Hunter Read online

  “Read the note,” Gabe suggested.

  Hunter opened the sealed note. Only a few words were written on it;

  You’ve always sought adventure, so here’s your inheritance — a treasure map. You have to follow the clues to find what’s been left for you, and more importantly to find yourself.

  “It is a map,” Hunter said. Gabe took the note from him and read over it. Then they gazed at each other.

  “Is the note from Dad?” Gabe asked, seeming almost envious.

  “I don’t know. Did you get one?” Hunter asked as he read over the words again.

  “No. No one did that I know of,” Gabe said. He looked over the letter.

  Hunter found that he wanted it to be from his dad. But there was no clue who it was actually from.

  “Why didn’t he tell us he was sick?” Hunter asked, letting down his guard.

  “He should have. I will be angry with him for a very long time for not letting us be there with him,” Gabe admitted.

  “Yeah, I’m a bit ticked about it,” Hunter said.

  The two were silent a moment as they returned their attention to the map laid out on the desk. This was the last thing Hunter would ever get from his father.

  “I don’t even know what to say about this,” Gabe finally said.

  “Did the old man lose his mind in the end?” Hunter asked.

  “No. I’m told he was completely sane,” Gabe assured him.

  “I’m not some kid who has time to go on a treasure hunt,” Hunter said.

  “Then you might never know what he wants to give you,” Gabe warned.

  “I don’t need anything,” Hunter said.

  “Wait. There’s a name and address on the back of the letter,” Gabe pointed out as he handed the note back to Hunter.

  He read it then looked at his brother. “Who in the hell is Professor Rebekah Kingsley the third?” he said. Gabe shrugged. “The third?” Hunter scoffed. “That sounds more like a woman you would want to know.”

  “I’m not a snob, Hunter,” Gabe grumbled. Hunter laughed.

  “Yeah, says the man wearing a freaking suit and two-thousand dollar shoes on a ranch,” Hunter pointed out.

  “At least I don’t dress like a homeless person,” Gabe told him.

  “I dress comfortably. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Maybe when you’re a teenager. But everyone has to grow up eventually.”

  “I don’t believe that. I think we can choose to live our lives any way we want,” Hunter countered.

  “Are you going to follow the map?” Gabe asked.

  Hunter looked at his legacy. One part of him wanted to lift the piece of paper and rip it to shreds. Another part of him — the part that couldn’t stand to walk away from a challenge — knew he wasn’t going to ignore his father’s last wishes.

  “Maybe,” he said with a sigh as he sank down into a chair.

  “You can’t ignore this, Hunter,” Gabe told him. Finally his brother sat as well. Neither of them looked inside at what else was in the box. Hunter would do that later.

  “I have an assignment first,” Hunter told him.

  “You work for yourself. You can put it off,” Gabe pointed out.

  Hunter stood. “I have to do the job. I’ll be back when it’s finished.” He turned to walk out of the room.

  “Just stay. I’ll help you,” Gabe offered, shocking Hunter. Emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time began to flood through him. Hunter shook his head.

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on that, Brother,” Hunter said. “I might have to find this Rebekah person when I get back and see if she knows anything. I promise I’ll come back.”

  “In another couple of years?” Gabe asked. Hunter felt the sting of those words. He really had abandoned his family. Maybe they cared more than he had realized. He looked at Gabe and the longing to stay there with him scared him enough to ensure he would do the opposite.

  “No. I won’t be that long,” he said, all joking gone from his tone.

  Gabe nodded at him and Hunter walked from the room. He had no doubt he would be back. But first he needed to get control over what he was feeling. He walked away from his brother and then through the front door. Leaving was something Hunter knew how to do incredibly well.

  Chapter One

  Present Day

  Hunter pulled up the long driveway to Gabe’s ranch. It was still odd to think of his childhood home as belonging to his brother now. It had been a couple months since he’d left the place after receiving the box from his father.

  His assignment hadn’t gone well, as his heart hadn’t been in it. He’d been itching to come back home and complete the task his father had left for him. But he’d struggled through the assignment, doing a terrible job, and now finally, he was back where he felt he belonged.

  He was irrationally happy his brother had decided to keep the ranch. He was also a bit disappointed he’d heard of his brother’s wedding from his brother Luke, and not from Gabe himself.

  But he was back home again and ready to begin the journey to find whatever treasure his father had left for him. But today was about Gabe. He spotted his twin standing in front of the house wearing a tux as he spoke with Luke and two women.

  Jumping from the car, his camera in hand, Hunter moved over to the group.

  “Don’t tell me, Frank Muller contacted you,” Gabe said.

  “Actually, it was Luke. He said you needed a photographer today.”

  Hunter greeted both brothers and was introduced to Lizzie and her niece while they chatted with their brother Finn on the phone since he hadn’t been able to make the wedding. They were interrupted when a helicopter landed on the side lawn, announcing the arrival of James, Aunt Claire and Knox.

  Hunter moved away from the group after a little while and took in the area, looking at it through the lens of his camera as he snapped pictures. Maybe he loved photography so much because he was the one in control — the one to forever document the moments he chose.

