Free Bury the Hatchet by Catherine Gayle Page A

agreed with that particular tactic was when TMZ had caught me naked in a hot tub with Leo Brunetti’s hands all over me when I was in Cancun last month. The Brunetti family was famous more for being rich than for anything they’d done. Well, other than playing fast and loose. And honestly, Lance would have been all over that if not for the fact that it had cost me my chance at ever winning Miss USA. Now, I supposed he was changing his focus, although I wasn’t sure what his new tack would be. What was he pushing me toward? Who was he trying to make me become?
    “Was he right?” Hunter asked. “Would you agree to it?”
    “I…” That was a loaded question, and I wasn’t sure how to go about explaining just how loaded it was.
    “You’re awfully hesitant.”
    “It’s just that what I would agree to and what I want aren’t necessarily the same thing.”
    Hunter sat up, drawing his knees toward his chest and resting his arms around them. “You’d do it even though you don’t want to? Is that what you’re telling me?”
    “I don’t know that I’d have much choice.”
    “Why the fuck wouldn’t you have a choice? You’re an adult. You can make your own decisions. He can’t control every aspect of your life for you unless you let him.”
    But I’d been letting him control everything for my entire life, because that was what I’d always known, and changing things wasn’t as easy as snapping my fingers or wrinkling my nose. There were no magic wands in real life. I didn’t know how to break free of Lance’s control over even the simplest aspects of my life, how to put my foot down and demand what I wanted.
    “I don’t know how to start,” I said, hating how pathetic that made me seem. This wasn’t what Daddy wanted for me. When it got right down to it, I didn’t think this was what Mama would have wanted, either. I wasn’t positive I understood everything involved in why she was so intent upon sending me to pageant after pageant, but I knew it wasn’t because she wanted to suffocate me.
    But Hunter was right. I was an adult. I didn’t have to go along with everything I was told to do, but hell if I knew how to set healthy boundaries and learn to live my life the way I wanted it to be.
    He smiled, and I had to wonder how he could be smiling at a time like this. But then he held out a hand to assist me up. I stumbled slightly and fell toward him. He steadied me by putting his other hand on my waist and drawing me in toward him. Too close. Just like every time we kissed for the cameras, awareness danced through my veins like fireflies flitting around after dark. My lips were suddenly dry, and I licked them. Hunter’s gaze followed my tongue, and I swallowed hard, trying to force my body to stop reacting to his presence.
    “Well,” he said, easing me away from him and acting as though he hadn’t noticed the crazy heat between us, “you could start by telling Lance that as soon as the wedding is over, he doesn’t get to make decisions for you anymore.”
    “I don’t think he’ll like that.”
    “Does it matter?”
    Hunter headed toward the kitchen after asking me that, so I assumed it was a rhetorical question. Did it matter to me what Lance thought? Was it important for Mama to approve of every decision I made? Those were the sorts of questions bouncing around in my head as I trudged along behind him. He had a jar of Nutella open on the counter, and he held out a plastic spoon for me. There wasn’t anything in sight to put it on.
    I took the spoon, and he dunked another one in for a bite.
    “Straight out of the jar?” I asked.
    He popped the spoon in his mouth and raised a brow. “Something else Lance might not like?” he asked after a moment, when I still hadn’t followed suit.
    It wasn’t just that. We were getting married tomorrow, and I had to be able to wear that dress in front of the lights and cameras. Thousands of people would see me in it at home, and that thing fit me like a