Page 7 of Hunter
I turn to McKenna, putting on a performance worthy of Reeve. “Really?”
“Yes! I remember now!” says Parker. “She mentioned it to Harper at the wedding. And Harp told me and Reeve.”
“That’s right,” says Reeve, turning to me. “And weren’t you sitting there when she shared that news, Hunt?”
“Shut up, Reeve,” I mutter.
“Isn’t that something?” McKenna asks Tanner. “Hunter and Isabella will be working on the same show!”
“It’ssomethingalright,” says Tanner, his glare at me changing from annoyed to downright murderous.
“I gotta go check something at the…um, the thing,” I say, getting up from the table. I glance at Gran. “I’ll come back to help with clean-up.”
She waves me away, but by the time my boots hit the porch of the lodge, Tanner’s right behind me.
“It’s no coincidence,” he grunts, following me down the stairs.
“So what?”
“So…” he says, following me to the cabin we used to share, “what’s your plan, exactly? You’re not Isabella’s biggest fan, as you’ve made abundantly clear. And if you upset Isabella, it’ll upset McKenna. And if you hurt my wife, you’ve got a world of pain coming to you, brother.”
My wife.
My wife.
Geez, but he loved throwing those two words around. Can’t go three steps anywhere without hearing about Tanner’s wife.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him, hopping up the steps of my cabin, and opening the front door.
He follows me inside.
“Fuck!” he bellows. “It smells like a locker room in here.”
“We don’t all havea wifeto clean for us.”
“You’re funny if you think McKenna’s my housekeeper,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest as I grab a beer from the fridge.
“Want one?”
“No,” he says. “I want to know why you’re working on Isabella’s show when you’ve got nothing nice to say about her.”
I pop the cap off the bottle, lean against the back of the couch and face him. “Like I said, it’s a good—”
“Business opportunity?” he says. “Cut the shit, Hunter. Every time you got drunk over the winter, we had to hear about what a fickle bitch Isabella was.”
I take a swig of Bud. “So what?”
“So you’re saying that the two are unrelated? Isabella being a contestant on the show and you being a location scout?”
“LocationAssistant.”
“What-the fuck-ever.” He pins me with eyes as blue as my own. “Be real with me, please.”
I take a deep breath, looking down at the bottle in my hands, then shrug. “You know what? I deserve answers.”
“Answers?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Answers. You know, we never even had a conversation? I got two texts from her: one said it was over and the other said not to come visit and get over it. I want to know what happened. I want to know why.”