  Hunter wasn’t exactly sure. He had no idea what was going to happen in the next few weeks, didn’t know which direction his life was going to go. For now, he simply found himself happy to be with his siblings.

  Though the ranch belonged to Gabe now, it would always be home — always be the place where he’d created his first adventures, and where he’d fallen in love for the first time.

  That thought stunned Hunter; his camera froze and he quit taking pictures. Maybe it was the fact that his brother was getting married, maybe it was being back home, but whatever it was, he was surprised to be thinking about a romance that had happened ten years ago.

  Becka.

  She’d been young and beautiful and full of dreams. He’d saved her from the ocean and then they hadn’t parted company the entire summer. The two of them had traipsed all over the ranch property when they weren’t finding secluded places on the beach to make love. They’d laughed and talked of dreams and had left the rest of the world behind.

  Hunter had been twenty-three at the time. It had been his first visit home in two years, and he hadn’t planned on staying so long. Those plans had changed the moment his lips had met Becka’s. He’d had a hard time letting her go when it had come time for him to leave.

  The music began, signaling the start of Gabe and Josie’s wedding. Hunter snapped back into the present and resumed clicking his camera, forever capturing this moment in his brother’s life.

  When the wedding was over, it would be time to find the professor his father wanted him to seek out and get on with his own journey. His brother Gabe had gotten a heck of a lot more than the ranch from their father. He’d gotten a new lease on life. Hunter hoped his father wasn’t expecting the same from him. One thing was certain though; he wouldn’t know anything until he began the journey.

  Chapter Two
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  Sitting in her stuffy office, Rebekah Kingsley III, was daydreaming. It wasn’t unusual for her to do that — it would just shock her students if they knew exactly what it was she dreamed of.

  On the outside, twenty-eight year old Rebekah had dark hair always pulled tightly into a bun on the back of her head, and deep chocolate eyes hidden by her wire-rimmed glasses, worn more to look like a legitimate professor than out of need. Her normal attire was a pencil skirt or slacks, a loose-fitted blouse and blazer, and sensible shoes since she walked miles a day on the large University of Southern California campus.

  Rebekah was a history professor who mostly loved her job. She never had been able to understand those who didn’t appreciate the romance and trauma of history. There was so much about it that was fascinating, and no matter how many years she studied it, she would never come close to touching the vastness of the subject.

  But Rebekah would always dream. In her mind she would be raiding a tomb in a lost city, her hair billowing over her shoulders, guns tied to her sides, men gazing at her in awe. In her dreams she looked like Lara Croft, not the uptight professor her parents had expected her to be from the first straight-A report card she’d brought home.

  With a sigh, Rebekah forced herself to focus as she graded papers. She didn’t often get students visiting her during office hours. She knew teaching undergraduate classes was her way to earn her stripes, but someday she’d be teaching the upper-division ones, the classes students wanted to be in, weren’t forced to attend by undergrad requirements.

  Until she’d been there long enough though, she would teach a subject she loved and she’d do it with a smile. And when she thought she couldn’t take another day, her dreams would save her.

  A quick tapping on her door made Rebekah jump before she looked up, inwardly scolding herself. A tomb raider would never get nervous over an unexpected sound. Maybe someday she’d go on an epic adventure. She did get nearly three months off in the summer. Most professors got to go to wonderful places. She was stuck in a small apartment in Malibu Canyon, California.

  A starting professor made enough money to live, but not travel the world, and though Rebekah’s parents weren’t even close to being poor, they felt it was a good life lesson for her to learn self-reliance from the beginning. It was why she’d worked her way through college, and why she’d eaten a lot of Top Ramen noodles over those years.

  She had constantly reminded herself that there was gold at the end of her rainbow though. And if it were easy for her to get where she wanted to be then she wouldn’t appreciate the journey nearly as much.

  Expecting a student to be standing in her doorway, Rebekah was taken aback when a man looked in on her, a smile of disbelief on his face, his shoulders so wide he nearly filled out the entire doorway. Sparkling green eyes gazed at her as if she were beneath a microscope, and full lips tilted up the slightest bit.

  And her heart stalled.

  Standing in the doorway was a man she’d never thought she would see again, a man who had once shattered her heart so badly she still wasn’t the same person she’d been back then — a man who had left her long ago. When her heart began beating again, it was at so fast a pace, she wondered if it was visible to him.

  “Becka?” The word came out a hushed whisper as he looked at her in wonder. He was analyzing her, searching her eyes as he made the connection. It had been ten years since she’d seen Hunter, and that still wasn’t enough time. He’d been her fantasy when she had been a teenager. She hadn’t thought she was good enough for him — she’d been right.

  He looked back at her and waited. Rebekah opened her mouth to speak and found her voice gone. She was a professor for goodness sake — speaking was how she made her living. She wasn’t going to let this man turn her into that sparkly-eyed little girl she’d once been.

