Wanting Hunter: Book 1 in the Cameron Family Saga

by Shirley Larson

  “We’re starting off with Lobster Bisque,’ he said.

  “Umm.” She watched as he dished out the soup with those capable hands. The sun and wind and lovely plantings had blown all thoughts out of her head of what her future might be with Hunter. Now she just wanted to eat and enjoy his company. It seemed he was in the same frame of mind.

  The next course was a lovely chicken dish with a creamy sauce she didn’t recognize and double mashed sweet potatoes on the side.

  “It always amazes me that you can eat like you do and stay as slim as you do.”

  “I burn it up on the stage,” she said, as she spooned the last bite of chicken into her mouth. “What’s for desert?”

  “Your favorite. Mint chocolate chip.”

  When he took her plate away, rinsed it and tucked it into the dishwasher, she sighed and said, “I really should go, Hunter.”

  “Should you?” he said. “You’re not going to stay for ice cream?”

  “I’d better not.”

  “Why not? Are you afraid ice cream will, like dancing, lead to sex?”

  She had to laugh. “You know what I said. Dating with no sex.”

  “I know what you said. I’m not sure that’s what you really want.”

  “What do you think I want?”

  “This.” He pulled her up off the chair and when she thought he would take her in his arms, he lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and headed for the bedroom.

  “Hunter. Hunter, put me down.”

  He did put her down…on the bed and he leaned down on top of her, a hand on each side of her hips where her legs dangled down off the bed. “If you want to go home, I’ll put you in my limo. But if you don’t really want to go…”

  The aching need, the hunger, the wanting flared up and blazed out of control. Three weeks. Three weeks she’d been without this wild excitement. She reached her hand to ruffle his dark head. “You looked beautiful in the sunlight.” Then as her eyes met his and she saw that his were dark with the same need she was feeling, she said, “You know I really don’t want to go home.”

  “Then stay,” he murmured, leaning over her. “Stay with me. Spend the night with me.” He began his slow seduction by lifting her pink sneaker and releasing her foot, first the left, then the right. Then he lifted her legs and made her comfortable on the bed.

  “I really should be home studying…”

  “I’m going to make you forget about studying. I’m going to make you forget about everything but me.” He pulled down the zipper to her jeans and, tugging the denim to the top of her thighs, he put a finger under the tiny scrap of material she wore and pulled it down as well. Then he crawled over her and slid his hands under her bare buttocks to lift her to his mouth and feed greedily on her. “Oh, Hunter, I…”

  She tried to maintain control of her body, but with his mouth lifting her to heaven, she could do nothing but take what he gave her. He lapped and tongued her until she cried out her release. While she lay nearly writhing in reaction to her climax, he lowered his pants, rolled a condom over himself and plunged into her, sending her into another spasm of intense delight. She came half up off the bed, her reaction was so intense. He still wore his t-shirt, and his pants were down just far enough to make it possible to join his body with hers, and somehow that intensified her pleasure, making this such a wanton act. Hunter increased his rhythm until he joined her in his release, groaning out his own pleasure.

  He lay half over her, his weight still on his arms. She nudged his hands away from the bed so that he lay on top of her. “I’m too heavy,” he said.

  “Not for me.” She wrapped her arms around him. When he moved to rid himself of the condom, she caught his hand. “Hunter.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think we might try this again? Without any clothes?”

  “I think that’s highly possible.”

  They made love twice more and were lying together spoon fashion, drowsily sated, when Hunter’s cell phone rang. He looked at the clock. It was eleven thirty. He was going to check the caller ID and let it go to voice mail, but it was Alex. He rolled away from Liz and growled into the phone, “This better be good,”

  “It’s not good. It’s about Justin, Hunter. I just got a call from his commanding officer. He’d been hit by shrapnel from an IED bomb. He’s been airlifted out of Germany. He arrived at JFK around six this evening. He was switched to another flight to Rochester and taken by ambulance to Rochester General. The commander didn’t think Justin’s injuries were life threatening, but he isn’t a doctor.”

