Midnight Promises by Eileen Wilks

Author:Eileen Wilks [Eileen Wilks]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Category Romance, Contemporary Romance, Fiction
ISBN: 9781459218062
Publisher: Silhouette Intimate Moments
Published: 2011-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

The house was as quiet as a big old house ever is, with no more than an occasional wooden mutter of complaint to disturb the silence as beams and boards settled into the small hours of the morning. Annie sat on the floor beside the couch where Jack lay sleeping. The light from the hall was dim, just enough for her to see that his eyes were closed, that his chest rose and fell shallowly, evenly…that he slept, but he was still with her. Damaged, but alive.

The doctor had released him shortly after midnight. They’d brought him here—pale, shaky, unsteady on his feet—only to confront the barrier of the stairs. All of the bedrooms were on the second floor. Jack couldn’t tackle the stairs in his condition, but Ben could have carried him to bed without much trouble. But Jack had been thoroughly offended by the idea of being toted around. He’d ended up on the couch in the family room.

Men, she thought, fond and exasperated. They were such babies sometimes. Babies with man-sized egos.

She would have to wake him soon. She remembered the nurses waking her over and over when she’d had a concussion, and how much that had irritated her. But the doctor had said to wake him up every two hours and make sure he was responsive, so she would do that.

Of course, she didn’t have to sit on the floor for those two hours, watching him sleep. But she wanted to. Needed to. Here in the near-dark, with the house quiet and her body exhausted, Annie couldn’t stop thinking. Jack had been so surprised that Ben and Charlie had wanted to bring him home. Shocked. It had obviously never occurred to him that they would do that.

Had anyone ever really been there for Jack? One hundred percent on his side, no matter what?

His aunt hadn’t. Oh, maybe Sybil Merriman had tried to do right by him, as Jack had said. She’d paid for his clothes and his meals and his college. But she’d never attended a track meet to watch him compete or bought him something just because he wanted it. Or praised him. Or hugged him. Maybe she hadn’t known how to do any of those things. Maybe the only way she’d been able to express caring had been with an endless series of lectures, but she’d held so much of herself back that only her disapproval had come through clearly.

His mother hadn’t been there for him, either. Not really. She’d loved him, yes—Annie believed that, because Jack did. But Therese Merriman had been too needy herself to truly place her child first. Though Jack never said so, Annie knew his years with his mother had been uncertain, even scary at times. And then she’d died. Annie knew well how little difference there was to a child between death and abandonment.

It was no wonder Jack didn’t trust love. The people he’d loved, the ones who had loved him—or who should have loved him—had let him down.

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