His Lost and Found Family by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-10-27T18:00:17+00:00

* * *

She’d never slept next to a little one. Didn’t think she would sleep. Most particularly not with Michael O’Connell just feet away, sharing the same mattress. And yet, with her senses abuzz and her heart bubbling with emotion, she floated off with a tiny body wrapped around her and slept better than she had in years. Deeply. Peacefully.

And woke up, completely disoriented, before dawn, to see Michael rounding the end of the pullout bed and heading toward the stairs. She knew it was for the best. Waking up together, all three of them in the same bed, would create an intimacy they couldn’t afford in their situation.

She cried a little, though, lying there in the dark with a small head digging into the side of her rib cage and a hand on her stomach. Was she being a fool? Refusing to seriously consider her option to adopt Harper because of professional boundaries and obligations? There was nothing that said she couldn’t fall in love with a child she met through work, or seriously consider taking that child in as her own if it was the employer’s request that she do.

Or had she already been seriously considering doing so and holding up the actual consideration with a professional boundary that was crumbling that night, in that bed?

She didn’t know if taking Harper was the best thing for the little girl. Had to think in-depth and with no blinders on about the logistics of becoming an overnight mother to any four-year-old child—let alone one who was going to need extra careful attention over the coming months as she moved on from a horrendous tragedy.

If she was in Phoenix, that part would be easier. Mandy Faith was there. A wife, mother of a toddler and a fellow child life specialist who worked part-time at the children’s hospital and part-time for Sierra’s Web. Mandy was top on Mariah’s list of contracted child life experts. If Mariah asked her, she’d be available to watch Harper, keep her overnight even, when Mariah had to be gone. For the first month, at least, she’d need to stay put, but there was also a pile of administrative work she’d been meaning to get done at the Sierra’s Web home office. And the partners were all in and out of Phoenix, using an apartment the firm owned for just that purpose. Mariah’s was in the same complex. She’d just wanted her own because she was in town more than some of them. Any one of them in town would happily bop over and stay at her place if necessary. They were her family.

For that matter, anyone who was available would fly to Phoenix for just that purpose.

Harper sighed. Flopped over, turning her back to Mariah, her butt pressed up against Mariah’s thigh now. And as Mariah watched night fade through the blinds, watched the child, she found it a little harder to breathe. Reined herself in. In the cover of darkness, she’d gone off on a wild tangent there, getting way ahead of herself.

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