to public speaking, but this was new...and a little frightening. What was wrong with her? And would she be able to hide it until the presentation was complete?
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was weak.
She looked at the people sitting there, all of them with eyes trained on her. Saw the smirk on Silas Rogers’s face. And then she did the unthinkable. While she stared directly into Kirk’s face, her tablet fell and bounced on the carpet, and she followed it down, sliding to the floor in an ignominious and unconscious heap.
Kirk acted on instinct. He scooped Sally into his arms.
“Finish the presentation,” he instructed the nearest member of her team as concerned murmurs swirled around them. “She’s counting on you.”
Then, without wasting another second, he stalked out of the room and down the corridor to Orson’s office.
“What’s wrong with Sally?” Marilyn asked, rising to her feet as he came into the executive suite.
“She collapsed.”
“We have a nurse on duty for the staff here. I’ll call her.”
“Yes, do that, thanks.”
He laid Sally down on a couch. Thankfully she was beginning to regain consciousness.
“Wha—?”
“You fainted,” Kirk filled in as she looked around her. “At least I think you fainted. I want you to go to the hospital for tests to make sure it’s not anything serious.”
Sally tried to struggle to an upright position. “Go to the hospital? Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be fine. I need to get back in there. I have to finish what I started.”
He could understand why she felt that way. A little research had revealed that Sally’s fear of public speaking had held her back from advancing within the company, purely because she’d been unable to speak to any size group in a situation like the one today. That she’d done as well as she had this morning had surprised him. Even more surprising was how proud of her he’d felt while she was doing it.
If he hadn’t been so focused on getting her out of the conference room, he would have stopped to wipe that ridiculous expression off Rogers’s face. He made a mental note to have a word with the man about the aside he’d heard him make about Sally riding on others’ coattails, implying that she was incapable of completing anything on her own. There was so much more to her than that narrow-minded stuffed shirt realized...so many depths to Sally Harrison that Kirk, in spite of himself, wanted to explore.
Over the past five weeks, he’d tried to tell himself that the crazy attraction between them was just that. A moment of craziness and nothing more. But seeing her this morning had brought his attraction to her back to the fore again. He’d resented having to turn and say hello to that pompous idiot Rogers when he’d finally gotten the chance to see her face-to-face again. Add to that the sheer panic that flew through him as she lost consciousness and hit the carpeted floor of the conference room, swiftly followed by the instinctive need to protect her, and he knew that the way he felt about Sally Harrison was more than crazy. It was downright certifiable.
A movement at the door alerted him to the arrival of the staff nurse, with Marilyn close on her heels.
“I have some water for her,” Marilyn said, putting a fresh pitcher and a glass on the side table.
“Nothing by mouth until we know what we’re dealing with,” said the nurse firmly but with a friendly smile. “Now, Ms. Harrison, how about you tell me what happened?”
The woman efficiently unpacked the small bag she’d brought with her and put a blood pressure cuff on Sally’s arm while taking her temperature with a digital ear thermometer. Sally briefly outlined how she’d felt in the moments before she fainted. Kirk could see she was embarrassed, but he wasn’t taking any risks by letting her brush this off. A suspicion began to form in his mind.
“Blood pressure is a little low. Temperature is normal. So you say you felt some nausea before you collapsed?”
Sally flicked her eyes to Kirk and then back to the nurse. “Yes, just a little. It’s not unusual for me to feel that way, especially when talking to a large group. I’m okay with my team, but this was an important presentation and, I guess, I may have let that get to me.”
“You’ve fainted before while speaking?” Kirk asked before the nurse could ask the same question.
“Not exactly. Usually I just feel sick and freeze. Today was different. But then again, today I actually got through a lot of my presentation. I was doing okay up until that dizzy spell hit.”
“You were doing great,” Kirk reassured her. “And your team is well trained and will do a fabulous job going through the rest of it in your absence. Don’t worry about it.”
“But—” she began in protest.
“Sally, I know you want to blame this on your difficulties with speaking in public, but given the situation with your father’s health I’m going to insist you still go to the hospital to rule anything else out. HTT cannot sustain any weakness in any department right now.”
His voice was sharper than he’d intended, and he forced a smile to his lips to soften his words. Thing was, his statement was truer than she probably realized. HTT was vulnerable right now, in more ways than one. He’d received news today that another major contract had been lost to their main rival. It made him all the more determined to find the wretched mole who continued to undermine HTT’s every potential new success.
Sally looked at him, and he watched as the light of defiance left her soft blue eyes. “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “But I don’t want to go to hospital. It’ll take far too long. I agree to going to either an urgent care clinic or my own doctor and I’m coming back to work straight afterward.”
“That will depend entirely on the outcome of your examination,” he replied firmly.
She rolled her eyes at him, but he wasn’t about to be swayed. If what he suspected was confirmed...? No, she’d said she’d taken a test. Said the results were negative. But home testing wasn’t always a hundred percent accurate, was it?
He couldn’t jump the gun. They’d wait until she’d seen a doctor, had some tests, then they’d deal with what came next.
The nurse agreed with Sally that a hospital visit wasn’t necessary and, after a quick discussion, agreed Kirk should transport her to the nearest clinic. After their arrival there, nothing could dislodge Kirk from her side, and in the end it had been easier to simply allow him to be there in the treatment room with her, especially since she suspected he wouldn’t trust her to deliver the results in full when she got them. That said, when the doctor returned after what felt like an interminable wait, to deliver the results of the first run of tests, she felt strangely relieved to have Kirk by her side.
“Okay, Ms. Harrison, you’re a little anemic, but that’s not unusual in your case. Overall you’re in excellent health, and I’m going to discharge you. It’s going to be important that you not skip meals and that you take some supplements
