Читать книгу A Cop's Honor - Emilie Rose - Страница 15
ОглавлениеBRANDON HAD SPENT Monday and Tuesday convincing himself that his out-of-line thoughts about Hannah had been a fluke. He arrived at her house Wednesday evening, determined to prove his point.
The front door opened. Belle, wearing a pink headband, leotard and tutu and her sparkly sandals, darted out toward him. She hurled herself at him. “Occifer Brandon!”
He swung her into the air then set her down. She weighed more than the twins, his four-year-old niece and nephew, but squealed the same. “Hey, kiddo. How’s the room?”
“Prettiful!”
Her made up words were...cute. Mason stepped onto the porch. The sour expression he usually greeted Brandon with was absent. “Mom’s inside. She’s all in a tiz about leaving me here. Like you’re gonna kill me or something.”
“I’ll try not to.” Brandon fist-bumped Mason then followed the kids through the foyer to the den.
Hannah hustled around the room, gathering her purse, a sweater and a tiny pair of dance slippers. The pink band in her hair matched Belle’s, as did the shoes on her feet and the fitted T-shirt skimming her slender curves, but the resemblance ended there. A khaki skirt hugged Hannah’s hips and revealed her long legs. There was nothing girlish about her figure.
The inappropriate reactions he’d hoped were a one-time deal shot through him like an Amtrak train. His heart clickety-clacked against his sternum, and adrenaline sped through his veins. Déjà vu. Damn.
She glanced up, spotted him and stopped. Her lips parted and her breasts rose with a quick inhalation. Color tinted her cheeks. “Hi.”
“Sorry I’m late. Last-minute conference call.”
“Thanks for texting and letting me know. We’re still okay for time. Are you sure you don’t mind staying with Mason?” Her words came out in a breathy rush—the kind that made him think of urgent middle-of-the-night whispers. And that was just wrong.
“Nah. I need his help. It’s a two-man job.”
Behind her back Mason gave him a thumbs-up. Teamwork. Progress.
“We usually grab dinner after dance lessons, but there’s sandwich stuff if y’all get hungry before I get home. Make yourself comfortable. If there’s anything you need, anything at all... Except I don’t think I have beer and I know I don’t have anything stronger, but—”
“Hannah.” He held up a hand to stop the flood of words. Despite what she’d said, she wasn’t at ease giving him full run of her home. Her hit-and-run glances and the pink-painted toenails curling in her sandals revealed her agitation. “I’ll get dinner for Mason and me, and I don’t mix alcohol with power tools. Take your time. You and Belle should have a girls’ night out dinner.”
“Oh. Well... I don’t know.”
“Do it, Mom. Go to that dumb salad place,” Mason encouraged. “You know...the one I hate and you love.”
Smart. The kid was trying to get them some extra tool time.
“Okay then... I’ll see you in a couple of hours.” Her attention shifted to Mason. “Listen and behave.” Then she hurried Belle out the door.
“You owe me, kid,” Brandon said.
Mason’s gaze turned wary. “For what?”
“For getting you out of going to dance with your sister.”
“Oh yeah. Thanks.” Mason scuffed his shoe on the floor. “Sisters suck.”
“Not always. Wait until she starts learning to cook. You’ll have more cookies and cakes from her experiments than you ever dreamed of, and most will be edible. Then when she’s a teenager she’ll bring home her friends. Pretty, datable girls, paraded right through your door. What’s not to like?”
Mason’s face turned red. “How do you know?”
“I have two sisters.” He checked his watch. “I’m ordering a pizza. You interested?” The magic word could make most males smile.
“Pizza! Heck, yeah.”
“Who delivers here?”
Mason shrugged. “We never get pizza delivered.”
He couldn’t have scripted a better answer. “Boot up your computer and let’s look it up.”
“Can’t you do it on your phone?”
He’d anticipated the question. “It’s easier to see a menu on a larger screen.”
“Why do you need a menu for pizza?”
“Because I want to order more than just pizza. Hang with me, kid. I’ll teach you a few things.”
Mason bought his excuse and quickly logged on. The boy executed a search without any instructions from Brandon. Then he pivoted the screen for Brandon to see. “These are our choices.”
Brandon pointed to a familiar name. “Your dad and I used to eat here. Food’s good. It’s not a chain. May I?”
