Page 420 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

Instead of getting the brush-off, he watched her cheeks pink. She lifted off her seat. He figured she was going for coffee to break the moment, but she moved to him and leaned a hand on the table.

She smiled a second before she lowered her head. Touched her lips to his.

It was nothing like what they’d had before, but there was a familiarity about it. Like déjà vu in the best way. An old familiar sweater on a cold day.

Then he lost all thought as she shifted, turned her head, and the kiss deepened.

Jacob reached up and touched her cheek. Tasted the promise in her. The hope that existed between them that he’d never found anywhere else.

She leaned back, and he heard her breathy sigh. Jacob opened his eyes, aware of the tug of a smile on his face.

Addie felt the same on hers. “Definitely not a cop.”

Jacob cleared his throat and finished his coffee.

“Need a refill?”

Before he could answer, Mona rushed in with tears rolling down her face. “What happened?”

Addie shook her head. “You don’t want the details. And I can’t give them to you when it’s an open investigation.”

“You have to tell me what happened!”

“I can’t tell you.”

Jacob shifted his lower body around along with his upper body. “You could sit with us and talk it out.”

The teen knew their friend Becca had died in the same incident where they were taken. Hank’s girlfriend had suffered and died at the hands of a demented killer.

Jacob had been pushed to his end and nearly broke. Only the arrival of the police had saved their lives otherwise they would have been buried with Becca.

Would Hank have gone on without them, believing it was his fault they were dead, and he was the only survivor? Maybe he believed exactly that about Becca’s death.

“You know that we know what it feels like to lose someone.” Jacob couldn’t push out those thoughts about Hank.

Where was his friend? He needed to ask Addie.

Hank didn’t cope well when he was pushed to his limit. Jacob had learned that the hard way when he’d tried to get Hank to open up to him about exactly what happened when Becca died.

Jacob couldn’t imagine, but he knew why Hank didn’t want to talk about it, ever.

Mona spun around and walked out. Russ went after her, following a silent but heated conversation between himand Addie. No words spoken out loud—but a lot had been communicated there.

Jacob was in too much pain to decipher it.

When it was just the two of them again, Jacob said, “What was that with Russ?”

She sighed, her hips back against the counter. “He parents differently than I would. But neither of us is her actual parent. Life just sucks sometimes.” She glanced aside. “She needs her mother, her father. And yet, it’s better that neither is here.”

“She has support and love. Why would she need anything else?”

Truth was, Jacob didn’t know anything about raising children. He’d barely managed to keep himself stable over the years. He would much rather be alone than wrapped up in other people’s feelings. When it came down to it, he sucked at relationships.

“I’m sorry.” When her gaze came back to him, Jacob said, “For how I broke things off.”

“We were both in pain, and my mom’s comments certainly didn’t help anything. She threw her weight around, making those snide comments about you and me. Putting us both down. We didn’t know how to deal with any of it.”

Neither of them had mentioned the elephant that’d been in that room before now. The one who looked an awful lot like her mother.

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