For Love and Family Read Online Free PDF

really was just inside.
    In those first few days of his life, she’d fallen in love with the baby Eve had given birth to. She’d held him and rocked him and cooed to him. She’d felt him curl up against her; she’d spent hours with him sleeping in her arms.
    In the process she’d begun to hope that her sister would change her mind about giving up the baby. That she could convince her sister to keep him and that then she would get to be a part of his life.
    But nothing she’d said or done had changed Eve’s mind. Eve had wanted nothing to do with that baby. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to hold him. She didn’t even want to know he was alive. And she certainly wasn’t going to keep him.
    When Terese had finally had to accept that, her thoughts had turned to an alternate course. She’d decided to adopt the baby herself.
    Eve had hit the ceiling when Terese had told her. It was the biggest argument they’d ever had, culminating in Eve’s flat refusal to relinquish the infant to Terese. Then, to make it even harder on Terese, Eve had arranged for the baby to be immediately turned over to the parents Eve had chosen. Terese hadn’t had so much as the opportunity to say goodbye to the baby she’d come to love.
    It had wrenched Terese’s heart. In fact, she’d gone through a long period of grieving before she’d given up the hope of ever seeing him again.
    And then she’d come home to find Hunter Coltrane in her entryway.
    Of course the circumstances had been less than ideal. Certainly she didn’t want a health problem to be the cause of bringing her nephew back into her life. But now that it had happened and she was only moments away from getting to see him again, it seemed too good to be true.
    Terese opened the rear door and pulled out her leather suitcase, not wanting to waste any more precious time when she could be meeting her nephew.
    And seeing his dad again.
    But Terese pushed the thought of Hunter out of her mind as soon as it popped into it. Exactly as she’d been doing since she’d seen him at the hospital. Hunter might be drop-dead gorgeous and honest enough to have kept his word, but meeting and getting to know his son was the only thing this visit was about. And she couldn’t let herself forget that.
    Terese was determined not to lose sight of just how touchy the whole situation was. She knew she had to keep in mind that she was an outsider in the lives of both father and son. She had to keep in mind that even though she might be a blood relative of Johnny’s, she still had no rights to him, that she was nothing more than a stranger here, allowed to get to know him only out of the kindness and generosity of his father, a father who could very well have dug in his heels and refused to have the line between birth family and adopted family crossed.
    No, she had no doubt whatsoever that this was a touchy situation. Touchy and complicated. And it didn’t need to be complicated even more by her drifting into thoughts of Hunter Coltrane as a man.
    Terese closed the rear car door with a resounding slam, as if that would help put an end to any thoughts of her nephew’s father.
    Then she climbed the four steps to the front porch with her suitcase in hand.
    But before she had a chance to knock on the screen, the carved oak door opened and there stood Hunter Coltrane.
    Tall. Broad-shouldered. Strappingly good-looking.
    Taller, broader of shoulder, and even more strappingly good-looking than her memory had made him in all the images that had haunted her since she’d come in on his confrontation with her sister this past week.
    It didn’t help matters.
    But Terese tamped down the instant, involuntaryappreciation that flooded her at that first sight of him and reminded herself that she was out of his league when it came to looks, and that she’d better remember it.
    Johnny. This was only about