Healing Hope (Helping Hands, Healing Hearts Book 3) Read online

  But it had been very hard to do anything about it. He didn’t have custody, so the only thing he could do was file complaints with his lawyer.

  He huffed out a breath. That was all done and over with. Now that he had Hope he could raise her and care for her the way he wanted. Moreso, the way she needed.

  His daughter got up and started to leave the kitchen, but Jess called her name. “Put your cup in the sink, please.”

  Without a word or a grumble, Hope did as she was told, then she took off down the hallway, Sophie bolting along at her side.

  Paul looked at Jess incredulously. “She has never put one dish in the sink, ever. You’ve made her do it two nights in a row.”

  Her brows quirked. “Have you ever told her to?”

  Paul snapped his mouth shut. Had he? “I don’t know that I have,” he said eventually.

  “She needs to have chores. She’s old enough to pick up her toys and get her dirty clothes in the basket, or whatever. Gather dirty dishes. This is her home, now, so she needs to take part in its upkeep. Is she enrolled in preschool?”

  “Not yet,” Paul admitted.

  “You need to be researching those to figure out which one she should go to,” Jess told him.

  It amazed him how patient she was being with him, and non-condescending. It chafed to take advice from her, though. The woman struck him as a damn beach bunny, which shouldn’t even have angered him. It was California, after all, and he’d seen the type many times before, both in the hospital and in actual life.

  So why was she aggravating him? Was it her casual beauty? Because she was stunning. He worked with good-looking people every day. None of them were in his space, though. Maybe that was the difference. This was his home, where he relaxed and could be his most vulnerable.

  Perhaps it was just a territorial defensiveness. Whatever it was, he was very aware of her. His skin prickled when she was near, and he found himself breathing her in.

  She’d seriously saved his ass over the past day. Despite his prickliness, she was sharing her knowledge with him, and he needed to appreciate that and absorb.

  “I’ll start researching them when I get to work tomorrow, or I’ll have my assistant reach out to them. Assuming you can take over tomorrow.”

  Jess gave him a crooked smile. “I think we’ll be okay.”

  Paul had done a lot of things by relying on his gut, and this would be no different. “Okay.”

  6

  Paul thought of those words two days later. Mostly, Jess had been incredibly polite and conscientious, responding to his texts and calls when he requested an update, even though he might have been a little nagging. It was hard to let go, though. After all this time, having his daughter in his life was important, and he needed to know that she was safe and cared for.

  Jess had stopped responding to his texts, though. He pressed the phone icon and tried to call, but it only beeped. Had they gone somewhere and gotten stranded? San Diego was a big city, and they had more than their fair share of crime.

  “Paul!”

  He looked up at his assistant, Jane. It was obvious by the look on her face that she’d been calling his name for a while. “Sorry, what do you need?”

  For the next two hours he was enmeshed in a series of emergencies, and he wasn’t able to check on Jess and Hope. When he pulled up his text messages, though, he saw Jess had sent a two-line message.

  We’re fine. Talk later.

  He thought about sending an aggravated response, but restrained himself. They could talk when he got home. And he would tell her that she needed to respond to him.

  Jess stared down at the phone, feeling a little guilty. That message had seemed a little terse, but she’d gotten aggravated. The man texted at least once an hour, and she’d responded to the previous ten messages in a timely manner. He needed to let up, though.

  Yes, Hope was a handful. The girl still refused to cooperate with even the easiest requests. Everything turned into a tense exchange. The cookies they made yesterday had been good bribes for a while, but she figured that game out.

  This morning, though, she’d finally begun to relax. Jess had driven them to the beach for the day, top down on the Jeep, and Hope had finally begun to connect to her. They wandered the rocky shoreline, waded through tide pools, investigating creatures hiding in the crevices and under rocks. Sophie trotted along at their side, happy to stay on the shore while they waded.

  “Oh, look at this,” Jess called, pointing down into the water.

  Hope gasped as she caught sight of the red creature. “Is that a star-fish?”

  “Yes,” Jess said, gently stroking a finger down one of the arms. It drew back, then rested its appendage on her finger.

  Hope squealed, a sound Jess had never heard her make. “He’s touching you!”

  Jess reached for Hope’s hand. “Let me see your hand.”

  Once Hope’s hand was next to hers, she moved the little fingers closer. The starfish very gently settled on Hope’s skin, making her giggle. The animal’s feet moved sinuously against her. “He’s tasting you,” Jess told her.

  Hope would have jerked back if Jess hadn’t been holding her hand.

  “Ew! Don’t let him eat me,” the little girl cried, her dark hair flying in the wind and her blue eyes wide.

  Jess grinned. “You’re too tough and stringy for him to eat. Don’t worry.”

  They moved on down the beach, and Hope trotted along beside Sophie. The little dog yipped, making her giggle, and Jess snapped a few pictures of her, then sent them to Paul. Today, finally, she was beginning to act like a child should act, playing in the sand and sea. It made Jess’s heart hurt that her growth had been stunted, in a way. It was almost like Hope had never been allowed to be a child. She’d seen the ocean before, but when Jess had suggested going wading, Hope had looked at her like she was crazy. Till Jess had done it herself.

