She shut the door, then locked it and leaned her forehead against the wood as tears rolled down her cheeks. Sometimes, she hated Russ so much she could hardly contain the emotion. Why had she ever gotten involved with him? Why had she ever succumbed to the pressure? If not for Kenny and Brent, she’d curse the day her mother had ever moved next door to the Prices’….

  She listened, wondering if he’d bang on the door again, wanting to continue his apology. But what had happened must’ve shocked him as badly as it did her because he didn’t even try. A few minutes later, she heard the Jeep start up and the engine noise dim as he drove away.

  He’s gone, she told herself, sagging against the door in relief. He’s gone. But the pain from his visit wasn’t.

  Using the walls to help fight the dizziness, she cleaned her mouth and retrieved some ice. Then she carried Gabe’s shirt into her room and curled up in bed, blocking out everything except the smell of Gabe on soft cotton.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Hannah had a fat lip and bruised face to rival Kenny’s. When she first got up, she stared disconsolately at herself in the mirror, wondering what to do about Russ. He’d never struck her before, and he’d seemed sincerely contrite the second after it happened. But she needed to document the incident in case he wouldn’t leave her alone in the future. With a sigh, she decided to go to the police station later and file a police report.

  Making her way through the quiet house, she checked on Brent to see that he was still sleeping, then headed outside to turn on the sprinklers. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting the world in a promising pink glow. She loved this time of morning—but today she wasn’t quite sure what to think of anything. Her life had definitely taken an unexpected twist since she’d started seeing Gabe. Part of her wanted to embrace the change. The other part wanted to hang on to the relative safety of the life she’d built since the divorce. For one thing, Russ had never resorted to violence until Gabe came on the scene.

  Hannah picked up the newspaper lying on her walkway, but instead of opening it, she sat in her new chair and stared at the flowers that had surprised her so much last night. Gabe must’ve brought them to the door after she’d said good-night to him—

  “There you are.” Kenny opened the screen door.

  “You’re up early,” she mused.

  “I couldn’t sleep any longer.” He stepped out to join her but froze the moment he got a good look at her face. “What happened to you?”

  “I got into a fight with Sly’s mom,” she said.

  “What?”

  She attempted a chuckle, even though her split lip resisted a smile. “I’m kidding. I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and accidentally ran into the door.” She didn’t want Kenny to know what had happened with his father. Because of what Tuck had gone through when he was little, Kenny was particularly sensitive to domestic violence. And she didn’t want to drag her sons through any more of her and Russ’s problems.

  “I guess now you know how I feel, huh?” he said.

  She adopted a rueful expression, which at this point came naturally enough. “I guess.”

  “We’d better lay low. We don’t look so good today.”

  “No kidding.”

  He sat on the porch railing, watching the sprinklers. “I can’t believe school starts tomorrow.”

  She snuggled deeper into the big sweatshirt she’d pulled on over her pajamas. “Neither can I. It seems like only yesterday that I was sending you off to kindergarten.”

  The phone rang.

  “Who’d be calling this early?” he asked.

  Hannah doubted it was Gabe, but she hopped up, just in case. “I’ll get it.”

  Slipping into the house, she jogged across the living room to the kitchen, where she snatched up the cordless phone. “Hello?”

  “Hannah?”

  It was Patti, but her voice sounded unusually harsh. “Hi, Patti. Is something wrong?”

  “Is it true?” she demanded.

  Hannah searched her mind, hoping to grasp what her ex-sister-in-law could be talking about. “Is what true?”

  “Are you sleeping with Gabe Holbrook?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HANNAH’S HEART POUNDED as she searched for an answer to Patti’s frank question. How could her sister-in-law know? Especially so soon? She and Gabe had been together only yesterday!

  “No,” she said out of stubborn resistance. She didn’t care if it was a lie. She resented the intrusion. Russ certainly had his nerve calling Patti after what he’d done last night. Fortunately, Hannah knew he didn’t really have any proof, except that Gabe had visited with a pot of flowers.

  “Gabe dropped by to talk to Kenny about the game on Friday. The flowers are a simple thank you for cooking for him,” she explained. “They don’t hold any special significance. Whatever else Russ told you—”

  “I haven’t talked to Russ,” Patti interrupted. “Deborah Wheeler and I walk together every morning. She just said—”

  Suddenly, Hannah knew that the car she’d almost hit coming out of Gabe’s driveway yesterday belonged to Deborah. That was why Hannah had felt a spark of recognition even though she hadn’t seen the driver’s face.

  Dropping her head in her hand, she rubbed her temples while Patti finished exactly as she expected “—she saw you at Gabe’s cabin yesterday.”

  Hannah remembered what Shirley and the others had said about Deborah in the beauty shop and knew it had to be true. Why else would Deborah be skulking around Gabe’s remote cabin? “I went to pick up my dishes.”

  “Hannah, she saw you in Gabe’s backyard without a shirt.”

  Oh God… “She must be mistaken. That…She couldn’t have—”

  “She did.”

  The front door slammed and Kenny appeared. “Who is it?” he said curiously.

