From Brooding Boss to Adoring Dad Read Online Free PDF

said, standing. “Let’s get this over with. Do you have my deed?”
    He handed it over, without saying a word.
    She didn’t look at it, though. He wouldn’t cheat her on this, and to look would be to insult him. No need to do that. No need to rub salt in what was obviously a very open, very raw wound. “Thank you,” she said, tucking the paper into her pocket.
    “Just like that,” he said, almost under his breath.
    “Like what?”
    “Like in a split second, it’s gone.” He shrugged. “So that makes us neighbors now, doesn’t it?”
    “In proximity, yes, I suppose it does. But we don’t have to be neighborly. I know you didn’t want to sell your land, and I know you resent me for buying it. So it’s OK with me if we’re not friends, not even neighbors who wave.”
    “And you think that makes it better for me?”
    “I don’t know what makes it better for you, Coulson. I’m just making an offer. I’ll stay away from you, leave you alone, won’t even come to Trinique’s, if it’s better for you that way.” It wasn’t much of a gesture, considering the circumstances. But it was the best she could do.
    “What’s better for me is getting my property back, but that’s not going to happen. You need it for whatever reason you may have, and I wanted it for whatever reason I had.
    But in the end, my reason wasn’t going to happen. Don’t know if yours will or not.”
    “What was your reason?” she asked him.
    “To use it as it was intended … as a hospital. But as you can see, I barely manage a clinic, so the hospital was a …”
    “A dream?”
    “A long way off. Money talks. You had it, I need it, and now one of us is happy while the other is better off. Fair trade, although I hate it to hell.”
    “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m going to open a children’s hospital.”
    “Now, there’s an impractical idea if ever I’ve heard one.”
    “You think a children’s hospital is impractical?” she practically growled, she was so angry.
    “Not in the right setting. Which is someplace accessible, a place people can get to easily, where they’ll want to take their children. We’re not accessible here. You already know that. And nobody in their right mind will bring their children to a place where the only way in or out is on a rutted road. Put the hospital someplace where people can use it. Not here!”
    “But here is perfect.” And her hospital wasn’t going to be just any ordinary hospital. It was going to be everything she hadn’t had when she’d spent so much time in various hospitals. It was going to be a place where being sick wasn’t the focus, but being normal was.
    “Shows what you know about setting up a hospital. At least, when I wanted to start a hospital here, I had enough sense to know that the area would support a very small general hospital.
General hospital,
not a specialty facility.”
    She tamped back her anger to face his challenge. With Adam Coulson, she had an idea that anger could turn intoa steady diet, and she simply didn’t want to bristle then strike every time they met. So now was as good a time as any to start reining herself in. Because she wasn’t going anywhere. This was home. He was her shouting-distance neighbor. She didn’t want the strife on a lingering basis. Gritting her teeth, she smiled up at him. “Then I guess it’s up to me to prove you wrong, isn’t it?”
    “Or the other way around.”
    “Not going to happen, Coulson. I know what I’m doing.”
    “The thing is, so do I, and I also know it’s a bad idea.”
    “You’ll change your mind.” She hoped.
    “You’ll change your plans.”
    “I don’t think so.” Standing her ground with him was … stimulating. It made her tingle. So much so, she took a step back from him. “Look, there’s no point in arguing about it. I’m going forward with my plans, whether or not you like it, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
    “Actually, I can stand back and watch