Read Online Lorraine Heath by Parting Gifts - Free Book Online Page A

apologized, but the house was still and quiet. He knew everyone had gone to bed. He picked up a fork and pierced a piece of chicken. It almost melted in his mouth. Charles was right; the woman was one hell of a cook. He should be eating crow instead of something this delicious.
    In the morning, first thing, he’d make amends.
    Maddie didn’t think it was the harsh thunder that woke her. She’d always had the ability to sleep through storms. She peered through her lashes. A little pixie stood beside the bed, hands clasped before her chest, eyes wide, lips set in a frown. Opening her eyes fully, Maddie smiled at Taylor.
    Thunder spoke out against the night. Taylor jerked her head toward the window, then threw her tiny body against the bed. Maddie drew the covers aside before placing her hand gently on the trembling child’s shoulders. “Come on. Get into bed with us.” With Charles’s arm draped over her stomach, she helped Taylor as much as she could. The little girl snuggled down into the bed, and Maddie drew her nearer.
    As the thunder again resounded, Maddie whispered, “Sounds like your Uncle Jesse’s warning sound, doesn’t it?”
    Taylor giggled and nuzzled her nose against Maddie’s shoulder. Maddie felt the child’s tremors subside. She touched a soft lock of her hair. Children were so different from adults. Their skin carried the scent of innocence, a softness not yet jaded by the reality of the world. They trusted and loved completely.
    She tucked the blankets more securely around Taylor. Lightning flashed, filling the room with a momentary brilliance. Her breath caught and her heart pounded furiously against her breast at the sight of Jesse standing within the open doorway.
    Jesse didn’t know how long he had been staring at the intimate scene before the lightning revealed his presence. He expected anger to flare in the woman’s eyes, but there was no anger, no annoyance, just a need to understand—to understand something he couldn’t explain. He reached into the room, grabbed onto the glass handle, and pulled the door until it clicked into place. He pressed his forehead against the oak door and listened to the silent tranquillity within. Emblazoned within his mind was the sight of Taylor snuggled against Maddie as her arm protectively circled the child, and Charles sleeping peacefully as he held his wife.
    He felt an unaccountable ache in his chest for things he’d never experienced. The women he’d taken to bed during his life weren’t the kind a man held in his arms afterward, weren’t the kind a man took with him into his dreams or his future. And they certainly weren’t the kind of women who’d ever allow a child to crawl into their bed.
    He walked to his own room. He closed the door, crossed the room, and braced both hands on the window. Gazing out, he watched the storm send down torrents of rain. Like the lightning flashing across the tempestuous sky, it suddenly occurred to him that when Charles had been talking about choosing paths to walk, his brother had been talking about his own path, a path Charles hadn’t chosen, a short path whose final destination was certain death.
    Jesse stripped off his clothes and fell into bed. He shoved an arm beneath his head and stared at the beamed ceiling, the play of shadows as the thunder chased the lightning across the sky.
    Charles hadn’t chosen his path, but he was traversing it with more courage than Jesse knew he, himself, would. He had little doubt that during the day there was enough activity going on to keep Charles’s mind off the future, but at night when it was dark and quiet and the desire for things that could never be crept into a man’s mind, what did a man do? He wrapped his arms around a woman and became lost in her scent, her softness.
    Perhaps Charles had married Maddie as much for his sake as for the children’s. No man wanted to walk the path toward Death alone, and Jesse knew he was a poor substitute for the compassion and