Chapter 1

My husband was the one who wanted the divorce, so I signed without a fight, and he remarried at once. Six years later, my CEO ex-husband saw me at the hospital holding a child with a face identical to his own, and he came completely undone.

My name is Sheila Pruitt. Six years ago, I came home carrying the results that said I'd passed my attending physician exam, and my husband, Cecil Delgado, pushed a set of divorce papers across the table at me.

His mother said a common doctor's background made me unfit to stand beside the president of Jetstream Group.

I didn't say a word. I signed my name and walked away with nothing. Eight days later, he married the heiress of a medical group.

Six years later, I was standing in a hospital hallway holding my five-year-old son when I ran into Cecil Delgado.

He looked at my son's face, the mirror image of his own, and the color drained out of him in an instant.

Rayhill Hospital in Lakeport, the third-floor outpatient corridor shared between orthopedics and oncology.

Three fifteen in the afternoon. Sheila had just finished a four-hour resection.

She stood at the sink and rinsed her hands under the iodine wash.

She stripped off her surgical gown, pulled on a white coat, and walked to the nurses' station to collect her five-year-old son, Earl Pruitt.

Earl wore a plain white cotton T-shirt and a blue preschool backpack.

In his hands he held a Rubik's cube, fingers flicking the colored squares fast, the pieces clicking crisply against each other.

Sheila bent down and settled Earl into the crook of her left arm.

In her right hand she carried a dark blue chart folder, and she started down the corridor toward the elevator bank at the far end.

Thirty feet away, the double doors of the orthopedics office swung open.

Cecil Delgado wore a custom charcoal suit cut close to his frame, the top button of his white shirt undone, no tie.

His right hand held a boy's. The boy's left wrist was wrapped in a thick white medical cast, and in his right hand he held up a black X-ray film.

"Dad, that machine that took the picture was so big, and it kept going beep. The doctor said my bone isn't broken, I just have to wear the cast for two weeks." The boy looked up at Cecil, chattering away.

"Mm. Don't get it wet when we're home." Cecil kept his eyes on the corridor ahead, his stride even.

Cecil led the boy toward the elevator bank, straight at them.

The cube spinning in Earl's hands suddenly jammed. His fingers slipped.

Clack. The colored cube hit the floor and rolled forward two meters, coming to a stop half an inch short of the toe of Cecil's black custom leather shoes.

Cecil's footsteps stopped short.

He looked down at the cube on the floor.

Then his gaze lifted, following the path the cube had rolled from.

First he saw Sheila, in a white coat with an "Attending Physician" badge on her chest.

Then his eyes went past the collar of that coat and fixed, hard, on the face of the boy in her arms.

The curve of Earl's brow, the slant of his single-lidded eyes, the thin line of his tightly pressed lips, all of it looked cast from the same mold as the Cecil standing there now, one to one.

Cecil's chest stopped moving. In that second his breath cut off entirely.

His right hand, still holding the injured boy, clenched down hard.

"Dad, you're squeezing too hard!" the boy cried out.

Slap. The black X-ray film in the boy's right hand dropped to the floor.

Sheila held Earl. Her feet stayed where they were, her gaze level with Cecil's eyes.

She didn't part her lips. She didn't say a single word.

She bent down, reached out with her right hand, picked the cube up off the floor, and pressed it back into Earl's hand.

Then she straightened, holding Earl, turned to the side, walked straight around Cecil's rigid body, and stepped into elevator number three just as its doors opened.

The elevator doors slid shut in front of Cecil's ashen face.