Her Christmas Guardian ; Protective Instincts by Shirlee McCoy

Author:Shirlee McCoy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-09-21T19:15:59+00:00

Chapter One

Help me, Mommy. Please! Help me!

The cries drifted into Raina’s consciousness, weaving their way through vivid dreams: Africa. A young boy who wasn’t Joseph, but who could have been. Hot sun. Desperate thirst. Fear.

And that cry!

Help me, Mommy! Please! Help me!

She jerked awake, her heart thundering so loudly, she thought she was still hearing the cries.

She was still hearing the cries.

Wasn’t she?

She scrambled out of bed, the sheets and blanket dropping onto the floor, her flannel pajamas tangled around her waist and legs. Wind rattled the windows, the darkness beyond the single-pane glass complete. She cocked her head to the side, heard the house creaking, ice pattering on the roof. Other than that, there was nothing. Her hand shook as she brushed bangs from her forehead and tried to take a few deep breaths. Tried, but her lungs wouldn’t fill.

“Calm down!” she muttered. “It was just a dream, and you’re still waking up from it.”

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had the dream many times in the six months since she’d returned from the mission trip, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t learned how to deal with it.

She paced to the window then back to the bed, inhaling, exhaling, forcing herself to relax.

She’d spent the past thirty hours wondering how the young boy who’d given her a drink of water and unlocked her cage was faring. Was it any wonder that she’d had such a vivid nightmare? After fighting red tape and bureaucracy, petitioning, begging, pleading and pulling every string she could think of, Raina had finally managed to get him to the United States on a medical visa. He’d stepped onto U.S. soil the previous morning. The flight from L.A. to Atlanta had gone off without a hitch, but the flight from Atlanta to D.C. had been canceled.

Good thing Raina had hired an escort to bring Samuel to the United States. One she trusted implicitly. Stella Silverstone worked for HEART, the hostage rescue team that had risked everything to save her and the rest of the mission team. Stella had been brusque and to the point when she’d called to tell Raina about the delay. They were stuck in Atlanta, their flight canceled because of the storms. Samuel was fine. Stella would call again when they got a flight out.

That had been more than twelve hours ago.

Raina hadn’t heard a word since. She was worried about Samuel. His leg had been amputated above the knee, and he’d suffered reoccurring infections in the stump. He’d been hospitalized for a few weeks before his trip to the United States, and the doctors hadn’t been hopeful for his recovery. No wonder Raina was having nightmares.

“But now you’re awake, so do something productive instead of standing around panicking.” Her words echoed in the room she’d once shared with Matt. Like everything else since the accident that had taken her husband and son, the room seemed to be nothing more than a shadow of its former self. Wedding pictures hung crooked on the wall.

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