After moping around the house for two weeks, Grace had finally convinced her to give Ben another chance to explain about Dorothy. Hannah went to the sheriff’s station feeling happy, with lunch for the two of them from Flo’s Café. She missed him so badly and couldn’t sleep at night thinking about their lovemaking. She would spend most of the night staring out her bedroom window and wondering if Ben missed her or had he moved on. She wished she had stayed and talked things out with him that morning but she had felt humiliated thinking he had slept with her while dating another woman.
She had walked in feeling hopeful and who did she see there? Dorothy sitting across the desk from him in a tight, silky blue dress, heels, perfect hair and face full of make-up. She was leaning toward Ben’s desk, flirting and giggling with him and Ben was sitting back in his chair looking happy and relaxed. He was eating some chocolate chip cookies out of a tin and laughing at something she said.
He obviously hadn’t been suffering or missing her at all and that hurt the most. He looked up when he heard the bell on the front door ring and looked at Hannah with surprise in his eyes, then winced when he saw her blue eyes glittering with anger and hurt.
“Hannah. I am so glad to see you, baby.” He stood up from his chair and walked toward her with an awkward smile. The station was empty and quiet, everyone had gone to lunch except him.
“Obviously,” she muttered, looking at Dorothy’s smug smile and then at Ben’s guilty look. All of a sudden she felt self-conscious about her plain jeans and old college T-shirt, her long hair pulled up in a ponytail. She couldn’t dress like she had stepped out of a fashion magazine, not with her messy job. “I came to surprise you with lunch, but I see you have company already, so I’ll just leave,” Hannah said rudely.
She threw the lunch in the trashcan by his desk and walked out in a heated rush, her face red with anger. At least Ruth, the secretary, hadn’t been there to see her humiliation or it would have been all over town in an hour. Ruth’s favorite pastime was gossiping on the phone to anyone willing to listen.
Ben caught up with her outside before she reached her truck parked in front of the station. “Hannah. I didn’t invite Dorothy here. She showed up to give me some homemade cookies. I told her I didn’t want to go out with her but she doesn’t give up. Stay and she’ll get the hint and leave.”
“You obviously didn’t make it clear enough to her since she is here with you flirting and you looked pretty happy about it. Now she feels obligated to feed you, too,” Hannah observed angrily, getting in her truck and slamming her door closed so hard it made him wince. “I’m done being a fool over you, Ben. You obviously have all the attention you need.”
“I was trying to think of a way to get rid of her without being mean,” he explained, knowing it sounded like a lame excuse but it was the honest truth. Dorothy was a nice, lonely lady and he didn’t like being rude. “I’ve missed you but I was waiting until you had a chance to calm down before I went to see you.”
“Whatever. I’m late for work. See you around town, sheriff,” she stated in a tone full of disbelief.
Ben had called her a few times but she was tired of hearing excuses so she refused to talk to him. She’d get over him much quicker if she just avoided him. A clean break was best. It would be hard since they lived in such a small town together where they would run into each other often.
She knew Jackson wanted to interfere but she told him things just didn’t work out between her and Ben and to leave it alone. He wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed to it to keep Hannah from getting more upset.
This last week she had started feeling nauseated at different times of the day and had felt light-headed, too. She had just started taking birth control pills before sleeping with Ben and didn’t know enough about them to understand why they hadn’t been effective. She couldn’t blame Ben, she had told him she was on the pill and it was true. But no matter how it happened, this would be her baby. She didn’t need a man to complicate her life. They would
be okay, just the two of them.
* * * *
Ben sat on the porch with Jackson Hawthorne at the Lazy J. He was petting Roxy, one of Hannah’s dogs. Roxy was a friendly black and white border collie who loved attention. Hannah hadn’t come home from work yet and it was getting dark. He had driven by the shelter often, looking into the big picture window just to see if he caught a glance of her. She refused his calls and the one time he had been brave enough to go into the shelter, Amy, her assistant, had glared at him rudely and informed him in a cool voice that Hannah was much too busy to come up to the front.
“You think she’s okay, Jack?” he asked for the fourth time, looking at his watch, impatient to see Hannah. He had explained to Jackson about the misunderstanding with Dorothy and how Hannah avoided his calls, so he finally came out here in person to force her to talk it out with him. He would even let her yell at him if it would get them talking again. Hannah in a temper was a scary sight but he needed her. Tonight they would talk it out once and for all. He missed his golden temptress and couldn’t stop remembering her in his arms that night. He wanted a chance to prove to her that she was the only one for him.
