Love Story(61)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“I don’t know,” Hunter said.

“Maybe he thought my grandmother and I are getting along,” I mused, running after Hunter as he turned a corner, “and of course I would come home to see her for the Breeders’ Cup.”

“Maybe,” Hunter said, stopping in front of the carousel that would spit out our suitcases.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I doubt he’d think of the Breeders’ Cup. He doesn’t know anything about horses.”

We stood in silence until the carousel ground to life. Hunter snagged his bag. He put one hand on my arm to stay me when I recognized mine, and he lifted it off the carousel for me. He started across the wide room toward passenger pickup with both suitcases in tow, but I took mine back from him, saying, “Maybe the Breeders’ Cup is coincidental. He assumed I would be living at my grandmother’s house, still in high school, because he’s forgotten how old I am.”

“I don’t know,” Hunter said again.

Suspicious this time, I looked him in the eye as we walked along. When he met my gaze, then fussed with his suitcase handle again, I knew he wasn’t telling me everything he knew. “What is it?” I insisted.

“My dad,” he said, nodding toward the sliding glass doors and slipping his sunglasses on.

Tommy had parked the Blackwell Farms king-cab pickup truck at the curb. As the airport doors slid open for us, I let the weight of my suitcase on wheels slow me like an anchor. Hunter reached the pickup first. Tommy bear-hugged him and they slapped each other on the back. They were both blond and had similar features, but Tommy’s face was weathered from the sun, and he wore a Blackwell Farms baseball cap and windbreaker that made him look strange embracing Hunter in his cashmere sweater and expensive sunglasses, obviously the heir to a horse fortune.

Tommy held Hunter at arm’s length and beamed at him. Tommy had all Hunter’s friendliness without any of Hunter’s what’s-in-it-for-me calculation. It was hard to picture him as the distant father from the story Hunter had written for Gabe’s class, but certain elements of it rang true. Tommy was a drinker, I knew. He had been a smoker, but Hunter had badgered him into quitting. Tommy had complained about this at the stable every day for a year. Now he rolled a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, chuckling at something Hunter had said.

Then Tommy turned to me with his arms stretched wide. “Erin! How’s the princess?”

“Hey, Tommy,” I said, going in for a hug. My grandmother had always discouraged me from hugging the help. She embarrassed me. I embraced Tommy and let him pick me up and set me back down.

“Hunter said you’d lost weight.” Tommy patted my tummy underneath my clothes. “Good thing you’re wearing that overcoat or you might blow away.”

On cue, icy wind gusted across the terminal driveway. I hadn’t known much about Kentucky when I moved here from California, and I’d been surprised by the tenuous winter that started in November: an overcast sky that spit tiny particles of ice instead of snow.

I wiped the wetness from my face. “Has my dad gotten here yet?”

“Your dad?” Tommy repeated, rolling the toothpick to the other side of his mouth.

“Or do you two have to stay away from each other? I shouldn’t have asked.” Tears stung my eyes. I could hardly see.

That’s why I was slow to understand the questioning look Tommy was giving Hunter, and the stony expression Hunter returned.

I think I might have gasped, “No!” and slapped both hands over my mouth. I wasn’t really aware of what I was doing besides staring at the sign beside the sliding glass doors, greeting visitors unfamiliar with the area with the various pronunciations of the city’s name: LOOAVULL. LUHVUL. LEWISVILLE. LOOAVILLE. LOOEYVILLE.

“Son—” Tommy began.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Hunter interrupted him. “Mrs. Blackwell wanted to see her and I didn’t know how else to get her on the airplane. Around here I could have slung her over my shoulder, but they frown on that in New York. Erin, come back.”

As I walked down the terminal sidewalk, I held up one finger to let them know—or at least to let Tommy know—that I needed a minute. Hunter couldn’t care less what I needed. I stomped down the sidewalk, tears mixing with the icy wind in my face. I would let the cold wind dry me out and then I would turn back. Except more tears kept coming as I thought about my dad. He had not done anything. Not anything new. Hunter had only scratched the scab off that wound. Hunter, whom I kept trusting for some reason. Why would I think he was on my side? He was swindling my grandmother. He could screw me over, too.

A shadow beside me made me turn my head. The Blackwell Farms truck crept backward along the curb, keeping pace with me. The window slid down and Tommy hollered, “Erin, get in the truck before Homeland Security crawls up my ass.”

I stomped a couple of steps more, but I was running out of sidewalk. UPS made Louisville one of the world’s busiest airports, but the passenger side of the airport was small, to match the city, and the terminal ended just ahead. I had no desire to wander through the industrial wasteland to the Ford plant.

I stepped over to the truck, jerked open the door, and tumbled into the backseat, shouting into the front, “Why did you tell me that, Hunter? What is the matter with you?”

Hunter leaned between the front seats to face me, sunglasses still obscuring his blue eyes on a cloudy afternoon. “It was the only way I could think of to get you here. Even the threat of going to Gabe with the stable-boy story wouldn’t get you to come back to Kentucky to see your grandmother, and she really wanted to see you. She was hysterical when I told her you’d gotten hit by a car. I didn’t have a lot of choice.”

He didn’t say he was sorry. He didn’t even look particularly sorry behind his sunglasses. He admitted his transgression with no apology.

A lot like my dad.

“You mean, you didn’t have a choice if you wanted to stay in college on my inheritance,” I corrected Hunter. “I hope nothing this important comes up again, because the stable boy is all you have to coerce me with now. Baiting me with my dad only works once per lifetime.”

“Stable boy,” Tommy muttered, shaking his head.

Luckily the farm wasn’t far, so I wouldn’t have to sit in the truck with Hunter for long. Of course, I’d spend the afternoon, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning stuck at my grandmother’s house. I had sworn to her that she would never see me again and here I was, only five months later. Broke, too, or I would have told Tommy to drop me off at a motel.

Instead, he drove the truck off the interstate, turned onto the narrow blacktop winding through the hills to the farm, then pulled onto the grassy shoulder underneath a huge, fire red maple. “Get out, both of you,” he barked.

Tommy did not bark often. The ice shower had stopped, so I couldn’t use the weather as an excuse. I slid across the seat and onto the ground, drained of emotion and shivering in my coat, looking down at the feet of Tommy and Hunter, standing in front of me. I had nothing to be ashamed of—Hunter was the one who should be ashamed—but I was afraid I looked like hell after crying and I didn’t want him to see me like this. I was an idiot, which made me want to cry again.