Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [0]
Just Take My Heart
By Mary Higgins Clark
Where Are You Now
Ghost Ship (Illustrated by Wendell Minor)
I Heard That Song Before
Two Little Girls in Blue
No Place Like Home
Nighttime Is My Time
The Second Time Around
Kitchen Privileges
Mount Vernon Love Story
Silent Night /All Through the Night
Daddy's Little Girl
On the Street Where You Live
Before I Say Good-bye
We'll Meet Again
All Through the Night
You Belong to Me
Pretend You Don't See Her
My Gal Sunday
Moonlight Becomes You
Silent Night
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
The Lottery Winner
Remember Me
I'll Be Seeing You
All Around the Town
Loves Music, Loves to Dance
The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories
While My Pretty One Sleeps
Weep No More, My Lady
Stillwatch
A Cry in the Night
The Cradle Will Fall
A Stranger Is Watching
Where Are the Children?
By Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark
Dashing Through the Snow
Santa Cruise
The Christmas Thief
He Sees You When You're Sleeping
Deck the Halls
MARY HIGGINS CLARK
Just
Take My Heart
Simon & Schuster
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Mary Higgins Clark
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2009
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Designed by Jill Putorti
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Mary Higgins.
Just take my heart: a novel / Mary Higgins Clark,p. cm.
1. Heart—Transplantation-Patients —Fiction. 2 Murder —Investigation — Fiction. 3. Cape Cod Bay (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.L287J87 2009
813'.54-dc22 2008034042
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7086-8 ISBN-10: 1-4165-7086-1
Acknowledgments
We all live in a time of medical miracles. Every day, lives are saved that even a generation ago would have been lost. A number of times I have written novels that touched on this subject and truly enjoyed the process of telling this kind of story.
It is always a joy to begin my acknowledgments by thanking my longtime editor and friend, Michael Korda, who with the assistance of Senior Editor Amanda Murray guides and encourages me from page one to “The End.” Many thanks.
Thanks always to Associate Director of Copyediting Gypsy da Silva, my publicist Lisl Cade, and my readers-in-progress Irene Clark, Agnes Newton, and Nadine Petry. What a grand team I have working with me.
Many thanks to Dr. Stuart Geffner, Director of Renal and Pan?creas Transplant Surgery at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Liv?ingston, New Jersey, for his kindness in answering my inquiries about lifesaving heart transplant surgery.
Special thanks to Lucki, the beloved little Maltese who belongs to my daughter Patty and my grandson Jerry. Lucki was the inspira?tion in this book for Emily's dog, Bess. I owe her a treat.
And now it's time for you, my friends and readers, to begin to turn these pages. As my Irish ancestors would say, “I hope you have a fine time.”
For John Conheeney
Spouse Extraordinaire
and
For our wonderful children and grandchildren
With love
Just
Take My
Heart
Just Take My Heart
1
It was the persistent sense of impending doom, not the nor'easter,