“He said, get rid of them.”
He drew in a sharp breath. It was almost a gasp. She could hear it in the silence of the kitchen, and she winced.
“And you said?”
She shrugged again. “I’d rather die.”
Connor nodded. He knew her well enough to know that was the truth. What the hell was Brad thinking?
“Suddenly he was like a stranger to me. He just shut the door. He went down to Portland to open up a branch office for our business. I thought he would think it over and come back and...” She gave him a significant look. “But he never came back. He began to make the branch office his headquarters. Then you showed up and told me he wanted a divorce.”
Connor nodded. His voice was low and gruff as he asked her, “Do you want him back?”
She had to think about that one. If she was honest, she would have to admit there was a part of her—a part she wasn’t very proud of—that would do almost anything to get him back. Anything but the one thing he asked for.
She stared at him and wondered how much she should tell him. He was obviously surprised to know about how little Brad cared about his sons. A normal man would care. So Brad had turned out to be not very normal. That was her mistake. She should have realized that and never married him in the first place.
She also had to live with the fact that he was getting worse and worse about paying child support. There were so many promises—and then so many excuses. What there wasn’t a lot of was money.
The business was floundering, he said. He was trying as hard as he could, but the profits weren’t rolling in like they used to in the old days—when she was doing half the work. Of course, he didn’t mention that. He didn’t want her anywhere near the business anymore.
She knew he resented having to give her anything. After all, he’d given her the house—not that it was paid off. Still, it had been what she wanted, what she felt she had to have to keep a stable environment for the boys.
But now she was having a hard time making the mortgage payments. She had to make a go of her cake business, or else she would have to go back to work and leave the boys with a babysitter. She was running out of time.
Time to build her business up to where it could pay for itself. Time to stabilize the mortgage situation before the bank came down on her. Time to get the boys old enough so that when she did have to go for a real, paying job, it wouldn’t break her heart to leave them with strangers.
So, yes. What Brad wanted now mattered. Had he gone through a transformation? Had he come up with second thoughts and decided to become a friend to the family? Or was it all more excuses about what he couldn’t do instead of what he could? Women with husbands in a stable situation didn’t realize how lucky they were.
Funny. Sometimes it almost seemed as though Brad had screwed up her marriage and now he wanted to screw up her single life as well.
She shook her head slowly. “I want my life back,” she admitted. “I want the life I had when I had a loving husband. I want my babies to have their father. But I don’t see how that can ever happen.”
Her eyes stung and she blinked quickly to make sure no tears dared show up.
“Unless...” She looked up into Connor’s eyes. “Unless you have a message from Brad that he wants it to happen, too.”
Whistling in the wind. She knew how useless that was. She gave Connor a shaky smile, basically absolving him of all guilt in the matter. She saw the look in his eyes. He felt sorry for her. She cringed inside. She didn’t want pity.
“Don’t worry. I don’t expect that. But I do want to know what he sent you for.”
Connor shook his head. Obviously he had nothing to give her. So Brad must have sent him on a scouting expedition, right? To see if she was surviving. To see if she was ready to hoist the white flag and admit he was right and she was wrong. She couldn’t make it on her own after all. She should have listened to him. And now, she should knuckle under and take his advice and give it all up.
She bit her lip. She wasn’t disappointed, exactly. She knew the score. But she was bummed out and it didn’t help her outlook on the day.
A timer went off and she hopped up to check on her cakes. This was where she belonged, this was where she knew what she was doing. The realm of human emotions was too treacherous. She would take her chances with the baked goods.
* * *
Connor watched her getting busy again and he wished he could find some way to help her deal with the truth—that Brad didn’t want her. He couldn’t say it might never happen. Brad could change his mind. But right now, he didn’t want Jill at all. What he wanted was to be totally free of her. At least, that was how he’d presented things a few days ago when they’d talked.
Brad wanted that, and he wanted her to give up her remaining interest in the company. That was the message he was supposed to make her listen to. That was the message he just couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Maybe later.
He took his cup to the sink, rinsed it out and headed back into the living room. He was folding up the covers he’d used when the front door opened and a young woman hurried in.
Connor looked up and started to smile. It was Sara Darling, Jill’s sister, and she stopped dead when she saw who had been sleeping on her sister’s couch.
“You!” she said accusingly, and he found himself backing up, just from the fire in her eyes.
He knew that Sara and Jill were very close, but he also knew they tended to see things very differently. Both were beautiful. Where Jill had a head full of crazy curls that made you want to kiss her a lot, Sara wore her blond hair slicked back and sleek, making her look efficient and professional. Today she wore a slim tan linen suit with a pale peach blouse and nude heels and she looked as though she was about to gavel an important business meeting to order.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded of him. “Oh, brother. I should have known you’d show up. Let a woman be vulnerable and alone and it’s like sharks smelling blood in the water.”
“Hey,” he protested, surprised. He’d always been friendly with this woman in the past. “That’s a bit harsh.”
“Harsh? You want to see harsh?”
He blanched. “Not really.”
Okay, so Sara was being extra protective of her sister. He got it. But she’d never looked on him as a bad guy before. Why now? He tried a tentative smile.
“Hey, Sara. Nice to see you.”
She was still frowning fiercely. “You have no right to complicate Jill’s life.”
He frowned, too, but in a more puzzled way. That was actually not what he wanted to do, either. But it seemed he was right. Sara was circling the wagons around her sister. How to convince her she didn’t need to do that with him?
“Listen, staying for the night wasn’t how I planned this.”
“I’ll bet.” She had her arms crossed and looked very intimidating. “Just what did you have in mind, Casanova?”
What? Did she really think he was hovering around in order to catch Jill in an emotional state? If only! He wanted to laugh at her but he knew that would only infuriate her further.
“Listen, I saved your sister from a blind date gone horribly wrong. Seriously. Do you know the guy she went out with?”
Sara shook her head, looking doubtful.
“I think his name was Karl.”
She shook her head again.
“Well, if you knew him, you’d see why Jill needed rescuing. He was flamboyantly wrong for her.”
“Okay.” Sara looked a little less intimidating. “Good.