Lynne Marshall - A Mother For His Adopted Son

Dear Reader Dear Reader Dear Reader About the Author Title Page Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN EPILOGUE Endpages Copyright , Writers are often asked where they get their ideas for stories. I can tell you I get mine all over the place! The spark that spurred A Mother for His Adopted Son came from an article about an ocularist in a regional magazine I subscribe to from Maine. I’d never heard of the profession, and was fascinated by this woman who’d been an art student but for the last thirty years had wound up making beautiful prosthetic eyes for clients. I clipped and held on to that article for a couple of years and it percolated in the back of my mind. Another day, I was driving around doing errands and listening to the radio when an intriguing interview aired, about a sightless man who had become amazingly independent through using a technique called echolocation. The interviewer began by describing this man as having beautiful blue eyes and, yes, they were prosthetics. He’d lost both his eyes by the time he was eighteen months old to retinoblastoma, but his mother never let his blindness hold him back from exploring and being adventurous. That sparked my dormant ocularist idea and, as they say, a story kernel was created! An ocularist isn’t a ‘usual’ job for a Medical Romance character, so I ran it by my editor, who was open and encouraging about the idea. Soon the character Andrea came to be, and shortly after that a little boy named Dani, too. But who would be the hero of this story, and why? It didn’t take long for the gorgeous pediatrician Dr Sammy to come into being—a dedicated doctor who believes in medical missions and adoption for very personal reasons. I hope you enjoy the dramatic and often emotional love story between Andrea and Sam as they work their way to their happily-ever-after. I always enjoy hearing from readers at lynnemarshall.com . And ‘friend’ me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LynneMarshall.Page Love, Lynne

About the Author LYNNE MARSHALL used to worry that she had a serious problem with daydreaming—and then she discovered she was supposed to write those stories! Being a late bloomer, she came to fiction-writing after her children were grown. Now she battles the empty nest by writing stories which include romance, medicine, and always a happily-ever-after. She is a Southern California native, a woman of faith, a dog lover, and a curious traveller.

Title Page A Mother for His Adopted Son Lynne Marshall www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication To foster parents and adoptive parents worldwide, who open their homes and hearts and make a difference in young lives.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Endpages

Copyright

SAM MARCUS STOOD in the observation room above the OR suite in St. Francis of the Valley Hospital, waiting for his child to lose an eye. He’d seen his share of surgeries before, being a pediatrician, but never for someone he loved. This time he needed an anchor, so he leaned against the window to see his son better and to offer support against the threat of his buckling knees.

He watched as the anesthesiologist put his tiny boy under and while the surgeon measured the eye globe and cornea dimensions, the length of the optic nerve. His heart thumped in his chest, and a fine line of sweat gathered above his lip as the surgeon made the first incision. He swiped it away with a trembling hand, trying his best to get his mind wrapped around what was happening.

Enucleation.

His barely three-year-old newly adopted son had retinoblastoma and needed to have his left eye surgically removed. He swallowed hard and shook his head, still unable to believe it.

He’d fallen in love with Danilo, an orphan, on his last Doctors’ Medical Missions trip to the Philippines. The mission had been in response to their latest typhoon, to tend to the countless new orphans. He hadn’t been in the market for a son or daughter. No, it had been the last thing on his mind then. Yet there had been one particular one-year-old boy who’d lost his entire family in the typhoon and who’d miraculously managed to survive for forty-eight hours on his own. A little hero.

Over the days of the two-week mission, Sam and the other doctors had performed physicals and minor procedures, as well as arranged for other children who had required more extensive medical care to be transported to where they needed to be. Dani had used his new walking skills to follow Sam everywhere. It’d made Sam remember one of his favorite childhood books, Are You My Mommy? A story his own mother had read to him, where a little bird who’d fallen out of the nest went looking for his mother, asking everyone, even machines, if they were his mother, and it had broken his heart.

All the children on this mission were orphans dealing with their losses in their own ways, yet this child, Dani, seemed to have chosen Sam. He gave in and took the boy with him everywhere at the orphanage clinic, cautiously opened his heart, then fell in love in an amazingly short period of time. Then it was time to leave. Dani cried inconsolably, and one of the sisters at the orphanage told Sam that it was the first time the child had cried since arriving there six weeks before.

What was a man supposed to do? He knew how it felt to be homeless. He’d been taken away from his mother when he was ten. She hadn’t abused him, but she’d had to leave him alone most nights so she could work a second job. Her plan had backfired and the authorities had taken Sam and put him into foster care. Yeah, he knew how it felt to be left all alone.

Fortunately for him he’d been placed into a big happy family and currently suffered from missing them, with everyone fanned out all across the United States. There’d been five natural siblings in all, and he’d become kid number six, yet his already overworked foster mother had insisted on bringing in more foster children—a long, long list of foster kids had come and gone over the years. Why? he used to ask whenever he’d been instructed to share his bunk bed with yet another new kid. We don’t have room for more, Mom . She’d always insisted he call her Mom.

Even after all these years her response never left his subconscious. “We don’t always know how we’ll make ends meet or where they’ll sleep, Sammy, but we just know we’ve got to bring them in because the child needs a home.”

The child needs a home .

He’d been one of those children. And he’d been trying to prove himself worth keeping ever since.

When he’d returned home from the Philippines, he’d been unable to get Dani out of his mind. Missing his infectious smile and unconditional love, he’d decided to try for the adoption in honor of his deceased foster mother, because that child needed a home.

Though it had taken a year and a half to jump through all the hoops to arrange for Dani’s adoption, six months ago he and Dani had teamed up and never looked back. And what an adjustment being a single father had been. It’d always been hectic, growing up with so many foster siblings, yet under the chaos there had been stability. Something he’d never had when he’d been a young boy. That was his goal for Dani, to give the boy stability, but he’d never been a parent before and they were both on a stiff learning curve, working things out, juggling the logistics of his busy career, child care and father-son time.