“No,” Hank said. “You’re right. It would be stupid for me to pretend I didn’t have illegitimate children when I got caught sticking my dick into other women all the time. I admit to what I am. I was a philanderer for a good long time, and I had no business making vows to your mother when I couldn’t keep them worth a damn. But among my sins was not ignoring children that I knew about.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“Obviously, I can add to my list of sins occasionally not using a condom.”

“Dad,” Gabe said.

“What? There’s no point dancing around it. No point pretending that’s not what we’re talking about. I was shit at controlling myself. But... Gabe...there aren’t other sons. At least not any that I know about.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JAMIE WAS JUST finishing up with the last of her duties, which had included checking on the motor she’d installed earlier. She checked it off on the main roster, and just resisted drawing a hand with its middle finger waving in the air. She didn’t want to leave any kind of public clue that her relationship with Gabe went anywhere beyond professional.

So she initialed it, and then suddenly found herself being hauled backward into the office.

Gabe shut the door behind them, locked it. There was something terrifying in those blue eyes of his. Fury, but something else that she couldn’t read.

“Gabe...”

“I need you,” he said, his voice fractured.

“You...what?”

“I need you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk.”

He reached over to the desk and swept all the papers that were on the edge of it on the floor, then picked Jamie up and deposited her on the edge, stepping between her thighs and taking her mouth in a searing kiss.

His heart was pounding hard, and it wasn’t just desire, or anything like that. It was beating like he was afraid.

And she didn’t want him to be afraid. So she clung to his shoulders and kissed him back, offered him everything he had taught her to give. He needed her.

His strength was failing him, and he needed her. Needed her to be strong now so that he could break.

She didn’t need to know why to know that.

At the same time it frightened her to be entrusted with such a thing.

Because when a man as strong as Gabe needed you to hold on to his strength for a moment, you had to be strong.

You’re strong. You’ve always been strong.

She’d taken care of her brothers, hadn’t she? Her dad?

Except, as Gabe wrenched her shirt up over her head, as he planted raw kisses on her neck, fractured sounds escaping him, she realized that in her family, they didn’t do a very good job of depending on each other at all.

Because what they really did was keep everything as tight inside as they could. That was their version of caring. Making sure they carried all the burdens on their own without handing them over to anyone else.