Present Day
Hannah Michaels Crestfall
SCARLETT WAS A lot like her father.
Confident.
Adorable.
And to the point.
The four of us had just gotten back from an early dinner, tacos again, but this time we went to a new restaurant on the river. Scarlett had insisted on the tacos. I think they were her new favorite.
We had just gotten in the house when her and Jonah started walking up the stairs to go play. They were whispering about something. When they reached the landing, she turned around.
“Daddy?” she called.
Jace glanced up from the paint can he was prying open. “Yeah, princess?”
In her jeans, Bulls t-shirt, and ballerina skirt pulled up around her waist and over her pants, her presence was like a welcome breath of fresh air. She always made you smile.
“I was thinking,” she said, tapping her finger to the side of her head, making those curls of hers bounce even as she stood still.
Setting the lid on the drop cloth, Jace kept his gaze focused on her. “About whaatttt?” he asked, drawing the word out.
Clearly he knew something was up.
Sitting on the step, she patted the place next to her for Jonah to join her. He did. “You know how I’m always asking you for a brother or sister?”
“Yeah,” Jace replied, apprehension clear in his tone.
Putting her arm around Jonah, she said, “Why don’t you apopt Jonah, and make him my brother?”
Jace’s eyes practically bugged out of his head. “Scarlett, it’s adopt. And it doesn’t work that way.”
She pursed her lips. “Adopt, that’s what I said. And why can’t it? He doesn’t have a daddy, and you could be his.”
“Yeah,” Jonah piped in. “And since Scarlett doesn’t have a mommy, my mommy could be hers.”
Her head jerked in his direction. “I do so have a mommy. She’s in heaven and she loves me very much.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. And I do have a daddy, but mine doesn’t love me.”
“Jonah,” I said from the bottom of the stairs, my voice as strangled as his words made me feel. “That is not true.”
“Yes, it is,” Jonah said, getting to his feet and storming down the hall.
There was no doubt the conversation had taken me by surprise, and just as I placed a foot on the first step, Jace put his hand on my shoulder. “Let me talk to him.”
“No, I should.”
“Please,” he said, “I spent most of my life without a father in it. I know what to say.”
Near the brink of tears, I nodded. “Thank you.”
As he headed up the stairs, Scarlett headed down. They passed in the middle, and he bent to whisper something into her ear.
She got a little teary, but then shook her head.
Holding the banister, she came the rest of the way down the stairs. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking at me with those big green eyes that made my heart swell. “I didn’t mean to make Jonah sad. Please don’t be mad.”
I bent down so I was at her height. “I know you didn’t.” I tapped her nose. “And I’m not mad. How could I ever be mad at you?”
She was truly upset. I could see it in the small set of her face. She might look like her mother, but she had her father’s personality. “That’s what my daddy says, too, but I know sometimes I make him mad.”
The overalls I was in the process of putting on pulled too tightly, and I had to rise to my feet. “Here’s the thing, Scarlett,” I said, “there are times that we are going to make each other mad, but as long as we learn from our mistakes and forgive, it’s okay. That’s what love is.”
Scarlett had to tip her face to look up to me. “Hannah, I love you,” she told me matter-of-factly.
Those tears that had been welling in my eyes fell, and I quickly wiped them away.
For a little girl, Scarlett had a tight hold as she wrapped her arms around my legs and held onto me. I didn’t care about the overalls any longer and crouched back down. “I love you, too,” I whispered.
“You won’t ever leave me, will you?”
That I didn’t know how to answer. “Not if I can help it,” I smiled at her.
“My mommy left me because she couldn’t help it.” Her eyes were sad.
I held her tighter to me. “And I know she must have loved you very much.”
“She did, my daddy tells me that all the time.”
“What do I tell you?” Jace asked as he started down the stairs with Jonah on his shoulders.
Scarlett beamed when she looked up at him and Jonah. “Girl talk, Daddy. Are you all better, Jonah?”
