Free Harlequin Special Edition October 2015, Box Set 1 of 2 by Christine Rimmer

born?”
    â€œNo. I doubt I ever will.”
    â€œBut with something as important as a child, Quinn, you never know. Someday Annabelle’s mother might regret her choice, change her mind.”
    â€œAnything’s possible.”
    â€œAnd if she did come to you, if she wanted to meet Annabelle?”
    â€œCan’t say for certain. If she was as honest and up-front as before, we would work something out so that she could know Annabelle and Annabelle could know her.”
    Chloe liked his answer. It could be difficult for him to make room for his daughter’s mother in their lives. But it was the right thing. “That sounds good. For Annabelle, most of all. It’s very likely, as she grows to adulthood, that she’s going to want to know about her birth mother and meet her, if possible.”
    â€œMaybe. But it’s like you told me that first night. I’m not going to borrow trouble. I’ll answer Annabelle’s questions and pay attention to the signals she gives me. And then take it from there.” He loosened his tie. “I didn’t want you to wonder anymore about how I ended up with sole custody of my little girl and no mother in sight.”
    Tenderness washed through her—for him, for the kind of man he was. A good man. Honest. True-hearted. A man who would do what was right even if it wasn’t the best or easiest thing for him, personally.
    She reached out and brushed his hand. “Let me...”
    He sat so still, so watchful, as she undid the tie completely. It made a soft, slithering sound as she slipped it from around his neck. She laid it carefully over the arm of the sofa. Then she turned to him again and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his snowy dress shirt, smoothing the collar open, revealing the powerful column of his neck and the sharp black point of one of those intricate tattoos that covered his shoulder and twined halfway down his arm.
    â€œBetter?” she asked.
    They shared a smile as he nodded. He said, “There’s more.”
    She took his right hand and turned it over, revealing his cuff buttons. One by one, she undid them. “Tell me.”
    â€œI’m dyslexic,” he said, his voice rougher than usual, freighted with something wary, something wounded. “You know what dyslexia is?”
    â€œI think I do. I think I remember reading that it’s when a person has difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters and other symbols?”
    â€œThat’s pretty close to the generally accepted definition.”
    She took his left hand and unbuttoned that cuff, too.
    He spoke again. “Most people think dyslexia is what you just said. A learning disorder, period. It’s more. It’s a challenge, a tough one. But it’s a gift, too.” She sat with his hand in her lap, the buttons undone, drinking in every word, as he explained, “You remember how I was as a kid. Trouble. Always getting in fights. Everyone thought I was stupid because I couldn’t get the hang of reading. I hated school, hated being the slow kid. I acted out constantly. Only later did I figure out that my problem was I couldn’t learn the way most kids learn. A traditional school environment did nothing for me. I don’t get phonics, don’t get learning things in rote sequence. It completely overloads me. So I would lash out.”
    She did remember that troubled boy so well. “You always seemed so angry.”
    â€œYou bet I was. By the time I was eleven, my mother was at the end of her rope with me. As a last-ditch effort to find something I could do well, she enrolled me in a karate class—and everything changed for me. For once, I got something, really
got
it. Yeah, I have to work my ass off to try and get the meaning out of a line of letters across a page. But I’d always been damn good at fighting. The way my brain is wired makes me more capable than most people of visualizing the moves