Page 12 of Hunter

“I hear that the honeymoon phase can lead to the parenting phase pretty quick.”

She gasps softly. “Oh! That reminds me. I have news for you!”

“News that has something to do with sex?”

“If you play your cards right,” she says. “Guess who got a job working on the production crew forThe Astonishing Race?”

My heart skips a beat. My mouth goes dry. My body—which doesn’t know whether to be excited or scared—is thrown into a sort of chaos because I know the name she’s going to say before she says it.

“Hunter!” she cries.

Hunter Stewart.I knew it.Shit. Shit shit shit.Why did I have to tell Harper about the race at McKenna’s wedding? Why didn’t I fake a stroke or faint or something?

“What the fu—um…I, um—I mean…how’dthathappen?”

“He knows a guy who works at a TV station in Ketchikan.”

“Hewantedto be on the show?”

“I’m not positive about the details,” says McKenna. “But I think he said something about networking with some big travel provider? I don’t know. I’m still getting used to the travel business.”

I laugh weakly, my mind buzzing with questions that McKenna can’t answer for me. By unspoken, tacit agreement, Hunter and I never involved McKenna and Tanner in our short, ill-fated, blisteringly-hot relationship. We never asked them to run interference or give us advice. We kept them completely out of our drama, and for that, I’m grateful.

“So! Are you excited to see him again?” McKenna asks with a little purr.

“Sure,” I hedge. “The Stewarts are great.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe you two could rekindle things, huh?”

Again, McKenna doesn’t know any details. She doesn’t know, for example, how many times Hunter made me orgasm in the back of his truck under the midnight sun. She doesn’t know how right it felt when he moved inside of me, or how safe I felt falling asleep in his arms. She doesn’t know that Hunter Stewart was the closest I’ve ever come to “falling” in love. And she doesn’t know all the reasons I cut things off at the knees, breaking his heart in the process.

But I do.

So I can guarantee McKenna that Hunter Stewart has zero interest in rekindling anything with me. At her wedding, his hatred for me shined so brightly, I felt it in every cell of my body every time he looked at me.

Rekindle things? No way. If anything, he’s out todestroyme.

Sabotage.

The word fires across my mind, blinking in yellow neon.

“Back off, Ken.” I say these words lightly, but she knows I mean them.

“You’re no fun!”

“I’m fun. But nothing good’s going to come from you sticking your nose in this, and you know it.”

“Got it. Got it,” she says, backing down. “So, tomorrow you get to Prince Rupert?”

“Yeah. We leave here at six and hopefully get to the port by noon. Then it’s seven hours via ferry to Ketchikan.”

“And the race starts…?”

“In three days,” I say. “So we have a night here and a night in Ketchikan and then…”

“You’re off!”

“We’re off,” I confirm, my voice flat and uncertain in my ears.

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