Very Private Duty Read Free Page A

black lashes framing a pair of deep-set, dove-gray eyes fluttered as he attempted to focus on the face looming over him.
    The pain in his leg was forgotten as he stared up at the girl he hadn’t seen in fourteen years. His eyes widened, moving slowly over her face and then lower. He stood corrected. Tricia Parker was not a girl, but a woman—all woman.
    “Hi, Jeremy.”
    Her voice was soft and husky, the way he remembered it after they’d finished making love. She had been the one to do the talking when he couldn’t, because making love had usually left him breathless and speechless.
    The long, black curly hair that she’d worn in a braid was missing, in its place a short, cropped style that hugged her well-shaped head. Everything about her was ample: breasts, hips, round face, dark sparkling eyes and her mouth. Oh, how he’d loved kissing her mouth.
    A white short-sleeved linen blouse and a pair of black slacks failed to camouflage or minimize her full figure. If her coloring had been a creamy magnolia instead of rich sable brown, she could have been the perfect model for baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens. Tricia was now the epitome of Rubenesque. It was as if she wore an invisible badge that silently announced: I Am Woman.
    He closed his eyes, temporarily forgetting the deceitful woman hovering over him. “Where am I?”
    “You’re home.”
    “Home where?” He’d slurred the two words.
    “In your house.”
    His eyes darkened like storm clouds. He’d waited fourteen, long agonizing years to reunite with Tricia so he could confront her about her infidelity. And now that that had become a reality, he knew he couldn’t. Not when pain throbbed throughout his body.
    “Get out of my house!”
    Shaking her head, Tricia thrust her face close to his, feeling his moist breath sweep over her cheek. “I’m sorry, Jeremy, I can’t do that.”
    Gray eyes glowing from his olive-brown face, like those of a savage predator, he bared his teeth. “I don’t want you here.”
    Straightening, she rounded the bed, gently lifting his left foot to rest on two pillows. “It’s not what you want but what you need. I’m going to be around for the next month, so you’d better get used to seeing me.”
    He went completely still. “A month?”
    “Yes. I’m on vacation. Once it’s over, I’m going back to Baltimore.”
    “I don’t know if I can tolerate seeing you for a month.”
    “Stuff it, Jeremy,” she retorted. “It’s not as if I want to be bothered with you, either. But I promised your father that I’d look after you, and I’ll do that until another nurse replaces me.”
    She neatly folded a lightweight blanket at the foot of the bed. What had been a family room was now a temporary bedroom. A tobacco-brown leather club chair with an ottoman was positioned several feetfrom the bed. The chair matched the daybed in a spacious alcove, which was now her temporary sleeping space. Sheldon had chosen the room because of an adjoining full bathroom with a freestanding shower.
    Jeremy stared at Tricia. She did not look any older than when he last saw her, but she had changed, and it wasn’t just her fuller figure or shorter hair. He’d lost count of the number of hours, days, months and years she’d continued to haunt him despite her duplicity. How could she profess to love him while she’d slept with another man at the same time? Had she told Russell Smith that she’d loved him, too?
    “You didn’t finish medical school.” His question was a statement.
    She straightened. “No, I didn’t.
    “What happened?”
    “Nothing happened. I decided I wasn’t cut out to be a doctor.”
    He lifted an eyebrow. “So, you became a nurse instead.”
    “Yes, Jeremy.”
    “Any specialty?”
    She nodded, saying, “Pediatrics.”
    “You became a pediatric nurse instead of a pediatrician?”
    Tricia wanted to scream at him that it had been his fault that she hadn’t realized her dream to become a doctor. What neither knew