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

on
them."
    Nicholas
picked up a spatula and lifted a cookie off the sheet, then bounced
it from palm to palm as it cooled. "I didn't know I had them,"
he said. "I don't cook much."
    Paige
watched him taste the cookie. "Neither do I. I guess you should
know that, shouldn't you? We'll probably starve within a month."
    Nicholas
looked up. "But we'll die happy," he said. He took a second
bite. "These are good, Paige. You're underestimating your-self."
    Paige
shook her head. "I once set the oven on fire cooking a TV
dinner. I didn't take it out of the box. Cookies are my whole
repertoire. But I can do those from
scratch. You seemed like a butter cookie kind of guy. I tried to
remember if you ever ordered chocolate at the diner, and you didn't,
I don't think, so you have to be a vanilla person." When
Nicholas stared at her, Paige grinned at him. "The world is
divided into chocolate people and vanilla people. Don't you know
that, Nicholas?"
    "It's
that simple?"
    Paige
nodded. "Think about it. No one ever likes the two halves of a
Dixie ice cream cup equally. You either save the chocolate because
you like it best, or you save the vanilla. If you're really lucky,
you can swap with someone so you get a whole cup of the flavor you
like best. My dad used to do that for me."
    Nicholas
thought about the kind of day he had just come from. He was still on
rotation in Emergency. This morning there had been a six-car pileup
on Route 93, and the wounded were brought to Mass General. One had
died, one had been in neurosurgery for eight hours, one had gone into
cardiac arrest. During lunch a six-year-old girl was brought in, shot
through the stomach in a playground when she was caught in the
crossfire of two youth gangs. And then, in his apartment, there
was Paige. To come home to Paige every day would be a relief. To come
home to her would be a blessing.
    "I
take it you're a chocolate person," Nicholas said.
    "Of
course."
    Nicholas
stepped forward and put his arms on either side of her, bracing her
against the sink. "You can have my half of a Dixie cup anytime,"
he said. "You can have anything you want."

    Nicholas
had read once of a five-foot-three-inch woman who had lifted an
overturned school bus off her seven-year-old daughter. He had watched
a 60
Minutes segment
about an unmarried soldier who threw himself on top of a grenade to
protect the life of a fellow soldier who had a family waiting back
home. Medically, Nicholas could credit this to the sudden adrenaline
rush caused by crisis situations. Practically, he knew that some
measure of emotional commitment was involved. And he realized, to his
surprise, that he would have done such things for Paige. He would
swim a channel, take a bullet, trade his life. The idea shook
Nicholas, chilled his blood. Maybe it was only fierce protectiveness,
but he was beginning to believe it was love.
    In
spite of himself, in spite of his hasty proposal, Nicholas did not
believe in romantic love. He did not believe in being swept off your
feet, or in love at first sight—either of which would have
accounted for his near-immediate obsession with Paige. When he
had lain awake in bed last night, he wondered if the attraction could
be based on pity—the boy who had grown up with everything
thinking he could light up the life of the girl who had not—but
Nicholas had met women of less pedigreed backgrounds before, and none
of them had ever affected him so strongly he forgot how to use his
voice, how to breathe involuntarily. Those women, the ones Nicholas
could win over with a bottle of house Chianti and a disarming smile,
usually graced his bed for a week before he felt like moving on. He could have
done that with Paige; he knew he could have if he'd wanted to. But
whenever he looked at her, he wanted to stand beside her, to shield
her from the world with the simple, strong heat of his body. She was
so much more fragile than she let on.
    Paige
was sprawled in what was now his living room,
thanks