Page 24 of Hunter

At least that was the end of it. I was afraid I would move into fantasy areas, and then that would lead to imagining him naked, which would lead to imaginary sex. Not that I had a problem with imaginary sex, except for the fact that I had a habit of bringing my delusions into my everyday life, and seducing Hunter was in the no-no zone.

I waited for Anna to elaborate her laugh, but she didn’t. She simply fixed me up before putting my hair to rights, which had flour, icing, and all sorts of other stuff in it thanks to Adair’s sticky hands, and then packed away the first-aid box.

“Noble,” Anna said as she rose from under the sink.

I froze, my eyes shooting straight toward her. Did she know?

“… was his father’s son. They both were incapable of flushing a toilet, not to mention able to cook anything. Hunter always looked after him, not his father. He kept Noble from doing stupid shit, despite Noble being the older brother.”

I sighed a breath of relief as I stood from the toilet. Anna didn’t know about Adair, or the fact that Hunter must not have kept much of an eye on Noble once he had grown up, because Noble did stupid things. Aka, me.

“Your cookies are safe,” Anna said. “Well, more than they would be with me.”

“Wait. Hunter can bake?” I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice, going from one extreme of information to another.

Big, broody, don’t-give-a-shit Hunter could bake? I had seen him cook the occasional simple meal for us, which I ate later when I was alone, but baking, too? The image of him in a pink apron with frills and Adair brought a strange mix of amusement and warmth to my chest.

“He makes mean blueberry muffins,” Anna joked, nudging me in the arm as we headed down the stairs.

Before we got two steps down, Anna stopped, turned, and walked straight up to Hunter’s door without hesitation and twisted the knob. It clicked but didn’t budge.

“I knew it.” She gave a sigh of disappointment before joining me on the stairs like nothing had happened.

She must have been as curious as I was. Not that I had tried to open his door or anything. Okay, I was lying. I had known it was locked before Anna had even touched the knob. It was locked before he had even bought me locks for my own door and the bathroom.

The thought soon ended when I reached the bottom of the stairs. I swear I almost swooned.

Adair was standing on one of the kitchen stools with a little apron I had never seen wrapped around his chest with little gingerbread men on it. He had icing all over his face, as well as a look of concentration, so absorbed in drawing on the cookies he didn’t notice our approach.

What made my heart cry was the way Hunter stood over him, his big arms encasing him so he wouldn’t fall off, holding Adair’s arms still as he helped him with the icing. The only disappointment I felt was that Hunter wasn’t wearing a pink, frilly apron as I had hoped. I thought about buying him one, but figured the chances of him wearing it were slim.

Anna stood by my side, a wide grin on her full lips as we both watched.

Only when Adair gave a happy laugh and dropped the icing did Hunter look up and catch us standing there. I should have looked away, or looked embarrassed for being caught, but the smile on my face was too genuine to hide.

My gaze remained locked on Hunter’s as Adair squealed and climbed down from the stool with Hunter’s help, cookie in hand, and ran straight up to me. It took a lot of strength to break that stare as I turned toward my baby.

Adair handed me the cookie like it was the most precious thing in the world. Scrawled in what could be a mix of pink and red, and maybe a little bit of purple, was a big heart saying, “I heart Mom.”

I scooped him up into my arms, not caring how dirty he was, and gave him a big wet kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, baby!” I pressed more kisses on his lips until he laughed and squirmed away from me.

Then he ran back over to Hunter and started jumping up and down on the spot like he needed to go potty, waving his hands in the air like a lunatic. Hunter nodded, picking up another cookie and handing it to him as he raced off back toward Anna.

Anna cooed over him as he passed her a cookie with her name on it and … “Boobies?” Anna read out loud. “Anna’s boobies?”

Hunter choked down a laugh and did his best to hold a straight face, looking everywhere but her.

I looked over and, sure enough, it had another heart with the words “Anna’s boobies” with the two O’s dotted to look like breasts.

I looked at Hunter with my mouth wide open as Anna burst out laughing.

“You let Adair write that?” I snapped.

“Yeah,” Hunter said, meeting my eye. “Kid wanted to write it. He asked, so I helped.”

Oh, no, he didn’t.

I marched my way up to him as his grin tweaked wider. “You can’t let him write things like that.”

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