now.”
Paula flushed slightly. “I don’t see why that would be of interest to me. He’s obviously crazy about you.”
If Jesse had been drinking, she would have choked. “He’s about forty years older than me.”
“So?”
“I do love Bill, but like family.” How could she have ever gotten interested in someone else when she’d been unable to get over Matt? “Besides, when we met, he made it clear I wasn’t his type, so even if I’d had any ideas, nothing would have happened.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Paula murmured as she got out mugs and set them on the counter.
But Jesse wasn’t so sure. Maybe it mattered a little.
An hour later she and Bill sat outside on the porch.
“I’ve been worried about you,” Bill said. “Missing you, too. Both of you. That little boy grows on a man.”
“I know. We’ve been thinking of you, as well.”
“But you’re doing okay?”
She smiled at him. “What you really want to know is if you were right to kick me out when you did. That’s all you care about, but you’re too polite to ask.”
“You’ll tell me,” he said confidently.
She laughed. “Yes, I will and you were right.”
“You were only living half a life, Jess. Hanging out with me and my friends. Not that we didn’t appreciate your pretty face or the joy that boy brought to us, but you were hiding.”
“I know.” She rested her forearms on her thighs. “It’s been good to be back, but hard. My sister hasn’t accepted that I’ve changed. I think she believes me about Drew, but she’s still angry.”
She didn’t have to explain about her past. Bill knew all her secrets.
“You’ve had five years to watch yourself change and grow and plenty of time to know you were coming back. Nicole got all this sprung on her. She has to adjust.”
“I know that in my head. It’s getting the rest of me to believe it that’s taking some time. Besides, I think she secretly wants to be mad at me.”
“She had a certain place in your family. Everyone has a role. You’ve changed yours. She’s going to fight that.”
Jesse had never considered that. Were family dynamics the real problem?
“If I’m different, then the balance of power, the rules, everything changes?” she asked, more to herself than him.
Bill, being Bill, didn’t answer.
She was going to have to think about that some more.
“So Gabe’s met his father,” her friend said. “How did that go?”
“Not well. Matt’s coming into his own with Gabe now, but the first couple of meetings were difficult. He didn’t know how to relate to a four-year-old. Not that he’s had a lot of experience.” She hesitated. “We were fighting when you drove up.”
“I noticed.”
“He blames me for not knowing Gabe.” She stared at the steps. “He says that telling him I was pregnant before I left wasn’t enough. That I knew he wouldn’t believe me. That I should have told him later, after Gabe was born. I should have given him a chance to be a father.”
She didn’t like talking about it. She felt awful inside, like she was a bad person. Like she’d been deliberately evil.
“It wasn’t like that,” she whispered. “I wanted him to care enough to believe me. I wanted him to come after me.”
“Did you know he didn’t believe you about the baby?”
She nodded. “What he said was so horrible.” Once a slut, always a slut. Those words were burned into her brain.
“How would you feel if he’d kept Gabe from you?” Bill asked quietly.
Jesse felt pain rip through her body and had her answer. “Oh, God.” To not have held him when he was born. To not have watched him grow. His first smile, his first step, the love in his eyes. The absolute trust. Thousands of perfect memories that would be with her always.
“He’ll never forgive me,” she whispered. “Why would he?”
Bill put his arm around her. “He’s angry now, but he’ll get over it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“A man doesn’t have that much emotion in himself without still caring.”
“I don’t know what he thinks about me,” she admitted, letting herself lean on him again. Something she was going to have to stop doing. “Sometimes I think he really likes being with me and other times-” she sighed “-he’s so different.”
“You were gone a long time.”
“I know. The Matt I knew loved me. At least I thought he did. That’s what’s confusing. I believed him when he said how important I was, how he would never leave. But the first time something went wrong, he turned his back on me.”
“It was a big thing to go wrong.”
She nodded. “I probably played into his worst fears. That it was just a game to me. That I didn’t care about him at all.”
“He reacted,” Bill said. “If you’d stayed around, talked again, maybe things would have been different.”
Would they? Jesse wasn’t sure. “I couldn’t have stayed. I would only ever have been Nicole’s screwup little sister. The useless girl who fell in love with a great guy. I needed to walk away to find out who I was.”
She smiled. “That sounds so ‘other dimension.’ I should probably start chanting.”
Bill chuckled.
“There’s so much going on,” she said. “The bakery burned down.”
She told him about that and how they’d started up the business in a rented kitchen. “Nicole is hating the success. I know she is.”
“You’re only responsible for yourself, Jess. And that’s the only person you can control. Other people will either get it or they won’t but you can’t define yourself by their opinions.”
“You’re just so rational. Have I mentioned that’s annoying?”
“Once or twice.”
She turned toward him. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“You would have done just fine.”
She knew that wasn’t true, but why worry about it? She’d met Bill and she’d thrived. She glanced at the house.
“Paula is nice,” she said. “An unexpected supporter. And pretty.”
Bill looked at her. “What’s your point, missy?”
“That you’ve been living alone long enough. Maybe it’s time to consider the possibilities.”
She’d teased Bill about other women before and he’d always politely dismissed her. This time he followed her gaze to the house and nodded slowly.
“Maybe it is.”
HEATH TOSSED A FOLDER onto Matt’s desk. “You’ll want to look them over, make sure we’re doing everything you want,” he said.
Matt waved him into a seat, then opened the folder and flipped through the papers. Despite the legal language, the intent was clear. He was suing Jesse for full custody of his son.
“I’ll study them tonight,” he said.
Heath frowned. “You sure about this, Matt? I understand wanting Jesse punished, but taking the kid? That’s a big responsibility.”
Matt knew his lawyer meant well. If their circumstances were reversed, Heath would do all he could to avoid having a child in his life. When Matt had first started down this road, he’d only been out for revenge. Now he wanted more.
The good side of him wanted to make sure he had a relationship with his son. He wanted to get to know him,
