she murmured. And then her mind did a double take. “Hold it,” she called to Shelly who moved rather fast when she wanted to. “Let me see that again.” She held her hand out for the watch. Upon closer examination, she recognized it. The timepiece was old-fashioned with a wind-up stem. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, it had come off Jesse Steele’s wrist. She had assumed he’d put it back on after she’d examined the scratch beneath the band. Obviously not. But just to be on the sure side, she asked, “Where did you get this?”
“Trauma bay one.” Shelly nodded back toward the room where, even now, another patient was being wheeled in on a gurney. It looked as if the flow was picking up again. “You were taking care of that hunk in there.” Shelly’s mouth widened in a huge, wistful grin. “I thought you might know where to find him. Assuming this is his and not some patient who was there before him.”
“No, this is his,” Tania said with certainty. “I recognize it.”
It would be too much of a coincidence for there to be two watches like this worn by patients occupying the same room on the same day. Rather than give the watch back to the nurse, Tania slipped the watch into her pocket. Hitting several more keys, she saved what she’d input and rose from the desk.
“His address has to be on file,” she said, thinking out loud. She knew for a fact that she’d seen it written on the information form the nurse had taken before she’d come in to treat the man. “I’ll look it up and have someone mail it to him.”
Shelly sighed soulfully as she followed her away from the desk. “I’d like to mail me to him.”
“Shelly, you’re married,” Tania pointed out.
“I’m married, I’m not blind. I can look. And maybe lust,” the older woman added mischievously. “It’s not like Raymond doesn’t look every woman over the age of eighteen up and down when he passes them.”
Obviously not every marriage was made in heaven, Tania thought.
“Hey, you ready?” Kady called, coming around the corner like a runaway steamroller.
Tania made a show of looking at the watch on her wrist. “For lunch or dinner?” It was a blatant reference to the fact that her older sister was more than half an hour late.
“Sorry, it’s been crazy today. I had to perform an emergency cardiac ablation. This man had an attack of atrial fibrillation that just wouldn’t stop. I know I should have called, but there wasn’t any time—”
“Save your apologies.” Tania grabbed her purse from the drawer beneath the nurse’s desk. “You lucked out. It’s been hectic here all morning, too.”
“Did it have anything to do with the camera crews outside?” Kady wanted to know.
She hadn’t seen the light of day since she’d walked in yesterday. Armageddon could have swept the street of Manhattan and she wouldn’t have known about it. “Camera crews?”
“Yeah, outside the E.R.” Only extremely tight security, instituted right after the serial killings that had rocked the hospital last January, had kept the pushiest of the crew members out. “Something about a hero saving a dealer’s diamonds. Security kept them out, but I heard that the media swarmed all over the guy when he finally left the hospital.”
Tania shook her head. “Poor man probably never got to go to his meeting.”
Kady stopped walking and looked at her sister, confused. “Meeting? What meeting?” And then the answer dawned on her. “Did you treat him?”
Stopping by the elevator, Tania pressed for the basement where the cafeteria was located. “I sewed up his scalp wound.”
Kady sighed. “Some girls have all the luck,” she teased. Tania looked at her and for one moment Kady could have bitten off her tongue. Because for one unguarded moment, Tania had allowed the pain to come through and register in her eyes.
But the next, Tania was flashing the wide smile she’d always been known for and nodding her head in agreement. “Yeah, we do. Your turn to buy lunch, by the way.”
Kady was relieved that the moment had passed. “I distinctly remember that it was your turn.”
“Maybe you should be marrying a neurosurgeon instead of a bodyguard. There’s something going wrong with your memory.”
The elevator arrived and the doors opened. Kady put her arm around Tania’s shoulders and guided her in. “Not today, little sister, not today.”
Chapter 3
She’d just wanted to make sure he was all right.
She’d been a safe distance away, trailing discreetly behind him—far enough away not to be noticed, close enough to see—when Jesse had stopped that thief.
Her breath had caught in her throat as she’d watched the two grapple on the ground. And it had taken everything she’d had not to run up to Jesse when she’d seen the blood trickling along the side of his head. She’d wanted to clean the wound with her handkerchief and make it better with her kisses.
In all probability, she would have run up to him to do just that, but the ambulance had arrived in the blink of an eye. When it had, rather than step forward she’d melted back in with the crowd. That was when she’d read the logo on the side of the vehicle. It had been dispensed from Patience Memorial Hospital.
She knew where that was.
Several months ago they’d treated her there when her wrists had had an unfortunate meeting with a shard of glass. The police had brought her there, summoned by her nosy superintendent who’d come about the overdue rent and had illegally let himself in when she hadn’t answered the door. The police had wanted to label it a suicide attempt. She’d talked them out of it, saying it was just an accident. A glass had broken when she was washing dishes and she hadn’t realized it until the jagged edges had scraped against both of her wrists and she’d felt faint.
They didn’t look like they believed her, but she’d convinced them. She was good at convincing people when she set her mind to it.
Except for Jesse.
But then, Jesse was different. Special. He always had been. She’d known that from the moment she’d first seen him walk through the doors of the firm she worked for. Used to work for, she corrected herself. They’d fired her. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Except for Jesse. He was special.
Special. And hers.
He was so brave, so selfless. So willing to put everyone else first. That’s why she loved him. Or at least that was one of the reasons. There were so many. She’d need a lifetime to count them. A lifetime that they would spend together.
Once she knew where the ambulance was going, she took off, availing herself of shortcuts in order to get there before the vehicle arrived. She succeeded, beating out the ambulance by a couple of minutes. Even using the siren, it had been slow going. The streets were clogged with lunchtime traffic and there was nowhere for the cars to pull over.
She’d counted on that, on the ambulance arriving at the rear E.R. entrance just as she had. She was in time to see Jesse being taken in.
Because there was so
