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Nora needed this chance for an emotional break. To give her back the joy she had once found in her work before the deaths had caught up to her and her mother died.
She even dared to hope that it could change her life and get it back on track.
TWO
HUDSON
Hudson’s morning coffee steamed over his screen as he held his head in his hands, fingers dug into his black locks as he tried not to stress. “I need this to work,” he muttered. “I don’t have another backup plan.”
The screen had refreshed every five minutes all night before Hudson finally admitted defeat and set his pride aside. Logan, his beta, talked him into looking for help caring for Hannah.
Being the alpha, Hudson had an obligation to take care of the orphaned members of his polar bear clan, but Hannah wasn’t officially part of the clan.
Her father, Frank, had abandoned the shifters to marry Hannah’s mother, a human. But Frank was one of Hudson’s best friends and business partner, so they still saw each other often and were very much a part of each other’s lives.
Still, that made Hannah technically an outsider, especially because she didn’t have any shifter capabilities. But he had to take care of Hannah now. As alpha, he could at least provide that.
The problem was that Hudson had no real parental upbringing to have gained any sort of parenting skills. He had lost his own parents at a young age.
Then he received the call about the plane crash that killed Frank and his wife. Their six-year-old daughter survived but was left alone and severely injured.
But at thirty-one years of age, never having married or had any children, Hudson didn’t know how to take care of her. He wouldn’t know how to take care of any kid, but definitely not one in Hannah’s shape. He wasn’t a doctor, and Hannah’s condition was more complicated than just giving her a bed to sleep in and some toys.
Not only that, but deep down, Hudson was grieving, no matter how much he didn’t want to admit it.
That’s when Logan suggested he hire professional help to show him how to properly care for a child in a wheelchair who needed around-the-clock care for physical therapy, meds, and so on.
He turned on the laptop and gave it a moment to start up. “There won’t be any responses to your stupid ad,” he mused gloomily. “They say everyone is short-staffed these days. Especially for good nurses. You aren’t going to find some trained nurse willing to give up her job for just one patient.”
He looked over his shoulder as he waited for the computer to load, his eye landing on a picture of him and Frank after one of their business deals had gone through.
No one knew how to seal a deal and read off of Hudson’s pitch like Frank.
Their friendship had made their partnership blossom.
Now Frank was gone along with his wife.
It was just him and Hannah now. And if anyone knew what she was going through by missing her parents, it was him. He just wasn’t sure how to talk to a child about that. Or how he could even pretend to make it better.
It never got better. And he didn’t want to lie to her.
Hudson felt guilty about his many failings when it came to Hannah. He was too busy with his job. He lacked the proper knowledge of caring for a child. And he had no idea where to start on her medical and recovery needs, even though he was the one who wanted to take her in.
He pushed himself out of his chair and tiptoed to Hannah’s room.
Her curly brown hair was scattered over her face and pillow with a drool spot where her mouth was.
Hudson smiled, happy that she was sleeping so well. No one deserved rest more.
His smile faded as his eyes skimmed over her room and landed on the large wheelchair parked near her bed.
Looking at the clock, he saw it was still early, so he let her continue her slumber.
He shut the door to a crack and returned to his cooling coffee and waiting laptop.
He sat with a heavy sigh, hoping that he was doing the right thing by giving her a home where she knew no one and had no immediate family.
If he were honest, and he always tried to be, his confidence in the whole thing had quickly waned. Of course, he wasn’t going to give her up. He just hated admitting he needed help. It wasn’t in an alpha’s nature.
