“Are you kidding me?” He bit back the profanities that he thought were missing from that statement to try and keep this civil.
She shook her head slowly.
He was speechless. She actually wanted him to keep his sister’s baby. The sister who turned on him, betrayed everything he’d ever done for her and tried to ruin him. He turned away from Hannah in disgust. Hannah was responsible for bringing all of this to him. He hadn’t asked for this crap. He should have let her drive away. Adopt a baby. It was so insane, the idea of him taking in a baby, that he didn’t even try and process it.
“Jackson?” He heard the concern in the soft voice that tried to coax him into speaking. He knew exactly what she was doing now. She wanted him to talk, to open up. Fat chance in hell. His muscles tensed even tighter. He stared into the fire. “You don’t know anything about me. I run a company. I work twelve hours a day and live in a penthouse in downtown Toronto. I don’t know anything about babies. I don’t want a baby.”
It didn’t faze her. She folded her hands on her lap and stared at him levelly. “She is your flesh and blood, Jackson. It was your sister’s last wish.”
“My sister was a junkie. I offered her help hundreds of times and she refused. If she wanted what was best for her baby she would have taken the help being offered and sobered up. Blood ties mean nothing to me.”
She nudged her chin toward his drink. “I changed my mind. Could I have a glass of whatever you’re drinking, please?”
He was surprised by the request. He nodded, walking across the room. A moment later she accepted the snifter of whiskey and took a sip while he sat down. He didn’t want to be impressed that she didn’t cough as she swallowed.
“I know you didn’t have a good relationship with your sister, but Emily is just a baby,” she said leaning forward.
He shrugged and ground his teeth together. This was not his problem, no matter how hard she tried to make him think it was.
She frowned at him when he didn’t answer. “She’ll be placed in foster care if you don’t adopt her.”
He tried not to feel anything, especially the ugly emotions that had consumed him for years. The bitterness, the anger… no, he wanted to continue feeling nothing.
…
Hannah crossed her legs in front of her nervously and watched as Jackson digested that last piece of info. She tried not to panic. It didn’t look as though she got through to him at all. The only sign she had that he processed what she said was the rigid, tense lines in his body. If she completely angered him, she’d ruin her chance at getting him to agree to this. But if she stopped now, he might not let her broach this again and tomorrow she was leaving.
“The foster care system is a place for children who don’t have any family capable of caring for them. Your sister thought she could trust her daughter to you.” Hannah would have given anything to have been adopted by some long-lost relative who had come forward to rescue her, to know that she was connected to someone.
She held her breath. He looked into the bottom of his empty glass and then up at her. “Well, I’m sure there’s lots of great people out there who want a kid.”
“There are, but there are also no guarantees. And in the meantime she’ll be in foster care. You don’t know where she’ll end up—”
“It’s not my problem. If my sister wanted me to have anything to do with this baby she would have contacted me when she was born.”
“She said she’d tried so many times in the past, but that you refused to see her. After Emily was born, I think something happened. She became fragile again. I don’t think she could have handled your rejection.” Hannah couldn’t filter out the accusation from her voice. She had her own guilt to work through for not noticing any signs that Louise was failing, but her brother did too. Hannah knew she was too emotionally close to this case, but her past collided with baby Emily’s and she was desperate to honor Louise’s wish.
He scowled at her. “Did she tell you that after I spent years protecting her she bailed on me? That I searched for her and tried to help her? That she and her addict friends broke into my house and trashed it, stealing everything of value I had? That I almost lost everything when I started out because I trusted her?”
Oh, Louise had told her all right. When Louise had been sober she’d confided so many things to Hannah. And whenever she spoke of her older brother her voice had been filled with such pain. She had stopped seeking him out after that night of the break-in. She’d told her of their childhood—before and after their mother had died.