
Three years later…
Charlotte
“Mamaaaaaa!”
I groaned into my pillow as the piping little voice woke me up precisely fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to go off. It was the same every single morning. My daughter did not believe in allowing me to sleep until dawn.
At least she’s sleeping through the night now, I thought as I struggled upright. Finally.
I would have loved a chance to snooze peacefully for a few more moments in my old, white, four-poster bed, which I’d proudly picked out at a furniture store when I was ten. Alas, Diana disapproved of slow service, and her howls grew louder. Reluctantly, I struggled out of bed, made my bleary-eyed way down the hallway, opened her door, and plastered a smile on my face.
“Good morning!”
Diana had just turned two a few months before, and she was a small and dainty thing with lots of dark curls that tended to tangle overnight. Her hair was almost black, but there were coppery highlights in it, and her wide eyes were a vivid hazel. She greeted me with a much more sincere smile than my own, looking delighted to see me, like I didn’t stagger into her bedroom half-dead each and every morning.
“Mama!”
I swung her out of the crib, planted a kiss on her forehead, and put her down on the changing table, where she promptly began to squeal and carry on like I was killing her. She had no interest in potty training yet, but she also didn’t care for having her diaper changed. But the alternative was unacceptable, so I talked to her quietly, trying to calm her down before she awakened the entire neighborhood. Fortunately she and I lived in the basement of the old house I’d grown up in, so there wasn’t much chance of her waking up my mother or my brother, both of whose bedrooms were on the second story.
That chore completed, the two of us headed upstairs for breakfast. For me, that was two pieces of toast with marmalade, and for her, a sippy cup of apple juice, slices of banana, and a bowl of Cheerios. While she was happily engaged with breakfast, I ducked into the nearby bathroom to pee and put on my blue uniform, keeping the door open so I could keep an eye on her. I’d braided my hair the night before after my shower, so all I really had to do to make myself presentable was throw on a bit of makeup.
Before long, I was strapping Diana into my old, ratty hatchback and dropping her off at daycare where she predictably howled as long as she thought I could hear her, then immediately ran off with a happy chortle to join her friends.
At last, I headed for work.
“I’m late. I know. I’m sorry.” I held up my hands in apology as I dashed into the diner. Pinecone was too small to even have a McDonald’s, but as a consequence its single diner did a brisk breakfast trade. There were already quite a few people seated at tables, waiting impatiently for service, and my boss glared at me as I charged into the kitchen. Howie was a balding, paunchy man in late middle age, whose perpetually sour expression hid a soft, squishy heart, and he threw a dark look at me.
“I’d fire you if I could find anyone else who’d work for me.”
“I’d quit if I could find anywhere else to work,” I retorted. I scrubbed thoroughly at the hand sink, plastered on yet another smile, and headed out to the dining room to take orders.
Pinecone never changed, and every day was pretty much like the next. I spent the morning greeting regulars, along with the occasional straggler from the nearby interstate, and taking orders for eggs of every sort. Breakfast hour slid into lunchtime, and the orders shifted to various types of cheeseburgers, and still I hadn’t gotten a break. My feet were killing me, and I was starving, but I kept on smiling.
Until Hunter Kensington walked in.
I hadn’t seen him in three long years, and I was suddenly, forcibly reminded of the night of my twenty-first birthday when he’d strode into Zippo’s Bar, clad in a leather jacket and oozing bad attitude. I remembered Angela’s gasp: Oh, my God, he’s gorgeous.
And he still was, though he was thinner, his face more lined than it had once been. He walked wearily, slowly, without the arrogant pride that had once stamped his every movement. He seemed drained, maybe even beaten. And that was hardly surprising given what had happened to him.
But even though he was lacking the arrogance he’d once had, he didn’t show any interest in the common people. Even when the whispers started, he didn’t trouble himself to look around. He just settled down at a table and waited with grim, tired patience.
Oh, my God, I thought frantically. He’s here to see me. He’s finally gotten out of prison…and he knows about Diana. He knows.
And of course, because he was a Kensington, he’d want to take my daughter away from me. Family was everything to the Kensingtons, and they all had a very firm idea of how children should be raised. And being brought up by a waitress who couldn’t even scrape up enough cash for her own apartment would definitely not be acceptable from the Kensington point of view.
