healing-hearts by Yvette Hines Read Free Book Online

quickly clarified. “No—I’m not pregnant.”
    Leigh placed a hand on her chest. “Phew, for a moment there I thought you had secretly gotten artificially inseminated.”
    “Maybe I should have, it may have been easier to get approval for it.”
    Yasmine knew she was in a funk, but she just couldn’t shake it. She wanted the twins.
    “So, what were you trying to get authorization to do?” Leigh questioned.
    Yasmine paused, not sure how she was going to verbalize to her friend what she wanted without crying like she had done most of the night, until she fell into an exhausted sleep.
    She took a deep breath and plunged forward. “I called a lawyer yesterday about adopting a set of twins from the orphanage.”
    “Wow!”
    Yasmine looked down toward her desk; she felt guilt about not being honest with her best friend about what she had planned to do.
    “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I guess I was just afraid you might try to talk me out of it.”
    “Yasmine, I’m your best friend and I’ve never judged you. If you’d have told me I would have just offered you my support.”
    Leigh’s saying that just made her feel guiltier.
    “So, what did the lawyers say?”
    Yasmine regained eye contact with her friend. “They basically said it was next to impossible for a single woman to adopt two children.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “There’s nothing I can do. I probably could try, but the lawyer said I would be wasting my time and money.”
    “You’re just going to give up?”
    Yasmine looked intently at her friend; it sounded as if she was disappointed in her.
    “I have no other choice,” Yasmine alleged categorically.
    “The lawyer said it was hard for a single woman...”
    Yasmine caught the twinkle in her friend’s eye. “And?”
    “Get married.”
    And there’s the tongue in cheek Leigh to bring me out of my funk. Yasmine had no doubt her friend was joking. Leigh had been there through her divorce and she knew her thoughts on remarrying.

Yasmine rolled with her friend’s humor. “So, do I put a line in the personals? SB-RF, single bi-racial female looking for adoption partner?”
    They both began to laugh.

“No, I think you should put flyers around the city and on bulletin boards.”
    “Better yet, why don’t I offer the option to the next guy that comes walking into my office?” Yasmine declared.
    “If I agree, does it mean I don’t have to come back?”
    Yasmine and Leigh sat dumbstruck by the sound of a male voice coming from the doorway, one Yasmine recognized.
    At the sight of the good-looking honey tanned white man, Leigh recovered quickly.
    Standing up and walking toward the door, Leigh held out her hand to the man while giving him one of her smiles and introducing herself. “Hello, I’m Leigh Clark. Welcome to Healthy Fit, can I assist you with something?”
    Yasmine watched from her desk as the man looked past Leigh and directed his gaze at her. For a moment, Yasmine wondered how much of the conversation he had overheard.
    Moving his gaze back to Leigh, he took her hand. “I’m Jason Richardson and I believe I have an appointment with Ms. Sousa.”
    “Oh, lucky her.” Leigh turned back to Yasmine and lifted an eyebrow in her direction. “I’ll just leave the two of you to your appointment .”
    Yasmine rose from her desk with her hand out toward him. “Mr. Richardson...I didn’t think you would show up.”
    As he approached her, she glanced at his appearance. Jason Richardson was dressed in full business apparel. He wore a navy blue suit with a soft gray tie striped with navy blue over what she could only assume was a perfectly starched white shirt. By his style of dress, she figured he had returned to work since his heart attack. She was curious about how long the doctor actually gotten him to stay out of work.
    Fleetingly, she thought about the difference in their worlds as she smoothed her free hand down the front of her khaki slacks.
    He stepped up to