Healing Hearts (The Challenge Series) Read Free

little rattled.” He stood, bumping the underside of the table and shoving it toward her.
    His face flushed an alarming shade of red.
    “You know, mister…um…anyway, you need to eat. Let me get you a bagel.” She rose slowly, hoping not to startle him into bolting. “Sit, please.”
    He dropped like a stone back into the chair. His tall body seemed shrunken then, helpless, boneless, and bereft. She stood a second, until he lifted those sapphire blues, and her whole world coalesced around the pain on his face.
    “Thanks,” he said. “I’m Jay.”
    “I’m Abby. And I’ll be right back with your food.”
     
    ***
     
    Jay stared down at the round, perfectly toasted bagel, watched the glistening butter melt. He sucked in a breath and forced his hand to move, to pick it up and put it to his lips. It smelled fantastic. But it tasted like cardboard. He ate anyway, knowing he was on verge of a total blood sugar meltdown otherwise. He chewed, swallowed, then did it all again. Feeding the physical self he still seemed responsible for, he observed Abby working behind the coffee bar, taking orders and filling them, her bright white smile making his pulse race a little faster each time he saw it.
    He shut his eyes a split second, then opened them when instead of the face of his dying, brutalized wife he saw her—Abby—the woman he’d come to count on behind the coffee counter—smiling and handing him an outrageously expensive concoction he never drank. At that realization, he sucked a huge chunk of bread down his windpipe, making his throat reject it with a loud, public, near-choking experience. By the time Abby had saved him once more with a well-timed, strong-armed Heimlich, he was limp again.
    “Damn,” he gasped, sucking back another entire bottle of water that she put in front of him. “I’m high maintenance.” He rubbed his neck, wincing at the stinging sensation when he spoke.
    “Oh, it’s okay. Good practice for me.” She smiled at him, the deep chocolate of her eyes and the warm olive of her skin a beacon—one he’d been drawn to for weeks now without understanding why. And for the first time in over a year and a half he smiled back at a pretty woman and let himself feel it—the tingly, buzzy, pull of attraction.
    Alarmed, he leapt to his feet, knocking over another water bottle but no longer caring. The last sight of her, of Abby, her long black hair scraped back in a ponytail, her deep, expressive eyes dark with concern, made his skin get hot and his lizard brain click into gear. Mortified at the tent he’d made in his shorts, he crashed out of the place determined never to come back, never to let himself feel that about any woman ever again.

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    “No, I’m not avoiding you.” Jay ran a hand down his face and leaned back against the rickety deck railing. “I’m coming into town tomorrow. I have to. Our court date is the twentieth.”
    “Listen, Jay.” His sister, the emergency room doctor’s voice filled his brain, reminding him of his failings , “I think you need to consider this as a—”
    “I know,” he interrupted, his chest tight and head pounding. “I know, Madison. Trust me, I’ve read your emails and seen the reports. She’s never going to wake up.” He glanced up at the bruised looking sky as a thunderstorm gathered strength in the general direction of Chicago. “You’re right. You’ve been right all along.”
    “Jay, I don’t want to be right. Trust me.”
    “I’ll see you tomorrow. I should be in by noon. Is your key in the normal place?”
    “Yeah. Drive safe, brother. Love you.”
    He put the brick of a wireless handset on a ratty deck chair. When it rang again within seconds, he jumped. Only a few people had this number. “Hello?” He hated how weak his voice sounded.
    “Uh, Hi. Jay. It’s…um…me…Abby from the coffee shop?”
    He frowned when his skin pebbled at the sound of her voice. Willing himself calm, he choked out an