Mail Order Stepbrother Read Online Free PDF Page B

child’s head, wondering what kind of future he had with an overly-protective mother and an apathetic father.
    It explained a lot about Jack…but didn’t excuse anything.
    “Bring him to the hospital Monday morning,” Melanie told Tess as she carefully handed the infant back to his mother. “We’ll run a few tests and see where we stand.”
    “Thank you,” Tess said, tears filling her eyes.
    Melanie glanced at Jack. It was the least she could do.
    ***
    “Sometimes I wonder about people,” Melanie texted to Nash a few minutes later as she sat in her car. “How a guy can cheat on his wife when she has so much on her plate.”
    “Sounds like the guy is a real winner.”
    Yeah.
    Melanie glanced back at the store. Instead of seeing Jack, her eyes fell to his car, parked harmlessly at the front of the store. She could see a car seat in the back now, one that had definitely not been there the night she climbed back there with him. She tried again not to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t taken that call from Tess.
    Oh, what she might have done.
    She couldn’t believe she’d told Nash what happened between her and Jack. She hadn’t told anyone, except what little she told Tanya, because she was embarrassed. She didn’t tell him everything. Just about the make-out session, the wife, the infant with Down Syndrome. She didn’t tell him that she was going to fix the hole in the baby’s heart. She still hadn’t told him she was a doctor.
    She could tell him she made out with a married man, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she was a doctor. Was there something wrong with that?
    But, again, he hadn’t told her what he did for a living, either.
    “Where are you?” she suddenly asked.
    She wasn’t sure he would answer. But he came back almost immediately.
    “New York.”
    She’d been to New York a few times herself. It was a unique place, one people either loved or hated on sight. Melanie loved to visit…wasn’t sure she would ever want to live there.
    But she could picture him there.
    In her mind, Nash was a tall, blond man who looked best in well-tailored suits. And that man was more comfortable in an urban setting than anywhere else—despite his deep respect for nature. She wasn’t sure why she pictured him that way, she just did. She had never asked him what he looked like—never even mentioned his lack of a photograph on the dating site. She wondered, sometimes, what he thought of her. She had posted a picture, but it was an older one from a time when her brown hair was cut short. The photo highlighted her blue eyes, which is why she chose it, but it wasn’t really representative of who she was now.
    But he had never asked if it was accurate, if that was still how she looked, or if it was even her. Was he that trusting or that uninterested? No matter what she did, or what Nash said, Melanie’s doubts kept creeping in.
    And then her phone beeped, alerting her to a new message.
    “Have you ever been to New York?”
    “A few times.”
    “There’s a romantic little restaurant in Soho…I’d like to take you there someday.”
    Melanie bit her lip, her heart suddenly pumping faster than it should. “Are you suggesting we meet in the real world?” she typed, her finger hesitating briefly over the send button.
    “I guess I am,” came his quick response.
    Melanie glanced over at Jack’s car again, remembering the feel of his lips on hers, his hands on her back. She missed physical contact. But she was enjoying the conversation, the forced communication. The what-ifs that had been plaguing her since the beginning came into play again when she thought about meeting him in real life. It all boiled down to essentially one question: What if he didn’t like her in the real world?
    “It’s been weeks,” his next text said. “Meeting in the real world is inevitable, isn’t it?”
    She knew that. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t still nervous about the idea.
    She hadn’t told