Texas Strong by Jean Brashear Read Free Book Online Page A

stay-at-home, jeans-clad mom whose handsome husband spent his days with beautiful women. Many of them fell at least a little in love with him, and had Laura not felt so secure in his love, she could have been miserable.
    But he’d always come home to her, always been faithful. Of that she was absolutely positive.
    Which made dealing with this first-ever mistress so alarming. She could battle a flesh-and-blood woman; she had no idea how to win against the allure of high-stakes medicine. He’d cared about his patients when he’d been in plastics, but that concern paled against the siren call of trauma’s life-or-death drama.
    The kids were gone, and suddenly Laura found herself almost an afterthought. She didn’t believe he was doing it on purpose, but somehow his lack of awareness was even more painful.
    She was excruciatingly aware that there was no telling how many years they had left together. When Jake’s best friend, Bob Hunter, had died at fifty-two from a heart attack, the shock of it had made her resolve to stop putting off the adventures she and Jake had planned.
    But the effect on Jake had been different. That was when he’d closed his practice and switched to trauma. Begun working even harder.
    She was terrified of losing him, but when she brought up the subject, he reassured her that she’d be left a woman of means. He’d make sure she was taken care of.
    Idiot. She didn’t want money; she wanted him. Laughing together as they once had so often. Traveling the world or simply sitting on their deck in the moonlight, holding hands.
    She’d brought up the subject on numerous occasions, though careful not to nag. He spent so much time at home in a haze of exhaustion that she was loath to disrupt what peace he could find here. She kept searching for the wake-up call that would get through to him. To let him know how much she missed him.
    She could start that catering business friends urged her to consider, but while that would fill the hours alone, it would be only a half life, a diversion to deflect her from thoughts of what might have been.
    They’d been so smug about the infallibility of their love—could she ever have imagined they’d be this out of touch with each other?
    Jake Cameron, you lunkhead . She swiped at the tears she’d sworn not to shed. Get a clue .
    She walked into the dining room with a trash bag to set the room straight. She thought better when her hands were busy, and the mess he wasn’t here to see was driving her nuts.
    The doorbell rang. She set the bag down and went to answer it. The delivery guy was nearly invisible behind the explosion of roses.
    Her heart melted a little as she accepted them. Well-tipped, the messenger left, and Laura placed the bouquet on the foyer table. Opened the card. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll take care of everything. Love, Jake .
    “You’ll mean to,” she murmured. “Until you get called in again.” With dragging feet, she returned to the dining room and cleared away the debris.
    The roses were beautiful. Extravagant.
    Impersonal. Money was not a problem, thanks to the investments they’d made with the income from his former very lucrative practice.
    Roses were too easy. She could accept them, forgive him whenever he finally arrived home, let things rock on this way, as they most certainly would if she let them.
    But Laura wanted Jake back. Her Jake. Yearned for him to look at her, really look, not have his vision clouded by exhaustion or worry over his patients, by the blinding light of being the key player in the struggle to preserve life.
    What he was doing fell little short of a miracle at times, yes. He was proud of his work, and she was proud of him. She had no wish to rob his patients of his lifesaving skills.
    But he wasn’t the only physician on the planet, gifted as he was. He was carrying too much of the load on his shoulders, and she was losing him, a slow bleeding out as deadly as any patient’s.
    There had to be some compromise,