My heart started to pound, and I considered doing something I’d never done before in my life—running away. If I headed out of here now before he spotted me—if I ran out the back door, jumped in my old Honda—if I picked up Diana from the day care and we just sped out of town and never looked back—
But I couldn’t. I was a single mom working as a waitress, and I didn’t have enough money to pay for groceries half the time, let alone flee across country. And I couldn’t run away. My family was here, and besides, I had a daughter who depended on me. I desperately needed to hang onto my job.
Slowly, my pulse thundering in my ears, I headed for his table.
***
Hunter
This diner looked like it sucked, but it had to be better than prison food.
I heaved a sigh as I sat at the table, waiting with thinly veiled impatience. There was only one waitress in this dump, a harassed-looking young woman who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t want to be here either.
Truth was, I was pissed. My younger brother Austin had known I’d be released today. I’d served my sentence, paid my fucking debt to society, and now at long last, I was a free man. Au should’ve sent a limo for me—or at least a goddamned taxi. Instead, I’d had to make my own way home.
I was a billionaire, for Christ’s sake, and I’d been forced to walk several miles in the February cold before someone had taken pity on me and picked me up. Then I’d hitched a ride from a trucker and listened to fucking Brad Paisley all the way here. It did not put me in the best of all possible moods.
So when the waitress finally paused by my table, I was pretty much primed to bite her head off.
She wore a shapeless blue uniform that effectively concealed her body, and a cap that shaded much of her face. Her voice was sweet but brisk. “How can I help you?”
I spoke tersely. “I want a burger. Fries. Glass of Coke.”
“Of course, sir.” There was a slightly sarcastic emphasis on the “sir,” and I decided I wasn’t going to leave her a damn tip. And yeah, I was being irrational, but my first day of freedom sucked already, and her attitude wasn’t helping any. “Anything else?”
“No. Just get me my food.”
She turned away, her red braid swinging slightly behind her. The distinctive color of it—hair like the sunset—caught my eye, and I jerked my head up in time to catch a glimpse of her profile. All at once I felt like the eighteen-wheeler I’d arrived here in had just run me over.
“Char?”
She looked back down at me, no surprise whatsoever on her face. “Hello, Hunter,” she answered, her voice very nearly a monotone. She wasn’t thrilled to see me, that much was clear. Well, that was no surprise. After all, I was a felon. I didn’t expect anyone in Pinecone to be happy to see me, least of all the girl I’d banged just before...
I tried to push that night out of my mind with the usual limited success and stared up at her, drinking her in. God, Char had changed since the night of her twenty-first birthday. She looked tired and decidedly older. What on earth had happened to the pretty, bright-eyed young girl she’d been? And why was she working in this shabby diner, of all places? Hadn’t she mentioned she was getting a degree so she could go into journalism? Words I hadn’t meant to say rose to my tongue, and I spat them out more harshly than I intended.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Working.” Her tone was decidedly unfriendly. “If you’ll let me go, I’ll put in your order.”
She spun on her heel, and something like panic zipped through me. She was turning away, turning her back on me, and I couldn’t bear to let her go again. I reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her in place.
She yanked her head around, her eyes blazing. “Let go of me. Now.”
I let go because it honestly hadn’t been my intent to grab her that way. It had been more of an instinct than a deliberate move. Somehow I just didn’t want her to leave. After three years of fantasizing about that night with her, it seemed almost like a miracle that she was here, virtually the first thing I saw when I got home. It was like fate had drawn us together somehow.
But if that was the case, she clearly didn’t give a damn about fate. She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and stalked away.
She didn’t want to talk to me.
Of course she didn’t. This was, I knew, the reaction I’d be receiving from everyone in Pinecone. Hell, probably from everyone in the United States. Even though I’d pleaded no contest, and there had been no trial and little drama or suspense regarding my fate, the news of my supposed crime had been featured in newspapers from coast to coast. It was the price of being a Kensington.
Everyone knew I was a felon, and everyone would spit on me because of it for the rest of my life. Even Char.
Anger, hot and unreasoning, sliced through me. I rose to my feet and glared at her retreating back.
“Hey!” I snapped.
She glanced back at me over her shoulder, and I pulled the small wad of money I’d received on leaving prison out of my pocket, found a five-dollar bill, and threw it down on the table. I was ravenous, and I hadn’t had a decent meal in two solid years, but I wasn’t going to sit in this ratty little diner and let her look at me that way, like I was something disgusting she’d scraped off her shoe. I’d rather starve.
“Thanks so much for your service,” I snarled. Her face flooded red, and I knew she understood perfectly well what I was referring to. Then I squared my shoulders and strode out of the diner, fury and hurt rioting inside me.
