Free Winning Back His Wife (Camp Firefly Falls Book 1) by Gwen Hayes, Zoe York Page A

father’s room with hardly a word from Michael.
    His mother stood and straightened her suit. “You’re here.”
    “Of course, Mom. Of course.” He held his stiff mother while she told them the prognosis. It wasn’t good.
    Heather got coffee for them both, ran interference when the nurses tried to get them to sit in the waiting room, and made calls to numbers she hadn’t used in a long time. Michael’s uncle, her father-in-law’s administrative assistant, his sister in Tucson, and to comfort her mother in law, the reverend who’d married them. Michael reached for her once, squeezing her like she was the only thing holding him up. And then she watched him morph from the scared son to the man his mother needed him to be. He dealt with everything else then. Providing comfort to his family with a reserved demeanor. Dealing with business calls and arrangements to handle whatever things his father had been working on. He was still pale, but he didn’t look scared. He looked terrifyingly capable.

Chapter 11
    M ichael was in shock . He could feel it from the inside out, an oppressive cloak that had fallen over him the second his mother had said those fateful five words. Your father's had a stroke . The cloak kept all his feelings on the inside and everyone around him at a strange, arms-length distance.
    It was easier that way, really. He could snap out orders about what needed to be done. An emergency board meeting. Lawyers had to be called. There were protocols in place for such an occurrence, but they'd want to make sure they were acting appropriately.
    He looked up from one phone call, looking for Heather. She was across the quite luxurious private hospital room, watching him from the small couch under the window. She gave him a small smile. He nodded.
    This would be awkward for her, sooner or later. He should tell her to go home, get some sleep.
    Before he could go to her side, the door swung open and in walked a team of people in scrubs. "Could we have the room alone with just family, please?"
    Michael stood stiffly as his father's assistant left, and he shook hands with the Reverend. "You could stay," he said quietly.
    The minister shook his head. "I'll be back. I could use a cup of tea, anyway."
    Behind the other man, Michael caught sight of Heather standing up. "Excuse me." He stepped into her path. "Hang on."
    "I'm going to get you some clothes," she said, not quite looking him in the eye. "You'll need a suit if you're going in front of the board."
    "I have a suit at the office. It's fine."
    "I'll go get you coffee, then."
    "I don't—"
    "Let her go, Michael," his mother said. He didn't miss the way Heather's shoulders stiffened at the cold tone.
    If the circumstances were anything but life-or-death, he'd snap.
    "She's my—" he started to say, quietly, but Heather shook her head and cut him off.
    "I'll be back." Another sad, gentle smile, and she was gone, ghosting out of his reach.
    The doctors filled the void with medical jargon and a decent try at empathy, but then they were gone, too, and it was just Michael and his parents, one of them unconscious and the other…
    "Mom…" he trailed off as he realized she was crying. "I'm so sorry."
    He grabbed a box of tissues and leaned gingerly against his father's hospital bed, next to her chair, and they sat in silence, listening to the beeping monitors.
    She went through five tissues before she finally looked up at him. "You'll need to take his place."
    "I…"
    Maybe if he'd finished that statement, maybe if he had known how to tell his mother he couldn't do that—maybe then he'd have avoided hurting everyone.
    But he didn't know how to talk to his mother.
    And when Heather returned an hour later, with soup and a coffee and clothes for him to wear to the board meeting, he didn't know how to talk to her, either.
    He hung the garment bag on the hook on the back of the door, and quietly told his mother he was going to eat his food in the waiting room with Heather.
    "Any