Beach House Beginnings Read Online Free PDF Page A

bad it was nearly empty.
    He ignored the hint and took the chair on the other side of the desk. All his instincts told him now was not the time to back off. She peeped at him again, her mouth pursing in a way that made him think more of kissing than of disapproval.
    “You didn’t ask about my scar,” he said in a conversational tone.
    A moment of charged silence passed. “Well…you know, it’s none of my business.”
    “I’m not sure about that. It’s what brought me here, after all.” It’s what brought me to you.
    Her eyebrows rose and she gave him her full attention for the first time. “How is that?”
    So cautious was Meg, so different than the Starr of ten years before, who had seemed to welcome life and love as if they were her due. He remembered her racing into the surf, dolphin-diving into the face of an oncoming wave. Would she even let the water wet her feet now? No , Caleb thought, and it took everything he had not to reach out for her, to grab her hand and tug her into his lap where he could whisper in her ear, assuring her he would always be her safe harbor.
    But he knew she wasn’t ready for that. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he was ready, though it didn’t seem he had much choice in the matter. Those kisses last night had proved that ready didn’t mean squat. When something so bright, so sure, came your way, you just grabbed for it with all you had, and held on.
    Looking death in the face made that Lesson Number One.
    “Caleb?”
    Right. He was supposed to be explaining his impetus for renting a beach cottage, though he’d better keep the exact details to himself for the moment. “I was in the hospital when Crescent Cove…uh, the idea of it just popped into my head. I knew I had to visit as soon as I was well.”
    When he didn’t continue, she threw him a disgruntled look. “Fine, I’ll ask. Why were you in the hospital?”
    “How much do you know about hearts?”
    “Are we talking physical or metaphorical?”
    Both were important when it came to the two of them, but Caleb would address that later. “Physical.”
    “Size of a fist,” she said, placing hers against her breastbone. “Four chambers. Blood pumps in, and it sends the de-oxygenated stuff through the lungs to pick up O² before being sent back out to the body.”
    “Right. The blood returning from the lungs goes into the left atrium—one of the chambers of the heart. From there, a valve, the mitral valve, opens to let that blood flow into the main pumping chamber, the left ventricle. I had a wonky valve, causing mitral stenosis.”
    Her fisted hand dropped to the desktop. “Sounds serious.”
    “It made some of my blood flow backward to my lungs, meaning my heart had to pump harder to get the necessary volume through my veins. Provided the leak is slow and only gets worse progressively, your body can compensate for years.”
    She covered her fist with her other hand, as if to comfort it. “And when it can no longer compensate?”
    “Then you experience shortness of breath and extreme fatigue.”
    “You knew this when you were a competing triathlete?” she asked, frowning at him.
    You say that as if you cared. “ Because I was a competing triathlete I caught on to something being not quite right. Turns out the bad case of strep throat I had as a kid likely developed into undiagnosed rheumatic fever that caused the damage. So I had surgery to fix me up, all right and tight.”
    She tilted her head, that glorious hair falling over one shoulder. “What kind of surgery makes you ‘all right and tight?’”
    “Open heart,” he said. “I have a mechanical valve now, and take a blood thinner every day, but that’s it. My long-term prognosis is the same as for any other thirty-year-old.”
    A moment passed, then she slapped her palms on the desktop. “Well. Congratulations.” She rose to her feet. “I’m glad to hear you’re in good shape.”
    “Excellent shape,” Caleb said, standing as well. She was in that