Chapter Three
Hunter
It was damn good to be home.
Whiskey glass in hand, I leaned back in the plush leather chair, looking at the book-lined walls that rose to the twenty-foot ceiling all around me.. When I was a kid, this library had been my father’s sanctuary, but I’d always crept into this room whenever he was out, looking through the myriad volumes and curling up on the couch to read. I didn’t admit to it often, because it wasn’t exactly part of my bad boy persona, but I loved books. Only Jacob had known my guilty secret—the two of us had first bonded over our mutual love of books.
After years of prison, I was incredibly grateful for the comfortable surroundings and the army of servants who’d appear at my elbow in a heartbeat to provide me with anything my heart desired. It was true that minimum-security prison hadn’t been as awful as what a lot of convicted criminals experienced, but it hadn’t been enjoyable, either. And the food had sucked.
But at home—well, tonight I’d feasted on shrimp, scallops, and blue crab, and now I was sipping at a glass of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat from the fireplace, the buttery softness of the upholstery, inhaling the mingled scents of wood smoke and thousands upon thousands of leather-bound books.
I was home at last. And I was grateful.
Home, though, felt strangely empty without the old man, I thought, opening my eyes and looking around. While I’d been in prison, Dad had passed on, and I wasn’t sure how I’d felt about that. On one hand, my controlling, demanding, manipulative father had irritated me right down to my core, which was probably one reason I’d been such a rebel in my youth. I’d had a hell of a lot to rebel about.
On the other hand…well, he’d been my father. Which probably accounted for the ache in my chest.
At any rate, Dad had died and left me a billionaire in my own right. I had inherited enormous amounts of money and investments, not to mention a large amount of stock in Kensington Media.
I should probably be making plans to take over the company from my younger brother. To gain power and wield it like a club. After all, that was the Kensington way, wasn’t it?
But of course Au had inherited just as much money as I had, and he had already had a chance to entrench himself within the glass walls of the Kensington Media building in downtown DC, like a medieval knight taking refuge behind stone ramparts. Taking him down wouldn’t be easy, even if I wanted to. And at this point, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Right now I felt content to simply sit in front of the fireplace, sip an excellent bourbon, and let freedom and the comfort of being home at last wash over me.
“More bourbon, sir?”
The butler had simply appeared at my elbow out of nowhere. It was amazing how he did that. His name was Clive Underwood, and he had been a shadowy presence in the mansion for my entire childhood. As a child, I’d been convinced he had superpowers. I still wondered.
The vague thoughts I’d been turning over in my head coalesced, and I nodded, holding out my glass. “Tell me, Clive, where is my brother? I’d like to see him again.”
That was only partially true. I’d always loathed Au, and I blamed him for everything that had happened. But even so…
Well, he was my brother.
“I am sorry, sir.” Clive didn’t say the words so much as he intoned them. He had a classy English accent, and his voice was pitched perfectly—not too loud, not too soft. Clive was the Goldilocks of butlers. “Young Mr. Kensington has flown to New York for the weekend, I’m afraid.”
It figured. Au had never enjoyed living in this bumfuck town any more than I had. I didn’t think my dad had liked it all that much, either—I always had the impression that he simply enjoyed lording it over the common people. Small town life was dull, bland, and boring, and I didn’t blame Au for fleeing to the family penthouse in New York whenever he got the chance. Who wouldn’t prefer the Big Apple to fucking Pinecone?
Still, a little flame of resentment lit inside me. After everything I had done for Au, everything I’d sacrificed for him, welcoming me home seemed like the least the little bastard could do.
Instead, he was living it up in New York City.
I sighed and pushed my irritation aside. I didn’t really need the stress of dealing with Au tonight anyway. Maybe it was cowardly of me, or maybe it was just that the years in prison had worn me down, but I really wanted to relax and bask in the sheer pleasure of being home.
“Thank you, Clive,” I said, and the butler faded away into the shadows.
Alone again, I sipped at the bourbon, stared into the dancing flames, and let my mind drift.
Unsurprisingly, the first place it landed was on Char Evans.
I’d thought about her a lot in prison. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. I’d been lonely, and she’d featured prominently in most of my fantasies for the past three years. It wasn’t like I was in love with her, of course; it was simply that she’d been the last woman I’d made love to, on the very night I had been arrested. After I’d been arrested, I’d been allowed out on bail for a while, but I hadn’t felt like it was fair to involve any woman in the soap opera of my life. As a consequence, I’d remained celibate for the last three years.
So Char had been the last woman I’d been with, and she’d been young and beautiful besides. Thus the lonely, empty years since I’d last seen her had been filled with restless imaginings in which I’d picked her up, shoved her against the brick wall in that alley, and…
I broke off the thought before I could settle into the groove of my well-worn fantasy, and forced myself to remember the way she’d looked this afternoon. Not old—she’d only be twenty-four now, after all—but tired and careworn, like the past several years had weighed heavily on her.
I wondered what had led to her working in a crappy diner. Hadn’t she gotten her bachelor’s degree? Enough years had passed that she surely must have. But if so, why was she working here instead of heading off to Richmond or Washington to become a journalist? I wondered if perhaps her mother was ill and Char had stayed in this one-horse town to take care of her. Or maybe her big brother…
I pushed away that thought instantly. Jacob Evans and I had once been close, but our friendship had imploded spectacularly near the end of high school. I tried not to think about Jacob at all if I could help it. He’d once been my very best friend, but now…now we were nothing to one another. Nothing at all.
