Mystery Heiress. Suzanne Carey
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Название: Mystery Heiress
Автор: Suzanne Carey
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Эротическая литература
Серия: Mills & Boon M&B
isbn: 9781472086976
isbn:
“Call me Stephen,” he said. “Thanks to Annabel, or Annie, as you call her, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. C’mon, let’s go upstairs and see how she’s doing before I have to check out of here.”
Pale and wraithlike as she slept beneath her hospital blanket, Annie looked like a little-girl ghost. Her control slipping, Jess wept softly as she gazed at her daughter. “I’m so worried about her,” she confided. “She’s all I’ve got. I don’t want to lose her.”
All too well, Stephen knew how she felt. A moment later, he’d taken her in his arms. Her tears were soaking into his hospital coat. An unplanned act, the move was meant simply to comfort her, or so he told himself.
To Jess, his arms offered a place of sanctuary and trust—and, incredibly, of nurturance. She wanted to lean on him. Blend with him. Burrow against the warmth of his neck. Despite her fear and worry over Annie, she realized it was a wake-up call to the lonely, loving woman in her—a woman who’d built a fortress around her heart when she learned of her late husband’s faithlessness.
As their embrace held, Stephen found he didn’t trust himself to move, or speak. By some alchemy he’d thought long extinct, he was holding a woman who filled his arms—one who, with her obvious refinement and strong capacity for love, might be able to fill his heart, as well.
A moment later, he was withdrawing from her. He was her daughter’s hematologist, after all. Professional ethics forbade his getting involved with her, even if his track record as a comforter of women who stood to lose a child did not.
“Ummm…Mrs. Holmes, I’d better be going,” he said awkwardly, when she didn’t speak. “We’ll have a chance to talk again tomorrow. Try to get some rest.”
Settling in a chair by Annie’s bed after he left, Jess pondered the fact that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. By itself, of course, it didn’t mean anything. Yet, coupled with the air of loneliness she’d noticed at the zoo and her persistent impression that he was a man who’d known sorrow, she thought it might.
She was aware their physical contact had embarrassed him. While her reaction to it had been quite a bit different, to say the least, she hoped it wouldn’t interfere with his care of Annie. Or prompt him to forget his promise to talk to Lindsay Todd on her behalf.
Returning home to face an empty house and the remainder of a lonely, aimless Saturday afternoon, Stephen found himself going into David’s room. On impulse, he opened David’s toy box and picked up some plastic cowboys and Indians, complete with ponies, that his little boy had loved to play with. The ache in his heart was boundless.
Aside from bringing the impersonal cruelty of illness home to him in a very personal way, David’s death had also taught him something about his fitness for a man-woman relationship, particularly one that might have to survive an emotional crisis. Or so he believed. As they’d dealt with the crushing blow of David’s cancer and death, he and Brenda had failed each other.
“What are you doing even thinking about Jessica Holmes?” he asked himself.
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