Page 15 of Healing Hope

“Okay,” Jess agreed. “That will be home base. And I’ll wait for as long as you want to play.”

Hope walked toward the swing sets, and she said a few words to Amelia, but Jess couldn’t hear what they were. She kept glancing at Jess, as if expecting her to suddenly disappear, and it broke her heart. Again, the girl was giving her a snapshot into her previous life, and Jess hated it.

Some people were meant to be parents. Her own parents were an obvious example of that. They had loved being parents and her mother, especially, had loved being pregnant.

Other people were not meant to be parents. They weren’t mentally, physically, or emotionally equipped to handle caring for another human being. Jess suspected that Hope’s mother had been one of the latter, and she’d only hung onto Hope in order to get at Paul. It was a very sad situation.

So Jess played on her phone as she watched the girls, and didn’t budge from the bench. Both girls eventually moved onto other equipment, but Jess stayed where she was. At one point, the girls ran over to see Sophie, and Hope was so proud of the little dog. Amelia was properly appreciative, and Hope beamed with pride.

Amelia’s mother, on a different bench rocking a stroller, called Amelia over, and it was obvious the girl had been warned they had a time limit. The two crammed as much enjoyment as they could into the final five minutes, and Hope waved at Amelia as she left.

“Her mom has to go cook dinner for her dad, she said,” Hope reported.

“Amelia seems like a fun friend,” Jess murmured. “Maybe we’ll see her here again.”

Hope looked up at her. “Maybe.” But she watched after the girl like she was resigned to never seeing her again.

As they left the park, Hope held onto her hand, then pulled her to a stop. “Miss Jess,” she whispered, her blue-grey eyes glimmering.

Jess stopped and kneeled down in front of her. “What’s up, honey?”

“Thank you for not leaving me in the park,” she whispered, her eyes swimming in tears as she looked down at her feet.

In spite of her own emotion, Jess leaned in enough to catch her gaze. “Did your mom leave you in a park, Hope?”

Hope blinked furiously, but tears started sliding down her cheeks as she nodded. “She always said she would be right back, that she was just meeting her friends, but sometimes she didn’t come back. I would look for her and she wouldn’t be anywhere around.”

What the hell… Jess did everything she could to control her anger. It was as she’d suspected. Parks were a popular hangout for drug dealers and if Hope’s mother had struggled with addiction, they’d probably been in a lot of parks.

Jess wished she could tell Hope how very fucked up her mother had been, but even though the girl was incredibly well spoken and intelligent for almost five, it would be over her head. It was now up to them to secure her fears and make sure she had the best life possible.

7

Paul could tell that something had happened as soon as he walked into the house. The smell of food wafted through the air, and his stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn’t had anything to eat since the granola bar at lunch. He’d been in meeting after meeting, and then, when he’d thought about heading home to see his girl before she went to bed, he’d been paged for a crisis with one of the new residents. The soldier had been sobbing in pain and fear, and it had taken everything in him and one of the nurses to get the man settled down.

As soon as he walked in the door, he could tell that Hope had gone to bed. It was too quiet. And Sophie didn’t run to meet him. The dog had definitely adopted Hope, but she was friendly to everyone in the house, including Jess. And she fit into their life seamlessly. Paul could tell that Erin had worked with her a lot to be sociable.

Dropping his briefcase outside his office because he had more work to do, he headed toward the kitchen. Jess sat at the island, laptop open in front of her. She looked up when he entered, a serene smile lighting her face, and it kind of stopped him in his tracks. For a moment he wondered what it would be like to cross the kitchen and drop a kiss to her mouth, and be welcomed home like he never had been before. For so long he’d been alone, and mostly he’d gotten used to it. But there were times, more often recently, when he craved personal human interaction. And skin contact. He had work interaction all the time, but his personal life had suffered.

Jessamy Swan was not his kind of woman, though. He usually liked them short and curvy and dark-haired, and she was none of those things. There was something… intriguing about her, though. If only she weren’t so damn young.

“We need to talk,” she said firmly, pushing her laptop to the side.

Paul sighed, wondering if she would think badly of him if he cracked a beer. By the tone of her voice, he could tell it was something about Hope, and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to hear it. Yes, she was his daughter, but it made his heart hurt when he thought about all the things she’d been through. He wasn’t sure what he could have done differently to try to gain custody of her sooner.

Moving to the fridge, he grabbed one of the beer bottles from the lower shelf, then made a motion to her. “Would you like one?”

“Please,” she said.

Jess waited until he’d popped the tops on the bottles and sat across from her, setting her beer within reach. “So, what’s going on?” he asked as he tilted up the bottle and took a long swallow. He normally wasn’t much of a drinker, but the day had gotten to him.

When she didn’t say anything, he glanced at her. Jess was staring at him, a soft frown on her face. “How about you tell me about your day first? What I have will hold.”

Paul relaxed back against the chair, wondering where the line was between them. Technically, he was her boss. He’d signed the contract with Helping Hands the day after she arrived, and he’d paid the retainer. The company would pay her, and if the rather large retainer was anything to go by, she must make decent money.

Since she’d been here, though, he’d already seen a change in Hope, and on that front, his anxiety had eased. Jessamy knew what she was doing with kids. From the little she’d mentioned, she came from a large family, with several siblings younger than her, so she’d grown up taking care of kids.

It was more than that, though. There was a care she used with Hope that Hope herself responded to. It had only been a few days, but Hope was coming out of her shell.

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