Family Wanted (Willow's Haven Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

silent for a moment, while the other man’s muffled words continued to sound through the phone. Then Titus took a deep breath and answered, “No, I’m not her brother,” he said, his words slow and deliberate, as though he struggled to get them out. “I’m her husband.”

Chapter Three
    I thought I could handle anything, that we could handle anything, but I learned my limitations.
    I t’d taken Titus six days to gather the right words to tell Savannah that her mommy would never come back. The phone call from the hospital had sucker punched him, and he hadn’t known how to deal with the blow. Nan had been sick. Dying. And he hadn’t even known.
    And his “closure” had been pathetic. Pitiful, even. Nan hadn’t had a funeral. An online memorial page had been set up by the hospital for guests to sign. There weren’t even any pictures. According to the guy from the hospital and the memorial page, Nan had chosen to donate her body to science in the hopes of curing the rare kidney disease that killed her. That, of course, was the type of thing the woman he knew and loved would’ve done.
    But what had happened to Nan between the time she left and the time she died? He’d learned from the memorial page that she’d worked at the Atlanta inner-city YMCA before she’d gotten sick, but that was all. She’d had an entire new life that he knew nothing about.
    During the past three years, he’d been confused. Hurt. But for the past six days, he’d been angry. And oddly enough, his anger hadn’t been focused on Nan but on God. How could He deal Titus this blow? How could He have turned his back so thoroughly on Titus and, even more, on Savannah?
    Savannah. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his little girl. She was already so sad from Nan’s abandonment, but now he couldn’t even offer her hope of seeing her mommy. And he wondered if he’d ever see her happy again.
    But each time he doubted whether she could recover from all this, he thought of the way she lit up each morning when Isabella talked to her about what she planned to do to her hair. And he thought about the way she played with Rose and Daisy and the fact that those two little girls had lost their own mom not that long ago.
    He knew Savannah
could
be okay, but it wouldn’t happen on its own, so he had to get out of his own funk and help his little girl. He’d hesitated about asking Isabella to do more than fix her hair each morning, because he couldn’t stop the feeling of guilt he experienced each time he was around her. He’d been attracted to her,
very
attracted to her, even before he learned of Nan’s passing.
    Truthfully, he still was.
    But his little girl had connected with Isabella, and he had the perfect means to allow them to intensify that bond and to help Savannah cope with this new pain of Nan’s death. Savannah wanted to swim, and Isabella had offered to teach her. Titus hadn’t done anything about that because he’d felt wrong for being attracted to Isabella at all. But he had to put his daughter’s needs first, so he’d deal with this attraction...and ask Isabella for help.
    * * *
    “My mommy is in heaven now.”
    Isabella glanced up from the laptop to see Savannah, clutching the same doll she’d brought to the trailer each day since they’d first done hair together last week. She looked hopefully at Isabella as though expecting some kind of perfect response to the statement. Not knowing where this conversation would go, Isabella said a quick prayer for guidance and then said, “Yes, she is.”
    A couple of blinks, a chew on her lower lip, and then Savannah added, “Daddy is sad.”
    Isabella knew that was an understatement, since Titus hadn’t said a word about his wife’s passing since the phone call last week. In fact, each morning he entered the trailer, hugged and kissed Savannah before she started playing with Rose and Daisy and then worked like a madman until the sun went down. “I know he’s sad.”
    And