by Tasha Jones
Dedicated
To All The Readers Who Are Making My Dreams Come True
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2015 Tasha Jones. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.
WARNING: This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language. It may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is for sale to adults ONLY.
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Other Titles By Tasha (Free on Kindle Unlimited)
For The Love Of The Doctor
Cowboy Love
Saving The Cowboy
African Attraction
My Caring Cowboy
Books By Friends (Free on Kindle Unlimited)
Violet Jackson
Loving The Doctor
Doctor's Baby
Doctor's Soul
The Nurse's Secret Love
Heart of Fire
Country Vibes
Doctor's Love
Falling For The Doctor
The Billionaire's Bodyguard
Jamaica, I Love You
City Vibes – Complete Series
About Tasha Jones
Hey,
I'm Tasha and thank you so much for taking the time to take a read through my book. I'm a young mother of one, with a loving husband, currently living in Jacksonville, and am a big reader. I've decided to turn my love for books into something more, and have started to passionately write more and more. I recently went on a trip to Africa with my fam, and got many ideas for stories on that trip. I also love traveling and cooking and hope it shows in my writing. I really hope you enjoy my writing and I can bring just a tiny bit of joy into your day.
Thanks,
Tasha
About This Book
Nadine Lewis never expected to meet a man like him.
As a single mother whose ex left her many years ago Nadine only had two priorities. Her five year old son Trevor, and making sure he had a good life. She never trusted a man after her ex left, and with working long hours at the salon and trying to take courses online so she could get her degree she didn't even have the time.
Her dream was always to open her own salon, but with money being so tight, she had been forced to work for someone else for many years.
But while working at the salon she received a frantic call from Trevor's babysitter who said Trevor was in the hospital. Panicked, Nadine dashed to the hospital to see what was wrong.
Little did she know that trip to the hospital would change her life forever...
Find out more in this touching romance story by bestselling romance author Tasha Jones.
This hot and steamy BWWM romance is for adult audiences 18+ only
Chapter 1- Nadine
“There you go, Mrs. Sanders. Perfect.” The old black lady stood up and ran her fingers over the short cut I’d given her. She was one of my most frequent clients, coming in once a month to trim off the one centimeter of grey frizz she gained in the three weeks I didn’t see her.
“Thank you, Nadine,” the old lady said and flashed a gummy smile. “You always do such a great job.” I walked Mrs. Sanders to the front desk. I was the reason the salon could take clients of every race now. The white girls weren’t able to do corn rows and afros the way I could, but the owner had wanted to expand.
“Who else do I have for today?” I asked Sonya who was at the front desk, taking Mrs. Sanders’s payment. Mondays were quiet at the hair salon, with only four of the six ladies coming in.
“You’ve got a Hannah at two and a…” she squinted at the book. “I don’t know what this says, but another one at three for a weave.”
“I’m going to shoot off and pick up Trevor now then,” I said, grabbing my keys and handbag. The preschool had half-day and full-day options but I couldn’t afford full day on my hairdresser salary. It was cheaper to pay Dianne, my next door neighbor, to watch Trevor for the next four hours of my shift.
When I walked into the preschool, Trevor’s name already echoed down the halls. He would know I was here long before he saw me. Every kid in this place knew which mothers belonged to which kids, and which things belonged in which locker. I couldn’t remember ever being that vigilant when I was in preschool, but it was a good twenty-two years since I’d been five.
“Why did you come so early?” Trevor asked, tipping his head back on his shoulders.
“It’s the same time I come every day, sweetheart,” I said, running my hand through his soft black curls and down onto his chocolate cheek. It was amazing how I was a hairdresser but I never got a chance to cut my own son’s hair. What was it they said about a shoemaker’s kids? “Do you have everything? Lunch box? Jacket?” I looked down at his bare feet and shook my head. It was heading on towards winter and he still insisted on taking them off. “Shoes?”
He nodded and slipped his hand into mine. It was warm and sticky, his morning mapped out on his soft skin.
“What are you going to do at Dianne’s today?” I asked when he was in the car on his elevated seat. I always asked him. If he chose something that he could look forward to, I pretended I could feel less guilty about having to leave him there.
“I want to watch cartoons on the new television she got again,” he said. “It’s really big, five times bigger than ours, even.”
“That sounds really big. I’ll have to come see it sometime.”
“Like today?”
I shook my head and glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Not today, angel. Mommy has to work, remember?”
He looked out the window. This look on his face was the one that hurt me the most. He wasn’t upset that I’d said no. He wasn’t sad I couldn’t come. He wasn’t even angry, trying to twist my arm with a temper tantrum. All of those I would have been able to handle – a lecture on how to act right made me feel like I was still being a good mother.
