Hunter's Moon

by Karen Robards

  Will’s pants lay next to the bed. They were nearly inside out. His wallet and some loose change and a gold foil condom packet had spilled out of his pockets across the carpet. Molly assumed that he’d been carrying the condom in her honor. He had never used it. The end when it had come was too hot, too fast, too shattering, to allow for such practicalities.

  When she spotted, first, her panties and hose and then her shoes, Molly moved with carefully sinuous grace to scoop them up.

  To scuttle, which was more in tune with the way she felt, would have been demeaning.

  “What are you doing?” It was a lazy inquiry.

  “Getting dressed.” Molly’s reply was short. As she gathered up her bra and dress, she heard rather than saw him sit up.

  “What’s the matter?” Will was frowning, Molly saw as she dared a glance at him. Sitting in the middle of the bed with his hair ruffled and his knees bent, dressed only in an open shirt and black socks, he was the sexiest thing she had ever seen in her life.

  “I hate making love to men in socks,” she said nastily, grabbing her purse and heading for the bathroom. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, but he was too late. She reached the sanctuary and closed the door behind her, locking it.

  Then she rested her forehead against the cool, gray-painted wood.

  The knob rattled.

  “Molly. Let me in.”

  She stepped back from the door. “I’m busy,” she said, and flushed the toilet to prove it.

  “Molly.”

  “Go away,” she said, depositing her belongings on the counter. Her reflection caught her eye. For a moment she stared at it. Her hair was a tangled mess, her mouth was swollen from kisses, and her eyes had an odd, almost shell-shocked expression. Lower than that, she refused to allow herself to look.

  If her body bore the marks of Will’s lovemaking, she didn’t want to see.

  “Molly!”

  “I’m taking a shower!” she called, turning away from the mirror, and suited her actions to her words.

  By the time she emerged from beneath the warm spray, she was cool, composed, and in control again. She dried, dressed, brushed out her hair, and touched up her makeup. When she was done, no one would ever have guessed that she had just gotten up from having earth-shattering sex with the man she loved.

  The man she loved. The very notion sent tendrils of panic curling through her. She refused even to consider it.

  To love someone was to get your heart broken. She’d learned that from many hard lessons over many hard years.

  She’d been a fool to let things go so far with Will. What on earth had she been thinking of? How could she not have foreseen that her atavistic yearning for a strong, kind man to take care of her would mix with potent sexual chemistry and a good measure of genuine liking to form something highly combustible? Add a dose of mind-blowing sex to the concoction, and of course she had fallen in love with him. It was a no-fail recipe.

  But what had she supposed the outcome was going to be? That he would carry her off into the sunset for a happily-ever-after? He would be going back to Chicago in just a couple of weeks. Did she think he was going to take her with him? Kids, dog, and all?

  Yeah, right. One thing she had learned was, there are no happy endings in life.

  Beyond the bathroom door there was silence. Molly listened, but could hear nothing. She knew he hadn’t left her, however. He was out there, waiting, and had to be faced.

  Molly squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and picked up her purse. Then she opened the bathroom door, and stepped out into the hotel room.

  Will was sitting in one of the gray velour armchairs. He was wearing his shirt, which was buttoned about halfway up his chest, a pair of narrow light blue boxer shorts, and his black socks. One bare leg was crossed over the other, its foot idly swinging. He was drinking a glass of milk, which he set down on the table as she emerged.

  “Ulcer acting up?” Molly asked with a mocking smile. She meant to push him away any way she could, to try to salvage what was left of her heart before he lodged himself in there any deeper. Using her knowledge of his ulcer was dirty pool, she knew, when he had presented it to her as a quid pro quo for what he knew about her mother. But she would fight dirty if she had to, to save herself from pain.

  “You might say that.”

  If being twitted about his ulcer bothered him, Will didn’t reveal it. Instead he took another sip of milk. His eyes ran over her thoughtfully before returning to her face.

  “Could you take me home, please? It’s getting late.”

  “It’s barely nine o’clock.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Kind of a short date, isn’t it?”

  Molly shrugged.

  Will stood up, and padded across the carpet toward her. It was all Molly could do not to retreat. She stood her ground, chin up. She was wearing heels, he was sock-footed, and the top of her head almost reached his eyebrows. Still, he was far larger, his frame broad-shouldered and muscular, and she knew from recent experience that he probably outweighed her by about seventy pounds.

  By rights he ought to intimidate her. And he did, but not because of his size. She found him intimidating because of the way he made her feel.

  Will stopped in front of her, reaching out to curl his hands around her upper arms. Molly jerked free of his touch.

  Will looked at her for a second, his gaze speculative, then folded his arms over his chest.

  “What’s the matter, Molly?” This time the question was almost tender.

  Molly’s lips tightened. “Nothing’s the matter.”

  Will sighed. “That’s what women always say when something’s the matter. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you’re mad at me all of a sudden. The question is, why?”

  “I’m not mad at you. I just want to go home. If you won’t take me, I’ll walk.”

  “Twenty-plus miles in the middle of the night? I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll hitchhike, then. Or call Ashley to come and pick me up.”

