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“I got a text from Dr. Warner while I was feeding Evan,” Hanna told him, setting the baby monitor on the counter so she could keep an eye on Evan. “He has my mother back at the rehab facility. He said he’d given her a mild sedative because she was still upset.”
Jesse turned, looked at her. “Areyoustill upset?”
There was no reason to hold back the truth on this. “Yes, and you should be as well.”
Her mother’s words just wouldn’t stop repeating in her head.Am I responsible for nearly getting Hanna and Evan killed?It was definitely a question that needed answering.
“It was a good guess on your part that your mother would try to keep you away from me by threatening my family,” Jesse remarked. “It was a guess, right?”
Hanna nodded, got a glass of water and leaned against the counter to face him. “But I don’t remember if what my mom said had any impact on my decision not to accept your marriage proposal. Or to end things with you.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and seemed to have a debate with himself as to what to say. “You told me there was no relationship to end, that it was only a one-night deal between us.”
She winced, hoping it hadn’t been as hurtful as it sounded. But according to what Jesse had told her, it had indeed been just one night. One that’d left her pregnant. She’d never come out and asked Jesse why that had happened, but in one of their brief conversations after the shooting, she had brought up the pregnancy, and he’d mentioned that he had used a condom. So, they’d practiced safe sex. For all the good it’d done.
Except there was plenty of good when she considered she now had her son.
That was playing into this messy situation, too. Jesse was Evan’s father. Always would be. And she didn’t have to actually remember being with him to know what had drawn her to him. Then and now. The attraction, yes. But more. She knew in her gut that Jesse was a good man. One who her mother had tried to give a raw deal because of the bitterness she felt toward his family.
“You said you told your mother about a week ago that you were getting back bits and pieces of your memory.” Jesse threw it out there.
“A lie,” Hanna readily admitted. “I thought it would make her stop worrying. Or at least worry less about me. I didn’t want her to lose hope that I’d make a full recovery, so I told her I was remembering some things.”
In hindsight, that hadn’t worked. Maybe nothing would. But that hadn’t stopped her from trying to soothe Isabel and perhaps dole out some hope to herself, as well, that she wouldn’t permanently stay in the dark when it came to all those missing years and memories of her life.
“A couple of days ago, I was going through all my old emails and texts, just to see if there was anything that would jog my memory,” she told Jesse. “Did you or Grayson take a look at those?”
He shook his head. “You were a victim and not target-specific. At least, that’s what we believed.” His face tightened. “Were we wrong about that?”
“No,” she tried to assure him. “I didn’t find threats or anything like that. Definitely nothing from Bull, Marlene, Arnie, or anyone else with obvious connections to the militia or the attack.” She paused. Had to. “I found some texts, though, from Darrin Madison.”
Even though Darrin didn’t live in Silver Creek, Jesse no doubt knew that was the name of her ex-fiancé. She was also betting the town’s rumor mill had been plenty busy with gossip about their breakup. Darrin was an investment mogul who had the added bonus of being a Texas heartthrob.
Among other things.
She had ended their engagement a little less than two years ago and, five months later, she’d landed in bed with Jesse. Maybe for rebound sex. Perhaps because the attraction had simply been that strong between them. But even without her memories, those texts had given her some insight.
“He hit me,” she heard herself say.
Jesse jerked back as if someone had punched him. He cursed under his breath, shook his head and then cursed some more. “I’m sorry. I hope he paid and paid hard for that.”
Hanna couldn’t be sure, but she doubted that he had. “I broke up with him, but he wasn’t arrested because I didn’t report it,” she admitted. “I can read through the lines of the flurry of texts from him and my mother. Darrin went into the groveling ‘but you caused me to do it’ mode. He insisted I made him snap when I accused him of having an affair with his assistant. He was having an affair, by the way. He finally admitted that in one of the texts.”
“And what the hell did Isabel say about it?” Jesse snapped.
Hanna managed a dry smile. “She thought I should forgive him and get counseling so I didn’t trigger Darrin into another impulsive gesture.Impulsive gesture,” she emphasized. “Those are the words Isabel used.” She shook her head. “I’m betting there were a lot of phone calls and visits to try to pressure me into getting back with him.”
“Did he pressure you too?” Jesse asked, the anger still biting in his voice.
“It seems that he did. According to the texts, he sent flowers, asked me to go on a romantic getaway so we could work things out, etcetera. I turned down all his offers, and then I stopped responding. He eventually stopped, too, and moved on. Isabel mentioned he recently got engaged again.”
He studied her face, maybe looking for any signs that bothered her. It didn’t. “I dodged a bullet with him.” Then, she wanted to kick herself for phrasing it that way. “Sorry. Not an especially good reference, considering I didn’t dodge the one Arnie fired. Or maybe it was Bull who pulled the trigger.”
Her voice cracked a little on those last words and, for a second, she was right back in the hospital. In pain, terrified and with the panic swelling inside her because she couldn’t remember what the heck had happened.
That crack in her voice and her troubled expression was probably why Jesse slid his hand over hers. For just a moment. Then he pulled back, which was normally something she would do. For just this one time, though, she wished he’d kept the contact there a little longer.
It was wrong to take comfort from him. Wrong to give him any kind of hope that she’d ever consider the marriage proposal he had told her would always be on the table.