When he looked out of the window he was just resigned. He knew what the answer was and he knew there was no use arguing or fighting about it. It was such a grown up thing to do for a five-year old. And it shot guilt through my chest like an arrow.
“You always have to work,” he said. It was true. I worked a lot, often putting in double shifts at the salon. But I didn’t have a choice.
“Remember how Bryce at school told you that his daddy made a lot of money so he could have all those toys you asked me about?”
Trevor nodded.
“Well, we don’t have a daddy that makes a lot of money. So I have to work hard to make up for that.”
Trevor knew Marcus had left before he’d been born. I had to tell him why his life was different than some of his school friends’ lives. I’d had to explain to him that not having a daddy didn’t make him wrong, like some kids told him. Kids could be real jerks.
“I don’t mind not having all the toys,” Trevor said, and I looked over my shoulder at him.
> “No?”
“Nah. I like it when we play together.”
The arrow of guilt had lodged between my ribs and he was wiggling it from side to side, making the pain fan out.
“We can spend time together on Thursday when I have a day off,” I said to him.
“Can we go to Dianne’s then to watch a movie?”
“We can go to the cinema and watch a big one.”
He smiled and nodded.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
Dianne came out of the house when I pulled up at the curb and when Trevor peeled out of the car, she hugged him.
“I was waiting for you. We’re going to make cupcakes today,” she said. Trevor whooped and ran into the house without saying goodbye.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said, fishing for money in my purse, but Dianne put her hand on my arm. “You don’t have to thank me every day. It’s a pleasure to have him. And you can worry about the money after work.”
I smiled and watched Dianne walk into the house. She was middle-aged with a low dull-brown bun on her neck and her clothes hung off her body like she’d lost weight a while ago and never bothered with new clothes. She’d been our neighbor for years and Trevor had stayed with her since he was born.
I leaned against the car. This was what I didn’t tell Trevor: Sometimes at night I wished Marcus would just come back, even if it meant he had other girls, just so that I wouldn’t have to carry the load alone. Sometimes I wanted to follow Dianne and Trevor into the house and watch cartoons on the five-times-bigger-than-ours television with them just so I could escape my own life for a bit. Sometimes I wanted to stay home so that I could spend time with Trevor, and I could save the money I had to pay Dianne every day.
It was probably my money that had gone to that TV.
I’d read a sign once that had said Children spell love T-I-M-E. I wondered if Trevor did that too, if he knew I was doing all of this because I loved him, even if I didn’t have a lot of time to offer.
I looked at my wristwatch. I had half an hour left before my next client. I walked to my own front door and unlocked it, leaving the key in the door. I switched on the computer and checked my inbox.
My assignment feedback was in. I opened the document. Sixty-five percent for Ethics. It was a subject I hated, and I’d managed to pass it. Thank God. I had been studying business management for four years part time, taking one or two subjects a semester where I could fit them in. I’d taken my exams, and I’d passed them all so far. I was almost done.
With the degree, I could either manage an upmarket salon, or I could open my own. I dreamed of being an owner that sat on her backside, delegating, and everyone else had to work like a dog the way I did. That way I could spend every day with Trevor, and we wouldn’t have to worry about money. Yeah, my own salon sounded amazing.
Chapter 2 - Nadine
I walked back into the salon five minutes before my next client arrived. I had forgotten to eat, my sandwich in the fridge still untouched. Sonya chucked a meal-replacement shake at me.
“I know you didn’t eat again. Have it, I packed extra.”
I smiled and popped open the top, taking a sip. It tasted like cardboard and vanilla.
“Why do you drink this again?”
Hannah, my next client, walked in and cut the conversation short. I put the shake to the side and walked over to her.
“What do you want done?” I asked.
About ten minutes before my three o’clock, my phone rang. It was Dianne’s number. Trevor often phoned at work to speak to me.
This time it was Dianne. She sounded frantic, and I couldn’t make out what she was trying to tell me with the rush of words.
“Calm down, I can’t hear a thing you’re saying,” I said into the phone. I walked to the back room where Sonya was having her lunch and the speakers that were always on the same radio station didn’t blare.
“Trevor is in the hospital,” Dianne said, and my blood slowed and then stopped in my veins. The walls around me moved in on me, squashing me and I felt lightheaded. I felt blindly behind me for a chair and sat down.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We were outside, I was gardening and he climbed into the tree… I’m so sorry…” She started hiccupping, unable to tell me what was really wrong.
“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up. I looked at Sonya who was sucking on a yogurt spoon.
“I’ll cover for you,” she said. “I’m off anyway.”
