making up extra class work while his classmates go on vacation, and since he seems to enjoy his time with you and Troy, I wanted to see if I could still bring him in for his regular sessions—give him a break from history and geometry and…me.”
“I’ll be here,” Jillian promised. “Anything else I can do to help?”
“Yeah. Be careful driving through No-Man’s Land. My son needs you.” He pulled his SWAT cap from his back pocket and pulled it on over his head. The stern police captain had returned. “Keep your doors locked. If you feel threatened in any way, stay in your car and drive straight to the nearest police station. Run red lights if you have to. If you think someone is following you, stay in your car and honk the horn until an officer comes out to assist you.”
“You know, I have a big brother to give me lectures like that. You don’t have to.”
“As long as you listen to one of us. I can give Troy a lift home on the days I’m off duty and don’t have to get back to the precinct.” He adjusted the brim of his cap to shade his eyes. “If riding with a cop wouldn’t cramp his style.”
“That’s nice to offer. I’ll ask him.”
“Be careful. Mike’s counting on you.”
Look who was talking. She dropped her gaze to the sidearm holstered at his thigh. “You be careful.”
“Always.”
After he tipped his hat and left, Jillian watched him stride down the hallway. Yeah. Big-brotherly overprotection aside, fortysomething looked good on the police captain from this view, too.
Savoring the responding skitter of her pulse, Jillian turned to her desk. Her gaze landed on the droopy, fading flower in the glass vase there, and her heart rate kicked up another notch. Would it have killed the sender to include a note? Or even just a name?
Between friendly discussion and heated debates, she’d forgotten for a few minutes that not all men were as straightforward as Michael Cutler. Maybe she was only crushing on the older man because she was 99. 9 percent certain he hadn’t sent her that mysterious rose. As beautiful and blameless as the deep red flower might once have been, she’d lived with too many deceptions in her life already. The whole secret admirer thing had lost its charm long ago.
Dismissing the tiresome joke with a shake of her head, Jillian sat behind her desk, pulling up Mike’s and Troy’s files on her computer to chart the updates. But the rose kept taunting her from the corner of her eye.
It was the sort of apologetic gesture her ex-boyfriend, Blake Rivers, would have made to get himself out of trouble with her. She supposed breaking up with him after an attempt to rekindle a relationship—clean and sober style—had failed qualified as trouble. But she had no proof the flower had come from Blake. No reason to suspect him. She’d left him months ago. He’d moved on to some blond reporter or red-haired heiress, according to the paper’s society page. Jillian was old news.
And she intended to stay that way. As wealthy and handsome and devilishly clever as Blake might be, he had a reckless streak in him that had enabled her own addiction and nearly gotten them both killed. Jillian had promised her family, her therapist Dr. Randolph and herself that she was never going to go down that dangerous, self-destructive path again.
But if not Blake, then who had sent her the flower?
She supposed a phone call to Blake’s office at Caldwell Technologies couldn’t hurt. She didn’t want to send any false signals to her ex, but a few words to put her mind at ease and set him straight on the romance-is-over message was worth the risk. And if the rose wasn’t from Blake…?
Jillian was leaving a message on Blake’s answering machine, reluctantly asking him to return her call, when Dylan Smith, another physical therapist who worked at the hospital’s outpatient therapy clinic with her, knocked on her door. She waved him into the room as she hung up the phone. As usual, Dylan’s dimpled cheeks and mischievous grin demanded she smile in return.
“What’s cookin’, Masterson?” He shoved his fingers through his muss of blond hair and sat down. “Makin’ plans for a hot date?”
“I’m workin’, Smith. Aren’t you?”
“Hell, no. It’s five o’clock, it’s Friday and a bunch of us are going over to the Shamrock to hit happy hour. If you don’t have plans, come with us.”
The Shamrock Bar? Fun with her friends sounded tempting, but her drinking days were over. “Thanks for the invite, but I’ve got things to do at home this weekend.”
“I helped you move into that apartment—up three flights of stairs, I might add—and everything looked neat and pretty and sitting in its place before we all left. Come.”
Jillian grinned at his pitiful, boyish pout. “My bedroom is only half painted, and the dueling colors have been driving me nuts all week. We’re supposed to have rain this weekend, and if I can’t open the windows and work, I’ll have to suffer through Pepto-Bismol pink and ice blue for another whole week. I need to get started on it tonight.”
Dylan leaned forward, reached across the desk and laid his hand over the top of hers where it rested on the blotter. Every muscle in Jillian’s fingers froze at the unexpected touch, though she managed to keep her smile in place.
“Just for an hour or two, Jilly? Please?” Dylan coaxed.
“I can’t.”
“I’ve got a bet with that new occupational therapist that I can eat an entire serving of the Shamrock’s fried habaneros and win free drinks for a year. You can cheer me on.”
“Or bring the stomach pump you’ll need when you’re done.”
“Very funny. Where’s the love?”
There was nothing secret about Dylan’s harmless flirtations. If you were female, he flirted. Still, boyish charm aside, Jillian thought it wise to steer clear of romantic entanglements for now, and gently extricated her hand from his. “Sorry. Ask the O.T. to cheer you on. She’s a hottie and it sounds like she might be interested in you. Share your habanero breath with her.”
“You’ve got to have fun sometime.” Dylan pushed to his feet, his grin firmly locked into place. He placed his hand over his heart and made a slight bow. “And I’m your man whenever you’re ready. Oh, I forgot.”
He reached inside the royal-blue polo shirt that matched her own clinic uniform, pulled out an envelope and set it on her desk.
“What’s this?”
“Lulu at the front desk was on her way out. She asked me to deliver it to you.”
Please, no. Jillian gingerly picked it up. No return address, and though the envelope had a stamp, it hadn’t been canceled. But the name and clinic address clearly belonged to her. An uneasy feeling soured her lips into a frown. “I thought the mail already came.”
Dylan plunged his hands into his pockets. “It must have dropped behind the counter or something.”
Jillian shrugged off the perplexing mystery and slid her finger beneath the flap to open it. “Thanks.”
He nodded toward the corner of her desk.
