AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Well, yes, but—’
He said something under his breath. ‘My God, no wonder you were so shocked to see me on the wharf. Did I wreck a secret rendezvous? Why all the furtiveness? Is he already married?’
Anne sent Dmitri a faltering look. The last of the peppered questions was one that she had meant to ask but had quite overlooked in her relief at finding him.
‘No, Anne, I am not married,’ he said, his faint amusement at her uncertainty having a deleterious effect on Hunter’s finely balanced temper. ‘I am very free and available.’
‘You’re really going to trust his word on that? You don’t trust me—’ Hunter turned on Anne furiously ?
??—and you know a hell of a lot more about me than you apparently do about roving lover-boy here. Why don’t you ask him how many other bastards he’s fathered in his wake—?’
‘I have done nothing to be ashamed of!’ Dmitri was as proud as his grim opponent and Anne was alarmed to see his fists bunch at his sides at the blatant insult to his honour. ‘I had no knowledge of the child. It was not my choice to lose touch. I was in love with her—’
Both men were squaring off and, afraid that there was going to be a fight right there on the deck, Anne rushed to defuse the tension. ‘He’s right—Hunter, please, you’ve got it all wrong. Why don’t you come back to the flat with us?’
Hunter’s head swung around heavily and he looked at her incredulously, his voice clotted with angry disbelief. ‘No, thanks, I told you I was a conservative. A ménage à trois is just not my scene.’
Anne blocked a sharply aggressive move from Dmitri. ‘It wouldn’t be that,’ she persisted doggedly.
‘What if I asked you to choose? Him or me?’
She was so taken aback by the absurdity of the demand that she hesitated, only for a heartbeat but it was an eternity too long.
‘Quite.’ Hunter slid the verbal knife into the momentary silence and made the slashing excision. ‘That choice was made, wasn’t it, Anne, as soon as you set eyes on him? After that I was just an inconvenience to be got rid of.’ He blistered a sardonic look at the forgotten drink clutched in Anne’s hand. ‘I needn’t have worried about compromising your independence—you’re evidently more than capable of ruthless self-interest.’ He made her a faint, mocking bow. ‘I won’t be hypocrite enough to wish you both a pleasant evening. In point of fact, I hope you both rot in hell!’
Anne was stiff with shock as she watched him go, every long stride managing to express a searing contempt for those he left behind, or, more specifically, her.
‘Do you want to go after him and explain?’ Dmitri asked with discouraging impatience. It was obvious what he hoped her answer would be. ‘He does seem confused about you and Katlin…’
That was such a masterly understatement that Anne almost smiled. She closed her eyes and sighed wearily. It had been a trauma-filled twenty-four hours and now, it seemed, there were still more rough waters ahead.
‘Somehow I don’t think it would do much good in the mood he’s in, even if I could find him…Hunter’s had a lot of practice at being elusive.’
She opened her eyes and met Dmitri’s frowning gaze. ‘I’m sure I can clear it up quietly with him later. Make it right with him,’ she added firmly, when it appeared that the slang was alien to interpretation.
He must have perceived the despair underlying her steadfast optimism. ‘He was angry to see you with another man. He means a lot to you, I can see that. Go. I have waited this long to see Katlin again, I can wait a little longer…’
They had a brief argument but Anne’s practicality won over Dmitri’s forced gallantry. As she pointed out, she had plenty of time to pound sense into Hunter’s hard head, while Dmitri’s ship was due to sail in three days’ time.
Dmitri had to clear his absence with the duty officer, and while he went briefly down to his quarters Anne waited by the top of the boarding steps, refusing to risk the possibility of running into Hunter again and facing down his hostility in public. He had been jealous. She held the knowledge to her bruised heart. He had not just been angry; there had been a deeper thread of emotion that had added to his bitterness, his disappointment at what he perceived to be a betrayal. He had believed her loyalty was due to him. He had been prepared to protect her, to fight for her. She had yet to be allowed to prove that she was prepared to do the same for him.
As she had wryly presumed, she was somewhat superfluous to requirements once Dmitri had been introduced to a snoozing Ivan and the awkward conversation between the two ex-lovers began to limp uncomfortably towards a kind of reconciliation. At first Katlin, wary and defensive, wouldn’t let her go to bed, and Dmitri too seemed to prefer to channel his questions and answers through a third party, but after a few cups of coffee and a growing, irritable awareness of how they were tiptoeing around the central issue Anne took herself off with the firm opinion that she was not cut out to be Cupid. It was up to Katlin and Dmitri to sort themselves out.
She lay awake for hours listening to the indistinct murmurs in the other room, pretending to herself that she was anxious for her sister when really she was waiting for the familiar bumps and rustles of movement that signalled Hunter going to bed. When they came at last it was nearly two in the morning by Anne’s luminous watch dial and there were a lot more thumps and stumbles than usual, and a string of ragged curses that indicated a less than sober occupant of the bed next door. She turned on her stomach and put a hand against the wall, pressing hard so that she could feel the vibration caused by his tossing and turning. Finally she could stand it no more. She crouched up and cupped her hand around her mouth, sealing it to the wall so that her visitors, and Ivan, bubbling sweetly in the corner, wouldn’t hear.
‘Hunter?’
The restless nudging of his bed against the wall stopped.
‘Hunter?’
Utter stillness and silence. Shivering in the warm night air, Anne crawled back under her thin sheet, tears stinging her eyes. She had never felt lonely before she’d come to the city. She had never felt real isolation until she had met Hunter. Whoever said that war, hunting and love had a thousand pains for one pleasure was right…only she hadn’t even been granted the one pleasure yet!
She bunched the sheet around her face to muffle a sniff, and then another. ‘Go to sleep.’
The slurred directive brought her head sharply up from the pillow. ‘Hunter?’
‘I said go to sleep, dammit!’
