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Deceived by his daughter’s aunt who might or might not be trying to take his child away. Check.
And the worst of all…
Spending all his free time thinking about a woman who was out to con him. Check.
This was why he steered clear of relationships altogether. People fucked each other over if given an inch of leeway.
Well, screw it all. He had his siblings, he had Mickie, and he had Kayla.
He didn’t need anyone else.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HANNAH COULDN’T BRING herself to leave Vermont.
Four days, an embarrassing amount of ice cream, a shameful number of wine bottles, and countless hours spent staring, unseeing, at the TV screen, and she still hadn’t left her rental house.
Why? Who the hell knew? After four days of no contact from JP or any of the Bensons, Mickie included, she should have gotten the message. They didn’t want anything to do with her.
Big surprise there. What had she expected? Open acceptance and understanding of her lies and all the ways her family had wronged his? She sure as hell wouldn’t have opened her arms to someone who’d caused so much turmoil to her family.
“Ugh,” she said aloud to the textured white ceiling. “It’s time to go home.” The thought of it had her stomach roiling. Not only had she been deep in pity-party mode since her confession to JP, but she’d also dodged every call from her parents. And there had been multiple attempts to contact her. Voicemails, texts, missed FaceTime calls. They’d have made everything that happened about them, and she just hadn’t been able to deal with them on top of everything else.
With a groan, she sat up and ran a hand through the rat’s nest that had formed on top of her head. Shit, when had she last taken a shower?
Time to stop feeling sorry for herself. This was exactly what she’d known would happen and what she deserved. She knew JP would ban her from Kayla’s life once he’d found out the truth. The man was a good father who protected his family from scheming liars.
There was one consequence she hadn’t expected, though. How deep she was mourning the loss of JP in her life along with Kayla. Heck, all the Bensons had become important to her in a short period, but JP was special. He’d gotten under her skin in a way no man had before. He’d also been close to getting under her clothes in a way no man had before him, but she refused to let herself dwell on that.
Too depressing.
And frustrating.
Along with the ice cream and wine, she’d spent a startling amount of time with her vibrator recently. Hence the refusal to think about JP shirtless. Or JP touching her. Or JP kissing her.
It was a new resolution. One she was failing at because now she was all hot and bothered again.
“You’re pathetic,” she mumbled. “Put on your big girl panties and move on with your life.”
She grabbed her phone and rang her parents’ house before she could talk herself out of it again. As far as she knew, they were the only people alive who still had a landline in their house.
“Hannah? Oh, my God, you’re alive!” Her mother’s frantic voice filled her ear.
Hannah rolled her eyes as an image of her mom standing in her kitchen clutching the phone to her ear popped into her mind. “Hey, Mom. Yes, I am just fine.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you called. Your father is the only reason I haven’t called the police to file a missing person report.”
The drama!
“For God’s sake, Mom.” Thankfully, her father had a modicum of sense. “I texted twice and told you I’d be out of touch for a few days.” Not that her texts had stopped her mother from calling at least ten times over the past four days.
“Yes, honey, but how did I know it was really you texting? You could have been kidnapped and forced to type that.”
Because that often happened to twenty-five-year-old women in rural Vermont. Same worries, different day. Hannah endured these inflated fears from her mom her entire life. Every time she missed a phone call, she was presumed kidnapped by her mother. Didn’t matter if she was in the middle of a final exam, at a doctor’s appointment, or on a date. It was exhausting. “I’m fine, Mom. Just had a rough couple of days.”
“Those Bensons, right? I knew it. You can tell me, honey. We’ll figure it out together. We’ll work out a way to get Kayla home to us where she belongs.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Hannah squeezed her eyes shut. “Mom, is Dad around?” He needed to be on the line as well to keep her mother from going off the deep end when she caught them up to date on what had happened between her and JP.
