Tessa's Gift. Cerella Sechrist

deep inside him. When was the last time he’d encountered such fervor? When was the last time he had ever felt such fire in himself? Not for years. Not since before Ginny had started experiencing symptoms... He shifted the watch on his wrist, righting it so the face stared up at him.

      “That little boy is terrified,” she continued. “So are his parents. And you did nothing to reassure them.”

      He tensed. Passion was one thing, but he would not let her presume to know his job. “I don’t make false promises,” he replied, his voice cold in contrast to the heat in hers. “Hope does more harm than the cancer itself.”

      She opened her mouth, presumably to contradict him, but he forged ahead, rattled by her judgment of him and his methods.

      “Do you know what hope is, Ms. Worth? It’s a disease. It leads you along, blinds you to reality and leaves you unprepared for death. When you cling to hope, it eats away at you, one minute at a time, a more silent killer than the leukemia ever will be. Because it destroys you without evidence. It misdirects, making you think there is a chance that life will one day be the same, that you can go back to normal. But there is no normal life anymore. There is no chance of that.”

      Noah wasn’t sure at what point in his speech he’d stopped referring to his patients and began speaking of himself, but he kept going, a flood of angry words that he could not seem to stop. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to get angry, to rail against the forces beyond his control. But this woman and her sudden intrusion into his day had worn away at the defenses he normally kept in place.

      “You can do everything right—treatments, protocols, rules—but all it takes is one mistake, a single slipup, and the disease rushes in, more ravenous than before. And where is hope when that happens? It abandons you.” He clenched his hands around the tablet he still held, trying to keep his fingers from shaking with rage. “Do not mistake compassion with false guarantees. I do not lie to my patients. They should be prepared for every scenario.”

      A memory of Ginny surfaced, in the last days before the disease had taken her, her face chalky, purplish-red bruises beneath her faded green eyes. She had looked at him, almost accusingly. He had promised her she would get better, that she’d be running and playing again before she knew it.

      Within the month, she was dead.

      His voice was hoarse with the effort of keeping back the tears and resisting a grief so deep and sharp that it felt as if his heart had been pierced. “Hope is fine for fairy tales, but it has no place here, in these halls,” he rasped out.

      And then he turned away, oblivious to the stares he sensed around them, and headed for his office, where he could close the door and remind himself that he was no longer hope’s victim. Because fate had already taken everything that mattered to him, and now, there was nothing left for it to claim.

       CHAPTER THREE

      RUFUS STRAINED ON his leash as Tessa rang the doorbell of her parents’ Findlay Roads home. Though her mom and dad had a penthouse apartment in Washington, DC, they had purchased a second home in town a couple of years ago. Her father divided his time between the Delphine, the local resort he owned, and his financial investment firm in the city.

      Tessa liked having more family nearby. For years after her grandmother died, she was the only one who called Findlay Roads home. But then after her sister Harper lost her job as a restaurant critic, she’d moved in with Tessa until she got back on her feet. Now, Harper was happily married to local restaurateur Connor Callahan, and had adopted Connor’s daughter, Molly. She and Connor had recently celebrated the birth of their first child together. Little Grace was a beautiful combination of Connor’s green eyes and Harper’s blond hair, and Tessa was every bit as enamored with her as she was with her other two nieces.

      Tessa’s parents still spent a lot of their time in the city, but now that they owned this house, they were making more and more trips to Findlay Roads. Only her oldest sister, Paige, and her husband and daughter still lived exclusively in DC. Tessa was hoping that might change at some point. For one thing, she was extremely close to her niece Zoe, Paige’s daughter, and she’d love the opportunity to see the six-year-old more often.

      Rufus whined impatiently. “Rufus, behave,” she warned him. She probably should have left Rufus at home. But she couldn’t stand the thought of making him stay by himself after she’d spent the whole day away at work. Not to mention that after spending so many hours with Dr. Noah Brennan, she needed Rufus to lower her stress level.

      Then again, she knew she couldn’t rely on Rufus alone. In the past two years, she’d shut too many other humans out. It was easy to love animals because they didn’t wound like humans did. But over the last few months, Tessa had realized how isolated she’d become, how she’d begun to justify shutting people out of her life. She didn’t want to become that person. She didn’t want to turn into someone like Noah Brennan. She shuddered at the memory of their day together, and his bitter words.

       Do you know what hope is? It’s a disease.

      It made her curious. What had happened to Noah Brennan to make him so jaded?

      In any case, she was glad she’d decided to bring Rufus along. Zoe and Molly loved having a dog to play with during these family gatherings. And while Tessa would never admit it aloud, she sort of liked ruffling Paige’s feathers with the dog. Paige had always been kind of stuck-up. Tessa loved her, but sometimes she wished Paige wasn’t quite such a snob. She hoped Rufus would loosen Paige up a little bit.

      It didn’t look promising, though. Paige kept a good distance from the dog at all times.

      The door opened, and her mother stood on the threshold.

      “Tessa, darling, come in.” Her mother leaned forward to place a kiss on her youngest daughter’s cheek as Rufus tried to slip inside. He only got past the doorway before his leash came up short, pulling Tessa past her mother and inside with him.

      “Oh, you’ve brought Rufus!” Her mother bent down to politely pat his ears, and Rufus grunted a greeting.

      She knew her mother found her choice of canine companion odd, but at least she didn’t criticize him like Paige did.

      “Everyone else is in the dining room. We were just waiting for you before we started.”

      “Sorry if I’m late. I had to swing home and pick up Rufus after work.”

      “Oh, that’s no trouble, darling. You know we keep ourselves entertained. How was your day?”

      Tessa recognized the hesitation in her mother’s tone. Her family was relieved that she had left her job at the animal shelter for something more distinguished. But they were still baffled because she hadn’t told them the real reason behind her radical decisions from the year before. They’d given up asking since she’d stubbornly refused to share any details. But she knew they worried about her. They were all hopeful this new job was the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. She didn’t quite see it that way. Her life, her hopes for the future, would never be what they once were. But she, too, was hopeful for some kind of new beginning.

      “Do you think we should lock Rufus on the patio while we eat?” her mother suggested. But the question came too late. Molly and Zoe had caught sight of him and were emitting girlish squeals of delight as they descended on him.

      Rufus woofed and wagged his tail at the attention. Tessa had to smile as the girls knelt down to scratch his ears. He flopped onto the floor and rolled onto his back, inviting them to scratch his belly.

      The rest of the family greeted her, but she couldn’t help noticing how Paige eyed Rufus’s presence with pursed lips.

      “Tessa, we weren’t aware you’d be bringing the dog.”

      Tessa shrugged. “He was home alone all day. I didn’t feel it was fair to leave him while I came over here.”

      “Well,