“This might surprise you, but I suspected you might have done jail time,” she said. It was one of the endless possibilities she’d considered late at night, when she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t one she’d taken all that seriously, just as she’d dismissed the possibility that he was on the run or an amnesiac or involved in some equally bizarre scenario. Another woman had seemed the most likely….
A scowl darkened his face. “Not the kind of question you want to ask, is it?”
“What was the charge?”
There was a lengthy silence. “I was convicted of dealing cocaine.”
“This is where your half brother comes in?”
Jon nodded. “The two of us were total opposites. He was the perfect son and I was the starving artist. The disreputable kid. My dad and stepmom favored Jim. He was ambitious, a businessman-in-the-making. He was everything they wanted in a son and I wasn’t.”
This was the first time he’d mentioned any family member other than his grandfather and the fact that Katie had been his dead mother’s name. His grandfather had left him the land on which Jon had built his house. “Where’s Jim now?”
His face tightened. “Dead.”
“Oh, Jon, I’m sorry.”
He nodded, but she saw him swallow hard. He set his foot against the back of the bleacher in front of them and slid his hands inside his pockets. “We lived together, and I was scraping by selling my pictures. I’d take my camera and hike into the forest and get as many shots as I could afford to develop. Jim moved in with me one summer and for a while it was great.”
Maryellen tucked her own hands in her pockets, but leaned closer to him, pressing her shoulder to his, needing to touch him.
“Jim was dealing cocaine. I swear on Katie’s life that I didn’t have a clue what he was doing. He was in college and his friends were the same upwardly mobile type he was.”
“He was selling to them?”
Jon nodded. “Fool that I was, I didn’t put two and two together. Jim always seemed to have money, always seemed to have whatever he wanted.”
“What happened?”
“One night the police came and dragged us both out of bed. They found the stuff. While I was screaming that it was planted and that we were innocent, Jim was selling me to the cops, saying it was mine.”
Maryellen placed her hand on his forearm, and he gripped her fingers with his own, squeezing hard.
“My brother testified against me, and my father claimed—well, he lied and said I was the one with the drug problem and that Jim had only recently moved into the house and couldn’t be involved.”
She closed her eyes, imagining that kind of betrayal. First his brother and then his father, too. “How could he do that?”
“Dad believed what Jim told him, I guess. He wanted to protect one of his sons—but not the other.”
“Oh, Jon.”
“I haven’t seen or talked to my father since the day I was sentenced. I want nothing to do with him. I don’t know how I would’ve survived without my grandfather’s support. He did everything he could to help me.”
She understood more and more of what he’d been through, the experiences that had shaped him.
“Jim died while I was in prison. My father wrote to tell me, but I never wrote him back.” He didn’t hide his pain or bitterness.
“How long were you in prison?”
“I was sentenced to fifteen years.”
She gasped. Jon, who loved the out-of-doors, had been locked in a jail cell.
“I served seven of those years, and it was seven years of hell.”
“Jim walked away scot-free?”
Jon looked down at their linked fingers and he squeezed so hard she nearly cried out from the pain. “He got a slap on the wrist with probation and then died of a heroin overdose the year before I was paroled.”
Maryellen desperately wanted to comfort him, to hold him in her arms.
“Now you know.” His eyes were cold as stones as he held her gaze. “You can give this information to any court in the land and take my daughter away from me.”
Now she knew why he was putting the land his grandfather had left him up for sale and selling the house he’d built with his own hands. Why he was quitting his job. Leaving Cedar Cove.
“You don’t trust me,” she whispered. He was relinquishing everything that mattered to him because he believed he was going to lose it, anyway. Because the minute he lowered his guard, he took the risk that she, too, would betray him.
“I can’t.” He didn’t bother to deny it. “The only person I can trust in this world is myself.”
“What about Katie?”
“She’s a baby….”
“She’s your daughter.”
“I love her.”
“But doesn’t she deserve to know her father?”
His jaw tightened again.
“Eventually you’ll have to trust someone. You can’t close yourself off from everyone. Sooner or later, you’ve got to stop running.”
He didn’t look at her, didn’t respond.
“I can deal with it if you don’t want me in your life, but Katie needs you. Jon, please don’t walk away from her.” She wanted to ask the same thing for herself, but wouldn’t.
“You know everything now.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You won’t try to get sole custody of Katie?”
“No,” she said. “I promise.”
“You probably could, you know.”
“Jon,” she cried in frustration. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? Katie needs you…. I need you. I’m not going to do anything to keep you out of Katie’s life. Or mine.”
His eyes narrowed. “Would you marry a felon?”
“Are you asking?”
He hesitated and then gave a jerky nod. She watched as he thrust his hands back inside his pockets, hunching his shoulders forward.
She blinked hard to keep the tears from spilling onto her face. “It would be the greatest honor of my life to marry you, to be the mother to your children and—”
“Children?”
“I’m thinking Katie could use a little brother or sister.”
A tentative smile came first and then Jon broke into the most wonderful deep-chested laugh. The sound of it drifted toward the cove, competing with the sharp cry of the seagulls.
Before Maryellen knew it, they were both standing and she was securely wrapped in his embrace. They hugged each other tightly and then he kissed her again and again.
Maryellen raised her face and wept openly as Jon’s kisses traveled over her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, moving toward her lips. When their mouths finally met, it was a kiss that spoke of faith and trust and love, and she returned those feelings in full measure.
She was breathless by the time he eased his mouth from hers. “I want us to get married soon.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Promise me you’ll never threaten to leave us again.”
“I promise,” he said,