Read Online Dylan's Redemption by Jennifer Ryan - Free Book Online Page B

her feelings clear and led him to believe Jessie died. He’d suffered and mourned in silence.
    “You should have told me. I can’t believe you sent that email in my name. How could you do something like that?”
    “I was hurt and angry after you left. I wasn’t thinking. I’d check your email every day for a clue as to why you left the way you did. What were you thinking? Then she emailed you, and it became so obvious you two had a falling out and that’s why you left the way you did.”
    “I can’t believe you were checking my emails.”
    “You knew the rules when you lived under our roof.”
    Yes, he did. They knew his passwords, but he never thought he’d given them any reason to check up on him. Sometimes his mother could be overprotective. In this case, she’d crossed a line.
    Furious she’d invade his privacy, send an email in his name, and then follow up with her lies by telling Jessie on the phone, he didn’t want to speak to her ever again. He couldn’t speak to his mother right now. He might say something he couldn’t take back. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
    “Dylan. I’m sorry. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.”
    “I know,” he conceded, but she had hurt him. She’d hurt Jessie, and that was harder to ignore. “I’ll talk to you later.”
    The damage had been done. Now, he had to find a way to make it up to Jessie. First, he had to find her.
    D YLAN SLAMMED HIS office door, rounded his desk, and sat in his cracked leather chair.
    The office buzzed with activity. After his call with his mother this morning, he’d been detoured from his objective to find Jessie for one emergency call and then another. When he finally returned to the office, he consulted with his deputies about ongoing cases, returned phone calls, and waded through general crap before he could look into Jessie’s past.
    Story of his life. Especially since he moved back to Fallbrook.
    Well, nothing and no one would sidetrack him this time. Not a case. Not his cousins, Brody and Owen, and whatever drama they had going on in their lives, though things had calmed down now that both of them were married.
    He’d come back to his office to find out where Jessie had been all this time. Her license plate was the one and only clue he had to work with, but he’d start there and follow her trail through the last several years and uncover all her secrets. He needed to dig up all the information and details on her before he saw her again. The next time they talked, he wanted to be prepared. This morning, she’d blindsided him. He didn’t want that to happen again.
    The aroma of fresh coffee surrounded him. Inhaling deeply, he rose and poured a cup from the pot his secretary made recently on the credenza. Returning to his desk, he frowned at the files piled in his in basket. To his dismay, they overwhelmed the number he’d managed to move into his out basket.
    He took off his hat, tossing it into the visitor’s chair. He ran both hands through his hair and swore under his breath. One hell of a morning. Jessie was back. Not only alive and well, but more beautiful than he imagined. And royally pissed. At him. At his mother because of that damn email. Even the thought of hurting Jessie with a letter like that made him sick. He’d never do anything to hurt her. That she believed it only showed how short he fell the one and only time he’d laid it all on the line to show her how special she was to him. Prom night. That night and Jessie haunted his memories.
    He took a swallow of coffee and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead between his eyes. A headache throbbed in time to his heart. The sun slowly descended into dusk, and still he hadn’t done what he’d come in on a Saturday to do.
    He thought of all Jessie had been through in her young life, ending with Buddy slicing open her back. An injury like that could be fatal. Just the thought of what Brian described made him cringe. He’d seen his share