His First Love Read online

  “He’s lost Tucker,” Molly said as they parted. “Did you see him go out the west door?”

  “No.” Molly’s mother sobered and looked from Molly to Hunter to his little brother. “Let’s check out front.”

  “I’ll take Deacon out the east door.” Hunter moved that way, and Molly couldn’t seem to get her feet to work.

  “Mols,” Mama said, and Molly jolted back to attention. She didn’t have time to stare after the handsome man Hunter had become. As she followed her mom out the front doors, she wondered if Hunter had felt any of the electricity she had. Had he simply moved on? Was he married? What was he doing now? Where was he living?

  He might not even be back in town for good, Molly told herself. Don’t go getting your hopes up.

  There were a hundred different things that could keep Molly from reconnecting with Hunter, and her mind started to list all of them as a defense mechanism.

  She heard Hunter calling for Tucker around the corner, and her mother did the same thing. A little boy came around the corner to their left, and Mama said, “There you are, Tucker Hammond.” She moved down the steps, holding tightly to the handrail, Molly noticed. Her mother was getting older, and while she still possessed every ounce of charm and sophistication she always had, her last round of fighting off her uterine cancer had taken a lot from her. Molly’s divorce hadn’t helped anything, and pure regret moved through her as she followed Mama.

  “Your brother is looking for you, baby,” Mama said, scooping the child into her arms.

  “I’ll get Hunter,” Molly said as she looked at Tucker. He definitely had the same brown eyes as his brother and father, and coupled with that light hair, Molly thought he’d break more hearts than Hunter had.

  After she’d broken up with him, he’d dated plenty of other girls. A different one every weekend. Sometimes he’d taken Laurel Phillips to a football game on Friday night and Teri Childs to a movie on Saturday night.

  He didn’t stay with any one girl at all, and Molly had told herself over and over that he was doing what she’d said they should. Meet and go out with a lot of different people. Then they’d know who they really liked.

  Hunter had told her for about a year that he liked her, and that he didn’t need to take anyone else to dinner to know it. And yet, when she’d finally ended their four-year relationship, that was exactly what he’d done.

  She pushed the high school memories out of her mind as she went around the corner. “Hunter,” she called to the tall man on the edge of the cement, looking out over the cemetery and the woods behind that.

  He turned toward her, his anxiety plain to see. She gestured for him to come to her, saying, “Mama found him. He’s okay.”

  Relief painted over his handsome features, and he strode toward Molly, his youngest brother in his arms. Time slowed for Molly. All sound disappeared. All she could see was Hunter Hammond in that cowboy hat, a boy who looked just like him on his hip, and her entire future with him right in front of her. Just out of reach.

  “Thanks, Molly,” he said as he passed, not slowing down for even a moment. Time sped again, and Molly spun around as the scent of Hunter’s cologne lingered in her nose. My, he knew how to put together an arsenal against a woman, didn’t he?

  The dark slacks, white shirt, and trendy tie. The cowboy hat. The good looks—superior looks. Molly had never met a man as handsome as Hunter. No woman had. He was just that gorgeous.

  And the cologne too?

  It was almost like he knew he wasn’t playing fair.

  She ducked around the corner too, just in time to see him take Tucker from Mama, now carrying both boys in his arms. He pressed his forehead to Tucker’s, his mouth moving. Molly was too far away to hear what they were saying, but the soft, adoring look on Mama’s face said enough.

  She loved Hunter too.

  She always had; it had been the Pastor who’d warned Molly about getting too serious with a boy too young. To her knowledge, Hunter’s father hadn’t been very keen on their relationship either.

  Molly approached slowly, smiling at her mother. Mama linked her arm through Molly’s and said, “I have to go check on Dad. We’ll see you at the house for lunch?”

  “Yes,” Molly said, glancing at her quickly. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Hunter, and she really wanted to invite him to lunch too.

