Read Online Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult - Free Book Online

wrong, as if it rhymed with fangs, and
Nicholas smiled. Then, hearing his footsteps, she jumped to her feet,
as though she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't have been
doing. "I'm sorry," she blurted out.
    Paige's
cheeks were flushed; her shoulders were shaking. "What are you
sorry for?" Nicholas said, tossing his bag onto the couch.
    Paige
looked around, and following her glance, Nicholas began to see that
she'd been doing more than baking cookies. She had cleaned the entire
apartment, even scrubbed the hardwood floors, from the looks of
things. She had taken the extra quilt out of the linen closet and
draped it over the couch, so bright colors like lime and violet and
magenta washed over the Spartan room. She had moved the copies of Smithsonian and
the New
England Journal of Medicine off
the coffee table to make room for a Mademoiselle magazine
open to a feature on shaping your buttocks. On the kitchen counter
was a spray of black-eyed Susans, arranged neatly in a clean-washed
peanut butter jar.
    These
subtle changes took the focus away from the antiques and the sharp
edges that had made the place look so formal. In one afternoon,
Paige had made his apartment resemble any other lived-in apartment.
    "When
you took me here last night, I kept thinking that there was something
missing. It—I don't know—it just looked sort of stiff,
like you lived in the pages of an Architectural
Digest article.
I picked the flowers on the edge of the highway," Paige said
nervously, "and since I couldn't find a vase, I sort of finished
the peanut butter."
    Nicholas
nodded. "I didn't even know I had peanut butter," he said,
still gazing around the room. In the entire course of his life, he'd
never seen a copy of Mademoiselle in
his home. His mother would have died rather than see highway
wildflowers on a table instead of her hothouse tea roses. He'd been
brought up to believe that quilts were acceptable for hunting lodges
but not formal sitting rooms.
    When
he started medical school, Nicholas had left the decoration of the
apartment in his mother's hands because he hadn't the time or the
inclination, and to no one's surprise it came out looking very much
like the house he'd grown up in. Astrid had bequeathed him an ormolu
clock and an ancient cherry dining room table. She'd commissioned
her usual decorator to take care of the drapes and the upholstery,
specifying the rich hunter-green and navy and crimson fabrics that
she felt suited Nicholas. He hadn't wanted a formal sitting room, but
he had never mentioned that to his mother. After the fact, he didn't
know how to go about changing one into a simple living room. Or maybe
he didn't know how to go about living.
    "What
do you think?" Paige whispered, so quietly that Nicholas thought
he had imagined her voice.
    Nicholas
walked toward her, wrapped his arms around her. "I think
we're going to have to buy a vase," he said.
    He
could feel Paige's shoulders relax beneath his hands. Suddenly she
started talking, the words tumbling out of her mouth. "I didn't
know what to do," she said, "but I knew it needed something. And
then I figured—I'm baking cookies, did you know that?—well, I didn't
know if what I liked would be what you liked,
and I started to think about how I'd act
if I came home and someone I barely even knew had rearranged my whole
house. We don't really know each other, Nicholas, and I've been
thinking about that all night too: just when I've convinced myself
that this is the most right thing in the world, my common sense comes
tramping in. What's your favorite —butter or chocolate chip?"
    "I
don't know," Nicholas said. He was smiling. He liked trying to
follow her conversation. It reminded him of a pet rabbit he'd had
once that he tried to take for a walk on a leash.
    "Don't
tease me," Paige said, pulling away. She walked into the kitchen
and pulled a tray out of the oven. "You've never used these
cookie sheets," she said. "The stickers were still