LOVE'S FUNNY THAT WAY

by Pamela Burford

  "You're not going anywhere," Dolores said. "We were about to send Hunter out after you."

  "Me?"

  The other woman approached Raven and seized her hands, smiling warmly. "We've been dying to meet you, Raven. Brent has told us so much about you. I'm Audrey Radley and this is my husband, Mike."

  Brent and Hunter's parents! Raven shot a glance at Hunter, whose stolid mask was now firmly in place.

  "It's … great to meet you," she said. "Um, Brent said you were in England the last few weeks. Visiting relatives."

  "We just got back yesterday." Mike Radley pumped her hand. "Brent told us you were as talented as you are beautiful, and he wasn't lying. You were very funny up there."

  "I give you a lot of credit for being able to do that," Audrey said. "It must be very intimidating."

  "Where is that fella of yours, by the way?" Mike asked. "He told us he'd be here tonight."

  "Brent couldn't make it," Raven said. "He tore his Achilles tendon at the gym."

  Audrey frowned. "I spoke to him after he got home. He never said anything about an injury."

  Raven caught Hunter's eye. That telltale muscle twitched in his jaw and he looked away.

  "Well, maybe he didn't want to worry you," Raven said. "I got the feeling it wasn't that serious."

  "So when are you and Brent coming to dinner?" Mike boomed, and turned to his wife. "How about Sunday! We'll make a ham."

  "Great!" Audrey seconded.

  "Oh, I—I don't know," Raven hedged. "Actually, I believe I have something planned for Sunday."

  Like being their son's ex-girlfriend by then. She certainly wasn't about to let Brent's family in on her plans to break up with him in two days. Not even Brent deserved that kind of disrespect.

  "How about next Sunday, then?" Audrey asked.

  "Uh…"

  Dolores said, "Back off a little, Audrey. Let the girl catch her breath."

  "You were wonderful out there," Raven told Dolores, eager to change the subject.

  "Thanks. These two talked me into it," she said, gesturing to Audrey and Mike.

  "So how does it compare to the pulpit?" Hunter asked.

  "I couldn't be sure with those lights in my eyes, but I don't think anyone dozed off on me."

  Mike said, "No one dozes during your sermons, Dolores. They wouldn't dare."

  "Sermons?" Raven said, wide-eyed. "No wonder you seemed like a natural up there. You're a ringer!"

  Hunter cracked a smile at last. "Raven, I'd like you to meet Reverend Dolores Beal, of the North Shore Unitarian Church."

  Dolores scowled at him. "Oh, so you remember what it's called, at least. When did you graduate religious school, Hunter? Ten, eleven years ago?"

  "Thirteen," he admitted.

  "Thirteen years! How many times have you set foot in the church in the last thirteen years?"

  Hunter looked to his parents for support. His father raised his hands as if to say, You're on your own, Son.

  "I'm running a business!" Hunter said. "It's not that easy to get up on Sunday mornings after three hours sleep—"

  "That lame excuse only covers the last couple of years. And anyway, if you're such a crackerjack businessman, we could use you on the ways and means committee. That's one Tuesday night a month. And bring that wayward brother of yours." Dolores addressed Raven as she hauled herself to her feet. "Unless Brent's worshiping somewhere else nowadays?"

  Raven met her stare for a few seconds before the significance of the question sank in. "Oh! No, we're not— Brent and I don't worsh— I mean, that's not how we spend our Sunday mornings."

  Hunter's parents chuckled knowingly. Even Reverend Beal couldn't suppress an indulgent smile. Only Hunter appeared unamused.

  That's not what I meant! Raven felt her face flame.

  "No comment," Dolores said. "Hunter, I have to say, you've done a terrific job with this place. I'm proud of you." She patted his cheek. "I had fun tonight."

  "Come back anytime, Reverend. The crowd loves you."

  "We have to get going." Audrey hugged Raven, her eyes brimming with genuine affection. "Make Brent bring you around. Soon, okay?"

  Raven groped for a response and settled for, "I'm so glad we got to meet at last."

