Hunter's Vow. SUSAN MEIER

stranger could enjoy the prosperity that had once been so important to him.

      Forced into a strained silence, Abby peeked at him and the very act of looking at him took her breath away. His dark, dark hair accented the smooth angles and planes of a face that would have made him the perfect candidate for modeling. He was still so damned sexy and gorgeous, it was impossible not to think of him as the guy she had loved all those years ago. Recognizing this really was Hunter—Hunter Wyman in her kitchen!—shot an unexpected ripple of tingles down her spine, which she quickly squelched. This might have been the boy who had wanted to wrap up the world and give it to her gift-boxed, but the man he had become had new beliefs….

      Before she could complete her thought, Tyler burst into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom!” he said and immediately reached for a cookie.

      With the moment of truth at hand, Abby froze. She glanced at Hunter and saw that he, too, seemed paralyzed. Reserved, composed, he sat motionless, waiting for her to do what had to be done.

      She cleared her throat. Gazing at her dark-haired, grayish-green-eyed little boy, the picture of Hunter in elementary school, she was swamped by fear. It was a good thing—a very good thing—for Tyler to meet his father, but she suddenly had the feeling they could have timed it all a little better. At the very least, they could have prepared him.

      However, now that the wheels were turning, it was too late to stop, too late to try to think of a way to make this easier. Hunter was in her kitchen. Tyler was staring at him with wide-eyed curiosity. The ball was in her court.

      She stooped to her son’s level. When she put her hands on his small shoulders, he gave all his attention to her. “Honey, this man is Hunter Wyman.”

      As if in slow motion, Abby’s little boy lifted his gaze away from her up to Hunter. Instead of seeing the explosion of happiness she expected to see on her son’s face, Abby found herself looking at gray-green eyes full of fire.

      “Hunter is your father,” Abby added slowly.

      Tyler’s lips thinned and his chin lifted. Because Abby knew her son so well, she easily recognized the look that expressed the bottom line to everything he felt.

      Condemnation.

      “I know. You told me Hunter Wyman was my father.”

      “Well, this is him,” Abby said brightly. “He’s moving back to Brewster County because he’s partners with Grant Brewster. So now he really gets to be your dad.”

      Though he spoke directly to his mother, Tyler never took his gaze from Hunter’s face. “He didn’t want to be my dad before this?”

      “He was away,” Abby began, but Hunter interrupted her.

      Hunkering down to Tyler’s level as Abby had, Hunter captured Tyler’s attention. “I didn’t know you existed. I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry,” he said honestly, humbly. “Sometimes adults do things that don’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, and people who shouldn’t get hurt do.” He paused, giving Tyler time to digest that. “I shouldn’t have left town without finding out for sure what had happened to you…and your mother.” He glanced at Abby for emphasis. “Because I didn’t, we didn’t get a chance to know each other. This is my fault. I will fix it.”

      “How?” Tyler asked simply.

      Yeah, how? Abby echoed in her head.

      Calm, cool, collected, Hunter said, “I don’t know yet. But if we take this one step at a time, everything will work out. For right now, though,” he said as he rose and walked back to the table, “it’s enough to finally get to meet you. If you want to go up to your room or go outside with your friends, I understand.” He paused and smiled. “You can do whatever you normally do.”

      Tyler peered at his mother. “Can I go outside?”

      “I’d rather you changed into play clothes first,” Abby said, feeling ridiculous making the inane request, given that she had just introduced her son to the father he had never met.

      Tyler nodded and raced from the room. Abby turned and gaped at Hunter. “Well, that was warm and fuzzy.”

      “We’re boys, Abby, not girls.”

      “You didn’t even hug him!”

      “He didn’t want me to hug him,” Hunter replied.

      “Hell, he didn’t even want me to touch him.” From the quiver in his voice Abby might have believed that bothered Hunter, but his next words were again detached and indifferent, making her think she had imagined the emotion. “It was almost as if somebody might have told him things about me that made him afraid of me.”

      Abby gasped incredulously. “What?”

      Hunter faced her. “Did you hate me so much that you had to poison his mind against me?”

      Abby might have actually appreciated his accusation, if he had said it with some feeling. Since it was delivered with complete composure, she didn’t trust it.

      “First, I didn’t hate you,” Abby quietly replied, so confused she knew she didn’t dare lose her temper for fear she had misinterpreted something and would make a worse mess out of this situation than it already was. “Second, I didn’t tell him anything but good things about you.”

      “That’s not how it looks to me. There’s no other explanation for how he could hate me even without knowing me….”

      Before Hunter could say anything else, Tyler slid into the room again. “You hurt my mom,” he said simply, his chin raised defiantly.

      “I didn’t mean to hurt your mom,” Hunter quickly retorted. But Tyler didn’t listen. He grabbed another cookie and shot out of the back door.

      “You still expect me to believe you didn’t say anything to him?”

      Abby only stared at Hunter. She understood that Tyler’s jumping in and out of the room—and the conversation—was only his way of dealing with his anger, and typical behavior for a six-year-old. But she couldn’t get herself to explain that to Hunter because his insinuation was infuriating. And personal. All these years of sacrifice and struggle, she had never once said anything hurtful or hateful about Hunter. She couldn’t stand here and let him make the accusation as if he had the right—as if he had every right in the world to everything he wanted after deserting them.

      “Do you really think me capable of trying to get him to hate you? And if I did, why?” she demanded. “To what end?”

      “Your parents got rid of me seven years ago by lying to me,” he said. “What was their reason for that? To what end?” he asked, mimicking her, but he shook his head as if to stop himself. “Okay, let’s just calm down.”

      Again he hauled back his anger and controlled himself, but Abby’s eyes narrowed. She would have welcomed the opportunity to argue any of this out with him, but because she believed it was better not to fight, she reined in her temper just as he had. However, the part of her that was hurt and upset, the part that had been abandoned, knew they would never resolve any of this without an opportunity to clear the air, because they both had feelings they had to deal with. Though Hunter kept leading them in the direction of a real, honest discussion, as if he understood that, too, he never let them finish. Seven years ago he not only would have let her have her say, he would have encouraged it.

      And he would have had his say, too.

      “The bottom line is that I want a relationship with my son,” Hunter said, removing his coat from the back of the kitchen chair. “So if I can’t form a decent connection with Tyler while he’s in your custody, I’ll file for custody myself.”

      Without another word he strode out of the kitchen and Abby stood, openmouthed, staring at her back door. Now where had that come from? After the great pains he took to make sure they didn’t argue, it didn’t make any sense to threaten to file for custody.

      For a few seconds,