A Ring And A Rainbow. Deanna Talcott

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…”

      He turned, intentionally arching an eyebrow at her. “Only one time?” he asked. “We had the craziest things happen to us out there. Remember the time you said ‘move over’ and I fell out of the hayloft?” He shook his head. “I wore that cast for six weeks. And it was the middle of summer. Wrecked my whole baseball season.”

      “So? It wasn’t my fault. What about the time we played cops and robbers and you tied me up and left me there? Out in the woods.”

      “I was coming back.”

      “Yeah. Right. If Beth hadn’t come along, I’d probably still be there.”

      He couldn’t stop the slow, amused smile that eased across his face. “You were spittin’ mad. Had to bribe you with a quarter candy bar just to get you to talk to me again.” He laughed, remembering how much it had meant to him to earn his way back into Claire’s good graces. “And then there was that treasure hunt you concocted to find the gold at the end of the rainbow.”

      “Me? You were the one who wanted the gold.”

      “Well, you were the one who dug it out of your mother’s purse and gave it to me.”

      Claire rolled her eyes, remembering. “Oh, I got in so much trouble. In my whole life I’ve never gotten in so much trouble as I did that one time, for losing that ring.”

      “We didn’t lose it,” he reminded, “we buried it. My folks turned that place upside down looking for it.”

      “Back then I had no idea what it meant to my mom. Or else I wouldn’t have done anything so stupid.” She paused. “A month’s worth of rent and a summer’s worth of groceries.”

      Hunter rapped the iron bed frame with the back of his knuckles, pensively remembering all they had once shared. Even with all the struggles, it had been an idyllic childhood, very much removed from the real world.

      “It was a world away,” he allowed, marveling that for moments they could reminisce and talk and laugh as they once did. “I’ve thought about the place a few times since I’ve left. But it’s the strangest thing…I don’t miss it. I wanted to leave so badly that I don’t think I’ve missed anything at all about Lost Falls.” His head swiveled, as he realized what he’d said, expecting her to be angry. “Except you.”

      Chapter Three

      As astonishment rolled through Claire’s eyes, all he could recognize was his blunder. “I meant,” he revised quickly, “that I’ve missed having you as a friend.”

      “We haven’t been friends for a long time, Hunter,” Claire reminded him. “You went your way, I went mine.”

      “You didn’t go anywhere, Claire. Like you said, you stayed here.”

      “And was that so bad?”

      “Maybe not. Not for you. You worked your way up in the company.”

      She stared at him in disbelief. “My life here is more than working my way up in a real estate office, Hunter,” she said evenly. “My life is not just about a job. It’s about commitments, and a sense of community and belonging.”

      “Funny. I seem to remember a time when you didn’t feel that way at all. I remember when you talked about seeing the world, when you talked about shedding the old memories and trading them in on some new ones. Ones that you’d created—not the ones that you were saddled with.”

      Claire winced. Hunter’s reminders of the rough times her family had endured hurt. “I’d rather you didn’t bring that up,” she said, her eyes flashing. “My father—”

      “I’m not talking about him,” he said. “This is about you, Claire. You always held your head up, no matter what happened. You never had anything to be ashamed of, and you made sure people knew it. But by staying here, you have a bundle of baggage attached to your backside.”

      “That was a long time ago, Hunter,” Claire reminded. “And I let go of it a long time ago.”

      He paused, his gaze narrowing, his expression thoughtful. “Why, then,” he asked, “can’t you do the same with us?”

      The unexpected question stopped Claire cold. Apprehension gripped her middle, making her heart pound and putting an ugly pain behind her breastbone. “You misunderstand,” she said finally, carefully. “There hasn’t been an ‘us’ for a long, long time.”

      “But you still can’t let go of it.”

      “Because…” She pressed her lips firmly together, and let the moment of weakness and indecision pass. She couldn’t allow herself to tell him he had been her everything, that he’d been her world, her life, her passion. Instead she settled for, “You were different. That’s why. I trusted you.” She stepped away, to the dresser, and picked up the faded family photo that she’d framed. Skimming her thumb over the top of the frame, she wiped away any trace of dust, then handed it to him. “I remember the day this picture was taken.”

      He studied it, his expression quizzical. Her father wasn’t even looking at the camera, and her mother was frowning, her mouth clamped tight. It looked as if they’d been arguing. “But…you couldn’t have been much more than seven or eight.”

      “Even so, I remember it. Because you were standing behind the lilac bushes watching.” He looked up at her in surprise. “You were waiting to see if I could go play. And that’s how I remember you, always on the perimeter. Always there. Always waiting for me, no matter what. And because of that I gave you everything.”

      A trace of annoyance touched his forehead, then he slowly, carefully, slid the picture back on the dresser. “We were next-door neighbors, Claire. We grew up together.”

      “But I grew up giving you my hopes and dreams. You knew me better than I knew myself. And sometimes I could just look at you and know what you were thinking.” Her voice dropped to a painful whisper. “Hunter, you were my first—”

      His palm lifted and his fingers splayed to prevent her from uttering “lover.” “I didn’t take that intimacy,” he emphasized, “lightly. I still don’t. But we were eighteen years old, Claire. Back then,” he admitted, “I was naive enough to think we would be together forever.”

      “We could have been,” she countered, painfully aware of his masculine good