Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Chapter 4
Sometimes when I watch Travis make coffee and he smiles, I wonder who he just thought about pissing off today.
-Hannah’s secret thoughts
Hannah
Present day
I juggled the car seat, as well as held Reggie’s hand, as we crossed the parking lot and entered the store.
We were at the mall.
Reggie wanted something pretty to wear, and stupidly enough, I’d agreed to get it for her.
She was going to see her father this weekend, and she ‘wanted to look pretty for her daddy.’
I knew that what she really wanted was to impress Joshua, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Joshua wouldn’t even notice. Joshua was too interested in his secretary, as well as his work, to care about his little girl.
The only thing that would make Joshua notice her would be if Reggie suddenly knew the secret to the stock exchange.
But even then, he’d only notice her long enough to get her secrets. Then he’d leave her on her own again, just like he did every time he deigned to see her.
Sure, Jefferson was only two hours from our hometown of Kilgore, Texas. But that didn’t make much of a difference to Joshua. Anything over a twenty-minute drive was an inconvenience to him.
Which he let her know each and every time it was his turn to drive out here and get her for the weekend.
So there I was, with a two-month-old, and my eight-year-old, taking them to the mall on a Friday at four in the afternoon.
I’d forgotten TJ’s stroller, and I had to either carry him in his car seat, or carry him in the infant carrier that he absolutely despised being in. There was something about how he was restrained that he didn’t like, causing him to never quite settle down.
Which meant I was carrying my twelve-pound two-month-old, in his eight-pound car seat, juggling a diaper bag, as well as trying to hang onto Reggie who refused to cross the street still without holding my hand.
Not that that bothered me all that much. I loved holding Reggie’s hand.
It’d been me and her for so very long, and she was growing up so godforsaken fast that I would take anything she was willing to give me.
It felt like just yesterday when she decided that she was going to walk instead of crawl. Run instead of walk. Talk instead of gesture. Ask to be put down instead of being held.
Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d helped give her a bath. It was like one day she decided that she no longer needed my assistance, and that was that.
“Ohhh!” she cried out the moment we crossed into the mall. “Can we get a cookie?”
I grinned.
I’d created a monster.
I loved Great American Cookie Factory. It was my guilty pleasure, and sure as shit, Reggie liked them, too.
My phone rang before we could so much as pass through the front doors, and I growled.
Before I could put down the infant carrier, though, it was taken out of my hands.
I gasped, my gaze snapping up as fear started to slice through me, and then closed my eyes in relief.
“You made it.”
I’d called Travis about halfway to the mall and asked if he could come get TJ. It was the day before I would start working full-time, and not only did I need to run by the mall for Reggie, I also needed to run by the scrub store to get some different scrubs that would fit my more voluptuous hips.
When I was pregnant, I’d been wearing a few pairs that I’d bought from the Goodwill. There was no way in hell I was paying the exorbitant amount of money for new scrubs that would only fit for just a few short months. However, now that I was down to my regular size—almost—I decided that maybe I’d spring for some scrubs that were a little prettier, and not so worn out.
Hence the other reason I’d decided to agree to Reggie’s pleading rather than tell her no like I’d wanted to.
“I did.” Travis’ deep voice had my heart fluttering.
Hell, anything the man did made my heart flutter.
We were right there, almost in this exact same spot, when I’d met him for the second time.
And the same thing happened then as it had today.
***
387 days ago
“You’re the one who has holes in her scrubs,” my new co-worker, Wednesday, commented dryly. “You asked where the best place to go was, and I, being the nice person that I am, volunteered to take you.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I told her. “Okay?”
She rolled her eyes and started walking away, not bothering to look back.
I looked in disgust at the mall.
I hated shopping. I hated crowds, and most of all, I hated being in a mall that had me only inches away from the most fattening food in the city.