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been married for fifty-two years, and they’d been in love long before that. Grace knew it hadn’t always been easy; they had to bury their only child, and that sadness plagued them every day. They knew heartache of an entirely different kind.
    But Claire had dealt with the heartache of loving someone who hadn’t loved her back. Claire had loved Brendan’s father, but Crayton Dallas had never returned that love. He’d abandoned Claire, left her without a second thought. He’d never been capable of love. At least that’s what Grace believed, because what other explanation could there be for a man who could walk out on the mother of his unborn child.
     And as for Grace’s father? Well, that was a whole other topic of conversation.
    Claire died when Grace was ten years old. Grace had been too young to demand to know who her father was then. And now the only person who could tell Grace was gone. But whoever he was, he’d either not known, or not cared. Grace didn’t know for sure, but she had a hard time imagining her mother not telling Grace’s father. So she went with the notion that he just hadn’t cared.
    Had this man broken Claire’s heart, too? Had she loved him? How had she dealt with it? How had she moved on? All of this would be helpful information to know so that Grace could figure out how to move on from Jax, because she had no freaking clue how to do it.
     Grace took another deep calming breath before she opened her eyes and straightened. She wiped away the remaining tears from her cheeks and dried her hands on her apron.
    She was tired; that’s why she was being so emotional. She hadn’t slept very well after she left the bar. Her mind had been full of useless thoughts that hadn’t gotten her anywhere, and had kept her from sleep until well after one in the morning. She’d woken up at five, and instead of lying in bed for an hour and a half, she’d decided to go to the café and cook.
    Pies were on the agenda for the day, thus her dough pounding. At least the café wasn’t going to open for another thirty minutes. She had a little bit of time to collect herself and down another cup of coffee.
    Yes, coffee would help her nerves.
    As she reached for her empty mug, a knock from the side door in the kitchen had her spinning around. Through the light blue sheers covering the windows, she could just make out the dark green uniform of an Atticus county deputy.
    “Oh, awesome. Just what my morning needs, more humiliation,” she whispered as she walked across the kitchen and unlocked the door.
    *  *  *
    Grace had been crying.
    If there was anything that brought Jax to his knees, it was Grace crying. She had flour on her face, and he could see the path the tears had taken down her cheeks.
    “Grace, what’s wrong?” Jax asked, stepping into the kitchen, not waiting for her to invite him in.
    “Nothing,” she said, turning around and walking away from him. “Did you come for coffee?” she asked, and grabbed her mug from the counter before she walked through the swinging door and out to the café.
    God, he hated it when she walked away from him. That’s all he’d been able to think about last night. Well, that and all of the disappointment from his friends. Harper had declared him an idiot before she’d followed Grace out of the bar. Shep had asked him what his problem was, Brendan had told him he better fix it, and Bennett had just frowned and shaken his head.
    “No,” he said, pushing through the door behind her, “I came to talk to you about last night.”
    “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said as she pumped coffee into her cup. “I got upset, now I’m over it. Case closed.”
    “If you were over it, why are you still upset? You’ve been crying, don’t try and hide it. I know that I—”
    “Contrary to popular belief, Jaxson, ” she interrupted as she grabbed a to-go cup from the stack and started to pump it full of coffee, “not everything is about you.”
    Jax crossed