Free The Family They Chose by Nancy Robards Thompson

Demetrios. Results require your immediate attention.
    Chance Demetrios?
    He’d been so busy, he’d put Demetrios out of his mind. Besides, it was just a momentary lapse of reasoning. He trusted his wife. So the message sent a jolt of anxiety through him. Jamison excused himself from the meeting, citing urgent business.
    What McInerney had waiting for him when he got back to the office made the anxiety he’d felt earlier seem like a warm bath: photos shot outside the Armstrong Institute. Photos of Olivia in the arms of Chance Demetrios.
    Jamison wanted to punch a wall. He wanted to hop on a plane and punch Demetrios. He wanted to look his wife in the eyes and ask, “Why?”
    He would ask her, all right. When he saw her in three days. In the meantime, though, he couldn’t talkto her. He needed to keep his distance, keep his cool, so that he didn’t do something he’d regret. Also, if he heard her voice there would be no way he’d be able to keep this to himself. And he needed to see her eyes when he asked her about it.
    How the hell was he going to hold this inside for three days?
    He ran through the options in his mind. He could cancel his meetings, saying he had a family emergency to attend to.
    No, if in fact Olivia was carrying on with Demetrios…though his heart still couldn’t reconcile her betraying him like that—not his Olivia. No, if he left it might draw attention to the situation, and he had to do everything he could to keep this under wraps.
    As anger simmered, he felt like a ticking time bomb that he hoped wouldn’t explode before he gave Olivia a chance to explain.

Chapter Seven
    D ressed in a cobalt-blue suit and pearls, Olivia drove across the Salt-and-Pepper Bridge, which stretched over the Charles River, connecting Boston with Cambridge.
    The formal name of the bridge was actually the Longfellow, but locals had dubbed it “Salt-and-Pepper” because the structure’s central towers resembled salt-and-pepper shakers.
    The Children’s Home was located just across the river, not too far from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Olivia had served on the Children’s Home board since the year she and Jamison hadmarried. Before she’d been appointed to the Children’s Home board of directors, she’d volunteered there when she was in college and knew it was such a worthy organization that it deserved as much support as it could get.
    In the nearly ten years that she’d been involved, Olivia had been instrumental in helping Pam Wilson, the executive director of The Children’s Home, write grants, raise funds and secure other means of political and community support for the Home.
    Other times, she filled in where they needed her. Whether it was answering the phone, taking the kids shopping for school supplies, or rolling up her sleeves and scrubbing toilets when the janitorial service didn’t show, she did what she could. Her favorite task was baking dozens of delicious cookies for the kids to take to school for birthday celebrations or bake sales, or sometimes the cookies were simply for them to enjoy as a special treat.
    Olivia’s goal as president of the board was to give the children—many of whom were here because of abuse, neglect or tragedy—as good a childhood as possible. Sometimes that meant singing songs and reading stories. Other times it meant getting her hands dirty. But she was game for whatever the kids needed, because she was passionate about the Children’s Home and the kids they served.
    It was never easy, though, when a new resident arrived. Usually the child was scared and skittish, oftentimes suffering emotional trauma after being displaced. Today, Pam needed all hands on deck because not one, but two little boys were arriving.
    Danny and Kevin Kelso had lost both of their parents in a nightmarish accident on the day after Christmas. The parents were coming home from a party and were hit head-on by a drunk driver. The boys had been home asleep in their beds, in the