  Dolores and the Radleys left. Halfway out the door himself, Hunter said, "I've got to count the receipts, Raven. What did you want to see me about?"

  "We need to talk." Raven fiddled with one of the horn buttons closing her mandarin-collared ivory tunic. Um … I guess this isn't a good time."

  "No, it's not."

  She searched his rigid features, seeking some shred of the warmth she knew was under the surface. It had to be. No one could turn his feelings off like a light switch.

  "I'll wait," she said. "I'm not in any hurry."

  Hunter looked away for a moment, then back at her. "We don't have anything to talk about."

  The words were like a slap. Wasn't that what she'd told Brent earlier that evening?

  Raven struggled for composure as she said, "I think we do."

  For an instant, as she looked into his eyes, she detected a silent plea. Leave it alone. Don't make this harder than it has to be. Then the mask was back and he turned away with an abrupt. "Suit yourself."

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  «^»

  Hunter took his time counting the receipts and battening down the hatches, hoping Raven would lose patience and leave. Instead she parked herself on the edge of the stage, sitting cross-legged, her long, plum-colored skirt draped demurely over her knees.

  And waited.

  When the last of his staff departed, Hunter lingered in the storeroom, spending twenty minutes rearranging boxes and double-checking paper supplies. He wasted another ten minutes fine-tuning payroll spreadsheets on the computer, and twenty more inventorying china and glassware. Eventually he had no choice but to reenter the club, brightly lit now that the overhead fixtures had been turned on.

  The room looked more than a little shabby under the harsh fluorescent glare, like a venerable grand dame stepping out of the flattering shadows into unforgiving sunlight. Chairs were upended on the battered tables, now stripped of their homey tablecloths. The dark paneling, installed decades ago when this building was a family-style Italian restaurant, was gouged and pocked with nail holes. The black and white floor tiles, still damp from their nightly scrubbing, were cracked and scored. The acrid odor of powerful cleaning agents hung heavy in the air. Hunter was a little embarrassed to have Raven see the place like this.

  She looked up from the newspaper she'd no doubt swiped from his office, and asked pleasantly, "Done already? Doesn't the flatware need to be polished? Maybe you should count the martini olives, make sure you have enough for the next year and a half."

  Hunter swung a chair off the table nearest her and sat backward on it, propping his forearms on the chairback. The speakers had long since been turned off; the only background music now was the faint drumroll of a late winter rainstorm pummeling the building's flat roof.

  He said, "I seem to recall you saying something about never being alone with me again."

  She looked so young and fresh, sitting cross-legged on the scarred wooden stage, the newspaper spread out on her lap, her shoulder bag and greenish-gray trench coat lying near her in a heap.

  She folded the paper and set it aside. "It doesn't have to be like this, Hunter." He started to reply, but she cut him off. "And don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. You're so cold and distant, you'd think I did something terrible to you."

  "You don't think you're overstating it just a bit?"

  "No, I don't."

  "Raven." He rested his chin on his folded arms and regarded her levelly. "What do you want?"

  She raised her hands, let them fall. "I just want things to be like they used to be between us. Simple. Natural. Is that too much to ask?"

  He gave her a grim half smile. "Things have never been simple between us, and doing what comes natura
lly isn't an option under the circumstances."

  "So we have to walk on eggs around each other from now on, is that it?"

  "That's it," he said.

  She waited. He stared back stoically. What did she want him to do, soften the truth by pretending they could have some chummy, platonic, in-law-type relationship?

  In a small voice she said, "If this is how it has to be, I wish I hadn't come back here. I should've listened to my gut and stayed away."

  "What would that accomplish? We'll still have to see each other, because of Brent, still have to deal with each other."

  She hesitated. "And if Brent were no longer in the picture?"

  "What do you mean?" Hunter straightened. "You're not breaking up with him."

  She started to respond, but her words died on a frustrated sigh.

  "If you were going to end it with Brent," he said, "you'd have done it when you first found out he was messing around. And if you're thinking of dumping him now because you've got a case of the hots for his kid brother, think again, because I won't have you," he added with brutal candor. "You've got to know I'd never do that to family."

