Forgotten Father by Carol Rose Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t have designs on Donovan or his money.
Maybe then, he’d have let himself see what they could mean to each
other.
    Only now he thought she was a harlot. A deceiver of
hearts. A golddigger.
    A sob tore loose from her throat as a fresh wave of
despair rolled over her. She brushed at the sudden tears in her
eyes with one hand.
    A blue van suddenly appeared around the corner
ahead.
    Through the riot in her head, Delanie heard the
blare of its horn.
    Reacting to the realization that she’d strayed
across the yellow line, she gripped the steering wheel and yanked
the car back into her lane just as the van approached her, sweeping
by with a angry blasting of noise.
    Trembling, panic coursing through her, Delanie clung
to the steering wheel and began to cry as she drove. The narrow,
charcoal road rushed beneath her. Everything moved in front of her
gaze—the sky overhead, the road, the gray-green brush along the
road.
    Great, heaving sobs shook her, harsh in her throat,
dragging at her breath. Fingers wrapped tightly around the steering
wheel, she stared through the tears in her eyes at a gray and
useless future. As ashen as the asphalt surface beneath her tires.
That was her life.
    She’d found him…and lost him.
    The aching sobs welling in her chest echoed the
pounding in her head. Consumed in misery, she battled to keep the
road in view, struggled to force herself to keep breathing.
    Her world had been fine before, the work
interesting. She had friends. Men who were interested in dating
her. A thousand possibilities everyday…but no one she loved. No one
man who revved her heart and made her homecomings warm.
    No one to really love.
    Not then and certainly not now.
    She’d met him and had bungled the show. How could
she have been so romantic, so consumed in her own awareness of
loving him that she’d missed the doubt in his face.
    It must have been there, but she hadn’t seen it.
He’d drawn her into his arms and kissed her as if she were his only
destiny.
    If only he’d known her name first. Then it would
have been different. Then he wouldn’t have felt manipulated.
Cheated.
    How could she have been so stupid?
    Dazed at the tumult consuming her, Delanie dragged
her focus back to the winding, gray road again and again. She had
to get home, had to find a place to huddle, to hide from a misery
so complete it threatened her very existence.
    A misery as complete as he’d made her feel for just
that one night. It was as if a piece of her had been torn loose in
that angry denunciation by the lake, a piece wrenched out of her
soul.
    Delanie put a hand to her throbbing head. The motion
of the car left her dizzy and disoriented. She closed her eyes
briefly, just a second, to ease their aching.
    Opening them again, she gasped, pulling sharply at
the steering wheel to yank the car back into its lane.
    Over-corrected violently, the small vehicle skidded
across the road, hit the verge and careened down an embankment
until it came to a jarring halt in a ditch beside the road.
    Shaken by the impact, Delanie huddled behind the
wheel, staring sightlessly through the windshield, her hands
clenched on the steering wheel, her entire body shuddering in
shock.
    ******
    She woke slowly to the light, feeling heavy and
stiff. The pillow beneath her head crackled noisily in her ear.
    Opening heavy-lidded eyes, she aimlessly noted the
faintly-patterned vinyl wallpaper, typically found in newer
institutional settings. Across the room, a television perched on a
wall mount. Beneath it sat a durable vinyl-upholstered chair that
looked as if it might recline.
    Hospital, she thought, her fuzzy brain only mildly
curious.
    A bank of windows paraded across the wall to the
left, the curtains pulled back to display a lovely wooded area.
    The door to her left suddenly whooshed open, drawing
Delanie’s gaze round.
    A diminutive woman with dark curly hair walked
briskly into the room. Even if she hadn’t worn scrubs and a
stethoscope around her