Food for the Soul Read Online Free Page A

the devil, gorgeous and playful, sinful.
    “Touché.” She watched as he noted something on the chart hanging at the end of her bed. His fingers were long and slender, and what she could see beneath his doctor coat and fitted button-down shirt was toned, not overly muscled. She liked that. She appreciated strength and a well-toned body, but she never needed a man bulging with muscles to satisfy her.
    What the hell was she thinking about? Satisfy her? Her brain must have been more swollen than she thought.
    “What’s wrong?” He hurried over to her side and looked into her eyes, not in a sexy way but as a professional doctor, not someone out of a porn.
    “Huh?”
    “You groaned. Are you sure you’re not in any pain?”
    “What are you?” she asked out of the blue, attempting to keep him from probing her embarrassing thoughts.
    “Homo sapiens, bipedal male.” He didn’t miss a beat.
    She snorted and was pleasantly surprised it didn’t cause any pain. “I mean your nationality. Sorry if it’s rude or prying. I tend to ignore whether I’m rude or not.”
    “I’ll try not to hold that against you.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “My mother’s family is Indonesian, and my father is from South Africa.” He said South Africa with a delightful accent, perfectly mimicking the tone of a native South African. Again, he made her smile when her thoughts were heavy. This doctor healed more than her swollen head.
    “How did they meet?” She attempted to sit on her own, but the doctor was there, pushing up her pillows and ensuring she moved slowly. She nodded in gratitude, relieved when there was no nausea or dizziness accompanying the motion. They grinned together at the small triumph, her lack of pain bringing as much joy to him as it did her.
    He cleared his throat before answering her question, looking away after their exchange. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one feeling a sudden attraction. Surely as the person of authority in this situation, he was feeling the impropriety more keenly than she was.
    “University. They were both studying to be historians.” He smiled to himself, but Harper could see there was sadness accompanying whatever memory his story conjured. “Their focus was on different time periods, but they made it work anyway.”
    “What made you become a doctor? They didn’t want you to follow in their footsteps?”
    He leaned forward slightly, a gleam in his eye. “They couldn’t have forced me to become a historian if they’d tied me down with medieval shackles and tortured me like a victim from the Spanish Inquisition.”
    He was close. She could skim her lips against his if she could only sit up a bit further. His gaze moved down to her mouth, and he swallowed, focusing all his attention on her, as though he were performing complex surgery. Without warning, he pulled away, and the speed of it nearly gave her whiplash. She continued their conversation, though, not wanting the severed tension to interrupt their previous line of discussion.
    “Think history is boring?” she asked, hoping he was considering what would happen if he ignored the negative stigma associated with doctor-patient relationships.
    “It’s not that it’s boring, I’m simply not a fan of focusing on the past.”
    “You have to know where you’re from to get where you’re going.”
    He sighed, an echo of a dramatic teenager. “My mother said that all the time, and I’ll tell you what I told her…over and over again. If you keep all your focus on the past, you’ll never see what’s right in front of you.” He sounded as though he spoke from experience.
    “You’re right,” she conceded, wanting to focus on what was right in front of her. “History is boring.”
    “Boring!” a loud voice from the doorway yelled. A small boy with short, wavy golden hair and caramel-colored skin ran into the hospital room. He couldn’t have been more than four years old. When he reached the bed, he placed his hands on the