  The color had leached from Raven's face. Her voice quavered. "I know that."

  Hunter hated doing this to her, but he couldn't allow her to think she could discard his brother to pursue a fling with him. Brent was still family—and Raven was obviously devoted to him, to have patiently waited out his alley-catting for this long. She'd invested two months of her life in a relationship that was clearly headed toward the altar. Neither she nor Brent had made a secret of their desire to settle down.

  Hunter wouldn't be doing Raven any favors, either, if he let her squander her future with Brent for a fleeting affair with him. He'd told her way back during that first double date that he wasn't the marrying type, and if his feelings on the issue had become somewhat muddled during the past two months, she didn't need to know that. As far as she was concerned, he was still a poster boy for happy-go-lucky bachelorhood, and her boyfriend's brother to boot—which made him doubly off-limits. Which might help explain her physical attraction to him: the allure of the unattainable.

  He only wished his feelings for her were that uncomplicated.

  He said, "Are you sleeping with him yet?" He hadn't intended to ask, but that remark about how they spent their Sunday mornings had been plaguing him.

  After a moment she said, "No."

  "Have you thought that if you spread your legs for your man, he might stop screwing around?"

  Never before had Raven looked at Hunter like this, as if taking his measure and finding him lacking. His fingers gripped the chairback so hard they cramped.

  Quietly she asked, "Are you trying to make me hate you?"

  Is it working? "Maybe you're waiting for the wedding night. Brent said you're an old-fashioned girl."

  "You'd be very happy if I followed your example and pretended I feel nothing for you. I can't do it, Hunter. I won't do it."

  "How goddamn naive are you?" He sprang to his feet, toppling the chair. "You're going to follow my example because anything else is pointless and destructive!"

  Raven scooted off the stage and stalked right up to him. "Is this pointless and destructive?" She pulled his head down and kissed him on the mouth.

  Hunter exulted in the gut-deep pleasure of it, for a stunned instant, before his internal censor categorized this as a dangerous activity. Then he responded without forethought, shoving Raven away, hard. She stumbled backward and collided with the edge of the stage.

  Conflicting impulses assailed him for the scant seconds it took her to catch her breath. The next thing he knew, she'd snatched up her bag and coat and bolted from the room.

  Every muscle tensed to tear out after her. Let her go, that internal censor commanded, as the club's outer door banged shut. This is what you want.

  No, not what he wanted, Hunter thought, but what he needed, what they both needed: a yawning chasm between them, too vast for either to leap.

  He scrubbed his hands over his face, but he couldn't scrub away the taste of her, the phantom touch of her lips.

  With a raw curse he sprinted through the club and out the back door, into the dark parking lot. Needles of freezing rain soaked him to the skin; his breath smoked like a locomotive in the downpour. The pole-mounted security light showed that the lot was empty except for Hunter's dark green Outback, in the far corner, and Raven's gray Mazda sedan, now racing toward the exit.

  Hunter was beyond rational thought. He charged the car, throwing himself at the front of it as the vehicle skidded to a squealing stop on the rain-battered blacktop. The overworked wipers revealed Raven's startled face in fleeting bursts, her knuckles white on the wheel.

  He lunged for the passenger door handle, only to hear the locks engage with an audible chunk just before he reached it. He yanked hard on the handle, to no avail. "Open the door, Raven!" He slammed his fist on the window glass. "Open it!"

  "Leave me alone!" she screamed, and started to pull away.

  Taking a running vault, Hunter swung his right leg onto the hood, boosting himself fully onto it. She braked hard again, sending him sliding off the car. He scrambled back onto it and stared through the windshield at her rigid features as icy rain hammered him like buckshot.

  "Unlock this car, Raven!"

  She responded with a ripe oath. If he had to stay out here all night, in this bitter torrent, he would. She must have known it, because after a lengthy stare-down, she unlocked the car.

