Authors: Hailey North
Pausing, she relived the moment he’d pulled her so close to him she’d felt their bodies merge and then he’d filled her with his seed.
Nah, she wasn’t staying home. For better or worse, she was going to Ponchatoula.
H
unter almost passed up the exit to Ponchatoula, turned the car around, and headed back to New Orleans.
New Orleans, where women like Daffy belonged.
The drive was less than an hour, all interstate, but Daffy had chattered so brightly, so gaily, and in such a well-mannered and meaningless way, Hunter almost didn’t recognize the woman he’d bedded only a short time earlier.
Almost.
She had to be nervous, no other reason for her to dither on like that. Why, she’d told him stories about half the people she’d photographed for her column, and never once had she relaxed and been the Daffy he’d spent the weekend with in Las Vegas.
His mother was going to think he’d lost his mind.
He could see her wise eyes now, moving over Daffy, taking in the linen shift with the matching sandals and handbag, the diamond bracelet dangling casually from her wrist. He could almost read Thelma’s mind, hear her thinking, “Lovely, but has that money gone to your head, son?”
And what would Daffy see when she looked at his mother? Would she see the hands worn by years of framing work and the lines etched in her face by a lifetime of struggling to provide for her family? Or would she see the hands that had held him safe and the bright mind and loving heart that had always looked out for his best interests?
Why, oh, why, had he invited Daffy?
“That sign says Ponchatoula,” Daffy said, pointing to the exit marker.
“Oh, right,” Hunter muttered, and peeled off just in time to careen into the turn and to annoy an eighteen-wheeler close on his rear. The big rig laid on its air horn and Hunter shrugged. Let the driver complain. He couldn’t be any less happy than Hunter right at this moment.
“Do you drive back and forth a lot?” Daffy was sitting half facing him, but her attention seemed fixated on anything that passed by outside the car, rather than on him.
“Lately I’ve spent a lot more time in the city,” he answered.
“Which one?” After she asked the question, she trilled a bit of a laugh, then stopped abruptly, her hand clamping over her chin.
“Am I making you nervous, Daffy?” He had to ask. And it was hard, pressing those words out from behind his teeth. He wasn’t one to ask a woman what was going on in her mind. If he didn’t connect easily with someone, he’d just shrug and move on. But damn it, he couldn’t do that. Not now, when he’d invited her to Ponchatoula. Not after how great last weekend had been.
Not now.
Not ever.
Hunter glanced over his right shoulder, then his left. Now, who had said that?
Daffy was gazing out the window as if she’d never seen a Sonic drive-up or a Chevron station or a washateria crammed into a two-story lean-to. Hell, she’d probably never stepped inside a laundromat in her life. She was playing with the diamond bracelet on her wrist but her lips weren’t moving, so hers hadn’t been the voice that uttered, “Not ever.”
Must be your subconscious, he said to himself. Daffy sure had a way of getting to him. First he’d invited her to dissuade her from being interested in him, then to test her interest, then to drive her away, then to see if just maybe she’d care to hang out with a guy who had a stellar future but not so pretty a past.
“Nervous?” She shook her head as he asked the question. “I’m rarely nervous,” she said. “Where does the name Ponchatoula come from?”
There it was again, that calm sort of question that held no flesh-and-blood life to it. Who cared what the meaning was of the name of the town? What Hunter cared about was . . .
“Daffy.”
“Yes?”
He pulled off the main drag, filled with antiques shops and restaurants that catered mainly to the tourists who strayed into town in search of a great buy they could trumpet to their friends back home.
Turning in the seat, he lay his arm over the back of her headrest and saw to his dismay that she in no way leaned closer in response to his overture. “Are you upset with me because I forgot to use protection?”
Her eyes widened. He watched the beautiful column of her throat as she swallowed, hard, and stared back at him. Her hair swung gently against the tops of her shoulders when she replied, “Oh, no, not at all.”
He brushed a hand over the crown of her hair. “Are you sure?”
She nodded, and blinked.
“Anything else?” Surprised at himself for asking, Hunter waited for her reaction. Why did he care if she was upset? Hadn’t he wanted her to be? Hadn’t he wanted her to see she wasn’t hanging out with a millionaire, but rather with the bad seed of a small town, the bastard son of a woman who’d left the space for “father” blank on the birth certificate?
