Read The Affair: Week 1 for Free Online Page A

at his uncharacteristic fanciful thought.
    She wasn’t entirely fairylike. No, he’d recognized her just now from the back—that erect carriage, that enticing, graceful curve that led from a narrow waist to round hips. He hadn’t noticed her today because he’d been overseeing some new equipment installation at his plant in Deerfield, but he’d seen her yesterday on Cristina’s monitor. Just in passing . . . brief glimpses before she’d cheekily opened those curtains.
    Emma Shore.
    He’d asked Mrs. Shaw for the offender’s name yesterday and recalled it now.
    He’d thought her unconventionally pretty before she’d irritated him by yanking open those curtains. Interesting looking. Her golden-blond hair was fairly short and reminded him of the style flappers used to wear, boyish and highlighting the shape of her skull. It suggested a nonconformist spirit—or at least a female who wanted others to
think
she was different, anyway. It touched her collar in the back while the soft-looking waves in the front ideally framed a delicate, piquant face. He couldn’t tell the color of her eyes on the monitor, but he’d noticed they looked large and dark next to her pale skin and hair. She had a tilt to her chin and a bright smile that went well together. Most people couldn’t pull off brash sweetness, but she did. Somehow. Or at least that had been his quick impression.
    He’d certainly thought that her face looked far too young and fresh to go with the lush, ripe firmness of her ass. Her figure was light and supple, the gracefulness of her movement capturing his attention.
    Not that he’d been staring. She was just difficult not to notice on the screen, that’s all. Any straight man would have looked twice. Any straight man with good taste would have looked more than that.
    He’d follow her now and demand an explanation for her intrusion into his home.
    He remained unmoving, however. She’d annoyed him, but her appearance had lightened him somehow as well, freshened him like a lungful of sea air after a night of debauchery.
    He stared out at the black lake, lost in thoughts that, for once lately, weren’t bitter and morose.

Chapter Four
    At the end of her shift the next night, Emma entered the bedroom to say good-bye to Cristina. Her patient had fallen asleep while Emma gave her report to Debbie, the night nurse. Emma paused next to the bed. Cristina looked even more shrunken than usual, her skin like dry, gray parchment stretched too tight over bone. A hospice nurse’s main goal was to make the last days of her patient’s life as comfortable and fulfilling as possible. Finding out what that meant for Cristina was proving to be a challenge for Emma. She sensed Cristina’s soul was heavy. Shedding that weight—even a little—might help ease her passage from this world.
    “Night, Cristina. Sleep easy,” Emma whispered before she turned to leave the hushed room.
    “It’s your own fault. You knew what I was capable of and what I wasn’t.
You
were capable of even less.”
    Emma blinked and spun around at the death-rattle voice.
    “Cristina?” she whispered, confused to see that her patient hadn’t moved from her sleeping position. She turned to go again after a pause. Cristina was having increasingly disturbed sleep, nightmares, and occasional hallucinations.
    “It was too much for me. Not only one, but
two
! You knew as well as me I wasn’t cut out for it
.
So you found yourself a martyr. Is it my fault she died? And then you had the nerve to think I’d transform into
her
overnight and replace her, you bastard!”
    Emma started at the venomous shriek. She hurried toward Cristina, who was now jerking and tossing on the bed, her mouth bared in a snarl, arms flailing.
    “I’ve got her,” Debbie said, appearing by Emma’s side as Emma gently restrained the swinging arms and spoke in firm, soothing tones, calling Cristina back to the waking world.
    “I think she’s okay,” Emma said after a moment