“Okay.” She backed toward the door, feeling for the knob behind her. Somehow she managed to coax up the corners of her mouth as she spoke to the traumatized child. “I’ll do my best to fix your sweater so it’s almost as good as new.”

“Thank you.” Hannah gave her a tremulous smile.

Jack rattled off his apartment number, and Christi filed it away in her memory as she exited.

On the other side of the door, she paused to kick-start her lungs while the startling news continued to loop through her mind.

Jack had a daughter.

So where was her mother?

But what did it matter? Their summer of romance was long past. Life had gone on for both of them. If there was a wife in the picture that Christi’s pretrip research hadn’t uncovered, so what? She’d made the taxing trek up here for a loan, nothing more.

Yet as she returned to her car and drove back toward Beth’s apartment, she couldn’t contain her burgeoning disappointment that Jack had found someone else to love soon after they’d broken up.

Because he wasn’t the only one whose heart had been tattered by their parting.

It had just taken her a lot longer to recognize all she’d lost.

And by then it had been too late.

14

This wasn’t how he’d wanted Christi to find out about his daughter.

As Jack led Hannah back to his apartment, the girl in lockstep beside him mere inches from the sweater draped over his arm, the meager dinner he’d managed to choke down hardened into a lump.

Christi’s shock had been almost palpable.

Not because she’d ever cared about him. The evidence proved otherwise. But his paternity wasn’t consistent with her image of the honorable, fresh-off-the-farm country boy who’d dropped out of college after the back-to-back deaths of his two remaining family members upended his world.

A guy with the values he’d espoused would never choose to be a single dad.

She had to be wondering if he’d been as upright as he’d seemed back in those days, or if he’d been as disingenuous as she—

“Who is that lady?”

Forcibly shifting gears, Jack refocused on Hannah. “Her name is Christi.”

“Is she your friend?”

Not even close.

“More like an acquaintance.” He picked up his pace.

“She’s nice.” Hannah broke into a trot. “Do you think she can fix my sweater?”

Not the Christi he’d once known. She would have relegated repairs and alterations to a tailor. He’d be willing to bet a week’s salary she’d never threaded a needle in her younger days.

“I hope so.” He turned onto the path that led to the door of the apartment. “But if she can’t, I’ll find someone in town who can.”