  Mama left, and Hunter set both boys on the ground beside him. He adjusted his hands in theirs and looked at her. With the crisis over, he seemed calm, confident, and perfectly collected.

  “Thanks for your help,” he said, that smile appearing again.

  Neither of them moved. Molly finally reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear, her voice stuck somewhere down inside her chest.

  “Do you live with your parents?” Hunter asked.

  Molly raised her eyes to his. “No, I have my own place.”

  “So you live here.” This time, it wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” she said. “You? Just visiting?” He’d gone to college at MIT. Like, the actual MIT, where only geniuses and future Nobel Peace Prize winners went to get educated.

  “I’m starting at HMC tomorrow,” he said, the smile faltering. “I’m literally moving back today.”

  “To the farm?”

  “For now,” he said. “I’ll probably get a place in the city. It’s too far to commute for long.”

  She nodded, every cell in her body buzzing with the words Hunter Hammond is back in Ivory Peaks. Hunter Hammond is back!

  “Do you want to come to lunch at my house?” she blurted out before she could think too hard about it.

  His eyes widened a little bit, and he looked down at his two brothers. “Hey, you guys,” he said, dropping into a crouch. “Will you go wait for me on the steps? I just need to talk to Molly alone for one second.”

  “All right,” Deacon said, and he took Tucker’s hand. The two of them walked away while Hunter straightened. He kept his eyes on them until they’d sat on the bottom step, and then for another few seconds.

  When he finally looked at her, a storm rolled across his face. Molly wanted to recall the invitation, but it was too late. She wasn’t sure what was going through his mind, because Hunter had never said a whole lot. He’d felt deeply, but he’d gone to therapy to learn how to do that. For a long time, he’d told her he’d simply existed behind a barrier made of frosted glass.

  He softened and lifted one hand toward her, sliding his fingertips along the side of her face and tucking her hair behind her ear again. It took all of Molly’s will power to stay still and not lean into those hands she’d known so well.

  “I want to, Molly,” he said as his hand dropped back to his side. “But I literally rolled into town ten minutes before church started. I haven’t seen my grandparents yet, or really talked to my parents. So I really shouldn’t.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice a bit ragged. She cleared her throat. “It’s okay. You go have fun with your family.”

  He nodded, and Molly wished with every birthday candle on the planet that he’d ask her out for another time. She’d clear any schedule she had to in order to be there.

  He didn’t though. Instead, he just nodded, ducked his head so his cowboy hat concealed most of his face, and said, “Deacon, Tuck, let’s go.”

  The little boys came toward them, and Hunter looked up at her as they took his hands. “See you around, Molly.” He started toward the small parking lot, and Molly turned as he went by and watched him take the boys to a large, gray truck that had a white trailer attached to it.

  It was exactly the kind of vehicle someone as masculine and male as Hunter would drive, and he lifted Deacon into the backseat while the child laughed. Molly smiled too, because wow. Hunter Hammond interacting with children was another low blow to her feelings for him. She’d seen him hold his sister when she was a baby, and she’d suspected then that he’d be a caring and attentive father. To actually see his concern for his brothers only cemented that.

  He closed the door and turned back to her. Embarrassment leapt to Molly’s face, and she ducked away from him, hurrying toward the steps that led back inside. She’d made her feelings for him known. She didn’t need to add further humiliation to her already burning life.

  Inside, she met her mother as she came down the hallway that led to Dad’s office. “He’s going to be a few minutes,” she said. “That means at least an hour. Can I ride with you? Or were you planning to go home and then come to the house for lunch?”

  “I can take you,” Molly said. They went out the west doors and around to the back of the church, where Dad always parked. Only a few spots were available, and usually the family took them.

  Ingrid’s car was gone already, which meant all of Molly’s younger siblings had already left. She clicked the button on her fob to unlock her car, and the vehicle beeped. Molly’s neck felt so tense, and after she got behind the wheel, she pushed out her breath and rolled her shoulders.

