“She’s had a hard life,” his mom mused thoughtfully.
“Imagine so.” He hadn’t looked at the background records the lawyers had dug up on Jillian. It had been enough for Jesse that they’d told him she’d checked out and wasn’t trying to pull a fast one. Apparently, though, his mother had read the file.
Jesse took a gulp of coffee and told himself to run for it. He could take most anything and stand his ground. Hell, he’d faced flash floods and lightning storms on the open land without blinking. But when his mother started in on him, it was smarter to bolt.
Decision made, he set the screwdriver he still held down on the counter. “Thanks for the coffee. I think that cupboard door’s good now, but if the hinge comes loose again, let me know.”
“You’re not fooling me, you know,” Cora Lee said softly. “I know a grown man trying to hide from his mother when I see one.”
Well, that stopped him. Shooting her a look over his shoulder, he asked wryly, “Can you really blame me?”
Cora Lee considered that for a second or two, then smiled. “I guess not. Fine. You can relax. I won’t say another word about Jillian.”
“Thanks.”
“For now.”
He rolled his eyes. Jesse was beginning to suspect there’d been nothing wrong with the damn cabinet he’d just spent fifteen minutes fixing in the first place. His mother had probably loosened the hinge so she’d have an excuse to trap him in her kitchen.
Her cottage was quiet. The kids were gone, Brody with his mother to the main house and Mac with Jillian back to their new prison cell. He scowled at the thought. Still didn’t like the idea of them living in that tiny, lifeless place, but the woman was as stubborn as she was beautiful.
His mind dredged up the image of Jillian laughing with Lucy when they came back from their spur-of-the-moment shopping trip. She’d looked…relaxed, like her guard was down, and a hot fist of need had grabbed Jesse by the balls and hadn’t let go yet.
He didn’t like his reactions to Jillian but hadn’t been able to control them yet, either. It seemed that woman had the ability to turn him inside out just by looking at him. So, the last thing he needed was his mother’s well-meant but unnecessary advice or opinion. Hell, he liked his life just fine the way it was. He wasn’t looking for a family. He already had a family and a kid he would always be responsible for because Brody’s father had died under Jesse’s watch. So yeah. No changes to his life needed. When he wanted a woman he went out and got one. Drinks, dinner and sex filled out a single evening and then he was back to his real world. This ranch. His family.
What with Will coming back from the dead, Lucy a widow and Brody fatherless, he didn’t need one more damn thing to think about. No more drama.
He opened the back door to leave, but stopped when his mother spoke up again. “Jesse.”
The speculative, my-son-needs-a-wife gleam in her eyes had been replaced by a glimmer of the concern and worry etched into her features. “I need you to talk to Will.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. “About what?”
She dropped into a kitchen chair and held a thick white mug of coffee cupped between her palms. “About how he has to keep a low profile until the police and the FBI say he can come out of the shadows and get back to his life. About how he can’t go off roaming into Royal like he tried to do just an hour ago.”
Jesse’s eyes went wide, and he shot a hard look at the main house behind him before looking back to his mother. “He can’t go into town. What’s he thinking? We already told him he’s got to stay here on the ranch until things are figured out.”
“Yes, I know.” Her eyebrows arched. “I was there.”
Sighing, he nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
But Cora Lee wasn’t finished. “Will’s going stir-crazy I think. All he can talk about is getting out there and hunting down Richard Lowell himself. Will wants to reclaim his life.”
Still furious, Jesse thought about Rich, a man who had duped them all. It was Will himself who’d figured out who the impostor was. When he heard that the man had claimed Rich had died in the boating accident, he’d known it was Rich himself who had stolen his life. Who but Will and Rich would have known the details? Now they were all trapped in this helplessness.
Jesse couldn’t blame his younger brother for wanting to do something. Anything. He could understand the frustration and the fury. Hell, he shared it. Richard Lowell. Hard to believe that he was the man who’d impersonated Will for so long.
Rich and Will had met at college and become friends, but apparently that hadn’t been enough for Rich. The man had been so eaten up by envy or whatever the hell it was that psychos got eaten up by, that eventually, he’d tried to kill Will and take over his life. And he’d come damn close to pulling it off forever.