Jonah nodded his head.
I blew him a kiss. “Do you want to talk to me about anything?”
He pretended to catch my kiss. “I’m good, Mommy,” he said, and then he looked down at Scarlett. “I’m ready to play trucks.”
“Trucks!” she said in disgust. “I’m a girl. I don’t play trucks.”
Jace lifted him off his shoulders and set him on the ground. “But you play football.”
“Yes, that’s different. That’s a sport. We can play Chutes and Ladders.”
Jonah twisted his mouth to the side. “I don’t really like that game.”
She started up the stairs. “But you’ll play it, right?”
Jonah started back up too. “I guess so.”
And just like that all was well in their world.
Jace stepped toward me, and I took in his handsome face. My heart started to pound. His mission was to grab hold of the strap of my overalls and bring it to my shoulder. “She’s a little outspoken,” he said. “I have to work on that.”
For some reason a flutter of butterflies awoke in my belly. “I don’t think so. I think she’s a girl who knows what she wants, and when she grows up, it will make her a strong and confident woman.”
Jace quirked a brow and paused what he was doing to look into my eyes. “You sold me.”
I raised a brow back. “It’s the truth,” I said, and then after a few seconds, I asked, “What did you say to Jonah?”
He stepped closer still, and I knew he could see the pulse beating erratically at the base of my throat as he battled with the clasp I had been unable to secure. “That he had a mother who loved him more than anything, and sometimes that was enough.”
The panic I had felt drained out of me.
“And some other things.”
“Like what?”
“Boy stuff.”
At that I smiled.
Successfully fastening the strap, he took a step back. “Whoa. Hot mamma.”
Twirling around, I pirouetted and then said, “You think?”
His grin was wicked. “I do.”
I giggled and pulled an elastic from my overalls pocket to fasten my hair up. “Great, I’ll buy one in every color and wear them to work.”
“That might be pushing it,” he said, as he started to pour the can of paint into the roller pan.
I watched him as he soaked the roller in the paint before deciding I should probably do what he was doing.
He glanced up. “Nice color, what do you call it?”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “It’s called China Doll. Don’t you like it?”
Jace lifted his gaze once again as he moved the roller up and down the pan. “What’s not to like? It’s white.”
“It’s not white,” I muttered under my breath.
“Yes, it is,” he snickered back, almost enjoying the fact he had a point, or perhaps maybe enjoying the banter that was back between us.
With a huge smile on my face, I was about to take the can from beside him when he took hold of my wrist. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Pain . . . ting.” I drew out the word.
“I’ll do the rolling. You can tape off the windows and doors, and move the drop cloths around.”
With my hands on my hips, I glared at him. “Wait. What? I don’t get to paint my own house?”
He pulled his ball cap off his head and turned it backward as if his proclamation was the written word.
I remembered then where exactly Scarlett got her disposition, and I was staring right at him. “Then I bought these overalls for nothing,” I sighed.
Jace shrugged, “Not for nothing. I told you, they’re hot.”
A girl had to appreciate the compliment because they were anything but hot.
He tipped his head back to stare up, up, up to the top of the ten-foot windows, then he rubbed his hands together. “Let’s do that wall first,” he pointed.
“Okay,” I said and decided music was a must. Putting on an old CD, I let Good Charlotte fill the room.
The smirk on Jace’s face was evident. “Good choice.”
We worked for a while in casual silence, and despite the cooler temperatures outside, the room grew hot. After I finished taping around the bottom half of the window, I turned to ask Jace if he wanted something cold to drink, and stopped before even opening my mouth.
He’d lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe his face. His stomach was tight, taut, and the way his hipbones jutted out over his low-slung jeans was perfection.
I think I might have licked my lips because he made a noise from deep in his throat when he caught me staring.