  “Is Hunter coming for lunch?” Mama asked.

  “No,” Molly said miserably. Too miserably. Her mother’s gaze on the side of her face felt too heavy to bear, and Molly quickly started the car and put it in reverse.

  “You invited him, though, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Molly said. Her mom didn’t ask another question, and that drove Molly crazy. She knew this tactic, because she’d grown up with it. She’d seen her mother fall silent when talking to Ingrid about her prom date, and when asking Lyra if her boyfriend was going to propose soon. Eventually, they all broke and spilled way more than necessary, and definitely more than they would’ve said if their mother had simply kept questioning them.

  Molly wasn’t going to give in this time. Her parents only lived eight minutes away from the church, and she flexed her fingers on the steering wheel as she approached the first red light. The blocks passed, and Molly started to congratulate herself as she made the final turn onto the street where she’d grown up.

  “Molly,” her mother said as she pulled into the driveway beside Ingrid’s sporty red hatchback. “Did you at least get his number?”

  “No, Mama,” Molly said, putting her plain white sedan in park. “He doesn’t want me anymore.” She looked at her mother then, her eyes wide and all of her hurt feelings streaming from her.

  “You don’t know that.” Mama reached over and brushed Molly’s hair off her shoulder.

  “He didn’t ask me out,” Molly said. “He didn’t even say if he was seeing someone.”

  “He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring,” Mama said. “There’s still time, Mols.”

  “No.” Molly shook her head. “He won’t want me once he finds out I’ve been married.”

  “Molly,” her mother started, but Molly opened her door and got out of the car. She didn’t want to hear how she was good enough for another man, and that a divorce was not the end of the world.

  It felt like the end of the world, like the biggest failure of Molly’s life, and she didn’t want to hear anything her mom might say.

  Thankfully, inside the house, all three of her sisters stood in the kitchen, each of them seemingly trying to talk over each other.

  The youngest, Kara, had just graduated from high school. In just a few months, she’d go off to school in the city. Ingrid would return to college for her last year, and Lyra would go back to Utah, where she went to school in Salt Lake City.

  Mama and Dad would be empty nesters for the first time, and Molly would keep getting up and going to school every day, teaching the second graders in her class how to read and how to be kind to one another.

  She just needed to make it through this summer. Somehow.

  Without much to do to fill her time, Molly had been working around the church, helping her father with some of the annual cleaning he did.

  She needed more to do. Another job. Something worthwhile to donate her time to. A hobby. A class to learn something new.

  “Molly,” Ingrid said, smiling as she caught sight of her. “Get in here and tell Lyra that there is no way Harry Styles is as cute as Niall Horen.” She grabbed onto Molly’s hand, blissfully unaware of Molly’s encounter with Hunter, and dragged her into the kitchen.

  Molly said, “Okay, I can entertain some arguments on both sides.” She put a smile on her face, and it wasn’t long before her blues got eradicated by the laughter and loud voices of her sisters. She’d always been able to rely on them to cheer her up and take her side, and Molly loved them powerfully.

  At the same time, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life with her sisters, and when her father came home and they all sat down to dinner, Molly could see an empty spot at their table specifically for Hunter.

  She looked away and closed her eyes for the prayer. Once her father finished that, he looked at Lyra and said, “I hear Rick is coming by tonight.”

  Molly’s hand froze as she reached for her fork. In fact, only her father continued to move at all. All the females in the room had frozen.

  “Daddy?” Lyra asked.

  Her father put a bite of meatloaf in his mouth, his bright eyes dancing. As he swallowed, a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “He came to see me after church, Lyra.”

  “Quinn,” Mama said, almost breathless herself. “Did he ask you for your blessing?”

  Dad shrugged one shoulder and said, “Maybe.”

  Chaos erupted at the table, with Lyra bursting into tears and Mama praising the Lord that the proposal was finally going to happen. Ingrid talked about how she could record the whole thing, and Kara kept agreeing with everyone else.

