Oh, God.
Tell him!
“Mary Anne was my sister!”
Hannah stopped breathing.
JP froze with the tips of his fingers curled into her pants. His expression reflected utter shock, then morphed into disbelief, and finally fury.
No. Those were not the words that fell from her mouth. They couldn’t be.
But his face told her all she needed to know.
She’d said it.
And she’d ruined everything.
Her chance at a bond with her niece.
Her parents’ shot at a relationship with their granddaughter.
Her friendship with the Bensons.
Her chances of ever touching JP again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WHAT THE FUCK just happened?
How did he go from worried about busting a nut too early to the second biggest shock of his life in a matter of seconds?
JP’s body flushed hot, then so cold he had to fight from breaking out in a storm of violent shivers.
“What the fuck did you say?” he asked as he withdrew his hands from where he’d been about to yank her pants down and taste her in a whole new way.
He had to have heard wrong. There was no fucking way.
Hannah sighed a defeated sound. She sagged into his pillows and gazed up at him with deep sadness in those pretty eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, making his stomach dive. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. I just…I was feeling so much, and then the guilt took over, and—”
Screw her guilt. “Say it again. Fucking tell me again.” How the hell was he managing a calm, even voice?
She swallowed. “M-Mary Anne is, was, my younger sister.”
“Mary Anne,” he said as the gravity of her statement worked its way under his skin. “The woman who tricked me into knocking her up then didn’t bother to tell me she had my kid before she up and died, leaving me a single father to a baby I didn’t know existed. That Mary Anne?”
She flinched at his cold description of her death, but at that moment, he didn’t care. Twice, these women had tricked him.
“Y-yes,” she said with a tremor vibrating her voice.
Still straddling her, he gaped down at her, trying to reconcile the information and deception with the woman he’d been spending time with. She’d been lying to him. Every fucking second of every fucking day.
“Was this all a big game to you? Have you been part of it from the beginning?” He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the strands hard to ground himself as he felt the world spiral out yet again. “Did you all have a good laugh at the stupid chump whose sperm she used for her selfish purposes?”
Hannah’s eyes widened in horror. “No!” She folded her arms over her chest, hiding her naked breasts from his view. She needn’t have bothered.
There was no way in hell he’d touch her again.
“No, JP, not at all. I had no idea what she was planning until she found out she was pregnant. Then she broke down and told me the whole story.”
A grunt was all he could manage. How the hell could he trust a word out of her lying mouth now? The one and only time he’d opened up and given a woman more than just his cock, and she’d been lying to him the entire time. He was a stupid fool.
“Can, um, can I please have my top?” She reached around him but couldn’t grab it.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Why the lies? What’s your angle?” Her comfort wasn’t his high priority right then. Understanding why he’d been chosen for this nightmare was. Figuring out what she wanted from him and Kayla.
And getting rid of her.
Suddenly, he couldn’t stand being so close to her. Still touching her. She represented everything wrong with this fucked up situation. The fabrications, the tricks, the confusion, the disbelief. All the feelings he’d been working to process and move past since Kayla dropped into his life came roaring back with a vengeance.
How could he have been fooled so easily twice? He hadn’t protected his daughter from the first liar that came their way. How could he be trusted to keep her safe from other threats and dangers? His chest tightened, and fingers tingled in the familiar warning signs.
He sprang off the bed as though burned by her naked skin.
Hannah scrambled to sit, then fished around for her discarded shirt. While he paced his room, she jerked the top over her head. Once in place, she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs as her eyes tracked his agitated movements.
“I begged her to tell you,” Hannah eventually whispered in a tiny voice. “Before she had Kayla, and then after. I begged her every single day. Even when she was too weak to h-hold a phone.”
He stopped walking and stood at the foot of the bed, staring at her. “Is that supposed to sway me? Is that sad little hitch in your voice when you talk about your dead sister supposed to make me feel like an asshole for getting angry at you? For fucking hating you and her?”