  “I’m on my way. Can you call Lynne? Let’s not say anything to Mother until we know more about his injury.”

  “Good plan. I’ll give Lynne a heads up.”

  His mind churning, he touched Liz on the shoulder. She came awake at once. “What is it?”

  “It’s Justin.”

  Please God not that beautiful, charming guy she’d met on the USO tour. “What happened?”

  “He’s been hit by bomb shrapnel…in the head. They’ve already taken him to Rochester, probably because that’s what Justin wanted, to be close to home. Sweetheart, I have to go.”

  “I’m going with you.” Liz began to gather up her clothes.

  “You have the show…”

  “I can take tomorrow off. Amy can stand in for me. After that…I may have to come back.”

  After a midnight call to Griffin gaining his assurance the cast could work around her for the next day and an anxious hour long plane ride, Liz and Hunter walked into the waiting room off the Rochester hospital ICU.

  Hunter went alone to talk to the doctor. Then the doctor took him into ICU to see Justin. Twenty minutes later, he came out, his face drawn. Hunter grabbed Liz in his arms and hugged her so hard that she was almost in a strangle hold. “Thank God you’re here with me.” Liz stood there and let him take solace from her body. Then he said, “I must be killing you.”

  “You’d be killing me if you didn’t need me.”

  “Justin just came out of surgery a few minutes ago. He’s got a tube in his mouth and a tube in his neck and a tube in his throat. I…it’s so damn hard to see him like that. But at least he’s alive. The shrapnel hit him on the side of his head. He hasn’t sustained any brain injury that we know of. He has speech, hearing and sight.”

  “I’m so glad for that…and so sorry this happened.” Those words felt completely inadequate.

  A nurse came and told Hunter he could go in again. Hunter said, “This is my fiancée.”

  “You both can go in, but you can’t stay long. He already has one visitor.”

  Justin had a visitor? It couldn’t be Alex. Right now, he was breaking the news to Amelia. Gripping Liz’s hand, Hunter went into the room. A woman wearing a nurse’s uniform, her auburn hair pulled back into a bun, leaned over Justin, stroking his arm, crooning to him in a very unprofessional way.

  Surprised by Hunter and Liz’s entrance, the nurse immediately straightened away from Justin and put on a professional nurse’s face. After a second that seemed to stretch too long, the woman held out her hand. “I’m Anne Wentworth. I…was in school with Justin. I’m not the nurse assigned to his case. I work in the emergency room. I couldn’t believe it when they brought him in. When I heard he was going to be operated on, I…took a break from my shift and came…to check on him. The nurse on duty knows me and she said it would be all right,” she finished anxiously, her eyes on Hunter.

  “Of course it’s all right. I’m glad you’re here,” Hunter told her.

  Liz recognized the signs. This sweet-faced woman was in love with Justin.

  Justin opened his eyes and his gaze flicked from Anne, to Liz, to Hunter. With his face almost completely covered with bandages and his arms tied down, he began to struggle against his breathing tube. Immediately, Anne’s hand covered Justin’s arm. “Justin, listen to me. You need to relax. I know that darn thing is uncomfortable. But the sooner you relax, the sooner the doctor ca
n remove it. Trust me on this.” Anne went on rubbing his arm and talking to him in that sweetly soft voice of hers. Liz fought to hold back the tears, both because of Justin’s injury and because of the sweetness of this woman who claimed to be nothing more than an old high school chum.

  Liz tugged at Hunter’s arm. “Since your time with him is limited, Anne, we’ll go and let you stay with him.”

  “I…thank you. That’s very kind.”

  Liz guided Hunter out of the room. Once they were safely back in the waiting room, Liz said, “She’s in love with him.”

  “Who? That nurse that fills out her uniform a lot up top and not much down below?”

  “You were checking her out?”

  “Yeah, I was checking her out. Only as a potential woman for Justin. She doesn’t measure up, Liz. He only dates models and actresses.”

