Free Hearts in Defiance (Romance in the Rockies Book 2) by Heather Blanton Page A

now?
    “You wouldn’t believe how I’ve missed you, Hannah,” he said as
they climbed the steps.
    Her first response to his lament was a spark of anger. Anger over
the abandonment and betrayal.
    … over the cowardice.
    So many good things had come out of the situation, though, she
couldn’t hate him. It wouldn’t be right. She’d told Mollie once that if Billy
ever showed up, she’d forgive him because she loved him. Well, one out of two.
    “Billy is a beautiful child,” she said, ignoring his comment. “He
looks the most like you, but I can see a little of your mother around his
mouth.”
    She thought she heard a quiet, perhaps defeated, sigh from the man
in tow behind her. “I can’t wait to see him.”
    Hannah plucked a lamp off the wall and led them into her room.
Silently, they padded up to the crib to gaze at her angel. Little Billy slept
contentedly, his knees drawn up to his chest, his diaper-covered bottom shoved
heavenward, and a thumb stashed securely in his mouth. Billy gasped and Hannah
stepped away. She hung the lamp on the hook near the crib as Billy reached out
and stroked the child’s soft golden tuft of hair.
    He raised a fist to his mouth as if holding back a sound. His eyes
glistened and Hannah couldn’t deny that the father of her baby was moved by the
sight of his son. “He’s beautiful, Hannah. And I only see you in those angelic
little features.”
    She laced her fingers in front of her and bowed her head. A
maelstrom of confusing emotions swirled in her heart. She wanted to run away
from Billy, but knew he would take that as rejection. She needed desperately to
be alone so she could sort out how she was feeling, because she had no idea.
    Tall and muscular, Billy still wore his ash hair trimmed short and
swept to the side. His smooth, handsome face, that deep, throaty laugh, and
those sky-blue eyes used to set her heart a fluttering. But now he seemed a
bit, well, too much like a greenhorn. His clothes were cut for city life. He
hung his bowler on the crib’s post, and while it looked well-worn, it was a bowler .
Fashionable back east, in Defiance only the meanest of men wore one, presumably
because they were spoiling for a fight. She didn’t get that impression from
Billy. Out here, he was just a dude.
    Although, judging by her racing heart, she couldn’t deny that she
still liked that handsome face and sky-blue eyes. But there was something
different about him. He carried himself more seriously and less arrogantly. He
didn’t have that boyish swagger she’d been so enamored of.
    “I meant it, Hannah. I came for you.” He tore his focus away from
Little Billy and sought her out in the flickering lamplight. “How do you feel
about me? Do we still have a chance?”
    “I don’t know.” She didn’t think that was what either one of them
wanted to hear, but it was the truth. “You lied to me. You abandoned me. You
let your father smear me, and you ran away.” Billy flinched at the accusations
she fired like a Gatling gun. Hannah immediately regretted her tone, the venom
in it surprising her. “I’m sorry. I don’t normally say things like that. It’s
just that I honestly thought I’d never see you again and …” She didn’t finish
the sentence. He got the gist of things.
    “Don’t apologize for the truth.” Billy rested his elbows on the
crib and shook his head. “I was sitting in a hotel in Paris three months after
you left, thinking about you. It hit me then that there wasn’t enough liquor
and there weren’t enough women in the world to make me forget you, but I was
still too scared of my father to do anything about it.” He smiled tenderly at
Little Billy. “Then one day at Harvard, I saw a professor of mine in the park
with his family. They were having a picnic. His son couldn’t have been more
than two years old.” Billy’s gaze misted over. “He was flying him around like a
bird, dipping and spinning. The little boy was laughing hysterically.”