At Mason’s nod, Brandon reached across him and used the touchpad to open the restaurant’s menu. “Large, all-meats okay with you?”
“Sounds great!” Mason said enthusiastically. “Whenever we get pizza we have to get plain cheese. That’s all Belle will eat. And it’s cheaper.”
Brandon hated the idea of Hannah having to watch every penny. He deliberately closed the window and straightened, then stopped, feigning a puzzled expression. “Wait. Did the phone number end in two six or six two?”
“Uh... I don’t know.”
Brandon clicked on the arrow that would bring up the search history. As he’d expected, it came up blank. “The URL’s not there.”
Mason’s fingers poised over the keys. “I can get the website back up.”
“Is your computer set to delete histories?”
Tension invaded the boy’s face and body. “Um...yeah.”
“How do you know how to do that?”
Mason hunched over the keyboard, ducking his chin. “I learned at school. I have to take a computer class every year, and they make us erase our histories so the next class can’t cheat and use our answers. So I do it at home. Out of habit. Because I do it every day at school. That’s all. Nothing else. Just habit.”
Plausible answer. But it didn’t explain Mason’s sudden wariness or why he’d used so many words and spoken so fast. Excessive explanations usually meant the subject had something to hide.
Mason found the page. Brandon dropped the subject. There was a time to press for more info and a time to ease up. If he didn’t want Mason on the defensive, this was the latter. He dialed the number and placed the order for pizza and the garlic knots Hannah used to love.
“Pizza won’t be here for forty minutes. Let’s see if we can get the gutter hung before the rain or the pizza arrive.”
Mason abandoned the computer easily and followed him outside. The lack of hesitation made Brandon question whether the computer was the root of the problem. No, there were too many clues implicating the device as a link.
The air was thick and heavy with a pending storm. They gathered the tools and set up in front of the garage. Brandon talked about anything but computers for half the job then asked, “You keep looking at the woods. Are you expecting company?”
Mason dropped his hammer. It clattered loudly down the aluminum rungs. “Ummm. No. I’m never here on Wednesday nights. Nobody would be looking for me.”
The kid sounded a little defensive. Brandon searched for a neutral subject. “Right. Ballet. Do your mom and Belle always dress alike?”
Mason’s face screwed up like he’d bitten into a lemon. “Yeah. Belle’s idea. She loves it. I think it’s stupid.”
“It’s kind of cute.”
Mason faked a vomiting sound.
“Could be worse, bud. They could make you wear the same color.”
“I’d shoot myself first.”
“You have any guns in the house?” Rick had owned several.
“No. Jeez. It’s just a sayin’.”
Brandon held the level and waited for the boy to retrieve the hammer and get back into position. “Do you have any friends in this neighborhood? I didn’t see bikes, toys or basketball goals in the other yards when I drove in.”
“Nah. Only old people live on our street.”
That shot down one theory. “What about behind you?”
Mason stiffened. “I don’t know.”
Looked like the friend he’d been going to study with wasn’t fictitious. “I just wondered if you have anyone to shoot hoops with.”
“Nah. Somebody left the net here one Christmas. Mom says it was Santa.” The sarcasm in his voice and the accompanying eye roll silently voiced his opinion about that.
“Not buying that, huh?”
“No.”
“You ever shoot?”
“Sometimes. I’m not very good.”
“Your dad and I used to play together.” Mason said nothing. Brandon let a few more minutes pass, then asked, “Do you like computers?”
“I guess.”
“Your dad was good with them—probably the best I’ve ever known.”
“Why do you keep talking about my dad?”
“Because he was my best friend for more than twenty years. More like a brother. He was a big part of my life. I miss him.”
“Well, I don’t even remember him, and he wasn’t a big part of mine. So stop it. Okay? Pizza’s here.” Mason scrambled down the ladder and headed for the delivery vehicle just entering the driveway, ending the discussion.
It pained Brandon to hear that Mason didn’t remember his father. Rick had been too great a guy to be forgotten—especially by his own son. Brandon resolved to find a way to rectify that situation. That meant he now had two assignments: figure out where Mason’s bad behavior originated, and help him remember his father.
* * *
“I WAS ABOUT to call you,” Lucy said when Hannah bustled Belle into the dance studio’s waiting area. “You’re never late.”
Hannah checked her watch. “Hi, Lucy. We’re not late, but we are cutting it close. Is Ella feeling better?”