  “Unlike yourself.”

  “Unlike my old self. I feel sorry for her. She doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “I’ll bet that’s what people said about me.

  “Fat chance. They were saying it about me.”

  “Hunter…I’ll have to fly back to New York tomorrow.”

  “I know. Oh, my love. Thank you for being here.”

  Liz sat with Hunter all that night and most of the next day. Justin remained stable. But when the time came and she had to leave in order to be back for rehearsal, she felt slightly sick to her stomach. She should be here with Hunter. But she couldn’t stay. She had to go. Here it was then. She had to make the choice of career over Hunter. She went to say something to him, but he shook his head. “It’s all right, Liz. You need to go.” She kissed Hunter goodbye and with reluctance in every bone in her body, she stepped out of his arms to walk down the hospital hall. It killed her to do it.

  Chapter 17

  Liz tried to concentrate on rehearsals, but the time away from Hunter made her miserable. She talked to him every night on the phone for at least an hour. The one good thing was that Justin was improving little by little.

  “Anne comes to see him every day. Justin tolerates her visits better than he does mine.”

  “He has to be nice in front of her. You’re family. He can let off steam to you.”

  “He does that. Every day the guy who used to be Mr. Congeniality snarls at me, telling me to get him out of the hospital. Mom, Alex and I have all been taking turns visiting him, but he snaps everybody’s head off except Mom’s and Anne’s.”

  “Any word when he’ll be able to come home?”

  “Hopefully, in another few days.”

  “Will…you be coming back to the city then?”

  “As fast as I can.”

  “It can’t be fast enough for me,” she said.

  Three days later, Liz came home from rehearsal. She zipped through her shower, tossed on jeans and a light sweater and began to pace, waiting for Hunter’s call. When the knock came at her apartment door, she was annoyed. She went to the door and opened it just enough to see who was bothering her at ten o’clock at night.

  “Hunter.”

  He stood in her doorway, big and real and beautiful and gathered her in his arms. “It’s been so long,” he murmured.

  “Just a million years. Now that you’re here you can help me pack…if that offer to move in with you is still open.”

  Was it really going to be that easy? She was going to move in with him now? “You’ve changed your mind?”

  “Seeing Justin like that, I just…I realized that if anything happened to you, I couldn’t bear it if we were apart.” He came toward her, a heady gleam in his eye.

  “No, you have to wait.”

  “I’ve been waiting for three weeks.”

  “I know. But if you want me to stay with you tonight, I have to pack.”

  She held him off all the while she threw stuff in a suitcase. He tried to help but mostly he got in her way. “Toothbrush?” he said, holding up a conventional one.

  “I use an electric. That’s the one I use for cleaning the crevices in the bathroom sink.”

  “Don’t need that.” Hunter tossed the toothbrush over his shoulder, making Liz laugh. He opened the drawer containing her panties and shut it again. “Don’t need those.” She made a sound in her throat and came up behind him. “I need seven.”

  “You’re only going to stay a week?”

  “Are you trying to be funny or does it just come naturally? That’s how many I’ll need until I wash again. You’re not helping, you know,” she said as she gathered up her underwear and folded it into the suitcase laying on the bed.

  He ignored her and opened her closet. “You don’t have many clothes, do you?”

  “I have jeans, tops and a couple of dressy dresses. What else do I need? I get my costumes at work.”

  “You need that red dress,” he said, as she concentrated on folding jeans and tees and packing them.

  “I don’t need the red dress.”

  “That red dress is hot. You need it.”

  He plucked it out of the closet and with a gleam in his eye that boded no good, he headed for her. She stretched out her arm like a traffic cop to stop him. “I’ll take it. And don’t come any closer.”

  When she finished, she had one large suitcase for clothes and one small suitcase for her cosmetics and hair products. Hunter picked up both of them and hustled her out of the door in front of him.

