by Lili Valente
She shot him a stern look. “No. You’ll make your shoulder worse. I can tell you’re in pain. I’ll go call the doctor and ask if you can take something for it after breakfast.”
“I’d rather have you for breakfast.” He grudgingly took the tissues she offered, capturing her fingers and holding tight when she tried to pull away. “I could arrange to lie very still while you sat on my face.”
Hannah rolled her eyes, a blush creeping up her neck. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m not impossible,” he said, running a suggestive finger down the center of her palm. “You’re irresistible.”
“So it’s my fault, is it?” she asked, letting him draw her closer to the bed.
Jackson nodded. “All your fault. Now get back into this bed and let me finish what we started.”
Hannah leaned toward him. For a moment, Jackson was certain he was going to have his way, but then another voice sounded from outside the door. This time, it was a man’s voice, and there was little doubt in Jackson’s mind who it belonged to.
“Hannah, I need to see you. It’s urgent,” Stewart Mason said, sounding much more self-assured than when he had been begging for more time to say goodbye to his daughters. “There’s a letter here for you. I think we should open it together.”
Hannah sighed, the happy light in her eyes flickering out as she called over her shoulder, “I’m coming. Just let me get Jackson settled with his breakfast tray.”
“I’ll meet you in the study.” A moment later, Stewart’s footsteps retreated down the hall.
“And a good morning to you too, sir.” Jackson’s lips curved in a rueful smile. “He seems excited to hear that I’m awake.”
Hannah grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jackson said. “None of this is your fault.”
“I know, but I wish things were different. I kept hoping…” Hannah trailed off with a shrug. “I don’t know. I guess all the time apart tricked me into thinking my parents were better people than they really are.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Absence makes the heart grow stupid,” she said, tossing the tissues into a small trashcan near the bedside table.
“You’re not stupid,” he said in a firmer tone. “I don’t want to hear you talk about yourself that way.”
Hannah looked up, a smile curving her lips. “Yes, sir.”
“Go see what he wants,” Jackson said gruffly, shocked to find himself stirring again, simply from hearing those two words tumble from her lips. “And then bring me a secure phone so I can start plotting our path to freedom.”
“Yes, sir,” she said again, with a little salute.
Jackson growled. “Don’t tease me, sunshine. Or you’ll be sorry. I’m not going to be a gimp forever.”
She winked. “I’m terrified, sir. Truly.”
He couldn’t help but smile. Smile and tell her again, that he loved her.
“I love you, too,” she said, her playful mood vanishing as she crossed to the door, opening it to reveal an older woman in a simple gray sweater and khakis holding a breakfast tray.
“Perfect timing, Miriam.” Hannah scanned the plates and bowls artfully arranged on the tray. “And you made sure these are from the list of foods approved by the doctor?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Miriam nodded. “Mr. Hawke can start with broth and if that settles well, I’ve got oatmeal and toast with honey.”
“Wonderful, thank you so much, Miriam.” Hannah turned over her shoulder, shooting him a tight smile as she stood back to make way for the maid to enter the room. “I’ll be back to check on you soon.”
Jackson nodded. “All right.” He resisted the urge to tell her to hurry back, instead focusing his attention on Miriam, thanking her for the tray she settled gently across his lap.
He was already an invalid. He wasn’t going to start acting like one of those needy bastards who couldn’t stand to be separated from his other half for more than ten minutes at a time. And he wasn’t going to let himself get sucked into creating problems where none existed.
Everything was fine. Hannah was safe, the danger to her life had been eliminated, and they had agreed to share their life together for the foreseeable future. All they had to do was get out of this house and away from her parents and things would go back to normal.
As normal as they ever had been, anyway. But he wasn’t going to let that bother him, either.
He and Hannah might not be normal, but they could and would be happy together. He refused to contemplate the thought of anything else.
CHAPTER TEN
Hannah
Hannah took the envelope from her father, frowning at the broken seal. “I thought we were going to open it together.”
“I couldn’t wait. I was too worried.” Stewart leaned in, templing his fingers as he watched her pull the letter from the envelope. “And it seems I was right to be. It’s from your sister.”
Hannah glanced up at him, fighting a wave of irritation. “Are you going to let me read it, Dad? Or should I just ask you what it says?”
Stewart’s brows crept higher on his broad forehead. “I apologize,” he said in a tone that made it clear he thought he had nothing to apologize for. “As I said, I was worried.” He motioned toward the letter. “Please. Read. I’ll wait until you’re done and we can discuss it together.”
She took a deep breath as she turned her attention back to the letter, determined not to let her emotions show on her face as she read.
No matter how much she wanted to believe the danger had passed and she was finally safe to relax her guard and reestablish a relationship with her father, she couldn’t shake the “off” feeling that made her nerve endings itch whenever she was in Stewart’s presence. Her gut said that her father still had secrets, dangerous secrets that might threaten the peaceful future she yearned for.
Dearest, sweetest, bravest Hannah, she read, resisting the urge to sneer at the effusive address.