“No. That stomach flu has knocked her out. She’s staying with my mom while Celia gets her groove on.”
Hannah glanced through the window overlooking the dance floor to Celia, Lucy’s youngest. She’d worn her dress-up tiara tonight. Belle would be begging for one on the way home.
“I hope you and Celia don’t come down with it.” Then she turned to Belle. “Hurry and put on your slippers, sweetie. The other girls are already lined up.”
Belle did as asked then dashed through the door and galloped across the room to the barre to greet her friend Celia. Hannah scooped up her daughter’s sandals and sank onto the bleachers provided for parents. Her pulse was racing, but only because she’d been rushing and because she was having second thoughts about leaving Brandon in charge at her house. It had nothing to do with the man himself. Nothing at all.
Lucy scanned the room. “Where’s Mason?”
“At home.”
Red eyebrows shot skyward. “Alone? Given what’s been going on, is that wise?”
Hannah took a long, calming breath. Aside from Brandon, Lucy was the only one who knew about Mason sneaking out. Her friend’s question was understandable. “I left him with a former colleague of Rick’s.”
“A cop?”
“Yes.”
“Then I guess Mason won’t get into anything.”
Hannah glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “Hope not.”
“So who is this colleague?”
“Brandon Martin.”
Lucy’s green eyes and mouth rounded. “It’s-his-fault, Brandon Martin?”
Hannah put a finger to her lips and nodded. She didn’t want her business shared.
“I thought you hated his guts,” Lucy whispered.
“Hate is a strong word.” But accurate. For years she’d channeled all of her anger from grief toward Brandon. “He’s Mason’s godfather. And I didn’t know who else to ask. He and Mason are fixing the sagging gutter over my garage door.”
“Ooh. He’s a handyman? Is he single?”
She shot Lucy a level look. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“If you’re determined to keep your fixer-upper, you have to admit, you could use a man around.”
“For repairs, yes. For anything else, no.”
“But—”
“Even if I didn’t hold him responsible for Rick’s death, the fact that he’s a cop makes him off-limits.”
“That’s only two strikes.”
The third was that Brandon made her feel things. Womanly things. She would never let herself fall in love again. Falling meant landing—hard—when it ended. And sex...well, for her, love and sex went hand in hand. “This isn’t baseball. Two strikes is enough.”
“Girl, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
Lucy was a single mom with an active social life. She fell in and out of love every few months and shared all the juicy details with Hannah. At first, the guy was Mr. Perfect and she’d extoll his virtues. Then she started to see his flaws and Hannah heard about those, too. She was convinced her friend was more in love with the idea of love than the practice of it. It seemed like she always wanted romance’s version of new car smell.
“I’m not missing anything. I love my kids. I love my job. I love my house. Life is good.”
“C’mon.” She leaned closer. “Don’t you miss sex?”
Embarrassed, Hannah again checked to see if any of the other parents were listening, but they were too engrossed in their cell phones to care.
“No.” Yes. But it wasn’t just the physical act she missed. It was all the rest: the companionship, the adult conversations, having someone who shared her hopes and dreams and understood her need to put down roots—deep roots. But no matter how great her relationship with Rick had been, nothing could fill the gaping hole his death had left behind. Her children had been too young to suffer much then. They weren’t now, and she would never put them through the loving and losing hell she’d endured. Which meant that bringing a man in—one who might leave—was out of the question.
“But—”
“Lucy, watch the girls.”
The peace lasted five minutes. “Maybe if you did something at church besides volunteer for nursery duty you’d meet a guy.”
“I know you find it hard to believe, but I’m not looking.”
“Men with babies have wives,” she continued as if Hannah hadn’t spoken. “If you’d teach the older kids’ class you could meet some single Christian dads who no longer have that wife attachment.”
“News flash. I don’t go to church to pick up men.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Girl, you are blind to so many opportunities. Just think who you’d meet if Mason played sports.”
“He doesn’t like sports.”
“Then sign him up for a scout troop or a science club.”
Hannah stuck her fingers in her ears. “La la la.”
“Scoff if you want, but I’m worried about you. You spend too much time alone.”
“I’m with people all day.”
“I meant in your downtime.” She paused briefly before her next question. “So, is Brandon attractive?”
Hannah’s ears burned. She shot her friend an end-of-my-patience glare that would have silenced her children.