“I’m fine,” she said. “What are we going to see first?”
He moved his arm back to his side of the car and faced the steering wheel. It was funny, this wanting to understand her mood and her not letting him in. He was used to things being the other way around, like when Lucy pestered him about what he was feeling and he never wanted to share with her, assuming she wouldn’t understand.
Was that how Daffy felt? That he, Hunter James, wouldn’t understand her, so what was the use of explaining it to him?
He drove back to the main street, moving into the left lane for the turn just before the railroad tracks. If Daffy felt like that, he promised himself, before this weekend was out, he would unlock the secret to understanding her. He didn’t want her to shield herself from him, to close him out. Damn it, for reasons he couldn’t explain at all, it mattered too much to him. No matter what, he’d get a closer glimpse inside that beautiful head of hers.
“I thought we’d stop by the house first,” Hunter was saying.
Daffy nodded, wishing she hadn’t denied being nervous. “Great,” she said. “That’s a charming train station. It looks like it belongs on a postcard.”
“It’s another antiques store now,” Hunter said, “like almost every shop along the main street. It’s better than being a ghost town with all the life sucked to the edge of the town by the Wal-Marts and Kmarts, but I don’t quite get the antiques thing.”
“I love antiques. I found my bed . . .” She blushed and let her sentence trail off.
Hunter was staring at her with a curious expression on his face. “It’s a beautiful bed,” he said, pulling off the road that paralleled the railroad tracks and stopping in front of a rambling yellow house with a tin roof. “Where did you get it?”
“In an out-of-the-way shop in Charleston. It was on consignment and I was visiting one of my sorority sisters and she mentioned it to me. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it.”
“I can understand that,” Hunter replied, making no move to turn off the ignition even though he’d parked the car.
“You can?”
He nodded. “I may not be into antiques, but I know a thing of beauty when I see it.”
Daffy toyed with her bracelet and glanced at him, almost shyly. “Me, too,” she said softly.
He leaned over, placed a hand over her hand. “Thanks for coming with me, Daffy.”
“You said that about Las Vegas, too.”
“I hope I always say it.”
Daffy didn’t move. She scarcely breathed. Why was he saying all these things? He sounded like a man who’d found the woman he’d been searching for the world over, yet she knew him to be a flirt and a rambler. And why did she savor every sweet word he said? Why not smile and laugh and flutter her lashes and let them slide right past her? She’d done exactly that with every other man she’d ever dated.
“Ready?” Hunter lifted her hand and brushed his lips over her knuckles.
She wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to admit to that. “Yes,” she said, reaching for the door handle.
Hunter jumped out and zipped around to open her door for her. Daffy liked that he did that. “Thanks,” she said, stepping out. “Your mother taught you right.”
“Oh, yeah.” Hunter grinned. “There’s no one quite like Thelma.”
“That’s what you call her?” Daffy walked side by side with Hunter along a stone pathway toward the one-story house. A porch traveled along the two sides she could see and wicker chairs and a swing invited visitors to dawdle there.
“Pretty much.” Hunter paused on the porch. “How about you?”
“I call my parents Dad and Mother.”
“Interesting contrast.” He led her to the swing and she joined him there. “You don’t talk about your parents much.”
“No, I guess I don’t. So is this where you grew up?”
“Daffy and her defenses,” Hunter said. “You don’t let anyone get in too close, do you?”
She started to object, but what was the point? Jonni knew her best; her father accepted and loved her, but he accepted everyone. Her mother pretty much ignored her except on socially essential family occasions, and all her friends accepted her as the fun-loving social butterfly she portrayed herself to be. “I guess I don’t,” she said once more.
He leaned against the back of the swing and rocked them gently by pushing his foot against the floor. Didn’t say a thing, though, for which Daffy was thankful. And appreciative. She stole a sideways glance at him, then slipped one hand into his.
“I’m not trying to shut you out,” she said. “I’m just cautious by nature.”
And if someone was going to get hurt in this thing between them, Daffy wasn’t volunteering to be “it.”
“Ah,” he said, and held on to her hand.
A large yellow cat poked its head around the corner of the porch. “Meet Mr. Pickle,” Hunter said. “Now, there’s a cat who used to jump if anyone said boo to him.”