It seems I’ll never come to the end of asking your forgiveness, but I do hope you’ll forgive me for leaving without saying goodbye. I waited to make sure you were okay, but then I had to leave. It was my one chance to get away and get to Jasper before Dad’s people figured out where he was. We worked out a special hiding place years ago and I knew he would be there, waiting for me, and we would finally have the chance to start a life away from all the sins and miseries of the past.
Some of those sins are mine, but most of them are Dad’s.
I’ll leave it up to him how much he wants to tell you. I would tell you everything, but I know it would cause you pain. And I’m sure Dad will intercept this letter before you’re allowed to read it—Hello, Dad, and goodbye, you sick son of a bitch—and my truth-telling would do no good. He would destroy the letter without passing it on and I would never get to tell you how much I love you.
And I do love you, so very, very much.
You are still my Jiminy Cricket, moo. You’re my conscience and the voice that leads me to all the best and brightest places. It’s your voice I’ve listened to for the past six years as I’ve fought to be the kind of mother Jasper deserves. And it is because of Jasper—and the Hannah voice in my head that insists his welfare must come first, no matter what—that I have to disappear again. He deserves to grow up happy and safe, with none of the ugly past shadowing his future.
I hope there will come a day when it’s safe for us to be a family again, but until then, know that I am out there somewhere in the big wide world loving you with all my heart and wishing you happiness. If you’ve found that with Jackson, then I wish you both well. But don’t let him make you pay for the things I’ve done, moo. You are your own person and a better one than I could ever be. The similarities between us are only skin deep, as you know better than anyone.
Take care and may the years ahead of you be happy ones, my sister friend.
Never ever,
Harley
Hannah press
ed her lips together, fighting to regain control of her emotions. The letter left her torn between being touched and suspicious, hurt and saddened that she’d lost Harley all over again.
But more powerful than any of those feelings was the certainty that her father was hiding something. Something bad, that Harley had known would cause Hannah pain. Something that had made her sister call the father she’d once idolized a “sick son of a bitch.”
Once upon a time, Hannah would have talked around that line, but when she looked up to find Stewart’s face set in his usual “master of all he surveys” mask, she couldn’t think of a valid reason to let him off easy.
“What did you do?” She set the letter on the table beside her wingback chair, suddenly cold despite the fire roaring in the fireplace near her feet.
Stewart sighed wearily as he pinched the bridge of his nose between two long, thin fingers. “Aside from do everything in my power to protect you and your sister? And nearly have a heart attack when I thought I was going to lose one of you?”
“Yes,” Hannah said, not buying the worried father act for a moment. “Aside from all that.”
He glanced up, studying her with his shrewd blue eyes. “I did what had to be done. It wasn’t gentle, but it was necessary. Your sister discovered a small part of an ugly, old story and rushed to judgment. If she’d given me the chance to explain, she would have understood that I did the best that I could. Considering the circumstances.”
Hannah didn’t bother trying to pick that tangle of words apart. She simply squeezed her lids closed, her features scrunching into a tight wad at the center of her face.
“There are things you don’t understand, Hannah.” Her father sighed again, a more put upon sound this time. “Will you stop making faces and look at me, please?”
She opened her eyes, pinning him with a cool glare. “Are you going to tell me what those things are? Are you going to explain what you did to make Ian Hawke your enemy? Or what Harley found out that made her think the only way to keep her son safe was to run away and hide in a place where you could never find her or Jasper?”
He sat up straighter, a new stiffness creeping in to tighten his jaw.
“That’s what I thought,” Hannah said, rising from her chair. “Jackson and I are leaving tomorrow, Dad. If you change your mind and want to be honest with me, then I’d love to have an adult conversation about this. If not, don’t bother contacting me again. And don’t send any spies or people to protect me. I don’t want or need your kind of help.”
Stewart made a grumbling sound. “You absolutely do need protection. As far as most people are concerned, you’re the last living daughter of one of the richest men in the world. That will make you a target, Hannah. Ian wasn’t the only person after my money or willing to hurt my children in order to—”
“You don’t have children anymore, Dad.” She ignored the pained look that flashed behind his eyes. “You have me. For now. But if you insist on lying to me, you will lose me too. I can forgive a lot, but I can’t forgive being kept in the dark about things that could endanger my life and my family.”
“I’m your family.” Stewart stood, spreading his arms in a gesture that insisted he had nothing to hide.
A gesture that was just another lie.
“Jackson is my family,” she said firmly, needing him to understand that she wasn’t making idle threats. “I’m going to build a life with him and I hope someday we’ll have children. Children I will love and do everything in my power to keep safe because nothing will be more important to me than their health and happiness.”
“That’s what I’ve done, Hannah. God, can’t you see—”
“No, Dad, that’s not what you’ve done,” Hannah said, refusing to back down. “If my safety were truly your first priority, you would tell me the truth. I need the truth. I can’t protect myself from something I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand, you need to trust your father.”
Hannah’s breath rushed out in an exasperated huff. “Maybe when I was a child, Dad, but I’m not a child anymore. I’m a grown woman, who has lost years of her life hiding away from the world, all to help you protect your secrets. Because your secrets are the most important things in your life, not me or Harley or Mom or anyone else.”
