Claiming Magique: 1 Page 16
To prove it, he’d greet Alexa with a hug to show her exactly how he felt. During lunch, he’d hold her hand and make his case for their next date—tonight. They’d go grocery shopping, just as he’d said. Normal, stupid, boring stuff to take the danger out of their love, convincing her she could relax.
Hunt cleared his throat, trying to calm his racing heart.
His server approached. “Another, Mr. Prescott?” He took the empty glass.
Hunt nodded. He moved his chair when the woman behind him bumped into it.
“Oh—sorry,” she said.
He gave her a smile in response and noticed the elderly couple was leaving hand-in-hand. Good for you. He grinned at their devotion after all these years.
Neither of them noticed him.
The bus staff cleared the table, dressing it in a new linen cloth and place settings.
“Enjoy,” the server said, delivering Hunt’s bourbon.
“Wait.” He turned to the boy. “What time do you have?”
The kid checked his watch and told him.
Hunt had the same time. Five minutes past the scheduled start of his and Alexa’s date. He glanced at the street, the heavy traffic. The stoplights seemed to go red every few seconds, clogging the flow even more. Wallace must have got caught in the jam, unless Alexa was driving herself.
Maybe she’d had car trouble. Christ, could she have been in an accident?
Oh shit, not that. Hunt listened for the wail of sirens. Someone close to his table laughed, a shrill, irritating sound. He pulled out his cell phone, checking the local news. Crazy, he knew. Unless an accident involved a fifty-car pileup, no one would report on it.
He checked the time again. Four more minutes had passed. She was almost ten minutes late. She hadn’t left him a text, nor had she called.
I’ll try, she’d said.
She hadn’t promised. She hadn’t committed.
No, dammit, no. She was going to show up.
“Hey,” Hunt said to the busboy. “Leave that alone.”
The kid snatched his hands back from the silverware. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were expecting someone.”
Wasn’t the menu lying there obvious? “Just leave it.”
“Yes sir.”
The woman behind Hunt’s chair smacked his again as she and her group left. This time, she didn’t apologize. His server approached. “Would you care for another drink, Mr. Prescott?”
Hunt squeezed his empty glass. “No.”
“Perhaps you’d like to order an appetizer while you wait for your guest?”
She was now fifteen minutes late. Hunt stared at the unopened menu on Alexa’s side. He recalled Tim’s warning.
She’s not going to be who you want her to be…she won’t show.
Thirty minutes passed, then forty, fifty.
Hunt recalled their night in the tent and the first evening he’d seen her. The way she’d laughed at his stupid joke. How she’d clung to him when they’d been alone in the bath.
“She’s not your ordinary call girl,” Jack Kilhan had said.
She chose whom she wanted to be with. She never did one on one. If she refused a man, that was the end of it.
Hunt loosened his tie, unable to pull in a full breath. Anger, then sorrow surged through him. Fuck, this couldn’t be it. Why wouldn’t she give them a chance? He knew she loved him. He’d felt it in her response to everything he did, whether it was romantic, stupid or otherwise. He saw it on her face. She recognized the depth of her emotions. That’s why she was so afraid.
So what now? Continue to chase her? Keep showing up at her dates, keeping her from other guys?
Would she continue to be with other men?
A wave of frustration and hurt hit so hard, Hunt gripped the arms of his chair so he wouldn’t bang his fist against the table.
Activity continued around him, a reminder that it was late. Five minutes ago, he was supposed to be at a meeting that his firm had planned for weeks. He’d tried to get out of it for today’s luncheon date and had failed.
His server approached again. “Mr. Prescott, are you going to order? If not, we do need this table.”
Hunt didn’t answer. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do. Stay? Leave? Call her or maybe Ronnie?
Idiot. Make a decision, will you? When he’d been a boy and his mother’s boyfriends had attacked her, he’d reacted quickly, not even considering his response.
“Mr. Prescott?”
Hunt searched the street for Alexa. His heart caught at the long hair he saw, so black it had blue highlights. He leaned to the side, trying to see around the man in front of—
The guy moved finally. The woman wasn’t Alexa. It would never be Alexa.
Hunt’s entire body ached. “No, I’m not ordering today.” He tossed enough cash on the table to cover his drinks and a generous tip.
The server stepped back as Hunt left his seat. His cell phone rang. No doubt Tim or David, wondering where the hell he was, with Tim probably having guessed how lunch had turned out.
Clenching his jaw, Hunt opened his phone and stared at the caller’s number.
At the hospital, he stopped the first orderly he saw. “Where’s the waiting room for this wing?”
“Down that hall to the left,” she said, pointing him in the correct direction.
Hunt broke into a jog, his shoes slapping the vinyl floor. Other visitors glanced up at the noise. Doctors and nurses hurried from one room into another. The door swung closed behind them, its sign warning Staff Only.
He rounded the corner and entered the waiting room.
Alexa stood at the window, her shoulder propped against the glass, head down. Alone now as she’d been for too many years.
Hunt’s chest ached with compassion. He would have given a decade of his life to have saved her from this.
As though she’d felt his presence, she glanced up and turned, her face drained of color, anguish in her eyes. Before he could move, she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around his torso, releasing her weight into him.
“You didn’t have to come,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “I didn’t expect you to. I—thank you for being here.”
He ran his hands down her back and cradled her even closer. “Thanks for calling me. When you didn’t show, I…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about that now.”