  He looked at her. Something in her face must have convinced him that she was serious, because his tone changed. “You really want to go home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll take you. Let me get dressed.”

  Molly tried not to watch as he walked over to the closet and extracted a sweat suit, which he threw on the bed. His undershorts were snug-fitting and reached only about a third of the way down his thighs. She couldn’t help but notice that he had nice legs, tanned and well muscled and roughened with hair. He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off with as little self-consciousness as if he’d been alone, while she shifted from foot to foot and tried to look at anything but him.

  “There’s Coke in the refrigerator, if you want it. I got it especially for you.”

  She glanced at him then, and it was a mistake. He was wearing only his light blue boxers. His body, which she hadn’t really gotten a good look at earlier, was now revealed in all its glory. It was gorgeous. His shoulders were bronzed and thickly muscled and broad; his arms, too, were well muscled. His chest was wide and tapered and covered with just the right amount of curling gold-tipped hair. His abdomen was ridged with muscle above the waistband of his shorts. His hips were narrow, his legs long and powerful-looking.

  Molly stared, and then averted her eyes. What had happened between them would not happen again. She would not allow herself to feel so much as a flutter of desire for him. Or any other emotion.

  “I don’t want a Coke,” she said.

  “There’s food, too, in the refrigerator. Cold chicken.” Will stepped into the sweat pants and pulled them up his legs, his movements as leisurely as if he had all night.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You were earlier.” There was a double meaning to that that Molly couldn’t miss.

  “I got over it,” she said shortly.

  “So all this because I didn’t take off my socks, hmm?” Will tied the drawstring around
his waist. Molly glanced away again.

  “Could you hurry, please? I really need to get home.”

  “Why? The last time you were out on a date, you didn’t get in till nearly midnight.” Will pulled the sweat shirt over his head and thrust his arms through the sleeves. Like the sweat pants, the sweat shirt was gray, with some sort of athletic logo.

  The date he referred to had been with Jimmy Miller, of course, and Will had been wildly jealous of the result. The knowledge of that jealousy now shimmered in the air between them, though his tone was mild. Molly thought of the hickey, felt her neck burn in silent reminder that she sported a new one, courtesy of Will, and mentally fled from the memory.

  “Look, are you one of those guys who has to hash things to death afterward? So we had sex, all right? You wanted it and I wanted it and we did it and now it’s out of our systems. Life goes on from there.”

  For a second or two Will merely looked at her.

  “Are you trying to tell me that as far as you’re concerned I’m just a one-night stand?” Will sounded almost amused. Molly crossed her arms over her breasts and watched as he thrust his feet into black sneakers and tied the laces. She was on edge, as jumpy as a frog in a frying pan, and his deliberate movements were all she needed to drive her around the bend.

  “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes, more or less,” she snapped.

  “Don’t call me, I’ll call you?” he asked, standing up.

  “Yes.”

  Will walked toward her, fully clothed now, looking impossibly sexy in the collarless gray sweats. He was unsmiling. Molly expected—what? That he would try to take her in his arms and kiss her? That he would tell her she was behaving foolishly, and ask her to reconsider? That he would be angry, or hurt, or pleading?

  “If that’s the way you want it,” Will said with a shrug, and handed her her brown sweater, which he had retrieved from the chair.

  32

  When they arrived at the house, Will insisted on walking her to the door. Molly marched ahead of him, brushing past Pork Chop, who greeted them with the inevitable barks of delight. The house lights were on. The windows glowed warm incandescent yellow. The porch was shadowy, but not so dark that she couldn’t see. When she reached the door, Molly turned to face Will, who had of course followed her up onto the porch.

  “So nothing grabbed me, okay? You can leave now.”

  “Not till you’re inside,” Will said calmly. He was being so good-humored about being dumped that it was driving Molly crazy. Every other boyfriend she had ever had, whether she had slept with them or not—and to tell the truth she had slept with remarkably few—would have been begging her for explanations by this time. In fact, being dumped seemed to act on men like the most powerful of aphrodisiacs. The more you told them they weren’t wanted, the more abjectly in love they fell.

  Except for this man.

  “All right,” she snapped, whirling to pull open the screen and fit her key in the lock. The light was on in the kitchen, she saw as she pushed the door open, but the room was deserted. The TV blared from the living room, and she assumed her siblings were in there.

  “Molly, is that you?” Ashley called, confirming her guess.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Molly answered, then turned to Will, blocking his access to the house.

  “I take it you’re not asking me in.” He sounded almost amused again. He had hold of the edge of the screen, so she could not pull the door closed in his face.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re not going to kiss me good night?”

  Molly did not even dignify that with an answer.

  “What will your brothers and sisters think?”

  Hard as it was to believe, the man was actually teasing her! Molly gritted her teeth.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t particularly care. I just want you out of here and out of my life.”

  There was a brief pause, and then Will smiled at her. “You’re forgetting something, I think.”

  “What?” Molly asked suspiciously.

  “However you may feel about me personally, professionally nothing’s changed. You still work for me, you still do what I tell you, and to all intents and purposes I’m still your boyfriend. Got that?”