  “Patti.” Hannah kept her tone as light as possible, but her stomach had tightened into a hard ball.

  “Is that Brent?” Patti asked.

  “Kenny.”

  “Does he know?”

  Recognizing the futility of trying to keep up the charade, Hannah closed her eyes and let her breath seep through her lips. “No.”

  “I take it you don’t want him to know.”

  “Of course not.” Clearing her throat, Hannah looked up at Kenny again. “Would you mind turning off the sprinklers for me?”

  “You’re done watering? Already?”

  She wasn’t, but she needed another moment alone, so she nodded.

  “Okay,” he said and left.

  She turned her back to the rest of the house and lowered her voice, just in case Brent was starting to stir in his room down the hall. “Gabe and I are adults, Patti. What we do isn’t anyone’s business, least of all Deborah Wheeler’s.”

  “I agree. What she did was nasty, horrible. But she saw him buy condoms yesterday, Hannah. He’s famous and he’s crippled and he’s been out of circulation for three years. Of course a purchase like that would grab her attention.”

  “She didn’t go out to his place because of mere curiosity, Patti. She went there because she has a crush on him.”

  “So?” Patti responded. “Most of the women in this town have fantasized about Gabe at some point. It’s not Deborah I’m worried about. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “Hannah, I know things have been…strained between us since the divorce. Because I care about you and my brother, I sometimes feel torn in two. I can’t help wishing you could patch up your differences and be a family again.”

  Hannah ran her tongue over her swollen lip. “I can’t, Patti. I don’t love him.” She could have added that she’d never loved him, that he’d hit her across the face just last night. But she swallowed the words. It wouldn’t matter. Patti would find some way to excuse him.

  “At least he’s willing to love you, Hannah,” she said. “At least he’s willing to be a husband and a father.”

  “Some love,” Hannah grumbled, but Patti didn’t seem to hear her. She was too busy making her point.

  “Gabe’s not the type to settle down. He was aloof before the injury—now he’s even worse. Besides, he could have almost anyone—despite the wheelchair.”

  “You’re saying he would never settle for me.” Patti’s words hurt almost as much as her brother’s blow.

  “It’s not you, Hannah. You’re a wonderful woman, and you’re very attractive. Almost any single man in this town would be happy to be with you—any regular guy, that is. But this is Gabe we’re talking about. You’re a thirty-seven-year-old divorcée with two children. And have you forgotten that you’re the one who put him in that chair?”

  “How could I ever forget that?”

  “Exactly. Do you think, even if you got together with him, that it would last? Resentment would have to crop up at some point. What are the chances that you’d be able to hold on to him?”

  Next to nil, Hannah thought. She doubted she could catch him in the first place. But that didn’t stop her heart from wanting…

  “Hannah?” Patti said when she didn’t respond.

  “I’m still here,” she replied.

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I don’t want to see you suffer. And I don’t want Russ or Kenny and Brent to suffer.”

  “Right.”

  Kenny came back in and stood in the doorway, watching her curiously.

  “I’ve got to go,” Hannah said numbly.

  “That’s it?” Patti asked.

  “What else can I say?”

  There was a long silence. “I’ll call you later.”

  Hannah wished she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to talk to Patti or Russ or even Violet. “Okay.”

  “What did Aunt Patti want?” Kenny asked as she hung up the phone.

  Hannah studied the marks the fight had left on her son’s young, handsome face. “She thinks I should get back with your father.”

  “Why?”

  “So everyone can be happy again, I guess.”

  He frowned at her response.

  “Don’t you agree with her?” she asked. She knew in the past Kenny and Brent had both hoped she and Russ would reconcile and thought he’d probably tell her the same thing.

  But Kenny surprised her. “No,” he said softly. “You deserve to be happy, too.”

  * * *

  WHEN GABE HEARD the bell, he flipped off the football tapes he’d been watching and followed a barking Lazarus to the door. It had to be Hannah. He hadn’t heard from her all day.

  But he should’ve checked the window. When he opened the door, he found a woman on his front porch, but it wasn’t Hannah—it was his sister, Reenie.

  “I need to talk to you,” she announced without preamble.

  Lazarus slipped around him to lick Reenie’s fingers. “You couldn’t have called?”

  She didn’t flinch at his sarcasm; Reenie didn’t flinch easily. “Are you kidding? With what I have to say, you’d only hang up on me.”

  “Oh, boy. Now I know I really have something to look forward to.”

  “Nothing more than the hard truth.”

  She patted Lazarus, then brushed past him the second he gave her enough room and, not for the first time, Gabe decided that his sister reminded him of a Chihuahua. Only five foot two and maybe one hundred pounds, she was petite and attractive and younger than him by nearly a decade. But nothing intimidated her. Occasionally, he grudgingly admitted that she had a generous heart and enough drive to accomplish almost anything; more often he complained of her bossy nature and sharp tongue. She was determined to carry the world on her shoulders—and God help anyone who stood in her way.