“Thank you,” I breathed and tore out of the salon.
Chapter 3 - Richard
A knock on my office door startled me.
“Come in,” I said without looking up from the papers in front of me. A nurse popped her head around the corner.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
I sighed and nodded. The girl looked like she couldn’t have been old enough to be out of school, let alone have a nursing qualification. She had braces, for crying out loud. I waved at the chair opposite me, and she sat down.
“What can I do for you…” I glanced at her name tag. “Darlene?”
“I wanted to talk to you about my rotations. I have...“
“Isn’t this something you should bring up with the head nurse?”
She twirled her thumbs in her lap, looking down. “She doesn’t really like me. She’s always shouting and I’m scared if I ask her to book me on a different time she might blow up. She has so many nurses...“
“I’m sorry you feel that way. But unfortunately the rotations are out of my control. The only way you’re going to sort this out is by talking to her.”
Darlene stood up and nodded. She walked out of the office with her head hanging. I sighed again and I was just about to continue with my paperwork when the phone rang.
“Dr. Morgan,” I said into the phone, clamping the receiver between my jaw and shoulder, paging through the paperwork while I listened.
“We need to talk,” Astrid’s clear voice rang across the speaker. It seemed like I could never really get away from her, no matter how long we hadn’t been living in the same house anymore.
“Not now, Astrid. I’ve told you not to phone me at the office. Unlike you I actually have work to do.”
“We have to talk about the settlement,” she said, ignoring me.
“Call me on my cell after work. My shift ends at three then we can talk.”
“When are we going to have time to talk about this? Did you get the papers?”
I chucked the stapled stack of papers onto the desk and leaned back. I’d been through the divorce papers four times now.
“I’m busy, Astrid.”
“You’re always working,” she complained, her voice turning into a whine. There was a time when I used to think she had the sexiest voice in the world. She could turn me on with a few words, alone, and she didn’t even have to be in the room. Her voice had lost that quality to me. It was a consistent whine now, either demanding or complaining.
“It’s to be able to make all the money you’re going to get out of me, darling,” I said sarcastically and hung up on her.
We’d been married three years, and if you asked me, I’d tell you it was three years too many. There should have been some kind of law that stopped men from marrying women with a tight ass and a sultry voice before they really knew them. I’d known Astrid for six months before we’d gotten married.
I’d met her at a conference in Ohio the year I was still doing my residency. She’d been there with another man, a Swedish doctor that had wanted to practice in the States. I’d taken one look at her and known that the doctor was one lucky man. She had a body to die for, long golden locks that were always styled perfectly and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. One look and I was sold. I had to have her.
The way she smiled at me, her green eyes hypnotizing me, made me think she felt the same way. Her arm had been hooked through the doctor’s elbow, but her eyes had been on mine,
speaking volumes.
We’d started talking in the afternoon. Her voice had been like honey, dribbling across my skin. I wanted her on my lips, in my mouth, all over my body. Her mouth had mesmerized me. I’d wanted to kiss her every time she opened it to say something.
By ten I had her in bed, her body curled around mine in a question mark and I was sure I had all the answers. She’d made me feel like a god. The Swedish doctor had disappeared, and I’d never asked what had happened to him.
I should have.
“Dr. Morgan to front desk.”Reception summoned me, and I stood up, shoving the papers under a book. I didn’t want to look at them. I didn’t want to have to think about who got the boat and who could keep the silver cutlery set, and who would get the crystal chandelier we’d bought in Italy on our honeymoon. Marriage always started off with love that could exist in a void.
And it ended off with monetary value, with how much each thing was worth, with how much each could gain.
Love was a hoax. I would have given it all to her if it wasn’t for the fact that a lot of the things in my home were heirlooms, more than eight generations old and almost priceless with age. And Astrid knew it. Her eyes had glittered when I’d brought her home the first time. Then it’d thought it was love. Now I recognized it for greed.
“Dr. Watts isn’t going to be able to make it today,” Emma, the receptionist, told me. “Will you be able to cover the emergency room until eight tonight?”
Another five hour shift? Why not. If it meant putting off Astrid longer, I’d do it. Besides, I had nothing to go home to. I signed the forms Emma pushed at me.
“I’m sorry to hear about your marriage,” Emma said. I glanced up at her.
“What?”
I don’t know what she saw in my face, but she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“I just… I was…” She swallowed hard.
“Where did you find out?” I asked. I didn’t like it when my personal life intertwined with my work life. I’d worked very hard to keep them separate.
“I saw it online,” she said softly. She pointed to her screen. I walked around the counter and into the secretary area, bending over her shoulder.