  Clearing her throat, she nodded. “I’m professor Rebekah Kingsley,” she corrected him, deciding to leave off “the third.” She actually hated it. When she’d been younger, she’d thought it was sort of cool, but then as she’d aged, kids had looked at her like she was an alien when she said it. Some thought she was a snob, others just thought she was a geek. Either way, she didn’t appreciate her parents adding it to her birth certificate.

  Hunter stood in the doorway looking at her with disbelief. Rebekah was used to that too. Though she was a respectable twenty-eight year old, she was blessed with fair skin that made her look more like eighteen — the age she’d been when she’d met Hunter. Her mother swore to her she’d appreciate that in another ten years. But when she was teaching eighteen- and nineteen-year-old students, she’d really like to appear at least a few years older than them. Most of her students assumed she was the T.A. It usually took her a while to convince them she wasn’t — even with the glasses and severe hairdo she was still mistaken for a student by other faculty members as well. Rebekah had been asked to leave the teachers’ lounge several times, forcing her to keep her college ID handy.

  And when it came to Hunter he had only known her as Becka. Their summer together, the year she’d graduated high school, had been pure magic and she hadn’t wanted to ruin it by being herself. She’d been only Becka that summer — a free spirited, happy young woman on the verge of becoming an adult. He’d been the one to take her there over and over again. Then they had parted ways.

  She tried to get her bearings as she gazed at him in her doorway. He shook his head as if he were trying to clear it. She could clearly see his confusion as she felt it herself.

  “No,” he said, drawing the word out. “It’s been a long time, but I swear …” He cut himself off. She could see he was trying to figure out if she was the same girl he’d known all those years before. No, she wasn’t. She could easily tell him that. But at the same time, she felt an unusual stirring of anger rise within her.

  Rebekah sat upright in her seat. “I assure you I know who I am,” she told the man in her stiffest voice. This made those wide lips of his turn up as he sauntered into her small office.

  The swagger of his hips as he took three steps forward, positioning himself right in front of her desk, made her mouth water in an unfamiliar way. She shook her head the smallest bit to try to clear it. She’d been in dreamland too long — it was obviously affecting her brain.

  His gaze caressed her face and recognition solidified in his eyes. Her heart pounded that much more quickly. She clenched her fingers so tightly together, her short nails dug into her palms. She wasn’t ready for this reunion, would never be ready for it if truth were to be told.

  “This wasn’t what I was expecting,” Hunter said with the tiniest hint of a drawl she’d never heard from him before. “How are you, Becka?” He leaned closer.

  “It’s not Becka anymore. I don’t like nicknames,” she told him as she sat up even straighter in her chair. The sooner this reunion ended, the better off she’d be.

  His hand lifted as if he wanted to reach out to her, and she flinched. If he touched her, she was afraid she would end up in a puddle at his feet. She’d come way too far to allow that to happen. His hand slowly dropped as he gave her a once-over. The look in his eyes nearly broke her heart all over again, as he seemed to find her lacking at the end of his perusal.

  “Sorry, darling, but I don’t like to waste my breath and your name is a mouthful,” he said. He have her a wink and a crooked smile, seeming to pull himself together quickly.

  “Why are you here, Hunter?” she asked. If he wasn’t going to get to the point, then she would lead him there. At least that much she had learned being a professor.

  “I was given your name,” he said. She waited and he didn’t explain further.

  “For what and by whom?” she asked.

  Suddenly Hunter pulled out the rickety chair in front of her desk, flipped it around, and straddled the thing before plopping down. Rebekah eyed the chair uneasily, wondering if it would hold up under his
weight. Hunter had changed since she’d last seen him. He’d always been good looking but the man had aged well, had bulked up from his wide shoulders and rippling arms, to his impressive thighs. She jerked her face back to his eyes quickly and felt a blush infuse her cheeks, though she’d done nothing wrong.

  “Whom?” he said with a laugh. “I’ve always found that word amusing.”

  She obviously had his full attention. She shifted in her seat, wishing he’d focus anywhere other than her. There was an intensity in his eyes that made her incredibly nervous. The sooner the reunion was over, the better.

  “I’m very busy, Hunter. Could you speed this up?” she asked.

  “It’s been a lot of years, Becka. Maybe we should slow it down,” he countered.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” she pointed out, ignoring his attempt at a reconnection.

  “What was the question?” he asked. There was a twinkle in his eyes that told her he was playing her. She had a feeling he was acting a lot dumber than he actually was. That intrigued Rebekah, though she didn’t know why. She’d had one summer with the man, and they’d both been young and carefree. They didn’t really know anything about one another.

  She raised an eyebrow at him and gave him her sternest professor look — the one known to make new students squirm in their seats. It certainly didn’t affect Hunter that way. He leaned in a little closer to her and continued to smile.

  “Ah, about who sent me?” he said as if he was having a light bulb moment. “Your formal name — the name I didn’t recognize — was on the treasure map from my dead father.”

  She waited for him to go on, but he said nothing else. Her frustration grew.

  “A treasure map?” she asked. Was this a practical joke? It had to be.

  “Yep, the map is my inheritance,” he told her, completely serious.

  “Your father passed away and gave you a map as your inheritance?” she questioned. She had to be sure she’d heard that right.