Tallchief: The Hunter by Cait London Read Free Book Online

anger, she’d written the check for almost her entire bank balance. She’d left a high-paying job as an executive in sales to study graphic design. The leap from knowing what attracted a buyer’s attention to visually creating it had been easy enough. With classes and equipment to start her fledgling business, she’d drained her resources. The check to Adam left her finances stripped. But after her commission on the Silver perfume advertisement, she would have enough to leave town. Adam was a drifter; with her money in his pocket, he’d be gone before her. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it?
    It would be hours before she slept, because the brush of Adam’s lips was warm and safe, just as it had been years ago.
    How could he taste the same? Wild and free and mysterious, as if he needed to be caught and treated gently? As if she needed to fly with him into that wild, free world?

Three

    W

hy had fear filled Jillian’s golden eyes? Why had she been so terrified by a simple brush of his lips? Did she hate him so? What had happened to her?
    Two hours after Jillian left his house, Adam paced the confines of the cabin, shoving his hand through his hair. He hadn’t wanted to know anything about New Pony news, and Tom’s death had surprised him. Using his laptop, Adam had researched newspaper archives to find the deaths of her parents and Tom. Tom’s obituary lacked the prison information and the cause of his death. There had been an auction to sell off the Greens’ furniture and their home. Through time, the other members of Tom’s teenage gang had carried on their family traditions as adults in New Pony, becoming “respectable.”
    Jillian must have been shattered. She thought little of him, except to hate him for her brother’s imprisonment and his death there. Yet that didn’t justify the leap of fear within her, that shivering, the paling of her face. Or did it?
    The newspaper’s archived account of her wedding to Kevin O’Malley had been detailed. The perfect wedding. But the bride’s expression hadn’t exactly been glowing; she’d looked stunned.
    Adam shook his head, his research answering his questions, but raising others. Once he’d protected another woman, one who had been abused by her boyfriend. Her body had tightened at the slightest touch meant to help or to comfort. Jillian’s expression was of that same, tight fear. He remembered Kevin O’Malley as a college student and two years older than himself. Kevin was rich, spoiled, a party boy and not exactly sensitive. The son of an ex-senator, his parents had designated his future in politics.
    Jillian would have been a perfect match with her quiet elegance, that intelligence, and would have improved his status in society and politics. His family’s money would have been needed by the Greens when they’d hit financial problems. They’d probably had to pay more than legal fees—Adam remembered the judge’s order, “Make financial restitution for the damage…Repayment is due for vandalism, theft and stolen vehicles.”
    The good things in life had probably been handed to Kevin, including Jillian.
    Whatever had happened to Jillian, her scars were unseen. Adam rubbed his hand over his side, where the scars of a shark attack remained; in comparison, those he’d gotten from testifying against Tom were much worse and slower to heal. He still carried the pain of being unable to protect his failing aunt, and he held his grief deep inside.
    Adam shook his head; he didn’t want to think of Jillian in the hands of O’Malley. He didn’t want to think of Jillian at all—or did he?
    Passing the table, he opened the box from his aunt Sarah. The feathers, one white and soft, the other, the bold color of a hawk, were bound by a worn red ribbon. Adam’s fingertip stroked the soft dove’s feather, and in doing so, moved it within the ribbon. Now the feathers spooned, thehawk’s curving to the dove’s, almost sensuously, protectively, as though they