“She’s been staying late at the shelter lately. She says they have been busy. I’ve been trying to get her to hire more help, but she is stubborn and says she can handle it. I’ll have Grace call her and see if she is still there,” Jackson said, getting up and going inside the house to talk to his girlfriend.
“Will you put in a good word with your mistress, Roxy? Tell her I am not a bad guy,” Ben asked the dog with a sad face and Roxy barked as if saying yes.
Jackson’s girlfriend, Grace, came out of the house a few minutes later. She was a young, petite woman with long, curly red hair and big brown eyes. She had been through hell in a previous relationship but had survived and found love with Jackson. Ben was so glad Jackson finally found someone kindhearted to love. She looked at Ben with sympathy and sat on the porch swing. “I called Hannah. One of the dogs is going into labor. She might be there a while.”
Ben sighed sadly, feeling frustrated with the whole situation and tempted to march into the shelter and just tell her how it was going to be. “I have absolutely no luck these days, especially with Hannah.”
“You know Hannah has trust issues, Ben. Thanks to our parents’ constant fighting and that creep that broke her heart in college, she has trouble believing in happily ever after. And I’m sure me and Kelly didn’t give her any good impressions,” Jackson explained with regret as he came back outside and overheard Ben’s comment. He sat next to Grace and held her hand lovingly. “Relationships are hard, Ben, but worth it in the end. Before I met Grace, I had no luck in relationships, but now I believe I was waiting for Grace to come into my life all along.”
Ben nodded. “I know that, Jackson, and you two are lucky to have found each other. You inspired me to go for my dream girl. I never pressured Hannah to go out with me until this year. I thought we finally were getting somewhere. I just don’t know what to do to fix all this. I am in love with your sister but she refuses to believe that.”
“Well, you’re being too nice with Dorothy, Ben. If you truly aren’t interested in dating her, be firm and let her know that showing up at every place you go to is called stalking,” Grace said, putting her own two cents in. “If she keeps ‘accidentally’ running into you, Hannah is always going to wonder why you haven’t put your foot down and told Dorothy straight out to leave you alone. I know if someone followed Jackson around like that I’d be one pissed off girlfriend and let him and her both know it.”
Jackson put his hands up in surrender at Grace’s angry speech and laughed. “I don’t need any other women. You’re my one and only, babe.”
Grace snuggled happily into his arms and hugged him tightly. “Keep it that way, cowboy, and we’ll live a long happy life.”
“You’re right, Grace. Hannah has been unusually quiet about all this, which is not like her. That’s why I’m worried. Normally if she is mad at me she’ll be in my face, yelling at me and she wouldn’t care who overheard us,” Ben admitted sadly, envying the obvious deep love between the couple. That’s what he wanted with Hannah. “I’ve been trying not to be too harsh with Dorothy, but she is either too dumb to get the message I am not interested or playing dumb. When Hannah walked in with lunch and saw Dorothy there at the station I did kick Dorothy out and told her I was only interested in Hannah, but it was too late. The damage had been done. And the rumors about me being some kind of Romeo are ridiculous. If I even stop and say hello to a woman or, God forbid, have a simple cup of coffee with her all of a sudden I’m a wild playboy with no morals.”
“Has Dorothy been back?” Jackson asked, knowing the answer already and frowning deeply when Ben nodded. “Grace is right on this one, buddy. You’re too soft with the ladies, that’s why they always flock around you and Hannah gets so jealous. Remember the chili cook-off a few months back? You started dancing with Hannah and she looked happy until Dorothy and a few other women butted in and you let them, so Hannah stalked off mad as hell. You’re going to have to make a stand or my sister will never take you seriously. I know she loves you, Ben, but she is a Hawthorne all the way through. We can be a bit jealous.”
Grace snorted at Jackson’s comment. “A bit? Like throwing a fit when I wanted to go to Randy’s with Sammie and Jane.” Sammie and Jane were two of the other waitresses at Flo’s Café where Grace worked.
Jackson nodded firmly at Grace, putting his arm around her shoulder and hugging her to him. “Damn straight. No one dances with my woman but me, baby.”