She squeezed his hand gently. “It’s probably the circumstances …” she said, not finishing her sentence.
But he noted the doubt in her voice, and he was hoping that he read some interest in her gaze—and a little hope of her own. “Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a relationship,” he admitted. “Having a bad accident, being injured, and going through months and months of therapy to finally get my physical body back again isn’t easy on relationships.”
She squeezed his fingers again. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.”
“Me too,” he said, “but I’m on the other side of it now. When I was injured, I pushed my grandparents away.” He stared out the window, realizing just how much that must have hurt them. When he turned back and looked down at her, he could see understanding in her gaze. “How come you’re not telling me that was a terrible thing to do?” he asked.
“Because, during my separation, divorce, and the whole move away from my ex-husband,” she said, “I didn’t tell my mother or my sister either.”
“Why not?”
“Because my mother is all gaga over my ex, and, to this day, Mom still wants me to call him up, apologize, and go back to him. And my sister? Well, my sister tries to get out of being in the middle because she can’t handle my mother either. She told me to leave him a lot earlier.”
Chapter 14
Jessica laughed at the look on Greyson’s face. Something about this conversation in the early morning was both soothing and intimidating. Because, like him, it had been a long time for her. Her husband had been her last relationship, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to go down that path again. At least she wasn’t until she met Greyson.
“It’s funny the way we react when we’re under stress, isn’t it?” he said.
She watched as he gently stroked the pad of his thumb up and down her hand. It was tantalizingly erotic, yet soothing—though she didn’t understand how it could be both at the same time. She reached over and caught his thumb. “I think we just hole up, like an animal, and try to hide,” she said. “At least, that’s what I did. I was all about protecting myself. I was pregnant, carrying Danny, so all I could do was try to hide away from everybody so I wouldn’t be hurt, and then I could have my son in peace.”
“And the nesting instinct comes into that too,” he said.
“I read a stat one time where a very high percentage of women who were pregnant all went through house moves, as they tried to find a place that was better than where they were before the pregnancy. Part of that nesting-instinct thing.” She chuckled. “Well, this place was definitely not as classy as my last one,” she said, “but it was private, and I was alone, and, at the time, I was totally good with that.”
“But it must have been hard,” he said.
She nodded, her heart aching with remembrances. “I think it’s the loss of my future plans and dreams that hurts the most. The fact that he didn’t care and couldn’t love my son, would reject his own son and not want anything to do with him—even though I originally thought he would have made such a great father—just hurt terribly.”
Greyson looked at their joined hands and frowned.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
He looked at the little boy and said, “I have some news.”
Instantly she could feel everything inside her tensing up, and the intimacy of the situation faded away. “What news?”
“Your brother-in-law and Frank did know each other in the military,” he said. “We don’t have a very strong connection to what they did on their time off, or even if they took time off together, but they were in the same unit.”
She shook her head. “I never would have thought something like that was possible.”
“We also don’t know if one or both of them may have come home with—you know—some injuries,” he said, “or some psychological issues from their tours overseas. Realistically that could have a big effect on this matter.”
She sank back as she thought about it. “I guess. I have heard that most do come back different.”
“But different can mean a lot of things,” he said gently. “It can mean good or bad.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out how any of this could be good.”
He grabbed her free hand, so that he was holding both of them together, cupped inside his own. He took a deep breath before he continued, “There’s a little bit of other news.”
She stared at him in surprise. “You’ve been busy,” she said, in a bad attempt at humor.
He nodded. “I have been. The thing is, I don’t know if this is good news or bad, but we’ll have to completely reevaluate what might have been going on here.”
“Just tell me,” she said. “I can’t deal with something if I don’t know what it is.”
“Okay. Your ex, George, is dead,” he said bluntly.
She stared at him in shock. “What?”
He nodded. “For about three months, apparently.”
“How is that even possible?”
“It’s very possible,” he said. “He had an aneurysm and collapsed at a conference. The information I have is that he died thirty-six hours later.”
She continued to stare at him. “Nobody contacted me.”
“They may not have known how to,” he reminded her. “And, if they didn’t know about Danny, George’s next of kin at that point in time would have been his brother.”
“Right,” she said, sagging back into the bed. “Jensen was close to his brother, so he would have been the one most likely called.”
“Exactly,” Greyson said, “and that could also have been the trigger for all this.”
“But the divorce papers?” she said, frowning.
“That’s something else that I’m trying to sort out,” he said. “We need to