Damn it. Damn it. I was a Kensington. Even if I’d spent the last few years in jail, how dare she look at me like that? How dare she?
Rage surged inside me, and humiliation too. All at once I desperately wanted to go home, to hide behind the white brick walls of Hilltop where no one could mock me. On foot, I headed for the mansion on the hill, trying to put the diner and the memory of her dark blue eyes behind me as fast as possible.
With any luck, I’d never see Char Evans again.
***
Charlotte
“Word on the street is that Hunter Kensington is back in town.”
At my brother’s quietly spoken words, I almost choked on my spaghetti. I looked up in guilty haste, but Jacob was speaking to my mother, not me. Of course. She’d always had a soft spot for Hunter, and at times I thought he’d had a soft spot for her too. At least he’d always cut back on the cussing and coarse language when she was around and had treated her with more respect than he’d treated any other adult in town.
Even as a child, I’d suspected that Hunter came over to our house frequently not just because he was fond of Jacob, but because my mother had filled a void in his life, a void that had been empty since his own mother had died.
“Oh, that’s nice. The poor dear, being cooped up like that for nearly three years. It can’t have been easy for him.”
Jacob rolled his eyes. “Mother, please. He is not a poor dear. He embezzled from the charity his family set up, remember?”
“I don’t believe that, and you shouldn’t either.” My mother’s voice was soft and gentle, but beneath it there was a note of absolute certainty. She’d always been steel wrapped in a soft marshmallow coating. Maybe she’d had to be like that to raise two children by herself after my dad had died. “Hunter would never steal from a charity. I don’t care what that silly trial determined. It’s simply not true.”
Jacob sighed. He was a smart guy who’d studied business at William and Mary, but for some reason known only to himself, he hadn’t chosen to pursue a high-paying job in the big city. Instead he’d come home to Pinecone and opened a used bookstore, of all things. In a world filled with ebooks, bookstores were rarely profitable, and Pinecone wasn’t exactly filled with ardent readers anyway. He was barely scraping by, financially speaking, but at least he’d had his own apartment until he’d moved back in to our childhood home to help out with Diana. I was grateful, but I knew that being around Mom all the time grated on him. She still tended to treat him like a teenager instead of the responsible adult citizen he’d become.
“Mom, Hunter was never the good guy you think he was. Even in high school, he was an asshole.”
“Jacob Evans. I won’t have that kind of language at the dinner table.”
My brother ran an irritated hand through his short auburn hair—less brilliant than mine, but redder by far than he wanted it to be. As a teenager, he’d spent hours staring into the mirror, mourning over the color of his hair. But it suited him. He was a nice-looking guy, and his hair was eye-catching. Which was why, I supposed, he managed to date a different woman every week, despite the limited pool of single women available in Pinecone.
“But it’s true,” he said at last. “What he did to me, Mom—the things he said—”
“He was a teenaged boy, Jacob. And he was going through a difficult time. Don’t hold grudges.”
Jacob gave an irritated huff and went back to eating his spaghetti. He had held his grudge against Hunter for a long time now—over ten years—and it didn’t seem likely that he’d give it up any time soon. Jacob had a core of steel too.
Personally, I was grateful he’d been distracted by Mom. Jacob had no idea that Hunter Kensington was the father of my baby, and I desperately wanted to keep it that way. Considering how much he hated Hunter, I didn’t want him to know, and I’d never even hinted at it. In fact, I’d claimed Diana’s father was some random guy from Washington I’d met in the bar on my twenty-first birthday—that I didn’t even know his name. It was better that way. Jacob had given up a lot to help me raise Diana, and he didn’t need to know that her father was his mortal enemy.
I was more than a little concerned that Hunter might wind up my mortal enemy too. I wasn’t sure why he’d sought me out at the diner, and the fact that he’d run off so quickly tended to suggest it wasn’t because of our daughter. It seemed likely that he had no idea she existed. And yet—well, it was awfully coincidental that he’d come to the diner where I worked right after being released from prison, wasn’t it?
I didn’t know what to think. But one thing was for sure—if Hunter didn’t know about Diana yet, he was bound to learn about her sooner or later. And then—and then—
Well, then things would go to hell in a handbasket. The situation, I decided, was complicated enough without bringing Jacob’s hatred for Hunter into the mix.
I concluded it was safest not to even mention that I’d seen Hunter. I swallowed another forkful of spaghetti and didn’t say a word.