The Heart Of The Hunter
Natalie-Nicole Bates
After a devastating accident, Barret Atkins has
accepted a quiet, solitary existence. His life is turned upside down, when he
finds the badly injured Kansas Smith, left for dead in a case of mistaken
identity. As Kansas begins to recover, Barret must face some deep scars of his
own. When the couple begin to fall for each other, their lives spin into a
revival of past hurts, jealousies, and betrayals, causing Barret to put a halt
to their budding relationship.
Barret’s hesitation causes his best friend-turned
vicious rival, Duncan Craig, to pursue a friendship with Kansas. Where will
this leave Barret? Can they all hold on long enough to escape Kansas’s
attacker, and will they ever conquer their own inner
demons intent on keeping them apart?
Excerpt
On Saturday morning, Kansas could wait no longer. She could
no longer live under the same roof with a man she was deeply in love with
without telling him how she felt, and finding out once and for all how he truly
felt about her. Now she stood leaning back against the counter sipping a cup of
coffee, her stomach ached from nerves for what she was about to do.
Most of the night
she was awake rehearsing speeches on the same theme--confessing her love to
Barret. Now all her carefully rehearsed words failed her.
Barret sat at the
kitchen table in t-shirt and jeans, absorbed in the
newspaper. A shadow of a beard emphasized his maleness.
Setting the cup
on the counter, she took the few steps to stand beside the table. “Barret, why
don’t you like me?” she blurted, immediately wishing she could bite back her
words.
Looking up from
his newspaper, his eyebrows slashed together. “Excuse me?”
Confusion
consumed her, and she felt trapped and exposed, hesitant to continue. When he
stood, she wanted to shrink away from him.
“Whatever gave
you the idea that I did not like you?”
The demanding
look in his blue eyes only made the words harder to form. Finally, she found
her voice. “I love you, and you don’t love me,” she finally admitted.
His shoulders
visibly stiffened and the color drained from his face. Obviously, she caught
him off guard. “I...I do love you, Kansas. But...but I don’t love you like you
mean,” he stuttered.
Her heart sank
heavily in her chest. She raised her chin and looked back at him. She had to
know. “What is it about me you don’t like?”
“I like
everything about you, Kansas. No, I love everything about you,” he told her as
he planted his hands firmly on her shoulders causing her to want to crawl out
of her skin and away from his touch. She’d said way too much, and upset their whole stable situation.
Finally, she
looked into his confused eyes. “I’m sorry, Barret. I just couldn’t go on like
this. Just tell me what it is about me that...” her voice trailed off as she
slowly came to terms with the fact that he didn’t love her as a woman.
Lifting her chin,
he forced her to make eye contact with him. “Listen, angel, it’s not you,
you’re absolutely perfect,” he told her,
and smiled a smile she knew was
forced.
“You’re the most
beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and you’re an amazing person. You can have any
man you want, but I’m not the right man for you,” he said gently.
Continuing to
maintain eye contact with him, she decided she wasn’t going to allow him to get
off with such a broad response “Why?” she demanded.
“The accident
changed me, Kansas. I’m not the same man I was before it happened, and I’m glad
for that. You wouldn’t have liked me then. I was an arrogant, self-absorbed
bastard, and now I’m not sure who I am anymore,
or what I really want. But I do want you to know that if things had been
different, and I wish they were...”
Finally, she
could take no more. “I got it, Barret,” she said shaking loose of his grip and
turning away.
“It’s just the
hero thing, Kansas. You’ll get over it. You think you love me because I saved
you that horrible day in that swamp. When some time passes, you’ll realize
you’d never be happy with an almost forty year old detective. You would only
resent me for taking you away from your old lifestyle.”
She whirled to
face him, her hands on her hips. “Why you arrogant… You don’t know me at all!”
Finally, she lost the battle not to cry and tears poured freely down her
cheeks. “I thought we were so close, but I guess I was completely off base
about that. I don’t care about money or scars! I only care about you! We could
have been so happy--”
The doorbell rang
cutting off Kansas’s words and she felt some relief that it had interrupted her
intense venting. She felt like such a fool now.
She’d
received the answer she was after.
Unfortunately, it was not the one she wanted.
Heart of the
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Thank you so much for featuring The Heart of the Hunter at your amazing blog!
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