“That blush answers my question, but FYI, I meant for me, not you. I’m in the relationship Sahara right now. Invite me over after dance tonight. Introduce us.”
“No!” Hannah spoke so loudly that the other mothers looked up from their gadgets. She didn’t know why she felt so strongly against the introduction. “He’s not your type. He doesn’t go dancing or hang out in bars.”
At least he hadn’t back when he and Rick had been friends.
“He’s a desk jockey?”
With that body? Not likely. “He’s a cop who worked with Rick, remember?”
“Then he’s my type. And who are we kidding? I’ll consider any man who is relatively intelligent, gainfully employed and in decent shape.”
The problem was, Lucy might do more than date Brandon. And then Hannah would have to hear about the physical side of their relationship in excruciating detail. No, thanks. She turned away from Lucy. “Oh look. They’re practicing pirouettes. Aren’t they adorable?”
She could feel Lucy watching her, but she didn’t turn or do anything else to encourage the conversation. This class couldn’t end soon enough. But once it did, she’d be going home to Brandon. To Mason, she hastily corrected. To Mason. Brandon was just a temporary affliction she must endure until she figured out what was going on with her son.
* * *
THE STORM THAT the day’s humidity had promised broke loose on the drive home. As if she wasn’t stressed enough about seeing Brandon again, Hannah had to fight through almost zero visibility and pounding water on the roads, grabbing and pulling her tires. She needed new wiper blades and tires. Pushing that worry aside, she pulled into the garage, heaved a sigh of relief and wiggled her fingers. They were cramped from having a death grip on the wheel.
Belle sprang from the car and sprinted into the house. Her daughter ran everywhere. Where did she find the energy? Hannah followed more slowly, pausing a moment to register the lack of water falling over the open door before she pushed the button to close it. She passed through the laundry room and dropped her purse on the kitchen counter.
The aroma of Italian food assailed her, making her wish she’d eaten more than a salad after dance class. She hustled to the den where Belle was chattering nonstop and demonstrating the new steps she’d learned tonight for Mason and Brandon. Both males reclined on the couch with an open, empty pizza box on the coffee table. Mason was wearing different clothes now and looked like he’d had a shower.
Brandon’s smiling gaze transferred from Belle to Hannah, and a surge of...something...shot through her. Relief that Mason looked relaxed and content instead of combative. That was all it was.
Brandon rose. “She’s quite a talented ballerina.”
“Yes,” was the only thing Hannah could squeeze out through her tight throat. Why did his smile and gentlemanly manners make it hard to breathe? Then she realized it was because his jeans were damp and clinging to his—Ahem.
“We saved some garlic knots for you. They’re keeping warm in the oven,” he said.
She looked at the box and recognized the familiar logo. Her stomach rumbled in anticipation and her mouth watered. “From Giuseppe’s? I haven’t eaten there in years.”
He turned to Mason. “Your mom was bloodthirsty. She used to threaten me with bodily harm if I ate the last garlic knot.”
The pressure in her chest increased. “That was a long time ago.”
He shrugged. “They’re as good as they used to be.”
Mason perked up. “Brandon said we had to save the rest for you. But if you don’t want ’em...” He started to rise.
“I do.”
“Dang.” Her son flopped back down, a picture of total dejection.
Brandon cut him a look. “How can you have room for more food?”
Mason grinned, looking so much like the sweet child she loved that it choked Hannah up all over again. “I’m a growing boy. And man, you worked me hard.”
Which reminded her... “I see my gutter is fixed and draining properly.”
“You should have been here, Mom. Right after we finished, a big bolt of lightning lit up the sky, then it thundered so loud it sounded like a bomb went off. The ladders rattled. We barely got the tools into Brandon’s truck before the bottom fell out. We got soaked!”
That explained the shower and clean clothes. Her son’s sullen attitude was gone. Brandon had managed a miracle. “Thank you for your work. Both of you.”
“I put the wet towels in the washer,” Brandon added. “Added to the stuff you already had in there, it was enough to run a load. So we did.”
“The machine’s pretty easy to work,” her son, who had never done a load of laundry in his life, volunteered. “Brandon showed me how. And he says I can help him with more stuff if you’ll give him a project list.”
It took a moment for her brain to recover from the shock of her son being eager to do chores. “Um... I’ll work on that.”