  Molly was happy for her sister. Of course she was. Her parents and sisters had acted with the same level of excitement when she’d gotten engaged too. She didn’t want to ruin anything for Lyra, and no one knew about Hunter’s return to Ivory Peaks. So she painted a smile on her face, and said, “I’ll help you with your hair, Lyra. Doesn’t Rick like it when you curl it?”

  Chapter 3

  “We don’t need to tell anyone about Tucker getting lost for a few seconds,” Hunter said as he turned onto the dirt lane that led back to the farm. “Okay, guys?”

  “Okay,” both boys said from the back seat. Hunter didn’t think for a second he could actually keep it a secret. He’d have to have a reason for why he was twenty minutes behind everyone coming home from church, and he wasn’t going to bring up Molly’s name.

  At the same time, why couldn’t he bring up Molly? Perhaps his father and Elise could help him understand the knot of feelings in his chest.

  No, he told himself. You pay a therapist for that. He’d call Lucy in the morning and find out if she had any appointments that week. He could zip down the street during the day if he had to.

  He pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse he’d grown to love over the years. He’d definitely had moments where he hated living here, and moments where he’d loved it. Now that he hadn’t been here for a while, only the fond memories seemed to be coming through.

  He killed the engine about the time his grandfather walked out the front door, and Hunter jumped from the truck then. “Grandpa,” he called, feeling very much like the little boy he’d been when his dad would bring him out to visit his grandparents.

  Hunter helped the little boys down from the back seat first, and then he hurried toward the front porch and up the steps. “Grandpa,” he said again, taking the older man into his arms. “Oh, it’s so good to see you.” He loved his grandfather so much, as the man had spent a lot of time with Hunter out here on the farm. They’d had many talks over the years, and so much of who Hunter wanted to be existed inside his grandpa.

  “Oh, my boy,” Grandpa said, and he pulled away and ran his hands down the sides of Hunter’s face, a soft, loving smile on his face. “I think you’re taller than last time you were here.”

  Hunter chuckled and shook his head. “Nope. I think you’re shorter, Gramps.”

  “That makes you taller, doesn’t it?” Grandpa turned and started toward the front door, which Tucker and Deacon had left open. “Come see Grandma. She’s been fretting about you for an hour.”

  Grandpa limped into the house, and Hunter followed slowly behind him, holding the door open and then closing it softly behind him. “He’s here, Bev.”

  Hunter grinned as his grandmother hurried into the foyer to greet him. He let her fuss over him and cry when she saw how “grown up” he was. He accepted the new book of crossword puzzles and the bottle of lemonade she kept in her fridge specifically for him, and he felt like he’d come home.

  At the same time, he knew he couldn’t stay at the farm forever. His thoughts wandered as he wondered where he’d end up, and by the time Grandma and Elise served lunch, Hunter’s nerves had returned in full force.

  He sat next to his father, realizing he was just as big as the man now. Maybe five or ten pounds heavier, as Hunter shared a lot of interests with his dad, but one of them was not running marathons.

  The conversation flowed around him, mainly focusing on his siblings and what they’d be doing now that school was out for the summer. They usually went to Coral Canyon for the summer, and as Hunter ate and listened, he realized his move back to Ivory Peaks had delayed them from returning to their summer home in the mountains.

  “You guys can go,” he said. “I’m fine here.”

  “I wanted to be here,” Dad said.

  “We wanted to be here,” Elise corrected him, shooting a look at Dad. “Coral Canyon isn’t going anywhere, Hunt. We wanted to see you and find out how your first week at HMC goes.” She gave him a warm smile, and Hunter’s heart expanded with love for her. She’d always been interested in what he was interested in, even when she didn’t understand some of the terms he used.

  She’d patiently ask him questions until he could explain what he was doing at school, and why he liked it. She didn’t know it, but it was something Elise had said about taking advantage of educational opportunities that had spurred Hunter into asking his uncle about his work with veterans.