Mail Order Stepbrother Read Online Free Page A

love nature, so if it doesn’t go well, I’m still doing something I love.
    So…it’s getting late. If I haven’t scared you off, what do you think about having a conversation on the messenger service on the dating website? Maybe around eight tomorrow evening? If you show, great. If not…it was nice to meet you.
    Melanie smiled as she read that last message. She liked his confidence, his enthusiasm, his intelligence. Amazing how much you could tell about a person from just a few words written on a computer screen! She felt like she knew more about this stranger than she knew about most of the people she worked with on a daily basis…Jack most especially.
    Maybe dating websites weren’t all that bad.
    She closed her computer and prepared for bed, excited about her romantic future for the first time in a long time.
     
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    Melanie was still at the hospital the next day when eight o’clock rolled around. She had a patient who was having some issues that might require surgical intervention, so she couldn’t go home until the patient was stable. So, as much as she hated to, she settled down at the nurse’s station and turned on her personal laptop.
    Nash’s personal icon appeared almost immediately at the bottom edge of the screen. She clicked on it and a messenger box opened.
    “Good evening,” his message said.
    Melanie smiled, thinking how old fashioned it was to say something like that. It was quirky, but a quirk she liked.
    “How are you?” she responded.
    “Still at the office. What about you?”
    “Same.”
    A smiley face emoticon appeared on the screen followed by, “I guess now we know why we’re both on this website.”
    “I would say that’s a pretty good guess.”
    Tanya walked up behind Melanie and reached over her to grab a pen.
    “You okay, sweetie?” she asked.
    “Yeah. Just talking to a friend.”
    Tanya nodded, a soft smile on her lips. “Not Jack, I hope.”
    Melanie’s cheeks immediately began to burn. No one had said anything to her all day about Willis’ party the night before. She had hoped that everyone was so busy with their own fun that they hadn’t noticed. Now she knew that wasn’t completely true.
    “Not Jack.”
    “I saw the two of you leave together—“
    “We didn’t, actually. It turns out that Jack’s married.”
    “No way!” Another nurse, who just happened to be passing the desk at that moment, cried out. “He is so hot! And I heard he made out with one of the doctors last night.”
    Tanya pointed to Melanie, causing her to duck away, snatching up her computer as she did.
    “Think I’ll go to the on-call room.”
    “It’s okay, honey,” Tanya called after her. “Everyone’s wanted to do what you did last night…”
    Melanie just kept walking.
    It took her a moment to find an available space. The first on-call room she came to was occupied by five sleeping interns who were so exhausted that they didn’t notice they were sleeping practically on top of one another. Melanie could remember what those nights had been like, and was grateful they were in her past. She found another room, a small break room along the furthest corridor of the pediatric wing, not far from the NICU, and locked herself inside.
    There were two messages from Nash. The first read, “What do you do for a living?” The second asked, “Did I lose you?”
    “Still here,” she quickly typed as she got herself settled. “A little interruption. Sorry.”
    “No problem. I was just answering a phone call myself.”
    “Good. I mean, good that you had something…” She moved the cursor back and erased that message. It sounded pretty lame. “So, what do we talk about?” she asked instead.
    “I don’t know. I suppose if this was a face to face date, I’d ask you things like, ‘Where did you go to school?’ ‘Are you close to your family?’ ‘What kinds of movies do you watch?’”
    “You already know. Sort of. And…it depends on who’s in