Another Chance to Love You Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ellen exclaimed the moment the door swung closed behind Daniel. “What on earth—”
    “Sit down, Mom.” Monica sank onto the chair behind her desk.
    Her mother moved forward. “Does he know?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, my.” She sat opposite Monica.
    “I went to the bookstore on Saturday and told him. He came to the house yesterday to meet Heather.” She remembered the way Heather had acted around Daniel. “The two of them got along very well.”
    “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.”
    “He’s her father. He had a right to know. It was wrong of me not to tell him.”
    There were tears in Ellen’s eyes. “He hurt you. He left you. You needed to protect yourself.”
    Weariness settled heavily on Monica’s shoulders. “Thatwas a long time ago, Mom. We were young and foolish. Things are different now. I needed to do what’s right in God’s eyes.”
    “Have you told Heather?”
    “Not yet. But we will. Soon.”
    Ellen dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. When she had control of herself, she met Monica’s gaze. “He seemed angry.”
    “Don’t you think he’s got a right to be angry? I robbed him out of almost eleven years of Heather’s life.”
    “But what if he hurts her like he did you?”
    She paused for a moment, scenes from last evening replaying in her mind. A soothing warmth spread through her, bringing with it a real calm and a sense of peace. “He won’t hurt Heather, Mom. He’s changed.”
    She knew without question that she spoke the truth. Daniel would be careful when it came to Heather. He might be ambitious. He might even be ruthless in his role as a big city newspaper reporter. But she felt sure he wouldn’t hurt her daughter.
    She didn’t know why she was so certain of that. She had no reason to be, no basis for her belief. Still, she believed it.
    Odd, she had loved the young man she’d known all those years ago. But when she looked at Daniel now, she saw very little of that college boy left. Oh, the outside was much the same, but the inner man was different. And it was the inner Daniel who intrigued Monica. Crazy as it was, she wanted to know the man he’d become.
    “Monica?”
    She gave her head a quick shake, then met her mother’s watchful gaze.
    “This is all my fault, isn’t it?” Ellen glanced down at her folded hands.
    “Your fault?”
    “Because I never told you that you were adopted.”
    She chose to answer honestly. “Maybe that was the catalyst, Mom. I won’t pretend I wasn’t hurt and confused when I found out.”
    She’d been more than hurt and confused. She’d been stunned. She and her parents had all donated blood while Heather was having her emergency appendectomy. Afterward, the lab technician had made an innocent comment about adoption being a wonderful thing. Monica thought she meant Heather and had corrected her. But the technician had meant Monica and had told her that her blood type didn’t match either of her parents; therefore, she had to be adopted.
    The discovery had left Monica reeling.
    She took a deep breath and continued, “Mom, I know you acted out of love for me…and maybe out of fear, too. I’ve come to realize the nature of my birth, why I was given up for adoption and who my birth parents were, isn’t as important to me as it is to some. You and Dad are my parents, and I love you.” She looked out the windows at the mountains. “But what I did to Daniel wasn’t the same thing. I should have told him about Heather from the start. Even if he didn’t want to marry me, it was what I should have done. I had no right to keep this a secret from him.”
    “Monica… You don’t still care for Daniel, do you?” The question was asked in a tense whisper.
    She didn’t know what to say. Seeing Daniel again after all these years had confused her. The best she could do was shrug, nod, then shake her head slowly, a gesture as confused as her emotions.
    “I never should have interfered,” Ellen said, more to herself than to her daughter. Her complexion