The cat strolled forward and paused to rub his chin against Hunter’s calf. Hunter scratched the top of the cat’s head and the feline sat back and meowed a loud complaint.
“He’s pretty trusting now,” Daffy said.
Hunter fixed her with a look Daffy couldn’t—or didn’t want to—interpret. “Come on,” he said, rising, her hand still tucked in his. “Mr. Pickle wants his swing.”
Sure enough, as soon as they headed for the front door, the cat leapt into the swing and applied his tongue and one front paw to the task of washing his face.
Hunter unlocked the front door and held it open for Daffy. She walked into a large living-dining room with casual furniture that invited one to sprawl comfortably, either on the deep chairs beside the fireplace or on the sofa in front of the television. The end tables were cluttered with baskets of yarn and needlepoint projects; the coffee table held a partially completed jigsaw puzzle. Hindering more than helping solve the puzzle was another cat, this one streaked in tones of chocolate and caramel and stretched out asleep atop the puzzle pieces.
“How homey,” Daffy remarked.
“Thanks,” Hunter said somewhat dryly.
“That,” Daffy said primly, “is a major compliment.”
He dropped her hand, but only to catch her by the shoulders and draw her close. “I’m glad you like it.”
She tilted her mouth to meet his kiss and as his warm lips captured hers, she sighed softly, parting her lips to let him in more fully.
Hunter accepted the invitation and pulled her soft body to his own aching, hard one. He didn’t want to care what she thought; yet he did. He didn’t want to need her, yet he craved her. He didn’t want to love her, yet he—
He broke off the kiss, stunned by the thought he’d almost formed.
Almost. Not quite.
“Don’t stop,” Daffy murmured, guiding his head back down.
“Better make sure no one’s home,” he said, stalling for some recovery time.
“Oh, of course!” Daffy backed up, one hand over her rosy lips.
“Thelma will be at the shop,” Hunter said over his shoulder as he strode down the hall that led to the kitchen, “but it’s hard to say who else might be here. She adopts people the way she does cats.”
Hunter was an only child and Thelma a single parent. Curious, Daffy followed him out of the cozy room, down a hallway hung with lots and lots of pictures. She halted in front of an array of what had to be Hunter’s grade school pictures.
The bright-eyed boy, with a grin full of mischief, changed little from photo to photo. Though, leaning closer, Daffy noted what looked like a black eye on the picture marked “fifth grade.” Intent on her study, she didn’t hear Hunter walk up behind her.
He put his arms around her and covered her eyes with his palms. “Not the baby pictures!”
Laughing, Daffy pulled his hands down and tucked them around her waist. Holding on to him, she said, “Oh, yes, the baby pictures. You were adorable. How’d you get the black eye?”
She felt him stiffen; then his shoulders moved in a shrug. “Fight.”
Tit for tat. She’d closed up on him and now he was doing the same. Feeling braver, possibly because they weren’t face-to-face, she said, “Tell me what you were fighting over and I’ll tell you why I call my dad Dad and my mother Mother.”
“You’re good,” he said, nuzzling his chin against the top of her hair. “Some snot-nosed kid called my mother a bad name and I socked him. He hit me back.”
“And was his shiner worse than yours?”
“How’d you know?”
“A good guess.”
He kissed the side of her ear and tightened his hold around her waist, his fingers drifting lower. Daffy sighed and snuggled against him. She clearly had no willpower where this man was concerned.
“Well?” Hunter said, his fingers moving in circles over the surface of her tummy.
“My mother,” she said slowly, trying not to sound bitter or like a spoiled child who, no matter what, would condemn her parent, “is one of those women who should never have had children. She’s incapable of giving selflessly of herself.”
“And is that what it takes to be a mother?”
“I think perhaps it is.”
“And your dad wasn’t like that?”
“Wasn’t and isn’t.” Daffy heard the emphatic way she answered and wished she could forgive her mother. Or maybe she had forgiven her but what she really wished was that she had a mother whom she could turn to, laugh with, shop with, cry with.
The only means of communication her mother knew was criticism, followed by ostracism.
“My dad has always been my friend,” she said. “Even when being my friend wasn’t such a popular position to take.”
“You mean, after you messed with Aloysius’s best man and screwed up your wedding?”