Free Marry Me Again (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 1) by Teresa Hill Page A

world to her. As Rebecca saw it, she was meant to have Sammy. He was her world, her absolute joy. So she had been fated to fall in love with Tucker, too, and to have her heart broken by him.
    Asking why didn't do any good. It never did. Fate was fate. It didn't take kindly to questions, and it always won out in the end.
    Still, with him here now, she couldn't help but think... Why? Why did it have to be Tucker? Why did he have to come back? Why did her whole body go warm all over in remembrance of him when he was doing nothing but holding her hands and making her miserable, all at the same time?
    "Rebecca?"
    She met his eyes, when she shouldn't have. She let her hands stay there in the warmth of his hold, when she should have known better.
    "I just..." Tucker faltered, and she thought it was so unlike him to be the least bit unsure of himself. "I honestly thought he'd be better off without me."
    She bit her lip, bit down hard and found herself trembling, her hands still in his and tears running down her face.
    She should hate him. She had for years, and one heartfelt confession couldn't change that but—oh, a part of her hurt so badly for him then. Hurt for him, and at the same time, blamed him. She tried to concentrate on the anger and to hang on to the need to blame him. She had to do that.
    "It's just not enough, Tucker. It's a cop-out."
    "I know," he admitted. "But it's true."
    Well, maybe it was. It probably was true. Rebecca couldn't deny that. She believed Tucker did think Sammy would be better off without him, because she knew how he felt about having children.
    And it just wasn't fair. It was so absolutely unfair that it had happened this way, with so much hurt and so much pain.
    Grudgingly, she admitted part of the hurt came from knowing it wasn't just him to blame. She'd blamed Tucker for years for the mess they'd made of their family, but when she was being really honest, she blamed herself, too.
    They'd gotten married too fast. She'd known that. They'd had too many differences, some that they hadn't even discovered until after they were married. Like Tucker saying he didn't think he'd make a good father. He'd meant it. She hadn't realized just how much he'd meant it until it was too late, until she was pregnant, hoping a baby might somehow help hold together her already troubled marriage.
    It had been terribly unfair to Sammy. He deserved the very best she had to give him, and as Rebecca saw it, the best gift a mother could give her son was to bring him into the world in the midst of a strong, loving marriage. Because being a parent was hard. It was so very hard sometimes, and it scared her—being the one person in the world Sammy truly had. What if something happened to her? What if she was doing it all wrong? What if she couldn't be all that he needed? It was a job that surely was easier for two people.
    Rebecca almost wept then. The sadness was just too much, too big, too overwhelming. How much of it could one person take?
    It was so much easier when she could think of Tucker as a cold, unfeeling person. It was easier to hate him and then try to push him from her mind.
    Why did he have to come back and bring up all these things in their shared past? Why?
    He caught her unaware, lost in her thoughts and her unanswered questions, and before she could stop him, he caught another tear as it ran down her face. He was wiping her tears away, again.
    But she had to remember there'd also been so many nights when she'd cried her eyes out and he'd been nowhere to be found.
    She had to remember, because he was the most dangerous man she'd ever met. He touched her where no one else had. He connected with her on some level that no one else had ever reached. Why did it have to be that way between them, still, after all these years?
    "I can't do this, Tucker."
    She backed away nervously, as far as she could from her seat on the sofa, and when it wasn't far enough, she got up and backed up against the wall and held up her