his phone on the console and his urge to make sure it wasn’t Valerie calling him again.
“Speaking of bad things, did you hear about Hank?” Ava asked.
“Kevin told me that Hank got sick last night.” Dan’s supervisor, Kevin McCoy, had called him on his way into work to let Dan know he was one of the senior guys on shift for the night.
“Sick is putting it mildly,” Ava said. “Denise texted me. Hank is having triple-bypass surgery this morning. He’s only forty-four.”
Hank Decker was also a career paramedic and one of Dan’s longtime coworkers. Dan stopped at a red light and looked at Ava. “Are you serious?”
“Wish I wasn’t.” Ava tapped her fingers against her cup. “What did you eat last night in the rig?”
“What does that have to do with Hank?” Dan scowled at the traffic around him.
“Come on, Dan. You and I both know the statistics of our work too well,” Ava said. “You have to take better care of yourself. You don’t want to become another statistic.”
Dan focused on the car in front of him. Ava had to transition from her paramedic work into something less stressful. Between her military-medic background and working as a paramedic in the city, she’d pushed the limit on her stress boundaries. But Dan didn’t have that kind of stress. Sure, his plate was full, but whose plate wasn’t?
“If you aren’t going to do something for yourself, then do it for Ben,” Ava urged.
“Fine. You’re right.” Ben was his everything. His son was his world. And his best friend wasn’t wrong. “I could stand to eat a few less french fries and add a few more days at the gym every week. That sound good?”
“It’s a start,” Ava said.
“Now, can we talk about coordinating the bachelor-and-bachelorette celebrations?” And move away from Dan’s health and his fast track to becoming another statistic.
Dan gripped the steering wheel. Had his supervisor known about the seriousness of Hank’s condition last night? Was that why Kevin had ended the call with the comment about an assistant director position opening within the next month? Adding that he considered Dan a natural fit, as if Kevin feared Dan might be next on the statistic train. Would he?
Dan took a large sip of his coffee, determined to slip in an hour at the gym later that afternoon. “I think we should stick with our original idea. Call the whole thing a coed bash and have one big party.”
Surely talking about wedding plans with his best friend would get the day back on track. Back to normal. And distract him from his phone. The one that buzzed again on the console. Dan rushed on, covering the sound, “About the wedding schedule.”
“You’re quite popular this morning. Something I should know?” Ava grabbed his phone and held it out of his reach. Her gaze settled on Dan like the fog over the bay: heavy and dense. “You met someone.”
“When?” Dan shook his head. “Last night between the heart attack and the preterm labor patient?”
“You have less than four weeks until the wedding. You need a date, or you’ll be at the singles’ setup table,” Ava warned, as if he wasn’t paying close enough attention. “Do you want that?”
He wanted his day to return to normal. He wanted Valerie to stop calling. He wanted to grab his phone from Ava. “Who’s at the singles’ table?”
“Women who want to date you.” Ava’s smile lifted her eyebrows and lightened her tone. “Especially Marlene Henderson. You remember Marlene, right? Wyatt’s mom introduced you guys during her garden party in the spring. Marlene is the master gardener at the botanical garden.”
And excessively gabby. Dan cringed. He’d never met anyone capable of putting so many words into one breath so continuously without hyperventilating. Dan had taken several deep breaths for the poor woman. Fortunately, a dear friend of Wyatt’s mom had a plant question and Dan had handed off Marlene, then escaped. Surely there was another guest on the wedding-invite list prepared and eager to match Marlene word for word. It just wasn’t Dan.
His phone chimed. He winced and concentrated on the road. He was setting his phone on permanent silence as soon as he got it back.
“Seriously, what is with your phone? You never get so many calls.” Ava crammed the party-planner binder back into her backpack. “We’ll deal with party planning later. What aren’t you telling me?”
Ava’s insight was all too clear. One of the pitfalls of having a best friend trained to read people and their actions. Dan pulled into a parking space outside San Francisco College of Medicine and turned toward Ava.
She jumped in first. “Everything okay with Ben? Your dad?”
The concern in Ava’s voice broke through Dan’s jumbled thoughts. Ava cared for his family. Her interest was real and genuine. He’d always appreciated that about her. “Dad is fine. He’s opened the mother-in-law apartment to a fire evacuee.”
“That’s wonderful and...” Ava’s words drifted off as if she sensed there was more.
He supposed she could read him well enough to know there was more. They’d worked in tandem too many nights on call in the ambulance not to be able to figure out each other.
“There’s more,” Dan admitted. He pushed Ava’s hand toward her. “Put the phone on speaker and press Play on the voice mail.”
Ava glanced at the phone screen. Shock slowed her words. “Valerie called six times. Valerie, as in your ex-wife, Valerie. The ex-wife who is now with your younger brother.”
Dan’s heartbeat stalled as if that assailant connected with a knockout punch after all. Five years ago, Dan had been pretzeled on his son’s hospital bed, Ben finally asleep on his chest. He’d been adjusting Ben’s IV lines and scolding himself for his misstep in caring for his sick son. The flu had played havoc with Ben’s glucose levels; the vomiting had only compounded things. Ben had been admitted to the hospital for the fourth time that year. And Dan had feared he’d never get it right.
Then the text from Valerie had arrived. Not a checking-on-her-sick-son text. But rather a picture of Valerie with her arms wrapped around Dan’s younger brother, her lips pressed against Jason’s cheek. The caption—Monte Carlo brought us together—in bold print underneath. Valerie had followed that with a quick explanation: There wasn’t an easy way to tell you. But we both want each other to be happy, right?
Dan had dropped the phone on the floor and curled his arms around his young son. Determined to focus on his true family and guard those he loved from harm.
Years later and he’d kept his promise. He’d gotten over his ex-wife. But he wasn’t as numb to his brother’s betrayal as he wanted to be.
Dan finally dipped his chin, the motion stiff, his voice flat. “That’s her.”
“What does she want?” Suspicion laced Ava’s tone.
“Play the voice mail and we can find out.” Unease twisted through his stomach again.
Valerie’s lyrical voice with her upbeat