“No, it’s all right.” She clung to him as she hadn’t before. As though they’d known and trusted each other forever, or as if he was the only one she had left now. “I was getting ready for our date when Wallace called.”
Hunt glanced past the empty room to the hall, not seeing the older man. He didn’t want to ask, but knew there was no getting out of it. “How is Ronnie?”
Alexa’s shoulders shook with her quiet weeping.
Aw god. Hunt forced down a swallow. “Is she—has she—”
“No! Please don’t even think that. The last I heard she’s stable. The doctors are still with her. So is Wallace. She asked to see him.” Alexa gripped Hunt’s shirt in her fist. “He told me Ronnie was having trouble breathing this morning. It may be a blood clot from her chemo. I’m not sure. I could barely listen to what the doctors were saying. When they let me see her a few minutes ago, she gave me these.”
Hunt eased back. Ronnie’s pearls rested in her palm.
“Why would she do that if she’s going to be okay?” Alexa cried. “She never lets go of them. She was doing fine. She was getting better.”
“Shhh.” He pulled her back into him, holding her as tight as he dared, hoping to ease her fear. “She’s going to get the best care there is. I’ll make some calls to people I know in the industry. We’ll get the top oncologists out here. Nothing’s going to happen to her. This is just a setback. We’ll make certain it’s fixed.”
“Don’t leave me, please.”
“I won’t, I promise.” He tightened his embrace, pressing his cheek to hers. Her skin was damp with tears. “I�
��ll wait with you for as long as it takes. We’ll be here together when the doctors come out again.”
“What if it’s hours?”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” She brought her arms back. “You have work. I shouldn’t have asked you to—”
“I don’t mind,” Hunt said, caressing her. “They’re not expecting me back today. Even if they did, I’d tell them to take a hike. I’m not leaving. I love you, Alexa. You know that, right? Or haven’t I made myself clear?”
She pressed her face against his shoulder.
Was she crying again? Had he said too much?
“I wasn’t sure at first,” she whispered.
Okay, he could accept that. “What changed your mind? Me showing up here?”
“No.” She wrapped her arms back around him.
Her embrace comforted and thrilled. All of his life, Hunt had waited for a moment such as this with a woman like her. He grinned so hard, his cheeks hurt. “Then what, or rather, when? What were we doing?”
“Talking.”
No kidding? He tried to recall when that might have been. What he’d said.
She murmured, “You asked me to go grocery shopping.”
Hunt laughed softly. “If you think that’s something, wait ’til we do laundry together.”
She pressed her fingers into his back. “Will we?”
He pulled back a bit so he could see her expression. Her face was puffy from tears and fatigue, but she didn’t appear as frightened of her feelings for him as she had in the past. “Close your eyes.”
She did as he asked, not questioning why, giving him a bit of her trust.
Grateful, Hunt kissed her closed lids, then whispered, “Do you want us to do everyday stuff?”
“I don’t want you to leave me. From the moment I met you, I didn’t want that.”
Hunt felt another grin coming on, but stifled it when Alexa looked at him, a bit of her old apprehension returned.
“What?” he asked.
She shook her head.
No way was he going to let her get away with that. They needed to talk, just as Ronnie had said. “You’re still scared, right?”
“I don’t want to be. I…” She screwed up her mouth.
“What? Finish, please.”
The look she gave him said she’d prefer to walk barefoot over glass, but at last she said, “I need you.”
Hunt waited.
“I love you,” she blurted. “I didn’t want to. I tried not to.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He smiled. “Quit beating yourself up. How could you resist me? How could any woman?”
Laughing, Alexa punched his arm, then hugged him again, even more fiercely this time, as though she never wanted to let go.
Other visitors arrived. They gave him and Alexa a cursory glance before sitting.
With his arm wrapped around her shoulders, Hunt led her back to the window. There they remained while he made his calls, then waited for more news on Ronnie.
When the doctor finally emerged, she greeted them with a smile.
“Ms. DuBlanc is fine and resting,” the young woman said, glancing from Alexa to Hunt.
“You’re certain?” Alexa asked.
“We’re taking good care of her,” the doctor assured. “She’s no longer in any danger. She told me to tell you Wallace is with her…and that she wants her pearls back.”
Alexa laughed, then buried her face in her hands.
The doctor backed away and hurried behind the door.
Hunt gathered Alexa close. “It was good news,” he murmured.
She wrapped her arms around his torso and squeezed tight. “Don’t ever let me go.”
Smiling, he caressed her with care and with love, knowing that whatever else came their way, they’d face it together.
About Tina Donahue
Tina Donahue is an award-winning, bestselling novelist in erotic romance, and an admitted chocoholic known to down semi-sweet candy bars in grocery checkout lines. She lives with her family in Palm Springs, California, where tires melt in the 120-degree summer heat and an occasional earthquake puts everyone on notice to bolt things down. When she’s not writing her steamy stories, trying to stay cool or crawling beneath her desk during a trembler, she loves shopping, eating at her favorite Mexican restaurant and meeting other authors. Before she wrote romance, Tina was the editor of an award-winning Midwestern newspaper and worked in Story Direction for a Hollywood production company.
Tina welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Claiming Magique
ISBN 9781419941467
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Claiming Magique Copyright 2012 Tina Donahue
Edited by Briana St. James
Cover design by Dar Albert
Photos: Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock.com
Electronic book publication August 2012
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