Read Online Mail Order Stepbrother by Kira Ward - Free Book Online Page A

nodded.
    Melanie squeezed her hand before letting go. “If you have any questions, just ask the nurses to page me.”
    “Thank you, Dr. Spence.”
    Melanie grabbed the iPad from where she’d dropped it in the seat of a chair and nodded as she glanced back at Tess. When she first learned that Jack was married, she imagined a mouse of a woman who had no idea that her husband was stepping out on her. But now… she couldn’t help but admire Tess for her strength. She wasn’t sure she could face the future Tess was staring at all on her own.
    Tess reminded Melanie a little of her mother. She suddenly had a deep desire to speak to her mom, but waited until she had checked on her other patients before she slipped into the nurses’ break room.
    “What’s the matter?” her mother said in way of greeting.
    “What makes you think something is wrong?”
    “Because you rarely ever call me just to talk.”
    Melanie wanted to deny it, but she knew it was true. She lived a busy life, had a busy career, and she didn’t make her mother a priority in her life.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not right.”
    “What’s going on, Mel?”
    She reached up and dragged her fingers through her hair. “Nothing. Just a long day already.” She sighed, her thoughts jumping from Tess to Eli to the surgery that was coming up. “How’s the party planning coming?”
    “Beautifully. I got your package with the sailboats…they’re perfect, just what I wanted.”
    “Good. Did you go over the guest list I sent back to you? I added a couple of names.”
    “Yes. I can’t believe I forgot Kurt,” she said, mentioning the name of the man who ran the community center she volunteered at, the place where she met Burton. “Thank you for fixing that.”
    “No problem. What else can I do?”
    “Oh, darling, there’s not much else. Not until you get here, of course. Are you still coming early?”
    “I’ll try. Depends on how crazy things are with my patients that weekend.”
    “Please try. I miss you, darling. And I can really use your help. This is the first big thing I’m doing as Burton’s wife and I want to make sure everything is perfect.”
    More guilt.
    “I’ll do my best.” Melanie ran her fingers through her hair again, thinking about the cases she had coming up in the next few weeks, trying to decide if she could postpone any of them. And then she realized that now wasn’t the time. “I love you, mom,” she said quietly into the phone. “I can’t wait to see you.”
    “Then I’ll see you in a few weeks.
    ***
    Melanie walked into the surgery waiting room, the fresh scrubs she’d quickly pulled on rubbing uncomfortably against the back of her neck. She reached up to adjust them when Tess spotted her, her eyes filling with tears before a single word came out of Melanie’s mouth.
    “He’s fine,” she said, reaching for the smaller woman. “The surgery went very well. We repaired the hole and looked around to make sure there wasn’t anything else that didn’t show up on the tests. There were no surprises.”
    “He’s going to be okay?”
    “He is,” Melanie said, rubbing Tess’s arms. “You can go sit with him in a few minutes. They’re just getting him get settled in the NICU. There are going to be a lot of wires and tubes, like I explained earlier. But with any luck we should be able to remove those fairly quickly.”
    “Thank you.” Tess threw her arms around Melanie and hugged her tightly, her fresh tears wetting the shoulder of Melanie’s scrubs.
    Melanie didn’t really mind.
    ***
    “When you said you cooked, I imagined lots of cans and boxes.”
    Nash laughed as he lifted the lid of a pot bubbling on Melanie’s stove and stirred its contents. “And when you said you couldn’t make toast, I thought you were exaggerating.”
    Melanie tossed a piece of onion at him—a piece that was still a little too thick despite his patient tutorial on the art of dicing vegetables. She could wield a