Mail Order Stepbrother by Kira Ward

his incision.”
    “Dr. Jonah?”
    “I’m going out of town,” Melanie reminded her. “I’ll be gone all next week.”
    “Oh yes, you told me already.” Tess dragged her fingers through her hair. “Everything’s starting to blur together, you know?”
    Melanie nodded. “It’s been a lot of information. But you’ll be fine.”
    She walked around Tess and retrieved the iPad she’d left on the seat of a chair. She paused in the doorway and watched Tess run a hand lovingly over her sleeping baby’s head.
    “Is everything settled at home? You have a safe place to go?”
    Tess looked up, confusion darkening her pretty features for a second.
    “You mean Jack?”
    Melanie had reported her run in with Jack in the parking garage to security. She’d heard that they filed a report against him with human resources and chances were good he would lose his job. It wasn’t what Melanie wanted, but he was a loose cannon. Someone had to do something.
    Tess looked down at the baby again. “Jack moved out on the day of the surgery. I haven’t heard from him since.”
    Melanie started to turn, but then paused again.
    “Promise me you’ll be careful, Tess.”
    “Of course,” she said with a soft smile. “I always am.”
    ***
    “Yes, Mom, I’ll be there first thing Friday morning,” Melanie was saying into the phone as she unloaded the dishwasher—it was getting more use in the past ten days that Nash had been in her life than the whole five years she’d lived there. “My plane lands at eight, your time.”
    “Good,” her mother said. “I need you to help me finish setting up.”
    “Doesn’t Burton have servants or whatever to help out?”
    Her mother groaned. “I hate telling them what to do. I feel like some sort of phony, bossing around a whole group of people who might have been my neighbors once upon a time.”
    Melanie smiled, trying to imagine her mother instructing a stable of maids. She simply couldn’t see it. Her mother was too nice. Melanie, on the other hand, could probably take to that kind of life quite easily… Imagine, never having to make another bed or empty another dishwasher…
    “Don’t worry. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
    “Well, Alyssa will be here and she’s bringing her husband and kids this time, so there will be plenty of hands. Burton says her teens are quite helpful.”
    “I didn’t realize she had kids.”
    “Yeah, a boy and a girl. Burton said he thinks they’re fifteen and seventeen, but he couldn’t be positive.”
    “They’re his only grandkids, and he can’t remember their ages?”
    “Burton had trouble with little details like that.”
    “Sounds like an old age sort of thing.”
    Her mother laughed. “Don’t say that in front of him. He’ll disown you.”
    He doesn’t own me.
    Melanie opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine. As she poured a glass, she asked, “What about his son? Is he going to be there?”
    “Alyssa says that she spoke to him and he was noncommittal, but she thinks she can talk him into it.”
    “So we might finally meet the mysterious Burton Collins Jr.?”
    “Might. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.”
    Melanie took a sip from her glass. There was a knock on the door and her heart fluttered a little. It was Nash. He’d called earlier to let her know he was running late, but planning on stopping by. She pulled the door open and gestured for him to be quiet. He smiled, dropping a kiss on her forehead before making a great shoe of walking on his tiptoes into the living room.
    “Well, it should be interesting if he does,” Melanie said into the phone, trying not to laugh at Nash.
    “Tell me how it’s going with that patient of yours,” her mother said. “The baby with Down’s.”
    “Well, actually,” she said, turning away from Nash as she lowered her voice. “He’s going home in the morning.”
    “That’s wonderful. He must be doing really well, then.”
    “He is. Better than expected.”
    “I