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future. You have options, though.” The doctor paused. “Do you hope to have children at some point?”
    “Yes.”
    “In that case, though I could prescribe hormone therapy, I’d rather do surgery, both for more extensive diagnostics and for treatment of the condition.”
    Surgery? In a hospital?
    Tori’s throat closed. Panic spiked and the room started to sway. She gripped the edge of the exam table.
    “Ms. Morgan, are you all right?”
    It took a moment for Tori to answer. “I…don’t have insurance,” she managed at last. “I…I couldn’t possibly pay for surgery.”
    Dr. Janssen’s frown deepened. She made a few notes in the file. “All right, then. If that’s the case, we’ll start you on hormone therapy right away. It’s similar to taking birth control pills.”
    Tori’s stomach cramped. “No. I can’t take those. I tried once, and it was a disaster. I had horrible mood swings. All in the down direction. I cried night and day. I couldn’t function.” She tried to drag oxygen into her constricted lungs. “Isn’t there anything else? Some diet I could follow? Special exercises?”
    Dr. Janssen peered at Tori over her glasses. “While a good diet and exercise are always worthwhile, I’m afraid they won’t cure your condition.”
    “There’s got to be something besides drugs or surgery.”
    The doctor sighed. “I’m afraid the only natural treatment for endometriosis is pregnancy.”
    Pregnancy? Tori stared at her.
    “Hormones again,” she explained. “After nine months without a period, the endometrial masses shrink. Breast-feeding’s beneficial, too.” She consulted the file again. “But I see you’re not married. Are you in a steady relationship?
    Maybe with the father of the baby you lost?”
    “No. He and I…It didn’t work out. I’m on my own now.”
    “So I’m guessing a baby isn’t an option for you at this time.”
    “No,” Tori whispered. “I guess it’s not.”

Chapter Four
    A little brother is fun to play with, fun to reduce to tears, and a good reason to beat up the neighborhood bully.
But sometimes, you just want to kill him.
    Nick expelled a breath. This Bayview job was turning out to be a freaking pain in his ass. Today’s fire was a feud between Nick’s painting foreman and a carpentry subcontractor. Bill Arnett’s drywall installers were behind schedule sanding the newly spackled wallboard. As a result, a half dozen painters were standing around on Nick’s dime.
    “Get some extra guys out here, pronto,” Nick told Arnett. “I can’t let the painting go another two days. How could you let this happen? Johnny gave you the new schedule weeks ago.”
    Arnett spit into a pile of drywall cuttings. “Your brother gave me nothing.” He produced a crumpled paper. “This is the only schedule I got, and I’m on it.”
    Nick checked the dates. “This is the old schedule.”
    Arnett shrugged. The man looked like five miles of bad road and smelled like stale tobacco, but his work was decent and his prices were rock-bottom. “It’s the only one I got.”
    Mentally, Nick consigned Johnny—his youngest brother and Bayview’s project manager—to the lowest and most painful level of hell. But Nick should have expected this. A monkey humping a football was a prettier sight than Johnny running a construction site.
    “Look,” Nick told Arnett. “The owner and his candy-ass architect are breathing down my neck. You gotta get more men out here.”
    “No can do, Nick. They’re all on that big casino job. If I’d known about this two weeks ago, I mighta been able to stall them. But now…” He shrugged. “It’s not gonna happen.”
    Nick toyed with the idea of fratricide as he left the job site. A tempting thought, but it would upset the family to no end, plus Doris would quit, so it was pretty much a nonoption. Even so, he almost reconsidered when he arrived at his office and found Johnny in the waiting room, dressed in green surgical scrubs.
    His