or friends.
“But then I ran into Rafe at the grocery store this afternoon,” Savannah said. “He told me you were eager to have company. So here I am.”
Eager? That was a crock, and Rafe knew it.
More irritated at his brother’s interference than Savannah’s surprise visit, he forced himself to be polite. “Thanks for stopping by.”
He wondered if Savannah noticed that his tone lacked sincerity. After all, they hadn’t dated in a couple of months—well, make that four or five, since they’d split up way before the tornado had struck Red Rock.
Savannah had wanted more from him than he’d been able to give her—like a commitment. And while he’d made no bones about being a happy bachelor, she seemed to think that she was the one woman who would eventually change his mind. So there’d been a few tears on her part, but he’d suspected she would have been a lot more hurt and disappointed if he’d strung her along.
Of course, Rafe had no way of knowing any of that. Javier had never been one to kiss and tell—or to break up and vent.
Leah, who’d been standing by his bed, took a step back, as though trying to bow out graciously.
She wasn’t going to leave him alone with Savannah, was she? Not that it mattered, he supposed. It’s just that he… Well, he didn’t want Leah to go. Not when she provided the only upbeat moments in his day.
“Hey, Florence,” he said, trying to recapture the playful moment they’d been having—or that they’d been about to have before Savannah’s arrival.
Leah paused, her expression unreadable. “Yes?”
For a moment he was at a loss for words. But he wanted to let both women know he and the blonde weren’t romantically involved, at least not any longer.
“I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine,” he told his nurse. “Savannah’s a paralegal at a local law firm. Or she was, the last time we talked.” He turned to his unexpected visitor. “Are you still working for Higgins and Lamphier?”
Savannah nodded, her demeanor a bit stiff and a frown creasing her brow.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Leah said with a casual smile. Then she nodded toward the doorway. “I’d better get back to work and let you two chat.”
Javier could have argued, asked her not to leave. But then what? His obvious attraction to his nurse would have only complicated any future discussion he had with Savannah.
And his life was complicated enough as it was.
Chapter Two
As Leah slipped into the hall, a whisper of uneasiness breezed through her. She could have sworn that Javier had been about to ask whether she was single and maybe even… Available?
Okay. So maybe she’d only imagined that’s what he’d been getting at.
When it came right down to it, she wasn’t sure why he’d asked those questions or what he’d meant by them. The minute Savannah what’s-her-name had entered the room, their conversation had ended before it even had a chance to take off, so all bets were off.
And really, wasn’t she better off not knowing what Javier had planned to say next? The last thing she needed to do was to create any unnecessary workday drama.
Still, the line of questioning had taken her aback and made her face the fact that, in spite of her efforts to remain completely professional, she was growing a little too fond of one of her patients.
Of course, she would never act on her attraction. She was too committed to her job to let anything like that get out of hand.
As she made her way to the nurses’ station, glad to be back on the job and out of Javier’s room, she held her head high, her shoulders straight. Yet disappointment threatened to drag her down for the count. She was sorry about the way things had played out.
And why was that? she wondered.
Probably because she cared more for her patient than she should. So for that reason alone she really ought to be glad that Savannah’s arrival had interrupted their conversation.
And she was.
Yet she’d flinched when the beautiful blonde had entered Javier’s room, and she’d found her emotional reaction to the visit more than a little bothersome. After all, Javier was a handsome bachelor. He probably had a slew of women in his pre-hospital life. How could he not?
So why would one woman’s visit surprise her? And why would it leave her so unsettled, so uneasy?
She supposed that was because, at least up until now, only his family had come to see him. And she hadn’t given his love life much thought.
Well, now… that wasn’t entirely true. She’d thought about the women he might have dated in the past, but in all of her musings they’d been faceless beauties.
Of course, that was no longer the case. Now one of them had a face—a pretty one that suggested Javier liked tall, sophisticated blondes who dressed to the nines and were skilled at applying makeup and styling their own hair.
Leah clicked her tongue, scolding herself for making that kind of assumption. Maybe she was connecting all the wrong dots. How did she know that Savannah and Javier had actually dated? Hadn’t he downplayed that possibility?
If he had no idea whether she still held the same job, how could he and Savannah be romantically involved? Clearly, he hadn’t seen her in a while.
Leah’s uneasiness began to lift at that conclusion—until she realized he’d spent more than two months in the hospital. He’d also been in a coma for nearly half that time. And he’d suffered some confusion and memory loss when he’d first come to.
Then, to make matters worse, she remembered what his brother Rafe had suggested to the family earlier this morning.
So it was easy to conclude that Savannah’s hospital visit hadn’t been a coincidence. In fact, Rafe had set it into motion when he’d run into her at the grocery store earlier today.
It hadn’t taken much of a leap for Leah to realize that, even if Javier had made it sound as if he and Savannah were merely friends, that hadn’t always been the case. At one time, they must have been more involved than that.
As Leah took a seat behind the desk, she had to admit that she didn’t like the idea of Javier having a girlfriend, which meant that her feelings had grown to the point that they bordered on that fine line between sympathetic and inappropriate.
Bordered? She was afraid that she might have crossed the line already, and that she was more attracted to her patient than a nurse ought to be.
So the way she saw it, she would either have to request a transfer to another floor or fight her feelings so she wouldn’t compromise her professional ethics.
With the dilemma still weighing on her mind, she reached for a chart belonging to another of her patients and tried to pretend she was busy. Yet even though she studied the paperwork in front