The first time I’d ever seen him, he’d taken my breath away, and that was before I knew him. That feeling had never changed. In fact, it was only intensified now. I had to remember he was definitely trouble. Ogling a man who wanted me for sex was dangerous. Very dangerous. I was going to get burned if I didn’t watch myself.
And still, I allowed myself to swim in his gaze for a few seconds more before I looked away. “I’m going to grab us some waters,” I said, and hurried out of the room. Flustered. Hot. And bothered.
The next two hours passed with conversation and music. He’d finished two of the four walls, and while he was busy working on the third, I had given the kids a snack and set them up with coloring books at the kitchen table. I was on cleanup duty now, and removing the tape from the already painted walls. Eventually, Jace and my paths merged once again.
This time his eyes flashed in the glow from the streetlights outside. “How about we take a break?”
I faltered at the question, unsure what he had in mind. That was quickly answered when he strode into the kitchen and came back with two beers. He slid down the unpainted wall under the stairs, and I did the same.
White paint had speckled his face and the top of his ball cap and my fingers itched to wipe it away, but I knew better. Touching him would only intensify the yearning I was feeling toward him.
“Why isn’t Jonah’s father a part of his life?” Jace asked, sliding his gaze toward me.
The question was casual enough, but the answer was complicated. The kids were talking about the pictures they were coloring in the other room and I knew they couldn’t hear me. “Let’s just say he’s not a good man.”
Everything about Jace still seduced me, and when he tipped his head back to sip from his bottle, I felt like I was transported back to the past. The familiarity of it was almost too much. I was so caught up in him that I almost didn’t hear him. “I know about what he did to you. Why didn’t you put him in jail?”
My eyes narrowed the tiniest amount, followed by the smallest tightening of my mouth. “How could you possibly know about that?”
He said nothing.
“Did you have someone investigate me?” I snapped.
His sigh turned harsh. Resigned. “You’re pissed off.”
I turned away from him. “No, I just wish you would have asked me, if you wanted to know about my past. I would have told you.”
“I’m asking you now.” From my peripheral view, I saw him take another pull from his bottle.
Setting mine aside, I shifted my gaze back toward him. “I already told you that Adam and I weren’t in love. We screwed one night after work, and when I found out I was pregnant, he wanted me to get an abortion. When I refused, he only married me because his parents threatened to cut him off. I married him because I wanted my baby to have a father. It was pretty warped on both our parts. You know, the idea that we could make things work?”
He frowned, edging closer. “Not really, Hannah. I can understand wanting your child to grow with both a father and a mother, especially when you didn’t.”
The beat of my heart felt unsteady. “That was overly optimistic considering I knew the kind of man I was marrying. And even if I hadn’t, as soon as we moved in together, I should have figured it out. He was drinking a lot and almost never around. I was really unhappy, we both were.”
Jace drew in a breath as he set his bottle down.
Tentatively I asked, “What kind of life would that have been for a child, anyway?”
He stared sadly over at the wall we’d just finished panting and mumbled, “I don’t know.”
It was taking all my strength to tell him the rest. “Well, it didn’t matter. We were never going to last. I should have just left.”
“Why didn’t you?” His voice was low.
I fought back tears. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t know.”
“What happened?” he asked, prompting me to go on.
The breath I drew in was ragged and I quickly exhaled it. “One night he came home really drunk and wanted to have sex. When I refused, he got violent and forced me to the bed, telling me I wasn’t fulfilling my wifely duties. Somehow I managed to shove him off me, and he fell to the ground, hitting his head. After he got to his feet, he flew into a violent rage. All I can remember is running down the hallway and him catching me. Then pain exploded through my body as I tumbled down the stairs. I tried to protect my baby. I did, but when I landed, it felt like I couldn’t move. Even to Adam, I must have looked pretty bad because he yanked me by the hair to a chair and handed me the phone as he dialed 911. He left before anyone arrived.”
Jace let his head fall back and he closed his eyes. His voice lacked that hard edge when he spoke, but there was an edge of steel in his tone. “If I ever see him, I’m going to fucking kill him.”