  Hunter leaped off the hood and jerked the door open. He folded himself into the front passenger seat and slammed the door shut. He was drenched to the bone, his black shirt and khaki pants plastered to his body, soaking the velour upholstery. Raven wasn't much drier, having fled the club without taking time to put her coat on. She trembled, from outrage as much as the cold, he suspected. He was still too pumped with adrenaline to feel much of anything at the moment.

  Little light made it through the pounding rain that shrouded the window glass, even less when Hunter reached over and killed the engine, halting the wipers in midswipe. He slipped Raven's car keys into his pants pocket.

  "I didn't mean to do that," he said tightly. "To shove you like I did in there. I don't know where that came from. I would never—" He thrust his wet hair off his forehead. "I'm sorry as hell, Raven. That's all I can tell you."

  Raven listened stoically, her gaze directed at the fogged windshield and the impenetrable downpour beyond. Her hair lay in sodden strands around her face. She shivered violently now.

  "Put this on," he said, reaching into the back seat for her trench coat. He pushed her right arm into the sleeve as she struggled into the coat, tugging the front closed without buttoning it.

  And still she didn't look at him. She'd wait him out, he knew, just as she'd done earlier inside the club. Only this time, all she wanted was for him to leave her be. So she could go home, lick her emotional wounds and shore up her defenses against him.

  It's what you need, what you demanded of her, he reminded himself. Give her her keys, let her go.

  "Say something," he said. "I'm not going to leave until you tell me what you're thinking."

  She shut her eyes, pulled the coat tighter around her.

  "Do you hate me?" he asked.

  "Isn't that what you wanted?"

  "Yes," he whispered.

  "I wish I could," she choked out on a sob. "I wish I could hate you. It's so easy for you."

  His throat constricted. "Is that what you think? That I hate you?" He reached for her. She jerked away, but he caught her by the upper arms and hauled her across the space between the bucket seats, awkwardly settling her on his lap with her booted feet on the driver's seat.

  "I don't hate you, angel." He wiped the wet hair off her cold cheeks, her forehead. "God, how could I ever hate you? Look at me."

  He tipped her face toward his, but her eyes were closed once more as she silently wept. "I don't know how to get us past this," he conf
essed, "and that's why I'm saying all the wrong things, and doing all the wrong things. I don't know how to be with you and not want you. How could I ever stop wanting you?"

  He kissed her eyes, tasted the salt of her tears. "Look at me," he insisted, and she did, and what he saw in her eyes cut through his defenses like a scalpel. On some level he knew it was more than lust he saw in those gilded depths, more than animal attraction, even as he denied it, even as he captured her mouth in a fierce, deep kiss.

  She still clutched her coat closed like a shield. He seized her wrist and pulled her arm away, slid his hand inside the coat and over the damp front of her tunic. She shuddered and tried to draw back, but he soothed her with his endless kiss and the tender urgency of his touch.

  Her breast filled his hand, warm and pliant, the nipple stiff against his palm, inflaming him. Raven's breathing quickened as he caressed her with growing hunger. The cold bit through his wet clothes now, but she was in his arms, and his senses fed on her, on the fragrant, supple heat of her.

  At some point he stopped thinking, let the untamed part of him slip its leash. Instinct guided his hand up her calf, under the hem of her skirt and higher, seeking. Her silky stocking ended in a garterlike band at mid-thigh and then there was only the scorching silk of her skin.

  They both groaned as his fingers splayed over the bare top of her thigh. Raven was kissing him back now, greedily plucking at his lips as her arms wound around his neck. Her thighs parted slightly; he doubted she was aware of it. The simple, spontaneous movement propelled him off a precipice he'd been teetering on for two long months.

  Hunter slid his hand between her legs, over the thin cotton of her underpants. He felt the shape of her through the cloth and the springy curls, traced her womanly furrow with a fingertip. Her breath caught. She went very still.

  He eased his fingers under the leg opening and touched her slippery folds. Raven gasped his name. Her nails dug into his shoulders even as her legs parted further in unconscious invitation.

  "That's it, angel." One finger found her narrow opening and pushed into her. "Oh, you're beautiful … yes…" he murmured, burrowing deeper into the sleek, snug heat of her.