Teresa Hill Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the chance to swear out loud, because the kids were asleep.
    He was going to stay far, far away from Samantha Carter.
    Wandering through the house, he picked up things here and there. Dani’s shoes and dirty socks that made a trail from the hallway to the living room. As usual she’d kicked them off while she made her way from one room to the next. No amount of talking made the least bit of difference about that particular bad habit of hers.
    Luke’s book bag from school was on the kitchen table, and Joe dug the lunch box out of the book bag so he could discard whatever Luke hadn’t finished of his lunch. Too many times Joe had forgotten, and the mess that confronted him inside the lunch box on a Monday morning was something he could do without.
    Inside the book bag, he also found Luke’s jacket and two sheets of math problems due tomorrow, all of them wadded into a neat little ball. Maybe they could smooth out the math sheets enough that Luke could turn them in.
    As Joe picked up the book bag to put it away, he realized it weighed more than it should have. There was something else inside it.
    A rock? That was Joe’s first thought. Luke loved rocks. For some reason, he didn’t think they had enough of them here, so he collected them at school and brought them home with him.
    He unzipped pockets one by one until he hit on the one that held something long and thin and heavy. Joe’s fingers closed around it and drew it out of the book bag.
    “Luke,” he said, shaking his head.
    In his hand was the tooth-fairy figurine he’d found Luke admiring in the lobby of Samantha Carter’s office when Joe had gone to get him. She had long blond hair, a blue dress with stars and a magic wand with fairy dust streaming after it. Luke must have swiped the figurine while Joe was settling the bill.
    Which meant Joe would have to see Samantha again.
    He tested out his feelings on the subject. He was not happy. He refused to be. So what if the woman was gorgeous and somehow looked as vulnerable as a fairy who’d gotten her wings singed? So what if simply touching her had the power to make him tremble like an overeager teenage boy?
    He wasn’t going to do anything about it. He couldn’t. He had his kids to think about. Kids who’d cried themselves to sleep too many nights to count over a woman who was never coming back to them, one he suspected didn’t give them a second thought these days.
    No woman was ever going to hurt them again. Joe would see to it.
    That meant Samantha Carter was off-limits. He and Luke would take the fairy back and be done with the woman.
     

    Samantha didn’t even get a chance to catch her breath until well past noon. A member of the office staff was kind enough to make a run to the nearby sandwich shop and take orders, so Samantha had a turkey sandwich on whole wheat, a diet soda and all of five minutes to down both before her next patient would be ready for her.
    Leaning back into the big leather chair, she let the sandwich sit there on her desk, let the soda get warm and go flat. Feeling altogether out of sorts today, she swiveled around in her chair and gave in to the need to let herself think about Joe Morgan and his adorable son.
    They were all she’d heard about today. It seemed they’d charmed the entire office staff, and Samantha had given herself away half-a-dozen times when she’d been teased about Mr. Morgan, Sr. He was so polite. He had a delicious Texas drawl. He was not married anymore. He didn’t seem at all caught up in his own charms, an affliction that tended to absolutely ruin most truly good-looking men. She’d gotten those choice bits of gossip within the first five minutes of arriving in the office. By noon someone had started a pool that had grown to twenty-five dollars already. The bet—how long it would be before he called back.
    “Am I that transparent?” Samantha complained, when she was closeted in her office at twelve-thirty with her forty-something, normally