Tallchief: The Hunter Read Free Page A

and uneven.
    Her order reminded him of others issued long ago. Leave town. Don’t testify against Tom or his friends. Forget you saw anything, knew anything. It will be worth your while. But if you go ahead, you’ll be sorry.
    “Am I making you nervous? Or don’t you like remembering what your family did? That when I was set to testify against Tom, they and their friends controlled the town and everyone in it? How they used that power against me and Aunt Sarah? Don’t you think it hurt her to see her longtime friends fear for their jobs? To move away from her on the church pew? To exclude her from their social circles? The gardening club?”
    His anger built and stormed and burst then. “Aunt Sarah had a bad heart, Jilly-dear.”
    Adam threw her teenage name at her, a reminder that the past lay between them, raw and brooding. “Aunt Sarah raised me, all by herself, and she could have had a few more years without the pressure put on her when I testified against Tom and his friends. But she said I should do what was right for me, and never wavered from that. She died before I graduated high school.”
    He ran his hand across his heart, where memories of his maternal aunt Sarah ran close and warm…Sarah, a womanon her own, doing her best to raise a child that wasn’t hers. She’d never complained, and loved him without restriction. “She wasn’t well, but she could have lived a few more years without all that stress.”
    He’d never told another person that, and guilt now nagged at him. He questioned again for the thousandth time if he should have testified.
    Jillian’s gaze softened, searching his. “I am very sorry about Sarah. I liked her very much. I did spend some time with her at the last. She called me and asked me to come over.”
    “She called you? One of the Greens? Why?”
    “She had her reasons.” Jillian’s pressed lips said she wouldn’t explain further.
    Adam slapped the flat of his hand on the counter. Then he turned from Jillian, closing her away from his grief. “But you didn’t like her enough to do anything to help, right?”
    The silence grew and throbbed, before Jillian said with quiet elegance, “We both lost people we loved. And I think we’ve said quite enough. It was a long time ago, and it would suit me to never see you again. Goodbye, Adam.”
    The sound of the rain upon the roof and against the windows hammered at the silence as Adam fought the past and the anger that had simmered for years—and the newly recognized need to see Jillian again. He ran his hand across his jaw and tried to settle the hunger in his heart for a girl who had stolen his dreams; her secret place in his heart had denied him any other woman. “What happened to O’Malley?” he asked again, needing to know more about her.
    “It doesn’t matter,” she answered slowly from behind him.
    He turned slowly, eyes narrowed upon her, ready to catch the slightest indication of what had happened. “But it does. He would have been a perfect catch for you. Just what yourparents wanted—an ex-senator’s son, a political career all laid out for him.”
    She sighed and looked out into the rainy mist swirling in front of the window. “You’re going to gnaw on everything, aren’t you? I knew you would. You were always very good at putting pieces together. You’re not the captain of the debate team now, Adam.”
    “This is a very private war, Jilly Green O’Malley. Your revenge against me is no small thing. I want to make certain that you don’t intend to hurt my family. If gnawing on old bones clears the table, then I will.”
    “If you need that to leave me alone, then I’ll give you the answer—Kevin and I simply grew apart.”
    The odd tremor in her tone drew him on. Was that a shudder passing over her body? Or just the shadows of the past stirring between them? And why should he want to hold her close and keep her safe as he had years ago?
    Disturbed by that thought, Adam moved to her computer, and