A Perfect Fit by Lynne Gentry Read Free Book Online Page A

pit. Once she was seated, he put both hands upon her waist and gently lifted her to him, setting her feet on the ground next to him. His face hovered close to hers, his breath a warm, reassuring whisper of the future she wanted.
    “Don’t move,” he said.
    He squatted by the lantern and took a small brush from his shirt pocket. After a few quick strokes in the chalky limestone, a piece of pottery emerged. “Look.”
    Magdalena squatted beside him. “It’s the rest of the swimmer family.”
    He smiled and pulled the shard from his pocket. With the skill of a surgeon, he aligned the two pieces.
    She lifted her eyes to his. “A perfect fit.”
    Setting the shard on the ground, he leaned in and lightly cupped her face with his hands. The wind ruffled her hair as he brought his lips to hers. The first brush was soft. Her lips parted, and he pressed harder. She drank in the taste of sunshine and smoky oranges. Warmth spread through her cheeks, slid down her neck, and raced through her limbs. Expectations fell away, and she melted into his embrace.
    His voice was a husky whisper when he finally pulled back. “When we get to the cave, we shall have to name our little swimmer family. What shall we call them?”
    “The Hastings family.”

To continue with Lawrence and Magdalena to the Cave of the Swimmers, keep reading for an excerpt from Healer of Carthage !

HEALER
    of
    CARTHAGE

1
    Dallas, Texas
    T IME IS A COMMODITY first-year residents can’t afford to waste, Dr. Hastings.” Nelda, the chunky ER charge nurse, held out two charts. “Which one do you want? The diabetic with a necrotic foot ulcer? Or the questionable TB hacking his lungs out?”
    What Lisbeth wanted was a bite of the tuna sandwich she’d just purchased from a vending machine, ten minutes off her feet, and a chance to read the letter burning a hole in the pocket of her white coat. But if she had any hope of catching a break in the next fifteen hours, tonight was not the time to spout off to the snarling brick house who had the power to make a thirty-hour call seem like sixty.
    Frigid temperatures, combined with the loneliness of the holidays, had driven the uninsured of every age, sex, nationality, and state of mental duress into the county hospital. Regurgitated Jack Daniels, exhaust fumes, and too many nights on the streets fouled the emergency room air. Vagrants slumped in the upholstered chairs or lay sprawled across every inch of shiny floor tiles. Bearded men and frazzled women scrapped for an inch of real estate and clamored for the attention of a doctor.
    The desperate begged for someone like her.
    Lisbeth’s eyes flitted from the stale sandwich she clutched to the occupied gurneys lining both sides of the hall. A grizzled man wearing a filthy, oversize army jacket and combat boots without laces sat up, flashed a toothless grin, then coughed blood into a tissue.
    So much for her appetite. Lisbeth slid her sandwich on top of the letter in her pocket.
    “I haven’t got all night, Dr. Hastings.” Nelda waved a chart under Lisbeth’s nose. “Choose!”
    Choices. Decisions she’d made that she could never undo. When she chose to go into medicine, Papa said he could see how she might enjoy saving the living after spending her childhood watching him resurrect the dead. He’d been supportive of her choice, even tried to share all he remembered of her mother’s medical career: First-year medical residents lived in a constant state of sleep deprivation. Days off were rare. And scariest of all . . . what kept her awake at night even when she wasn’t on call, the possibility that she’d screw up and kill someone.
    “Which one?” Nelda barked in the voice that had earned her the nickname of Nurse Ratched.
    Something about the desperation oozing from the old man’s yellowed eyes pumped a new round of adrenaline into Lisbeth’s sagging system. She snatched the chart in Nelda’s left hand. “TB it is.”
    Thirty minutes later Lisbeth exited