Accidentally Yours by Susan Mallery Read Free Book Online

turkeys needed by the First Baptist Church of Songwood for their Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners,” Jason continued. “Two thousand tulip bulbs for the Songwood community center to plant in the fall. A new fence for the elementary school playground and five thousand dollars for the local library.”
    She had to be playing him, Nathan thought. No one got him alone with what they thought was a blank checkbook and asked for tulip bulbs. That, or she was an idiot.
    “What about for yourself?” he asked.
    She looked at him. “I have what I want. Money for research. I wish I could just buy a cure, but I can’t. This is the next best thing. You made that possible and I appreciate it.”
    “I can tell,” he said drily.
    “No, I mean it. You’re paying for a miracle. How often does that happen?”
    Nathan shifted uncomfortably. He looked at Jason and nodded. “Fine.”
    Kerri beamed. “Seriously? All of them? I should have asked for low-cost housing for the needy.”
    She didn’t mean herself, he thought, amazed when he would have assumed he was beyond amazement. She had nothing but her current paycheck in the bank. No savings, no IRA, no nothing.
    It was a game. A strategy. She would reveal herself soon enough.
    “There’s just one more thing,” she said, smoothing her skirt. “It’s personal.”
    He put down his coffee and folded his arms over his chest. Here we go, he thought. Now they were going to see the real Kerri Sullivan.
    “I need help with something.” She stared at Jason, rather than Nathan. “Something big. I need to fly.”
    “You want a plane ticket?” Nathan asked.
    “No.” She sighed.
    “You’re not getting a private jet.”
    She turned to him. “I don’t want a private jet. I want to fly. By myself.” She held out her arms, as if they were wings. “Or maybe walk on water, although that could be more problematic.”
    Great. He was making a deal with someone insane. That would help his stress level.
    She looked back at Jason. “When my son was diagnosed, he got depressed and I was terrified he was going to give up. He was only five. I decided that I needed to give him a reason to live. A reason to think he would make it when other kids couldn’t. I told him I had superpowers and because he was my son, he had them, too.”
    Jason was good, Nathan thought. His lawyer barely blinked.
    “Superpowers?” Jason asked.
    “I have a costume and I do tricks. I’m Wonder Mom. I arranged for Cody to see me lift a car, which was pretty cool. But he’s older now and honestly, my last stunt was with a cat and I don’t think he believed me. So I was thinking if I could do something special, that would be good.”
    Jason cleared his throat. “Do you have an idea how you want to make this happen?”
    “Fairy dust?” Nathan asked.
    Kerri ignored him. “A harness and a crane for the flying. A platform just under the water for that. I don’t know and I don’t have the resources.” She looked at Nathan. “You do.”
    He held up both hands. “You’re Wonder Mom. How can a mere mortal possibly help?”
    Kerri narrowed her gaze. “Is he always an ass?”
    Jason started to choke on his coffee. Nathan waited patiently until the other man managed to croak, “No. Not at all.”
    “You should make that sound more convincing,” Nathan murmured.
    Kerri faced him. “What does it matter to you? You’ll assign some secretary to find me what I need and be done with it. It’s nothing to you and it’s everything to my son. Do you get that?”
    Nathan had been called a lot of names in the past eighteen or twenty years, starting when he was in college and taking rich kids for their allowance at high-stakes poker games. He’d been written up in newspapers and magazines as a heartless, money-hungry bastard who would rather rape the environment than spend an extra buck on saving whatever microscopic insect he was displacing with his buildings.
    He’d been told he was heartless, soulless, lacking in