His Healing Touch Read Online Free PDF Page A

better about all the trouble I’ve put you to.”
    When he hesitated, she put on her best “do as I say” look, hoping it would have more effect on Adam than it did on Aleesha.
    Amazingly, it did.
    “Do you have a dustpan?” she asked as he stood.
    He pointed to a narrow door.
    She pulled out a hand broom, too, then proceeded to sweep up the remnants of the plate. “What would you be doing if I wasn’t here?” she asked, eye-level with his worn hiking shoes.
    “Watching something on TV, I guess.”
    It was just a broken plate; the miserable way he sounded, a person would think he’d killed someone! “Then go watch something on TV. Pretend I’m not even here.”
    The shoes—and their owner—hiked into the living room, and seconds later, the theme from the Channel 13 news filled the air.
    When she joined him after cleaning up, he was in his recliner, TV listings in one hand, clicker in the other. Kasey sat on the end of the couch nearest his chair and hugged a quilted toss pillow to her chest. “Anything positive happening tonight?”
    “Nah. Typical news day.” He brightened slightly to add, “The Dow Jones is up a couple of points, though.”
    Yippee, she thought. Kasey knew as much about the stock market as she knew about cardiology. “Have they said anything about the weather yet?”
    “Only that we’re in for a doozie of a storm.”
    Yippee, she echoed silently. It’d be just her luck for the tail end of that hurricane that had been wreaking havoc in the Atlantic to choose tonight to head up Chesapeake Bay. If that happened, they could be stranded here for…for who knew how long! Several years earlier, when the weather had taken a turn like that, downed trees and power lines had Baltimoreans fighting in store aisles over the dwindling supply of ice and batteries. Kasey sighed inwardly.
    A huge clap of thunder, followed immediately by crackling lightning, shook the cabin.
    Wonderful, Kasey thought. What else could go wrong?
    As if in answer to her question, the lights went out. She watched as the TV’s picture shrunk to a bright white pinpoint, then disappeared altogether. She’d never seen such total darkness, not even in the basement furnace room at home.
    “Stay right where you are,” Adam said. “I’ll get a flashlight.”
    “Don’t you worry, I’m not gonna move a muscle. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.”
    She could hear him, rummaging somewhere off to her left. Hopefully, he hadn’t stored the flashlight in that kitchen drawer, because he was likely to pull out the proverbial bloody stump instead of a flashlight.
    Much to her surprise, he was back in no time, illuminated by the pyramid-shaped beam of a foot-long flashlight.
    “Here,” he instructed, handing her a battery-powered lantern, “turn that on.”
    And before she could agree or object, he was gone again, leaving nothing but a bobbing, weaving trail of light in his wake. Kasey fumbled with the lantern until she found a switch on its side. Minutes later, Adam placed a glass-globed lantern beside it, and once lit, the oil-soaked wick brightened the entire room. He placed a matching lamp on the kitchen counter.
    “Well,” she said, laughing, “what in the world will we do without the TV to entertain us?”
    Adam leaned back in his recliner. “Oh, I have a feeling you’ll think of something.”
    For a reason she couldn’t explain, the way he sounded just now matched the expression he’d worn earlier. Suspicious was the only word she could think of to describe it. And she couldn’t for the life of her come up with a reason he’d have to feel that way. “We could play a game, I suppose. Do you have a game cupboard up here?”
    “Actually, it’s a game chest. ” He nodded at the coffee table. “What’s your preference? Scrabble? Monopoly? Life?”
    Last thing Kasey wanted to do right now was think. She wrinkled her nose. “How ’bout War?”
    “That baby game?” he said, grinning.
    “Truthfully,