Stewart balked but didn’t say anything for a long moment, long enough for Hannah to notice how gray his hair had become and the way his eyes sagged at the edges. Her father didn’t have smile lines. He had creases in his stony face, marks caused by gravity, not by the soul contained within his body.
Suddenly, that seemed like the saddest thing in the world, to have lived over sixty years and bear so few signs of a life filled with love or laughter.
Finally, he spoke, his voice rougher than it had been before. “I’m leaving you everything, Hannah. The fortune, the estate, the businesses, everything. You can look at my will if you don’t believe me. I have a copy in the desk drawer.”
It wasn’t what she’d been expecting to hear, but it wasn’t what she needed to hear either. “I don’t care, Dad,” she said, fighting to keep her frustration from her voice. “I don’t care about the money. I never have, don’t you know that by now?”
“I’ve been in touch with Sybil. I know your business is in trouble.” Stewart folded his arms, scowling down his nose at her in that way that used to make her shake in her shoes when she was a girl. “I could make your problems go away. Or I could cut you off without a penny, and let you see how hard the world can be without money to smooth your way.”
Hannah stood up straighter, meeting his scowl with a hard look of her own. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and she wasn’t the fragile, bendable daughter her father had known, either.
“Go right ahead, Dad,” she said, feeling like she’d shrugged off a lead weight from around her shoulders. “I’m capable of making my own money. I’m also capable of surrounding myself with people who understand the difference between love and manipulation.”
She turned to go, but her father called out for her to wait. She turned back, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to give her a reason to stay.
“I…I don’t know what to do,” Stewart said, his arms falling limply to his sides. “I don’t want to lose you. I just…I don’t know how to make you stay.”
Her chest flooded with a tender, wounded feeling, pity and anger swirling inside of her until finally both emotions faded away, leaving her as confused as the tired old man facing her across the room.
“I’m not a chess piece, Dad,” she said wearily. “I’m your daughter. I’m a person and I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to talk.”
He blinked, his features softening in a way she had never seen before. But it wasn’t regret or love that gentled his expression; it was hopelessness, helplessness, the barren look of a man who had finally realized that the war was over and he had lost the final battle.
No matter how much he might want her to stay, he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, let her in. He was trapped inside a fortress of his own lies and he would remain there—safe, but desperately alone—until the day he died.
“I did what I had to do,” he said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. “There’s no point in talking about the past. It’s too late for regret. Or forgiveness. You couldn’t forgive it all, anyway. No one could.”
Hannah nodded, tears stinging into her eyes as Stewart settled back into his chair by the fire, clearly resigned to letting his daughter walk away.
To the outside world, her father appeared to have it all—money, power, influence, a beautiful, well-bred wife, and a shot at the presidency if he played his cards right. But looking at him now, all Hannah saw was the shell of a man, a lonely, suffering warning that every dream came at a price.
The price her father had paid had been too dear, and it had left him all alone. He would rule his kingdom from a dusty, empty tower room, knowing that everything beautiful in his life had withered and died in the shadow of the da
rk bargains he had made.
Tears slipping silently down her cheeks, Hannah turned to go, wondering how high a price she would pay for her own dreams.
She waited until she was down the hall, nearing the garage on the south side where the servants parked before she pulled her cell from the band of her sports bra, where she’d had it tucked since last night. Dominic said he would call as soon as he had news, but she couldn’t resist punching in his contact number and hitting send.
The phone rang four times before forwarding to voice mail. For a moment, Hannah considered hanging up without leaving a message, but if she was in for a penny, she was in for a pound.
It was time for Dom to know just how serious she was about getting the information she needed.
“It’s Hannah,” she said after the beep. “I took some samples of Jackson’s hair last night while he was sleeping. I’m overnighting them to the post office box address you left so you’ll have them as soon as you’re ready. Hopefully, finding Harley and Jasper won’t be as difficult as my father seems to think it will be and we can have this settled soon.”
Hannah hesitated a moment before adding. “And Dom, don’t forward any information to my father. I know we agreed that you work for me now, but I want to make it clear that I don’t want Dad to know where Harley and Jasper are. She had her reasons for wanting out from under his thumb and I respect them, whatever they are. Talk soon.”
She hung up and stood in the dim light at the end of the hallway, squeezing the phone tight, wondering when she had become the kind of person who has spies on retainer. Or the kind who collects hairs from the pillow of her unconscious lover, proving she was as concerned about her own peace of mind as she was his precious life.
She didn’t know, but she knew she couldn’t back down now. She had to know the truth. Then she would decide how much to tell Jackson and whether or not she could live with keeping his son a secret from him for the rest of their lives.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jackson
They landed in Jackson Hole, Wyoming four days before Christmas and barely made it to their cabin on Granite Ridge before the snow began to fall. By midnight, the gentle drifting flakes had become a madly swirling blizzard and Hannah spent half the night crawling in and out of bed, making sure the power hadn’t gone out and taken the heat with it.
