The Doctor's Secret Bride(62)
She was learning a great deal about Erik as a brilliant doctor, a devoted father, and a charming man who knew how to make a woman feel special by merely smiling at her.
She respected him. She trusted him. She loved him.
As she walked into the kitchen, Michelle eyed her laptop on the table. Before she left to drop Precious off at the party, she’d been in the middle of writing another fund-raising letter for the center. Rose had informed her that the one they’d been circulating wasn’t doing the job. They were still very short of their financial goal.
Some superb news had resulted from that old letter, though. The proprietor of one of the businesses they’d solicited owned a piece of land across the street from the projects where most of the kids who frequented the center lived. According to Rose, Mr. Dawson had himself climbed out of poverty into success and wanted to give something back to his town.
She would love nothing more than to plop down in front of her laptop and finish the letter, but she was driven instead to put away the bags of recently delivered groceries sitting on the island. Erik had made arrangements for the groceries to be delivered so that Mrs. Hayes didn’t have to go to the store. Michelle had learned that before Cassie died, she was the one who did the weekly shopping.
She still couldn’t believe the modest way they lived—well modest compared to the fully staffed mansion he grew up in—when Erik was worth millions, perhaps billions of dollars. He didn’t have to work, didn’t even have to be a doctor, but he’d told her that he loved helping people. She knew for a fact that most of the patients he saw at the free clinic didn’t pay him. It was another outstanding quality that endeared her to him.
Michelle had emptied about half the number of bags when Mrs. Hayes shuffled into the kitchen.
“Michelle dear, you don’t have to do that. That’s my job.” She walked over and tried to shoo Michelle away.
“Yeah, right.” Michelle placed her hand on the older woman’s shoulders and steered her toward the table, happy she could return a favor, however small, to the old lady who had been so kind to her and Robert when they were children. Many times, she had taken them into her little house that always smelled of cooking spices. She would feed them then wrap them in blankets she kept on her couch. She would turn on her TV and she and Robert would watch cartoons until they fell asleep in a warm, quiet room for a change. Then their father would come for them and take them home. Take them to hell was more like it. The same kind of hell children she cared about still lived in.
She helped Mrs. Hayes into a chair. “You sit yourself right down there and let me do this. She pulled out another chair and made the lady put her feet up. “Now there. Would you like something to drink?”
“A glass of water would be nice.”
“Coming right up.”
“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Hayes said, smiling as Michelle placed a crystal glass in her hand. “You remind me so much of Miss Cassie. It’s the same way she used to fuss over me.”
“Really?”
“She was a sweet woman.” Mrs. Hayes took a long draft from the glass.
“How did you ever end up here… in this house, anyway?” Michelle asked, going back to the grocery bags.
Mrs. Hayes chuckled. “It’s a long story.”
“I have time.” After all the time Mrs. Hayes had devoted to her childhood, she could spend a few moments listening to the old woman’s life story. Besides, even though Mrs. Hayes still refused to admit pulling strings to get her hired, Michelle knew that if she hadn’t run into the old woman that day at the diner, months ago, she never would have met Erik. She wouldn’t be in this kitchen today.#p#分页标题#e#
“Well, my younger brother came down sick with leukemia. He didn’t have medical insurance, so I started taking care of him. I sold everything I had and mortgaged my little house, but it wasn’t enough. At the time, I was cleaning office buildings for a living. One of them was the free clinic on Bridge.” She smiled as a far-away look came to her eyes. “Then this young doctor joined the staff.”
“Erik?” Michelle asked.
She nodded. “Dr. Erik Philippe LaCrosse, Jr.—young, handsome, brilliant, and newly married. He’d be at the clinic at all ungodly hours of the night. Miss Cassie used to bring him lunch and sometimes dinner.” She chuckled. “He used to complain that she was the worst cook and how he feared she would poison him one day. So I started bringing him little dishes here and there. You remember I like to dabble in the kitchen.”