  She managed to keep him at bay in the back of the limousine, which was nothing short of a miracle and in the elevator going up to his apartment. But once they were inside his place, he tossed the suitcases down in the entryway and reached for her.

  “Not yet. I have to unpack.”

  “My house, my rules.” He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him. “I should just back you up against the wall right here.”

  “As lovely as that sounds,” she said, “couldn’t I talk you into taking those few steps into your bedroom?”

  “You could,” he said. He step walked her backwards until she was next to his bed and then he lifted her and laid her out on top of the duvet.

  “Hunter, your beautiful bed cover…”

  “Screw the damn bed cover. How do you want to do this, hard and fast or slow and torturing?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I love a woman who tells the truth.”

  “And I love you, Hunter Cameron.”

  He’d crawled over the top of her but now he stilled and simply stared down at her. “How long?” he said.

  “How long for what?”

  “How long until you marry me?” He expected her to say when the show was up and running.

  “How about we wait until your brother gets out of the hospital? I really think your whole family should be there.”

  He laid fully down on her and feeling her warm and pliant body under his, he buried his head in her shoulder.

  “Hunter, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  He lifted his head and looked down at her beloved face. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

  “Not very darn much, I’m guessing. Although you are a pretty sexy guy. Maybe I’m just marrying you for the sex.”

  “Maybe I’m marrying you because I can’t live without you.”

  “Oh, Hunter. Make love to me please.”

  He undressed her slowly and he caressed her slowly and he entered her slowly. She lifted to meet him and he took his time, bringing her close to the edge and then backing off just that little bit so he could start all over again. When he finally realized he could no longer stave off his climax and that she was already in the throes of hers, he fell with her into that lovely explosion of sensation.

  It was another two months before Justin was released from the hospital. By then, the rehearsals for the show were intense. They would open out of town in September and come back to New York for their Broadway opening. Liz asked Hunter if he could wait for the wedding until she had a break at Christmas time, and he said he would.

  Meanwhile the media had a heyday.
The speculation ran rampant. Headlines on the tabloids were both insulting and false. Star of Count of Monte Cristo pregnant with tycoon Hunter Cameron’s baby.

  Liz Farnsworth resigning from cast to go in seclusion over broken heart from break up with Hunter Cameron.

  Cameron/Farnsworth wedding is off. Hunter will never marry again.

  Liz couldn’t go to the grocery store anymore and look at her face plastered all over the rags with some picture a photographer caught of her coming out of the theater looking her absolute worst. One look at that photo, her face with no makeup, her hair falling down from a messy knot, circles under her eyes from lack of sleep; she couldn’t blame people for thinking she was going off the rails.

  “I hate this,” she complained to Hunter after they’d shared a Sunday meal of pizza and beer.

  “They’ll be on to the next scandal soon,” Hunter said, rinsing their plates and putting them in the dishwasher, while she wiped up the countertops. “We’ll just let Milton get the groceries. He doesn’t mind.”

  “Is your mother okay with having the wedding at her house at Christmastime?”

  “Are you kidding? She’d disown me if we went anywhere else. She’s in her element. Liz. I want to buy you an engagement ring.”

  “No,” she said. “No ring.” She went to him and slid her hands up his chest. “It’s a waste of money. I can’t wear the ring at the theater when I’m performing. Where else do I go?”

  “How will people know we’re engaged?” In truth, Hunter wanted to put his ring on her, claim his ownership.

  “Your family knows we’re engaged, my family knows we’re engaged, my buddies at the theater know I’m engaged. No one else matters.”

  “So. Do you have our wedding on your calendar of events?”

  “I do. Right there.” She stabbed a well-manicured finger as required for her role at the calendar day, December twenty-fourth.

  “What am I going to do for two more months?”

  “Enjoy being with me?”

  He gathered her into his arms. “I think I might manage that.”

  The show opened, and there was critical acclaim for both Liz and the actor who portrayed the Count as well as for the show itself. Liz was praised for the emotional power of her singing, particularly in the duet at the end.