Resisting the Brooding Heart Surgeon
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Tina Beckett
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PROLOGUE
SHANNA MEADOWS HEARD the sound first, before she fully comprehended what it was. Her mom was crying. Loudly. She slowly made her way toward the living room, realizing she was late for school. She hadn’t meant to oversleep, didn’t even remember her mom trying to wake her up.
The legs of the giraffe pajama bottoms she’d gotten last Christmas were still a little too long, and they dragged across the carpet with every step she took as she moved closer and closer to the sound. Maybe she should go back to her room and get dressed. Even if she was late, her mom could still take her to school.
Her dad had told her she needed to help around the house while he was gone, and she’d tried. She’d really tried. But now her mom was sobbing, and she could hear another voice in the room talking to her. A man’s voice.
It wasn’t her dad’s. She was suddenly scared.
She came into the room and saw two men in uniforms, like the ones her dad wore on special occasions. “Ma’am, we want you to know that your husband was a hero. His sacrifice saved the lives of his troop.”
Sacrifice? What did that mean?
Her mom’s eyes suddenly swung her way, spotting her in the doorway. She dabbed at her eyes, which were really red and had a weird expression in them. “G-go back to bed, baby.”
“But I’m late for school. Is something wrong with Dad?”
The two men stood like statues, not saying anything, but one of them glanced at the other.
Her mother closed her eyes for a second before looking at her again, drawing a deep breath as if she, too, was really scared about something. “You’re not going to school today, Shan.”
Not going to school? She always went to school unless she was really sick or there was too much snow on the ground. “But why?”
“Go back to bed, and I’ll come talk to you in a few minutes.”
As she looked into the unsmiling faces of the two men, who hadn’t even said hello to her, Shanna realized something was very wrong. Something more wrong than not getting up in time to catch the school bus. And it had something to do with her dad. With the word sacrifice the men had used.
Suddenly, she wanted to go back to bed. To go back to sleep and wake up all over again. Wake up to the normal sounds of her mother getting breakfast ready and hollering that she needed to hurry.
Wake up to her mother not crying.
A normal day.
But today wasn’t normal. And from the way her mom looked, and the way Shanna was feeling, days weren’t going to feel normal again for a very long time.
If ever.
