The Billionaire's Voice (The Sinclairs #4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

confidence in her, but she had none in herself when it came to doing the impossible. And she was almost angry at him for making it seem like performing again would be no big deal.
    Maybe he could do anything, and thought nothing of risking his life by jumping from places that weren’t made to be launch sites.
    Maybe he was cocky enough to think that he was invincible.
    She . . . wasn’t.
    The last thing she needed was to feel like a failure . . . again. Not when she was only now regaining control of her life.
    Most of the time, she could forget who she’d been before she’d lost her hearing, but that stupid offer from the Sinclair Fund had temporarily brought it all rushing back with a vengeance. After her hearing loss, she’d put aside all thoughts of skating again. What was the point? It was a career path that she could never follow, and forgetting had been the sensible thing to do back then. She’d lost her fiancé over her handicap, and she’d taken a lot of emotional blows since she’d left Boston and the man she’d once worshipped.
    After Tessa’s father had passed away, her mother had needed help in the restaurant. When her mom had gotten sick, soon after her dad’s death, and then died only a year later, Tessa had been thrust into the role of restaurant owner quickly. Liam had come home for good, giving up a well-loved, lucrative career to be here in Amesport with her. Back then, she’d needed her brother, had clung to him like a lifeline. Now, he was “helping her” until he drove her nearly insane.
    It’s time to move on. I’m finally content with my life now. I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back.
    Finally, she answered, “You don’t understand. You have no idea what it’s like to suddenly lose everything you’ve ever known, everything you care about.” She’d been incredibly isolated, suddenly handicapped, and unable to do the thing she’d loved most in the world.
    She’d had so many losses over the course of five or six years that she hadn’t been able to take another blow. She’d never had time to recover. Losing her hearing, her fiancé, her skating career, her father, and then finally her mom, all in a relatively short period of time, had nearly killed her.
    Over time, she’d learned to function in a world with no sound. She was finally at peace with her condition. The last thing she needed was to reopen old wounds. She’d come too far to slide backward now.
    There wasn’t really a deaf community in her area, and she’d already had friends, so it had just been a matter of learning to connect with them again. The need to be able to communicate and not feel so isolated had been almost an obsession. She’d learned to read lips as quickly as possible when she was with Rick, and she’d become an expert at it from years of practice. ASL was easier, but other than Liam, her parents, and her best friend, Randi, nobody knew sign language. Becoming very, very good at lip reading had been her only option. And she was good at it, so good that some people didn’t even notice she was deaf if she was having a face-to-face conversation with them.
    Liam had told her that her speaking voice sounded almost identical to her pre-deafness voice. Her friends had claimed the same thing. But Tessa would never really know if they were pacifying her, or if what they said was the truth. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them, but all of them had kind hearts, and what person who cared about her was going to tell a deaf woman that she talked strangely?
    Slowly, she’d lost touch with most of her old friends in the area, feeling different from all of her former friends. It hurt to be different, but she’d learned to live with the distance between herself and old friends; most of them were still acquaintances, and they were kind to her.
    Tessa startled as she felt the warmth of Micah’s large, strong hand cradling hers. Her eyes flew to his face.
    “I’ll help you, Tessa.” The look on his