Ready for Marriage? by Anne Marie Winston Beverly Barton & Ann Major

Author:Anne Marie Winston, Beverly Barton & Ann Major [Anne Marie Winston, Beverly Barton & Ann Major]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408907832
Publisher: Harlequin Mills & Boon Ltd.
Published: 2009-02-12T13:00:00+00:00

Eight

Dante Moran called at seven-thirty. Kate had been awake since six o’clock, but she hadn’t ventured from her room. She’d called herself a coward, a fool and a hussy, not necessarily in that order. A coward for not wanting to face Trent this morning. A hussy and a fool for allowing herself to give in to temptation last night.

Maybe she should add judgmental bitch to that list. After all, what right did she have to judge Trent? If he wanted to settle for a marriage without passion, was that so wrong? For her—definitely yes. But maybe not for Trent. The old Trent, the man she’d fallen in love with and married would never have been satisfied with less than everything. The new Trent—she didn’t really know him, did she?

“Kate are you there?” Moran asked.

“Sorry, just gathering wool.”

“Did I wake you?”

“No, I’ve been up for quite a while. But it is early, so why are you calling?”

“To let you know that it doesn’t look as if we’ll be able to set up a meeting between the adoptive parents and the biological parents.”

“What? Why not?”

“None of the adoptive parents are willing to attend a meeting.”

“I see.” A gut-tightening sense of disappointment hit Kate.

“You can’t blame them. Not really,” Moran said. “They’re all scared to death, afraid they might lose their child. Right or wrong, they see the biological parents as enemies.”

“I can understand why they’d feel that way. After all, they’re as much victims in this horrific situation as we are. And if the shoe was on the other foot, I’d probably feel the way they do.”

“I called you first,” Moran told her. “We’ll be letting the others know later today.”

“Thanks.”

“Not all my news is bad.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

“The adoptive parents did agree to send recent photographs of the girls via e-mail attachments. And one is even sending several photos of their child, dating from infancy.”

Kate’s heart skipped a beat as her hopes shot sky-high. “From infancy? If we saw a picture of our child as an infant, we’d recognize her immediately.”

“I don’t know why I told you about that. Dammit, Kate, she’s not one of the two with type O-positive blood.”

Her sky-high hopes nosedived. “But we will see photos of the other two girls, right?”

Would she know her own daughter from a photograph? Or would her eager heart see something that wasn’t there—a resemblance to her or to Trent that would be only in her imagination?

“Absolutely. All of you will get copies. We’re expecting those photos this morning. I’ll phone you the minute we get all three sets.”

“Hey, Moran, you know where all three girls live, don’t you?”

“Yeah, we know.” A slight hesitation. A deep breath. “But don’t ask me to give you the addresses. I can’t bend the rules that much.”

“Could you tell me if they’re close?” she asked. “Just tell me the states they’re in.”

“The two with type O-positive blood are within three hours of Memphis,” he told her. “One’s in Mississippi and the other in Alabama. And that’s all I can tell you at this point.

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