  It was the same with parks. They’d gone to a couple of parks this week, but she’d been leery of having to play with other kids, so she’d sat on the bench with Jess, or walked the trails. She never left Jess’s side.

  About four days after Jess had started, they were sitting on the bench listening to the birds chirp when a little girl ran over from the playground, an easy smile on her face. “I’m Amelia. Can you come play with me?”

  Hope shook her head vigorously, and the other girl’s face fell. She turned and walked away. Jess didn’t say anything at first, just letting the incident filter through her brain. She wasn’t sure why Hope had denied the little girl, and she wasn’t sure Hope could even answer her if she asked.

  “Amelia seemed like a nice girl,” she said eventually, observing Hope’s face out of the corner of her eye. Hope scowled and pulled Sophie tighter to her side. “Why didn’t you want to go play with her?”

  Unexpectedly, tears filled Hope’s eyes and she blinked furiously, turning her head away to look down at Sophie. The little dog whined and went up on two legs to lick at her face.

  Jess moved off the bench and sank down onto her haunches in front of Hope. “Look at me.” She waited until the girl’s big blue eyes flicked to hers. “What’s wrong? I promise you I’m not going to be mad or upset at you. I just want to know what you’re thinking. If you want to go play, I think you would have a lot of fun.”

  Hope shook her head, lips clamped tightly together.

  “Hope,” Jess said.

  “If I go play, you’ll disappear,” she burst out in a rush.

  Jess blinked, wondering if she’d heard her right. “I’ll disappear? No, I won’t. I’ll be right here. I swear. I won’t go anywhere.”

  Hope shook her head, though, and a sinking feeling began to fill Jess’s heart. Had her mother left her in a park or something? “Hope,” she whispered, reaching out to rest her hands on the girl’s clenched fists, “if you want to play with Amelia, Sophie and I will come over to the playground with you. That way you can see us the entire time. Okay?”

  Hope was qui
et for a long while, and Jess could see the internal struggle. Then she looked up at Jess and made a brave decision. “You promise?”

  Jess nodded. She pushed to her feet and took Sophie’s leash in one hand, and Hope’s hand in the other. “Let’s go.”

  Amelia was alone on the swings, and a broad smile split her face as Hope came over to her. But Hope hung back, holding onto Jess’s hand. “You promise you won’t go anywhere?”

  “I promise. Where would you like me to wait so that you can see me?”

  Hope glanced around and eventually pointed to a bench a few yards away.

  “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.

  Just because she was here for Hope, though, it didn’t mean she wanted to hear about his crappy day. “It’s not important. Just a rough day at work.”

  “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, but thank you. I’m going to put together a sandwich or something.” He started to get up, but she beat him to it, resting a hand on his shoulder to keep him in the seat.

  “I have a plate for you in the microwave.”

  Paul watched as she crossed the kitchen to the microwave and pushed a few buttons. Then she turned to lean against the over door. Tonight she wore a light summer dress thing that kind of hung off her, the hem ending just above her knees. If she hadn’t been wearing a tank top, it would have been indecent, but it suited her. Free and flowy. And pretty. Paul scrubbed his hand down his face, feeling old.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked as she removed the plate. Turning, she brought it to the island and set it in front of him, then moved to her chair.

  Paul looked down at the plate.
His mouth had been watering as soon as he’d walked into the house, and now he understood why. She’d made some kind of pork loin roast sitting in a little pool of sauce, with tiny potatoes. And what looked like roasted garlic broccoli? For a moment he was struck speechless. The plate looked restaurant quality. He glanced around the kitchen, looking for takeout bags. “You made this?”

  Jess lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “Yes…” she drawled.

  Paul reached for the silverware he hadn’t even been aware of her setting down. He cut a piece of the roast and lifted it to his mouth, then chewy slowly. “Oh, hell,” he groaned as it melted on his tongue.

  Jess laughed, leaning an elbow on the edge of the island to prop her chin and watch him.

  He glanced at her. “You made this?” he asked again.

  She made a face at him. “Isn’t this what we bought at the store the other day?”

  Damn, it was. “You said you cooked, but I never expect you to cook for me,” he said firmly. “As long as you take care of my daughter, that’s really all I require from you. This is a nice treat, though.”

  She shrugged lightly, one smooth, tan shoulder riding high. “She ate and there were leftovers. You don’t appear to eat enough, so I made you a plate. It was no big deal.”

  Paul looked down at the food. It was a big deal to him. “Thank you. It’s delicious. Better than anything else I’ve had for a long time.”

  Jess gave him that crooked smile he’d come to expect.

  “I’m glad,” she said softly. “I’ve had some excellent teachers.”

  For a moment, Paul wondered if she meant men. Had they instructed her how to cook after a lazy weekend of making love? What business was it of his if they had? What she did before she came here was none of his business.