I closed my own eyes and exhaled in a long, weary sigh. “To me he’s already dead.”
“But he’s not. Why didn’t you put him in jail?”
I opened my eyes and saw his looking at me. “I made a deal with the devil. In exchange for me not pressing charges,” I said. “Adam had to leave town, and agree to a divorce without contest. I didn’t want a dime of his money. I just wanted to be free of him. But most of all, I didn’t want him to play any part in Jonah’s life. He wasn’t a good man. You know?”
“Yeah, I do.”
I glanced away. “So I made him sign away his parental rights to his son.”
“And that’s why you moved here, because he came back?”
I still didn’t look at Jace. “Yes. Adam came back this past summer. When he did, he tried to convince me he was different, that he had changed. But I didn’t believe him. Once I made it clear I wasn’t going to allow him to see Jonah, he threatened a lawsuit. I didn’t care what he threatened; he was not going near my child. It only took a couple of conversations for him to show his true colors. The last time I saw him, he got so angry that he struck me, and I ended up on the floor of my office. I’d only sprained my ankle, and my jaw was mildly bruised, but he scared me enough that I called the police and filed a restraining order. The next day I started looking for a new job. I knew I had to get far away from him or he might kill me.”
“Motherfucker,” Jace muttered, as he balled his hands into fists.
When I glanced up, I could see his eyes were shadowed with pity. At the sight of it, I shook off my hurt and gave him a fake smile. Pity wasn’t anything I ever needed or wanted. “And Jonah and I are much happier here than we were in Grand Haven. So it all worked out for the best.”
He reached for my hand. “Hannah, I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
That part of my life was over, and now that I’d finally gotten out of Grand Haven, I didn’t want to look back. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Yes, there is something else we should talk about,” he said firmly.
Jace’s voice was absolute, and I knew what he wanted to talk about was us. I didn’t want to. I was already too wrung out. So I shook my head and started to get to my feet.
He didn’t let me escape. He took my hand, and the current that flowed between us was electric. I knew he felt it. I could tell. He didn’t let go though as he had the last time. Instead, he turned my hand over and traced the lines on my palm until I shivered.
Only then did I look at him. “What is it?”
“The night you came to my house.”
“And you fucked me,” I said bluntly.
His eyes closed. “Yes. That night I told you I hadn’t been with anyone in a long time.”
“I remember, and I told you the same.”
“What I meant by that was I hadn’t had sex with anyone since my wife died.”
It felt like a confession, and I was so tired by then I just blurted out, “And I hadn’t been with anyone since my husband.”
His entire body started to vibrate, and then without a word, he got to his feet and started toward the kitchen.
Feeling exhausted, I stood and wiped my sweaty hands on the legs of my overalls. I thought it was too much for Jace, and that he was going to get Scarlett and go home. I knew we shouldn’t have talked about this. But then he whipped around and strode back in my direction. His features where etched in sorrow, and he yanked me roughly to him. And then he crushed his mouth down over mine. I made a noise of surprise, and although I needed this kiss like I needed air, I pushed him away. “We shouldn’t,” I whispered.
Very gently, he pulled me back to him. “Yes, we should.”
I shook my head. “Friends, remember?”
He was shaking his head by then too, and I knew I was going to give in to him.
Little hands clapping had us both turning in shock. “Finally, this date can be over, I’m so tired!” Scarlett exclaimed.
Seriously, I had to laugh. She was just too cute. Having no idea what she meant, I looked at Jace in question.
“Long story, I’ll tell you later,” he mumbled.
As was the norm with Jace, later never did come, but Jonah filled me in on Scarlett’s definition of a date. She really was too much. Just like her father. And like her father, I really did love her.
I didn’t see Jace again until Monday morning at work, where we resumed our business relationship without falter.
The personal one though . . . it was back on shaky ground.