He didn’t want to argue over this, but she needed to understand it wasn’t his job to take moral sides. Not as the attorney of record and certainly not as the man who could too easily fall under her spell once again. If he cared about her father’s guilt or innocence, if he cared about Molly’s emotional state, he’d set himself up for a rejection that would take a lot longer than eight months for him to get over.
“Molly—”
She leaned forward. “You’ve read the file, you know the facts, but you don’t know the man and my father. General Addams would not kill his best friend,” she said, imploring him with her voice, begging him with her deep eyes and soulful expression.
Hunter groaned and tried to give her the speech he gave to every client or relative who insisted they needed him to believe in their innocence in order to represent them. “Listen to me. You need me to be your father’s advocate not his champion. There’s a difference.”
She shook her head and he caught a whiff of her fragrant scent. His groin reacted as if she were plastered against him, but his brain somehow managed to function and focus on their conversation.
“He’s my father. My real father. One who cares about me and…” She paused and swallowed hard, fighting what he felt certain were tears.
Shit.
“Look,” he began, “I can’t begin to imagine what you’re feeling right now, but I’ll do my best for him.”
Molly nodded. “I never doubted that or I wouldn’t have called you. So let’s just enjoy. There’ll be time enough to get into details later.” She pushed his cup toward him.
He nodded in appreciation and lifted his cup to take a long, hot sip, burning the roof of his mouth in the process. They sat in surprisingly comfortable silence, sharing their morning coffee and talking about general subjects like the news and the weather. Not in a stilted way that people tended to do, but in a relaxed, understanding one, causing Hunter to remember just how well they’d always gotten along.
He gradually brought the subject back to her current situation. “Do you like living with everyone or do you hate being surrounded by people? After all the years of living on my own, I’m not sure I could move in with strangers.” It reminded him too much of foster care.
She pursed her glossy lips as she thought about his question. “It was uncomfortable at first and there are still things about being on my own that I miss,” she said at last. “I’m definitely not going to stay with them forever. It just seemed like a good way to get to know my family and make up for lost time.”
“Even with Jessie’s hostility?” he asked, seriously wondering how she could handle it day in and day out.
“She’s been the biggest challenge. I just try and put myself in her place. It usually calms me down enough to ignore her, you know?”
He shook his head. “Not really. I was an only child, so I never had to get used to brothers and sisters. At least not until later on.”
“Until foster care.”
At her use of the term, everything inside him froze and he wished he’d never said anything at all. “Right.” His jaw locked tight.
“Was it that bad?” she asked softly.
He never talked about his past. Even when he’d told her he’d grown up in the system, she’d known better than to ask for details. Obviously now that she’d successfully dug into her own roots, she thought she had carte blanche to ask about his.
“Yeah, it was that bad. The nightmare you hear about. Can we leave it at that?” Hunter was deliberately abrupt in the hopes she’d drop the subject.
“No, we can’t.” Molly reached out and covered his hand with hers. She looked at him with a combination of caring and curiosity in her gaze. No pity.
He’d never had the sense that she pitied him. Maybe because her own childhood hadn’t been a picnic, she was so able to understand his.
“It doesn’t seem like you’ve gotten beyond the past. Maybe talking about it will help.” The hope in her voice implored him to open up.
“Just because you’ve found some freaking fairy tale doesn’t mean I will. Leave it alone.”
He expected a wounded look.
“Do you ever wish you could look up your family?” she asked instead.
Hunter closed his eyes and counted to ten before meeting her gaze again. “Do you ever wish your mother would show up and ruin the good thing you’ve got going? No, you don’t. Just like I don’t want my deadbeat, alcoholic father who walked out on me and my mother to knock on my door. And I sure as hell don’t ever want to see the woman who turned me over to foster care showing up for a handout. That’s the beauty of stupid questions. They don’t deserve answers.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the hard chair, pulling his hand away from hers.
Molly raised her eyebrows, seemingly unfazed by his outburst. “Actually I’d like to see my mother again because I have a lot of unanswered questions for her. But I wouldn’t expect anything from her this time. Lesson learned on that score.”
He nodded, her calm, quiet answer deflating some of his frustration, which hadn’t been directed at her but at his lousy childhood, at least until the year he’d spent in Ty’s home. But that had been ripped away from him, as well.
She was right. She’d come to terms with her past. He was still powder-keg angry.
He let out a deep breath and exhaled hard. “Not everyone can get things wrapped up in a neat little bow like you did.”
“That’s true, but you’re only hurting yourself by holding on to so much anger. I’m here if you want to talk about it, that’s all.”
But for how long? Hunter wondered. How long was Molly here for him before she walked away the way she did before? The way everyone in his life tended to do.
“Thanks,” he muttered, unwilling to engage in that particular conversation.
“If I ever had kids, I’d never treat them like they were less important than the gum wrapper on my shoe,” Molly said, taking him off guard.
“Or the next drink,” Hunter added without thinking.
A cute smile pulled at her lips. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Joining me in my griping, I mean. It felt good, didn’t it?”
He inclined his head. “I’m sure neither one of us would leave a kid in the restroom of Penn Station without a look back.”
“Is that what your mother did?” she asked, obviously horrified by the prospect.