She didn’t want to be beholden to Brandon or have him hanging around her house or washing her clothes. Asking for help with Mason had been hard enough. And that was all she wanted from him. But how could she refuse when her son sounded so happy about being included? And then the guilt kicked in again. He needed a man’s influence. And she couldn’t give him that.
“Did you finish your homework?”
Mason’s crestfallen expression revealed his answer before he mumbled, “Most of it. All I have left is math.”
“Get to it.”
He slouched out of the room. Thunder shook the house, drowning out the sound of Mason’s heavy footsteps tromping up the stairs. The lights flickered.
Then because she couldn’t handle more of Brandon’s silent smiles she turned to her daughter. “Belle, you need to have your bath and get ready for bed. Go on up. I’ll be there right after I see out our guest.”
“But, Mom, can’t Occifer Brandon tuck me in?”
“No.”
“Sure,” he replied simultaneously.
Hannah shook her head. She needed him gone. “You don’t have to do that. I know you need to get ready for work tomorrow.”
“I can stick around until after you give Belle her bath. A few more minutes won’t kill me. It might even give the worst of the storm time to pass.”
Suddenly, she felt mean for wanting to throw him out into the deluge. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“I have a niece and nephew, twins who just turned four. I can handle reading a bedtime story.”
“Yippee!” Belle charged upstairs before Hannah could come up with an excuse.
The lights blinked again and Brandon frowned. “Do you have frequent outages?”
“Enough.”
“Where do you keep your flashlights? I’ll get them out in case you lose power while you give the ballerina a bath.”
“In the laundry room drawer, but I usually use the hurricane lamps on the mantel. Matches are with the flashlights. What did you find out from Mason?”
“Very little. Gathering info is a finesse job. It’ll take time, but I’ll get to the bottom of it. Do you know the families who live on the street behind you?”
“No. Why?”
“Mason kept checking the woods. I’ll see what I can get on your neighbors.”
“Why?”
“Just a hunch.”
“What kind of a hunch?”
“Nothing concrete.”
The lights went out before she could press for more. Belle cried, “Mommy!”
Brandon pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and hit the flashlight app. Hannah had left hers in her purse on the kitchen counter.
“Wait here. I’ll get you a light.” He left and returned a moment later with a box of matches. “Your flashlight batteries are dead. Do you have more?”
“Mason dropped the flashlight the night he tried to sneak out. I suspect it’s the bulb.”
After lighting the kerosene lamps, he handed her one. “Take care of Belle. You have city water and a gas water heater. She can still have her bath. I’ll check on Mason.”
Of course Brandon knew all the details about her house. He’d been a huge part of the purchase process. If not for him, she would never have been able to convince Rick to buy the old home she’d fallen in love with the moment she’d seen it. Brandon had been the one to shadow the inspector, and when Rick had been daunted by the amount of work the house needed, Brandon had pointed out that the previous owners had already done all the expensive renovations, leaving only cosmetic projects incomplete. He’d helped Rick make and prioritize the renovation list.
That Brandon had been such a huge part of their lives had made his failure to protect Rick even more difficult to comprehend.
They climbed the wide stairs side by side. Wind rattled the windows and whistled under the eaves. It was comforting to have someone else here to help with the weather this nasty. And that was crazy, because she’d handled every previous outage just fine by herself. She pushed that feeling aside, and on the landing, they went in opposite directions—her to her daughter, him to her son.
After giving Belle her bath and dressing her for bed, Hannah left the lamp on the table and headed for Mason’s room. Brandon had one hip parked on the corner of her son’s desk. Both he and Mason looked comfortable together. Even though she hadn’t made a sound Brandon looked up. “He has Rick’s head for numbers.”
“Yes. He does. Belle has picked out her book. She’s waiting for you. I’ll take over here.”
He rose and crossed the room. Their shoulders brushed as he passed, and static electricity zapped her, making her gasp. Brandon paused and their gazes met in the darkened room. The electricity between them had to be due to the storm. She hustled to Mason’s side and settled in to check homework, but her thoughts were anything but settled. She kept listening for sounds from Belle’s room.
Finally, Mason closed his book. “He’s pretty cool. Brandon, I mean. I can see why Dad would have wanted to be his friend. He knows stuff.”
She didn’t want her son comparing the men and have Rick come up short. “Yes. He does. But your daddy did, too. He was smart in a different way.”
“If you say so.”
“I’m going to leave the light with you. Be careful. It’s an open flame and fuel—”
“Moooom, I know!”
