Hannah’s arms were full of baby before she had time to answer. She adjusted in her seat, arranged the blanket, and reverently touched a finger to the baby’s downy head. After a few minutes of reverent staring, she looked at Stephen with a smile so bright, her expression so radiant, so full of love, that for just a second it felt…good. And then his heart imploded.
Yeah, he’d wanted her, but not like this. He didn’t ever want a woman like this.
It was wrong. All of it. Being here. Hannah holding the baby. And it was too much. This entire night was suddenly too fucking much.
“Excuse me.” He shoved back in his chair as memories gained a chokehold around his throat. The iron legs scraped across the wooden deck, and he made a swift exit to the kitchen. He’d spent too many family gatherings imagining his wife beside him. Imagining his own babies being passed around the table, his own children adding to the mayhem.
But that had all died a violent, bloody death. And so had he.
With his hands braced on the edge of the sink, he sucked in air through his nose, trying not to be sick. His fist tightened on the bottle in his hand. His muscles tensed, thinking how good it would feel to heave it across the room, hear the glass shatter. Hear something outwardly break, like he’d been broken.
He’d spent the first two years in a bottle and he’d still felt lost. The next two years screwing a multitude of women. And he’d still been alone.
Then he’d turned to work, where he managed, commanded. It had brought him wealth and power, but it hadn’t brought her back. It only filled the holes, or if not filled, at least covered them.
The muscles in his arms trembled at the need to throw something bigger. Hit something. Hurt someone. This is why he avoided his family. Why he avoided anything and anyone that made him feel too much.
He pushed the bottle aside and looked down at his hands, white-knuckled, blue veins thickening to the surface. The hands of a man who wanted to draw blood and cause pain. Hands he knew could kill. Inviting Hannah here had been a mistake. Coming here at all felt like a royal mistake, even more so when he heard swift footsteps entering the kitchen behind him.
“I like her,” Lizzy said, coming further into the room.
He squeezed his eyes shut and forced out a long, heavy breath. He did not want to blow up at his niece’s party. He’d had a bad moment, but he was pulling it together, pulling himself back together. He might not entirely like the man he was now, but he could live with it. He could function instead of being the broken-down mess he’d been for so long.
Lizzy opened the dishwasher and started loading it like it was her own house. “She’s nice.”
“Yeah.” Too nice.
“Looks like a keeper,” Lizzy said, rinsing a glass.
“Maybe for someone.”
“Really?” She stopped what she was doing and faced him. “So you’re not trying to keep her?”
“Hell, no.” Stephen turned to stare at her, appalled she would even think that, that anyone would think that. He’d wanted a date, a diversion. Not a— “I was just being nice, for God’s sake. Does she look like the kind of woman I’d want to spend time with? Jesus, Lizzy.”
Movement across the room caught his eye and too-sweet Hannah stood there, looking at him like he’d just slapped her across the face. Her wide eyes swung from his to Lizzy’s and back again. “I um…I was just…” Her entire being seemed to collapse like wet cotton candy.
Fuck. “Hannah—”
“I have to go.” Even as she spoke she was turning, her hair flying out around her shoulders.
Stephen wiped his hands over his face, throwing out every curse at himself he could think of. He caught up with Hannah a half second after she reached her brother, still deep in conversation with Matt.
“I’m ready to go.”
Conversation between the men ceased, her brother’s attention swinging to her. “Okay.”
Luke rose and shook Matt’s hand while Stephen stood to the side like an unnecessary extra.
Matt held out his hand to Hannah. “Glad you came. And thank you for Gracie’s gift. She’ll no doubt be dreaming of horses.”
“She’s welcome anytime.”
Matt gave Stephen a curious look, as he was standing so far away from his date. Yeah, he should be right beside her, trying his damnedest to get another one.
Not going to happen.
Stephen followed the three of them to the door, an awkward few steps behind, saw Luke take her elbow, and caught his low, “What’s up?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
She was lying. Stephen could see that, figured her brother could too. Her smile faked and forced, not at all like the one he’d worked for last night at dinner or the one she’d given freely just an hour ago.
But he didn’t want to have to work to make her smile, or worry when she wasn’t. Didn’t want to be with someone who mattered. So he stepped up, opened the front door, and stuck out his hand to Luke. “Thanks for coming.”
Luke squeezed. The look in his eyes said he hadn’t believed his sister’s nothing answer. Stephen squeezed back, meeting the man’s strength, each sending his own message.
And Hannah walked out of the house without a word or a backward glance, clearly sending hers.
Chapter 7
Hannah stabbed at the soiled hay and hefted another load of manure into the wheelbarrow. She didn’t mind the work, it was the memory of her weekend she was trying to scoop out. Frustrated, embarrassed, and the more she fought it, the louder the replay.