One From The Heart by Richards Cinda & Reavis Cheryl

Author:Richards, Cinda & Reavis, Cheryl [Richards, Cinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-09-20T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

“DON’T CRY.”

“I’m not crying!”

“Yeah, well, what the hell do you call it?”

“What I call it is none of your business!”

“Come here—come here!”

She kept trying to bat his hands away to keep him from touching her, but he caught both her hands in his.

“Hannah, you are going to drive me crazy, you know that!”

She looked up at him. He had such a frown.

Ernie, she thought. She didn’t want him to frown; he’d had enough worry with Browne women. She gave in to a sudden, insane impulse to wrap her arms around him, to take the comfort he wanted to give her, if only for a second. She needed him, and at that moment, she didn’t care if he knew it. She hugged him tightly, her eyes closed, the tears squeezing out the corners and spilling down her cheeks. But she couldn’t be this close to him, either. She stiffened and tried to move away from him, but he wouldn’t let her go, keeping her close and making her put her head on his shoulder, holding her for what seemed a wonderfully long time.

“Hannah, I’m sorry,” he whispered against her ear. “I didn’t mean to do that to you. I didn’t mean to make you tell me like that. A house has got to fall on me sometimes. I thought you were just being hardheaded—like Libby.”

“It doesn’t matter.” God, I’m as bad as Petey.

“Yeah, it does matter. Can I ask you a question?” he said, trying to see her face.

But she was more comfortable hiding from him. “No,” she said, her voice muffled in his shirt. “Yes,” she amended tiredly. She was behaving like an idiot; she could spare him a question.

“Why do you think Jake’s not your father? People talk, Hannah. If it’s true, I never heard anything about it. And Mim—she’d know if anybody would—she’s never said that.”

Hannah sighed and moved out of his arms, wiping at her eyes with her fingertips. “I don’t know what else it could be. How else could he live with that you-take-this-kid-and-ril-take-that-one divorce he and my mother had? He never tried to see me. He never wrote to me. He never in my life sent me a birthday or a Christmas present. He never even sent me a card. When I was little, I used to tell people he was dead so that I wouldn’t have to explain it.”

“You said you moved around a lot. Maybe he didn’t know where you were.”

She smiled at his attempt to make her feel better. “He’s a man with a lot of money, Ernie. And from what I know about Jake Browne, he would have found me if he’d wanted to.”

He reached out to put his arms around her again, and she let him do it, let him hug her tightly the way he wanted to.

“Hannah, Hannah, I hate to see you so sad.”

“I’m all right. Honestly. I don’t dwell on it. I can’t do anything about the past. I guess it’s just—seeing Petey. It makes me remember, you know? I had my mother, at least.

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