She returned to Belle’s room but paused outside the door to listen as Brandon read a much-loved tale using different voices for each character. Undetected, she observed the reflection of the man and child in the bed via the mirror hanging over Belle’s dresser.
Brandon was propped against the headboard, book in hand, looking as if he belonged there. His long legs, crossed at his ankles, were on top of the quilt revealing his sock-covered feet. Her daughter lay trustingly beside him with her folded hands beneath her cheek, eyes heavy lidded and close to sleep. A pang of yearning hit Hannah so hard it took her breath. Rick used to read in bed, and Hannah had often fallen asleep at his side.
How would it feel to be curled against Brandon’s side as trustingly as Belle? She shook her head. Thoughts like that were disloyal to Rick. Her husband had never known the simple joy of reading stories to his daughter. He’d been killed on the eve of Belle’s first birthday. Pain and regret rolled through her.
Then she realized Brandon had gone silent. She caught him watching her in the mirror and she couldn’t look away. Her pulse quickened. Why? Why did he have this effect on her?
He closed the book and eased from the bed. After gently covering Belle, he gathered his boots off the floor and the lamp from the table and joined her in the hall.
“She’s out, but she fought it,” he whispered. Lamplight and hushed voices engulfed them in intimacy.
His attention shifted behind her—to her bedroom. It lingered, scanned. Lightning flashed, illuminating her bed and the half-dozen throw pillows that hadn’t been there when he’d last slept in that same bed. Lord, she didn’t need to think about him between those same sheets.
Then his gaze swung back to her. The flickering light picked out the golden flecks in his irises. She felt vulnerable even though he couldn’t possibly know that her obsession with pillows was because she couldn’t bear to sleep in an empty bed.
He lifted his arm, the one holding the light. Her breath caught. An image of Brandon propped against her headboard flashed in her mind. Only in this picture his chest was bare and his legs were beneath the covers. Heat rushed through her.
The atmosphere changed, becoming as electrically charged as the storm raging outside. Her heart pounded harder, but it was barely audible over the thunder rumbling the house.
“After you,” he said.
What was wrong with her? He was indicating the stairs, not the bedroom. She blamed her unwelcome thoughts on her conversation with Lucy. She did not want Brandon. Not in that way. She had to get him out of her house. She turned and quickly descended the stairs. On silent feet he followed her, the edge of his circle of light nipping at her heels. In the foyer he set the lamp on the console table and stepped into his work boots.
“So you’ve read bedtime stories before,” she said to break the awkwardly intimate silence.
“I read to the twins sometimes when they stay with my folks to give Mom a break. And, once in a while, I get suckered into reading at the library on Cops and Kids day.”
She’d like to see that. No! She wouldn’t. “Why aren’t you married with children of your own by now, Brandon?”
He finished tying his laces then straightened, looming over her in the murky light. The corners of his mouth curved downward. “Two reasons. My job—you, more than anyone, know the risks that entails—and my dad.”
Yes, she knew the dangers of police work. And she needed to remember them. Right now. “What does your father have to do with anything?”
“He has Parkinson’s disease. It’s not believed to be hereditary, but the doctors can’t be certain of the cause. One day he’ll need ’round the clock care for his most basic needs. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
She was familiar with the disease and had worked with several afflicted patients in the past. “What stage is he in now?”
“Stage two. He’s still mostly independent, but he’s starting to need help. Not that he’s willing to admit that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is. You play the hand you’re dealt. You’ve done a good job of that, Hannah. Mason and Belle are great kids.”
The praise, something she heard so rarely, choked her up, made her eyes burn. But she would not cry in front of Brandon. “I wish Rick was here to see them.”
Brandon’s flinch stabbed her with guilt. She hadn’t intentionally used the spiteful barb to push him away, but distance between them was for the best. When she’d seen him so comfortable with Mason and then again with Belle he’d made her ache for something she would never have again. A partner, someone with whom she could share the joys and burdens of parenthood.
That wind-down period at the end of the day when you rehashed what had happened and planned for the future was tough. That was when loneliness enveloped her. And, yes, as much as she’d tried to deny it, she did miss intimacy. But taking a lover as casually as Lucy did just wasn’t part of her makeup.
Brandon’s lips compressed. “Make your project list, Hannah. I’ll be back. And we’ll get to the bottom of what’s troubling Mason.”