  Molly stared at him. She had forgotten that. She was not going to be able just to cut him out of her life. She was going to have to deal with him, every day, until he returned to Chicago.

  On his terms.

  “Get some sleep, honey,” Will said on a caressing note. Behind her, Molly glimpsed Ashley entering the kitchen, and assumed the loving tone was for her sister’s benefit. Then Will curled a hand around her nape and bent his head to drop a quick, hard kiss on her mouth.

  “Don’t do that again,” Molly growled so that only he could hear when he released her. To her fury, he chucked her under the chin with avuncular indulgence, called a cheerful good night to Ashley, and then, and only then, left the porch.

  She couldn’t even give herself the pleasure of slamming the door behind him. With Ashley as a witness she had to close it quietly, and could only give vent to her spleen by the secret savagery with which she locked it.

  “You’re home early,” Ashley said in all innocence. “Didn’t Will want to come in?”

  Molly forced a smile as she faced her sister, and proceeded to spin one more in what was beginning to seem like a positive web of lies.

  Then she retired to her room, went to bed, and lay awake the rest of the night.

  It was around midnight when Will found himself driving past Molly’s house again. After taking her home, he had made use of his unexpected free time to resume his interrupted search of Howard Lawrence’s office. This time he found something of more than passing interest: a blackmail note. Or at least what appeared to be one.

  Composed of different-size letters cut from magazines and pasted onto plain white typing paper, the note said simply, I kNow WhAt yOU did. There was no specific threat, no demand for payment. That led Will to suspect it was one in a series of notes, but he came up empty searching for others. Still, his instinct, which was rarely wrong, told him that this was it: the smoking gun. He’d never bought the story of Lawrence’s suicide. His reading of the man had been that he wasn’t the type. Here was the first concrete evidence that he was right. Someone, somehow, had apparently known that Lawrence was talking to him, and had found the knowledge fertile ground for blackmail. Was Lawrence killed as a result? It seemed likely.

  There was no envelope—a return address was really too much to hope for—and the paper was not creased as it would have been had it been folded for mailing, so Will deduced it had been hand-carried to the recipient. He would have it tested for fingerprints first thing in the morning. He would also check Lawrence’s bank records for any unusual payouts. Not that he was likely to find that the trainer had written his blackmailer a check, but an unusual transaction would at least serve to confirm his theory.

  It was the first crack in the case since Lawrence’s death. Despite the debacle with Molly earlier in the evening, Will felt almost mellow as he headed back toward Lexington.

  Although it was not precisely on the way, Will turned down the road that led past Molly’s house. Horse folk, by and large, were early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, and nearly every house he passed was dark. Molly’s was no exception. It was quiet beneath the starry sky. The only movement came from the swaying branches of the gnarled oak in the front yard, and the shifting shadows caused by clouds playing tag with a ghostly moon.

  Molly—and the rest of them—would be asleep.

  He was fifty kinds of an idiot to be driving past her house in the middle of the night, he knew. Will thought of the lovesick yokel and almost snorted. Surely he was not that bad. Or at least if he was, he’d be damned if he’d let it show.

  He still hadn’t figured out precisely what had gone wrong between him and Molly earlier that evening, but he knew this: A universal truth of life is, the harder you chase something, the
faster it runs away. He was too old a hand at the games women play to-go whining after Molly when she was walking away.

  The correct strategy in that situation was to walk away himself.

  Though in this case it was hard. The sex they’d had had been fantastic, and there’d been just enough of it to whet his appetite. He wanted more. A whole lot more.

  It looked like he was going to have to work to get it.

  Fool, he called himself for the dozenth time. He’d known from the beginning that he was falling for a mantrap. A sexy little she-devil of a mantrap who chewed men up and spit them out like bubble gum.

  So what had he expected? Certainly not forever. Anyway, he wasn’t into forever himself. He didn’t want forever.

  He wanted to take Molly to bed and keep her there for about a month and after that …

  After that he’d probably have her out of his system. He’d kiss her good-bye and go back to Chicago and get on with his life.

  But he’d be the one to make the break, damn it. Not her. And not yet.

  Will was almost past the house when he saw it: a dark figure skulking across the yard. Unable for a moment to believe what he was seeing, Will blinked, stared—and almost drove into a tree.

  After righting the car just barely in the nick of time, his first impulse was to slam on the brake, jump out, and give chase there and then. But he controlled himself, drove on around the bend, doused his lights, and turned the car around.

  Coming back, he pulled off onto a bumpy dirt track that led through a stand of tall sycamores not far from the house, unscrewed the interior light bulb so that he could open the door without being seen, and got out of the car. The pistol he kept in the glove compartment was in his hand.

  The moon was high overhead, providing plenty of illumination. Will skirted the perimeter of the yard, keeping to the shadows, his eyes moving carefully over the bushes near the house. They were some kind of evergreen, overgrown and badly in need of trimming. For a Peeping Tom, or a burglar, or whatever, they would provide perfect cover.

  For a moment Will thought that he was too late; whoever had been prowling about the house was gone.