Anyway, there was no point in speculating, not really. I could find out Char’s story easily enough simply by asking around. Rule one of a small town was that everyone loved gossip. I promised myself that I’d look into it first thing tomorrow.
In the meantime… I allowed myself to sink into my fantasy, remembering the warm scent of her skin, the faint fragrance of strawberries in her hair. The way she’d wrapped herself around me in that alley, innocent but eager. The little sounds of pleasure she’d made.
Like all the Kensingtons, I was cold and remote when it came to relationships, so I didn’t feel anything more for her than I’d ever felt for any woman…but god, that night had been hot.
I tried to hold onto my fantasy, to focus on the too-vivid memories of how she’d felt against me, hot and soft and eager, but suddenly the memory shifted, and all I could see was her dark eyes gazing at me with contemptuous disdain. The thought made something in my chest clench, and a sudden gust of anger blew through me. How dare she, a mere waitress, look at me that way? I was a Kensington, goddammit. Even if I had just been released from prison, I was better than her. Better than anyone in this tiny, pitiful town.
That’s Dad talking, I thought.
My father had always insisted we were better—better educated, more intelligent, and in general superior to the common folk of Pinecone. They aren’t fit to shine your boots, Hunter. Remember that. As a teenager, I’d bought into that wholeheartedly, and in the end it had caused a terrible rift between me and Jacob Evans. And even then I hadn’t been able to bring myself to admit that I was at fault and that maybe, just maybe, being a Kensington didn’t automatically make me superior to anyone else.
But now…
I was a felon. I’d spent over two years in a cell, sleeping on a cot, and eating revolting food. Yes, I’d served my time for a crime I didn’t even commit, but Char had no way of knowing that. Just because I happened to be filthy rich didn’t make me better than her or anyone else. In the eyes of society, I was a mere criminal.
Why shouldn’t Char look at me with disdain?
I didn’t know why it mattered so much to me, but I desperately wanted to wash that look of contempt out of her eyes. I remembered how she’d looked at me that night in the alley, the expression of awakening desire on her face, a look almost of adoration as she’d gazed up at me. I wasn’t sure why she’d looked at me that way, considering she hadn’t seen me in years, but…
Well, if I was going to be honest about it, it wasn’t the sex that had scorched its memory into me that night. It was the way she’d looked at me.
I let myself sink into fantasy and imagined taking her out behind the diner, shoving her up against the wall, and making love to her until she looked at me that way again.
***
Charlotte
I wasn’t all that surprised when Hunter showed up the next day.
Like a bad penny, I thought with a twinge of mingled annoyance and panic. I poured him a cup of coffee and looked down at him, wishing that I wasn’t wearing this shapeless uniform, that I could let him see me wearing tight-fitting jeans and an even tighter t-shirt, so that he could see that I was still as shapely as ever. That I could let my hair ripple down over my shoulders, instead of confining it in this sexless braid, so that he’d know I was still a woman...
But I caught myself quickly and tried to erase those thoughts. I didn’t care what Hunter Kensington thought of me, after all. In fact, the less he thought of me, the better.
“Hi, Char,” he said, smiling up at me. He had a nice smile. Today he looked less worn, like he’d gotten a good night’s sleep for the first time in a long while. He was still a little on the thin side, of course, but under his familiar old leather jacket, it didn’t show as much. And he smelled like I remembered, like a cool winter breeze carrying snowflakes in its wake.
I refused to give in to that smile, refused to soften. If he’d known about Diana, I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t have walked away yesterday. The fact that he had made it pretty clear he hadn’t heard about my daughter yet. But sooner or later, it was inevitable that he would.
So I couldn’t let myself bend, not even a little. This man held my entire life in his hands…and he didn’t even know it.
“What can I get you?”
I thought I saw a flicker of disappointment in the amber depths of his eyes, but the amiable smile stayed firmly in place. “Today, I think I’d like pancakes. Sausage on the side, and a biscuit.”
I wrote it down and turned away, not even bothering to tell him it would be out shortly. Despite his carefully nonconfrontational attitude, my heart was racing in my chest.
If only he’d leave town and never come back. If only. Because if he stayed here, there was no way he wouldn’t find out about Diana sooner or later. Someone was bound to mention her, and then he’d do the math and guess she was his. Even if I denied it, he’d just use his vast wealth and the lawyers at his disposal to force me into having a paternity test done. And then…and then…
And then what? I remembered my first panicked thought yesterday, that he’d want to take Diana away from me. But did Hunter Kensington even want a daughter? I seriously doubted it—a little girl hardly seemed to fit his bad boy, motorcycle-riding lifestyle—but I also knew that to the Kensingtons, family was everything. Would he allow his child to be brought up in a decaying old bungalow? Would he allow her to attend a cheap childcare center?
I knew the answers as well as I knew my own name. Whether he cared for the child was irrelevant—after all, his own father hadn’t ever seemed to give a damn about him. But the Kensington devotion to family was legendary. As a Kensington, he would want to give his child everything his name and wealth could offer her. It was even possible he might try to take her away from me. Given that he was a felon, I doubted he could succeed—but then again, there were few limits to what that sort of wealth could achieve. The thought made me break out in a cold sweat, and I almost dropped the coffee carafe.
Once again, I thought of running. It was, I thought, the only way out of this situation, the only way to protect my baby. But the grim truth was that I had no resources, no way to escape. Mom had spent almost all her savings to get me and Jacob through college, and Jacob’s bookstore was only barely profitable. All my friends, even Angela, had long since moved to bigger towns that offered brighter futures. And me—I didn’t have two pennies to rub together.
No, I wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how much I wanted to.
I was trapped.