Free Linda Lael Miller Bundle by Linda Lael Miller

wouldn’t be there and she needed some time to prepare herself for the strange quiet that would greet her when she unlocked her front door. She decided to pay her mother a visit.
    More than once during the short drive to Seaview Convalescent Home, Shay glanced toward the flowers so carefully placed on the passenger seat and wondered if it wouldn’t be safer, from an emotional standpoint anyway, to forget Mitch Prescott and this collaboration business altogether and take her chances with Lucetta White. Granted, the woman was a literary viper, but Ms. White couldn’t hurt Rosamond, could she? No one could hurt Rosamond.
    Shay bit her lower lip as she turned into the spacious asphalt parking lot behind the convalescent home. Rosamond was safe, but what about Hank? What about Riley and Garrett? What about herself?
    Stopping the car and turning off the ignition, Shay rested her forehead on the steering wheel and drew a deep breath. Each life, she reflected, feeling bruised and cornered, touches other lives. If Miss White chose to, she could drag up all sorts of hurtful things, such as Eliott’s theft all those years before, and his desertion. Shay had long since come to terms with Eliott’s actions, but how could Hank, a six-year-old, be expected to understand and cope?
    Shay drew another deep breath and sat up very straight. Except for his personal word, she had no assurances that Mitch Prescott would be any fairer or any kinder in his handling of the Rosamond Dallas story, but he did seem the lesser of two evils, even considering the unnerving effect he had on Shay’s emotions. The book would be written, one way or the other, and there was no going back.
    She got out of the car, crossed the parking lot and entered the convalescent home resolutely. Shay was not looking forward to another one-sided visit with her mother and the guilt inspired by that fact made her spirits sag. What was she supposed to say to the woman? “Hello, Mother, today I dressed up as a bee?” Or maybe she could announce, “Guess what? I’ve met a man and he wants to tell all your most intimate secrets to the world and I’m going to help him and for all that, Mother, I do believe he could seduce me without half trying!”
    As Shay hurried through the rear entrance to the building and down the immaculate hallway toward her mother’s room, the inner dialogue gained momentum. I’m afraid, Mother. I’m afraid. I’m starting to care about Mitch Prescott and that’s going to make everything that much more difficult, don’t you see? We’ll make love and that will change me for always but it will just be another affair to him. I don’t think I could bear that, Mother.
    Overcome, Shay stopped and rested one shoulder against the wall beside Rosamond’s door, her head lowered. The fantasy was futile: Rosamond couldn’t advise her, probably wouldn’t bother even if she were well. That was reality.
    A cold, quiet anger sustained Shay, made her square her shoulders and lift her chin. She walked into her mother’s room, crossed to her chair, bent to bestow the customary forehead kiss. Then, because her own reality was that she loved her mother, whether that love had ever been returned or not, Shay sat down facing Rosamond and told her about being a bee in a car-lot commercial, about a bouquet of pink daisies, about a man with brash brown eyes and a smile that made grooves in his cheeks.
    After half an hour, when Rosamond’s dinner was brought in, Shay slipped out. She hesitated only a moment before the pay phone in the hallway, then rummaged through her purse for a quarter. Mitch answered on the second ring.
    “Thank you for the flowers,” Shay said lamely. She’d planned a crisper approach, but at the sound of his voice, the words had evaporated from her mind in a shimmering fog.
    His responding chuckle was a low, tender sound, rich with the innate masculinity he exuded so effortlessly. “You’re welcome. Now, what about dinner and the