From Brooding Boss to Adoring Dad Read Online Free PDF Page A

pristine. No tourists.”
    “There’ll be time enough for that in a while. Right how, I still have work to do
right where I am.
And who knows? Maybe you’ll find some time for a short holiday yourself. You wouldn’t want your father on your arm for that, would you? Especially if you meet a nice young man who’s in the mood for a little holiday, too?”
    He lived in perpetual hope of that. Wanted grandchildren. But she’d … she’d never been that interested. It had been more than fifteen years since her last recurrence of leukemia, and the doctors had long since declared her recovered. Years and years of fighting the disease and all its nasty comebacks had taught her to be cautious. It had also taught her to stay focused on her goal … get through college, get through medical school, now this. Her life hadn’t afforded her the luxury of having more than one goal at a time because there had been so many times when even a single goal had been a struggle. So now she had a single goal to achieve, the most important one of her life, and she wouldn’t allow herself to think in terms of anything more.
    “Dad, you know I’m not looking right now,” she told him.
    “One of my big regrets, Erin, is that I have raised such a serious daughter. You were brought up in an old man’s world, I’m afraid, and you don’t know how to have fun.”
    Her father was older, yes. But fun … her life had been filled with fun, filled with so many wonderful things. And this was her father’s standard argument, the one he used to make her feel guilty. “It’s not going to work,” she teased.
    “What’s not going to work?” he asked, laughter just on the edge of his voice.
    “You know what I’m talking about. And there’ll be plenty of time for grandchildren, if I ever do find the right man.”
    “If you ever start looking.”
    Oh, she’d looked. Come close to finding, actually. Then been jilted because a slight illness had brought up a cancer scare, which had scared a man she might have been serious about right out the door. And he had run so hard and fast he hadn’t even made the promise that he’d call, or see her again, or they’d work it out. He’d told her he loved her one week, then bolted the next. Like her high school sweetheart had when the cancer actually had returned. Or her childhood best friend had when the chemotherapy had claimed her hair.
Oh, gross, Erin. You’re, like, going bald. That’s so disgusting.
So, no more looking, no more expectations. Emotionally, it was easier that way. “On that note, I’m going to say goodnight. Love you, Dad.”
    “Love you, too, Erin. Even if you are stubborn and too serious for your own good.”
    He clicked off before she could get to her next comeback. And for a while after the phone call she sat with her feet propped up on the porch rail, enjoying the gentle, hot breeze, still listening to the strains of happy music wafting in. Thinking of Adam Coulson, not of her dad. Harvard education and without a decent stethoscope. On impulse, she dialed her dad back. “One more thing,” she said. “Could you send me a stethoscope?”
    It was a small gesture, and she kept telling herself that it was for Tyjon, and anybody else needing treatment here. Not for Coulson.
    “So, let’s just get this over with.” A voice came at her from out of the dark a while later.
    Startled by Coulson’s intrusion into her pleasant solitude, Erin jumped. “Do you always sneak up on people that way?”
    “I wasn’t sneaking.”
    “And you didn’t exactly announce yourself either, did you?”
    “Actually, I did. I said, ‘Let’s just get this over with.'”
    Straightening in the chair and pulling her feet off the porch rail, she was a little sad to have her evening ended so abruptly. It was nice to relax for a while. The ambiance suited her, made her feel mellow. Lately, she hadn’t had time to relax, and who knew how long it had been since she’d felt mellow. “I agree,” she