  Which was where Gabe came in. Besides Keith, her husband, he was one of the few people in her life who still offered her some resistance. He supposed it was because he was just as hardheaded as she was. Whatever the reason, he felt it was his duty to keep the force of his sister’s personality from leveling everything and everyone in its path.

  “Is there anything I can do to avoid this little confrontation?” he asked. He had too much on his mind right now, didn’t want to argue with his little sister.

  She arched her dark eyebrows, and he looked into blue eyes that were almost a mirror image of his own. “No, but I’m willing to start with the positive.”

  “Which is…”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re finally coming to your senses.”

  This certainly wasn’t what Gabe had expected to hear. “About—”

  “Letting go of the past and embracing the future.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hannah Price, of course. I think it’s wonderful that you’re seeing her.”

  He thought of Hannah’s reluctance to draw public attention. “I’m not sure I’d call it that,” he said.

  “You’d better be calling it that,” she snapped indignantly. “You slept with her yesterday, didn’t you?”

  Gabe sat up taller. “Whoa, wait a second. Where are you getting your information?”

  “It’s all over town. When Shirley Erman rang me up at the Gas-N-Go this morning, she told me Deborah Wheeler told her that Hannah was half-naked in your yard yesterday afternoon.”

  Gabe’s muscles bunched as anger flooded through him. “How would Deborah Wheeler know that?”

  Lazarus was wagging his tail and watching her expectantly, hoping for another crumb of attention. “I called her to ask the same thing,” she said, absently petting him again.

  “And she said…”

  “She just happened to be in the area.”

  He grimaced. “God, she’s even worse than I thought.”

  “She’s not the only one who’s spreading rumors. Marge over at Finley’s said you bought champagne, chocolate-covered strawberries and flowers. She added, with a wink, that you also bought condoms and told her you were planning to use the whole box this weekend. With all of that, did you think you were keeping your relationship with Hannah a secret?”

  He hadn’t been planning to sleep with Hannah when he’d bought the damn condoms! But now he could see that his subconscious had been working against him all along. “Shit,” he said, shoving a hand through his hair.

  “So, do you think this thing between you and Hannah might be serious?” Reenie asked.

  Serious? Gabe had no clue. His attraction to Kenny’s mother had taken him by surprise, and now she was running scared, and having the whole town talking about them wasn’t going to help. Surely word would get back to her boys, which he knew she didn’t want…. “If this is the positive side to your visit, what’s the negative?” he asked to avoid his sister’s question.

  “I want to talk about Dad.”

  “Not now,” Gabe said.

  “Gabe, this thing between the two of you has gone on long enough.”

  “It’s none of your business, Reenie.”

  “It is my business. He’s my father. You’re my brother. I love you both, and I’m tired of having this division in the family.”

  “Maybe Dad should’ve thought about how it might divide the family before—”

  “He had the affair twenty-four years ago, Gabe. That’s a long time. Can’t you cut him a little slack?”

  “Cut him some slack? We have a half sister because of him!”

  “And she’s a wonderful person. I like her. I think you would, too, if only you’d give her a chance.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to let go of the past. But whenever he pictured his father with Lucky’s mother, that terrible sense of betrayal welled up inside him and nearly choked him.

  “Maybe there are things you’re not taking into consideration, Gabe,” she said when he didn’t reply.

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that marriage isn’t always easy, even when both parties are basically good people.”

  Something about the tone of her voice told Gabe she was talking about more than their parents. “What do you mean?”

  She knelt in front of Lazarus and scratched him as if she really didn’t want to look Gabe in the eye. “Exactly what I said.”

  “No, there’s more. You’re not having trouble with Keith, are you?”

  “Of course not,” she said, but she spoke too quickly to convince him.

  “Something’s going on. I know you too well to buy into that stiff-upper-lip thing, Reenie.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, straightening. “Keith’s a good father.”

  “And he’s a good husband, right?”

  “I love him. I love him more than anything in the world.”

  “But…”

  She stared down at the keys she held in one hand. “He’s changing.”

  Her expression grew so troubled Gabe couldn’t feel any animosity toward her at all. Despite the discord that had existed between them for the past couple of years, she was still his little sister and he’d do anything to protect her. “How?”

  “He’s…preoccupied or…or something.”

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know. It’s happened gradually, I guess.”

  “Having him gone almost a week out of every month can’t help.”

  “He’s gone more than that. Softscape decided that three weeks of telecommuting in one month was too much. For the past year, he’s been gone half the time.”

  Gabe had been so involved in recuperating that he hadn’t paid any attention. “It’s not good for you to be apart so much.”

  She chuckled humorlessly. “No kidding. I’m beginning to feel like a…a divorcée or a widow. But…never mind.” She acknowledged Lazarus again when he gave a short whine. “None of this has anything to do with you.”

  Gabe knew she was afraid she was indulging in self-pity, which is something she’d accused him of doing often enough. But he couldn’t hold what she’d said in the past against her. “Why not have him quit his job? Do something else?”

  “I’ve asked him to.”

  “What does he say?”

  “He says okay but never gives notice. It’s always going to happen next week or next month or next year.”