Open Heart Read Online Free Page A

day, I swear.”
    Once again, Annabeth felt tears in her eyes.
    Phil saw them and looked concerned. “Hey, you OK, hon?”
    “Oh, sure. I am. That’s just so beautiful.”
    “So, why did you need to talk to Vicky?”
    “Oh. Oh, right.” Annabeth wiped her tears away. “Would you give her this for me?” She handed Phil a box. “It’s a gift.”
    “A gift?”
    “Yeah. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow, and I wanted to give this to her.”
    “So soon? I thought you were here longer.”
    “No. I’m checking out early.”
    “Oh. Well, sure, hon. I’ll make sure she gets it.”
    “Thanks. And – and can you just tell her one thing?”
    “Of course.”
    “Tell her that I admire her so much for what she’s done… her building up a whole new life. She’s strong and amazing and I want the best of everything for her.”
    Puzzled, Phil looked down at her. “OK.”
    “And please tell her that this gift is special… that my husband Cam gave it to me when I beat cancer. It symbolizes strength and triumph and new beginnings and I can’t think of anybody better to have it.” She held Phil’s gaze. “You’ll tell her?”
    “I – I will.”
    “Thank you. Goodbye, Phil.”
    “Goodbye, Annabeth.” He shut the door behind her.
    OK. That was weird. Why do I feel so uneasy about all of that?

Chapter Three
     
    Eric came back from his hike sore and tired, but happy. He’d never seen anything like the mountains around Open Skies, and he was officially in love with them. He’d always considered himself a Texas boy, but now he was wondering about that.
    The wild flowers in the Rocky Mountains were stunning, and so different from the plants and blossoms that he saw in the heat and warmth of Texas. Vibrant and tough, the mountain flowers thrived and gloried in the air and wind and sun. They would dig down in to a rock crevice and just take root and bloom there – literally spring forth out of that hardness. Some were deceptively delicate, and he thought maybe he liked these the best… the true hidden nature of the flower hidden by an unassuming exterior. Beautiful to look at; difficult to hurt. Adaptable and smart and damn near impossible to kill.
    He saw Annabeth sitting on her porch with a cup of tea and her laptop. Her hair was golden and glowing in the early sunset, her face fresh and softly pink. He smiled at her, noticing her long legs and shapely breasts.
    “Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”
    “OK. You?”
    “Good.”
    He gestured at her computer. “You doing some writing?”
    “No, just checking the comments on my last blog post.”
    “Oh, yeah? You got a few?”
    She laughed. “Almost eight hundred.”
    “What?” Even for her, that was a lot.
    “Yeah. I wrote a post saying that I’m finishing my third book, and so I have lots of people excited about that.”
    Count me among them.
    “That’s great.”
    “Yeah.” She scrolled down a bit. “These people – they really pulled me through some hard stuff, especially in the early days.”
    “I can imagine.” Eric remembered the raw pain in her first posts. They were like screams of torment across his computer screen; he could actually feel her grief and confusion about what happened to Cam reaching out to him.
    Those first posts were what made him want to follow her in her journey. Eric knew it was illogical, but he had some deep need to know that the wife of the man whose heart he had received was doing better. Every day he logged on to her blog and every day his heart ached for her, even as he felt gratitude for his second chance.
    When Annabeth’s writing became cautiously more positive and upbeat, he had almost danced around his apartment in relief. When she wrote about meeting friends for dinner and being able to look at babies again, he had actually cried. And when she got her first book deal, he’d waited eagerly for the book to be published and he’d been at the store before it even opened on the day of delivery. He sat