In The Arms of a Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page B

was more aware of the subtle play of muscle beneath fabric than the rise and fall of his chest.
    The baby squirmed in her lap and Dana blinked, her gaze rising to Luke’s face. Loose waves of dark-brown hair just brushed the neck of his T-shirt. The fabric expanded to cover broad shoulders. He was a giant of a man, yet there was a gentleness about his face, more specifically his eyes. Set above high cheekbones, his eyes were startlingly blue against his dark complexion. Eyes that watched her intently, missing nothing.
    Dana was surprised to find that a surreal warmth had filled her, calmed her when she wasn’t even aware of it. But to her amazement, that wasn’t all. She’d hardly been aware of herself as a woman during the past year and a half. But emotions she’d thought long dead now warmed her body in places she’d learned to ignore. Luke’s gaze flickered to her mouth, and Dana jerked her hand away as though she’d been burned.
    â€œIs anyone expecting you?” Luke’s deep voice cut through the silence that followed.
    Was anyone expecting her? She desperately wanted to say yes, but couldn’t think of a soul who’d look for her. Her aunt and uncle had raised her since the age of five, after her parents died in an auto accident. Dana checked in with them once a week. But if she didn’t, would they call her? An old pain threatened to resurface, and she suddenly knew why she phoned them so regularly. The answer was no.
    Her chest constricted again, but this time Dana reached for Luke, her hand seeking his chest like a lifeline. He placed his hand over hers, warm and reassuring.
    â€œNo, Dana,” he crooned, his deep voice hypnotic. “Don’t let it happen again. Breathe.”
    Her eyes were glued to his chest, but her thoughts were frantically searching for a positive answer to his question. The list of people close to her was short and getting shorter. Her ex-husband? She shook her head, forcing down a hysterical sob. No, Robert was busy tending to his new wife and newborn son. His biological son, she mentally added. A child that even the most advanced fertility treatments hadn’t allowed her to bear.
    Perhaps that was the reason she was so out of control, she reasoned. She’d continued to try to become pregnant, even after the divorce, for the last year and a half. Her doctor had pumped enough hormones into her system to give her normally laid-back personality a jolt of hysteria. Not that the effort had done any good.
    And now that door had permanently closed.
    I’m afraid we’ve reached an impasse, Dana. Her doctor had delivered the news as gently as possible. There’s nothing more we can do.
    She’d received the call from her doctor just moments before she was to go on-air today. The proverbial straw that had broken the camel’s back.
    There hadn’t been time to confide the news to anyone, but she could predict the reaction of friends and family. It’s for the best, they’d say. After all, she was a single woman in the public eye. If viewers reacted negatively to a pregnancy, it could mean the end of her career.
    But what did she care?
    People looked at her carefully arranged appearance, her high-profile career, and thought she’d achieved her dream. It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. What she wanted was to spend sleepless nights holding an infant against her breast, make mud pies with a toddler, and teacha first-grader how to turn a wad of gum into a shiny pink bubble.
    At one time the dream had included a loving husband, but not anymore.
    â€œDana?”
    Dana looked up, knowing his watchful eyes had seen the play of emotion on her face. She dropped her hand, forcing her breathing to steady on its on. This was her life, the hand she’d been dealt. She called on the stubborn pride that had seen her through more than one lonely crisis, including her childhood.
    Dana lifted her chin slightly.