Page 44 of The Cowboy's Second Chance Bride

“They were hacked for the purpose of this article. You and I know it. And mostly people don’t care, but it’s being used to discredit both you and that presser we did in Dallas. It also sparked a conversation on talk shows about singles adopting kids. And as to be expected, some people in the comments admire Sabrina, and others are tearing her to pieces.”

I brushed my hand over my chin as I worked to find the next step.

“There’s another tab,” Paul said.

And by the look on his face, I knew this wasn’t going to be good either. I clicked the tab and was instantly greeted with a picture of Travis at a poker table. The lighting was poor, the image grainy, his cards were on the table, his fingers were on his cards, and a lot of chips were beside him. The picture made Travis look...

My mom came up behind me. “Oh, that is not a good picture of Travis. It makes him look smarmy. Deceitful.”

“Crooked,” I said. Sabrina had to be feeling like she was drowning:

“Professional Gambler Travis Holloway’s Estate Being Investigated for Tax Evasion.”

“This isn’t good.” I stood, ready to go to her.

Paul put out his hand. “She’s really upset and said she needs some time to herself. She’ll come downstairs when she’s ready to see people.”

So much for avoiding her. Soon I would find myself pacing outside her door, anxious to see how she was holding up. And here I’d spent the night cold showering, all while her life was unraveling.

ChapterSeventeen

SABRINA

Could a person get dehydrated and need medical intervention from crying? Because I honestly felt like there were no more fluids in me. My stomach hurt, my head hurt, and my heart was broken. I was too exhausted to get water, but I was thirsty and kept licking my dry lips with my dry tongue.

I woke to the pinging of messages on my phone. All from Cricket. She had been the one to see the articles and alert me. I ran down the hall and woke up Paul. In real time, we watched comment after comment get posted. They talked about me like I wasn’t a person who had feelings and desires and whose feelings and desires they were currently mocking and judging. To be fair, some were defending me. But nice voices always got lost in the louder, negative ones.

That was when Paul made me go back to my room. I thought about waking Cal instead, but I knew he would need to loop Paul in, so I cut out the middleman, maybe partly because I didn’t want to have the adoption conversation with Cal. I was relieved knowing Cal hadn’t pursued the path of family and kids. If he had, how could I not believe he’d been right to dump me because I never would have been able to give him kids.

And yeah, when I pictured what life would be like when this job ended, I pictured him going back to his death-wish lifestyle, and I would go back to mine, only with adding a baby. For some reason I couldn’t explain, I didn’t want Cal to know about my reproductive issues.

When I thought things couldn’t get worse, which was such a cliché but only because it was true, my adoption coordinator called me. Mrs. Monighan and I had been on this journey together from day one. I had cried in her office while filling out the paperwork. She’d been the gentle guide I needed.

“Sabrina.” The way she said my name was not gentle at all but cold. Practical. All business.

“Yes, hello, Mrs. Monighan. I was going to call, but I was waiting until my lawyer and PR person had done due diligence so I could pass along what they found.”

“I understand. I’m calling to let you know the agency has frozen your application.”

“What does that mean?” I’d been sitting in a chair by the window, looking out across the vast landscape of the mountains, feeling almost like I was out of my body. But her comment drew me back in and snapped me to attention.

“It means right now that we will not be moving to the next step.” She almost sounded like a recording, her voice a monotone.

“For how long? And then when it’s unfrozen, do I start at the bottom of the list again?”

“Indefinitely.”

I bent over, resting my chest against my legs, a cheek on my knee, as I faced the window and felt faint. “Is there a policy on what indefinitely looks like and how to unfreeze?”

“It’s being crafted as we speak.”

Which meant freezes weren’t a thing. So why don’t they just drop me?

I would find out later that they froze me out because dropping me could have exposed them to legal issues, and with being hacked, they were already facing a lot of those.

“Mrs. Monighan, I’m not the one who hacked the company. Why is this affecting my application?”

“We were hacked because of you.” She cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, it was in a whisper. “They see you as a risk. Having it known that the information of hundreds of private adoptions is in the hands of a hacker has made our families panic. Which has made our board panic, and you are the scapegoat.”

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