LITMIR.BIZ

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and Mom did for her, Madison took the life insurance money and disappeared immediately after Andrew’s funeral, and she hasn’t bothered to call and check on you since. Family wouldn’t do that.”

      “Madison was grieving, too, son, in her own way. She lost her husband and her son that night.”

      “A baby she didn’t want.” His father’s stubborn refusal to accept reality made Adam want to punch something.

      “You can’t know that, son.”

      “I know what Andrew told me. He said she resented the pregnancy.”

      “You only heard one side of the story. The pregnancy might have been unplanned and the timing less than ideal, but Madison would have been a good momma once the little one arrived.”

      “Damn it, Dad, her carelessness killed—” An abrupt slicing motion of his father’s hand made Adam bite back his words. Danny Drake had never been willing to hear anything negative against the woman he’d loved like a daughter.

      Adam tried again—this time with cold, hard facts. “She was ticketed for ‘driving too fast for conditions.’ Your son and grandson died in that wreck, and she walked away with barely a scratch. How can you not hold her responsible?”

      “Not all wounds are visible. She was injured enough to miscarry her baby. Placing blame doesn’t change what’s happened. Andrew is gone. Holding on to your anger won’t bring him back.

      “You asked what you could do for me, Adam. I’m telling you. If I’m going to devote all my energy to beating this cancer, then I need to know my practice is in good hands. Madison is the only veterinarian I trust to do things my way while I’m out of commission.”

      “But you know nothing about what she’s been doing since she left.”

      “Wrong. I’ve been keeping tabs on our girl. Bring her home, son, or I’ll skip the surgery and take my chances with the chemotherapy radiation treatments. At least then I won’t have to miss as much work.”

      “The odds of a nonsurgical approach—”

      “I know the damned odds,” his father snapped, then took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Ripping my rib out to get to my lung is going to sideline me for months. I need backup. Reliable backup. This is my cancer. My fight. And I’ll do it my way. Bring. Madison. Home.”

      His father snatched up his newspaper and stormed from the galley down the short hall and into the bedroom, his footsteps shaking the motor home in which Adam’s parents had been living since beginning the renovations on their house. The door slammed shut.

      Frustrated by his father’s refusal to listen to reason, Adam balled his fists. What choice did he have except to comply if he wanted his father to take the most successful course of treatment?

      Adam had to go after the one woman he never wanted to see again. If he succeeded, would he finally win his father’s approval?

      * * *

      A GHOST ROSE from the rocking chair on Madison’s front porch, freezing her fatigued muscles with icy horror and chilling the sweat on her skin.

      No. Not a ghost—ghosts weren’t tall and tanned. They didn’t plant fists on lean hips and scowl with hatred-filled blue-green eyes and flattened lips.

      The man on her front porch wasn’t her dead husband. It was his identical twin. Adam Drake. Adam so strongly resembled the man she’d once loved with every fiber of her being that looking at him made her chest ache.

      Resignation settled over her like a smothering lead X-ray apron. She should’ve known her self-imposed exile couldn’t last. It had taken six years for the nightmare of her past to catch up with her. The Drakes had found her despite her changing names and relocating to another state.

      Judging by his expression, Adam hadn’t forgotten or forgiven what she’d done. She couldn’t blame him. She couldn’t forget or forgive her actions that night, either. She pressed a hand over the empty ache in her stomach—a sensation that never seemed to abate.

      With a face as rigid as a granite mountainside, Adam glared at her from the top step. She didn’t climb the treads to join him, and probably couldn’t have even if she’d ordered her gelatinous legs to move. Her run home in the sweltering heat had taken a lot out of her, but not nearly as much as this man’s presence. Her mouth was parched, her water bottle empty. She needed to rehydrate. But not so badly that she’d invite him inside her home.

      “My father has lung cancer,” Adam stated without preliminaries—typical of him. Andrew had been the charming twin.

      The bald statement punched the air from her. She struggled to wheeze enough breath to respond. “I’m sorry.”

      “He wants you to run his practice while he undergoes treatment.”

      No! Fear and guilt collided, sending razor-sharp fragments of pain slicing through her. She couldn’t let Danny Drake back into her life and her heart only to say goodbye to her father-in-law again. She’d already buried too many loved ones. Her parents. Her baby sister. Her husband. Her son.

      She wanted to ask about Danny’s prognosis, but couldn’t handle knowing even that much. Distance, both emotional and geographical, was her ally. “I can’t.”

      “You owe him.”

      “I have a practice here, Adam. People depend on me.” Sweat snaked down her spine.

      “In a backwater town this size you can’t possibly have enough business to operate five days a week.”

      True. Quincey was a one-stoplight rural Southern township. But the slow pace gave her just enough time and money to work with her rescue animals. As if to reinforce that point, Bojangles’s nicker pulled her attention to the pasture beside the house.

      The bay gelding shifted his hooves and pushed his broad chest against the board fence as if sensing her distress and wanting to come to her aid. She and the horse had a lot in common—they’d both been left behind by the people they loved. She’d taken enough psychology courses to know that saving the horse had been a substitute for saving the baby she couldn’t.

      “I wish your father well, Adam. But I can’t help. Give Danny and Helen my best. Goodbye.”

      He didn’t take the hint to vacate her porch. Fine. She’d go around back. She pivoted.

      “You owe him, Madison.”

      Her spine snapped straight under an icy deluge of guilt. Yes, she did owe the Drakes. They’d taken her in even before the tornado had killed her family. For years they’d been her surrogate parents, but then her mother-in-law had said things that still haunted Madison’s dreams. Neither Adam nor his father had witnessed Helen’s emotional explosion, but Madison had been shredded by the verbal shrapnel.

      Reluctantly, Madison faced him again. Sweat-dampened hair clung to her forehead. She shoved it back with an unsteady hand. “Adam, you don’t want me there.”

      “No. But I want my father alive. His wishes are the only reason I’m here.”

      “What does Helen say about this?”

      A nerve in his jaw twitched. “My mother will do whatever it takes to convince Dad to undergo the most promising treatment protocol. We both will.”

      Hope that Madison hadn’t realized she’d been harboring leeched from her, leaving her drained, aching and empty. They didn’t want her back. She was a necessary evil, not a long-missed family member.

      “I can’t, Adam.”

      Disgust twisted his lips. “Andrew was right. You are a cold, selfish bitch.”

      Cold, selfish bitch. The words sliced her like a new scalpel, reopening the gaping wound left by the hateful argument that night when she’d learned the man she’d loved had sabotaged her carefully made plans. Plans they had discussed. Plans they had agreed

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