About the Authors

DEANNE ANDERS was reading romance while her friends were still reading Nancy Drew, and she knew she’d hit the jackpot when she found a shelf of romances in her local library. Years later she discovered the fun of writing her own. Deanne lives in Florida, with her husband and their spoiled Pomeranian. During the day she works as a nursing supervisor. With her love of everything medical and romance, writing for Mills & Boon Medical Romance is a dream come true.

JANICE LYNN has a Masters in Nursing from Vanderbilt University, and works as a nurse practitioner in a family practice. She lives in the southern United States with her husband, their four children, their Jack Russell—appropriately named Trouble—and a lot of unnamed dust bunnies that have moved in since she started her writing career. To find out more about Janice and her writing visit janicelynn.com.

Also by Deanne Anders

From Midwife to Mummy

The Surgeon’s Baby Bombshell

Also by Janice Lynn

Winter Wedding in Vegas

Sizzling Nights with Dr Off-Limits

It Started at Christmas…

The Nurse’s Baby Secret

The Doctor’s Secret Son

A Firefighter in Her Stocking

A Surgeon to Heal Her Heart

Heart Surgeon to Single Dad

Friend, Fling, Forever?

A Nurse to Tame the ER Doc

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Stolen Kiss with the Single Mum

Deanne Anders

The Nurse’s One Night to Forever

Janice Lynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90229-2

STOLEN KISS WITH THE SINGLE MUM & THE NURSE’S ONE NIGHT TO FOREVER

Stolen Kiss with the Single Mum © 2020 Deanne Anders The Nurse’s One Night to Forever © 2020 Janice Lynn

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Stolen Kiss with the Single Mum

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

The Nurse’s One Night to Forever

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Stolen Kiss with the Single Mum

Deanne Anders

A stolen moment…

A lifetime together?

Three years ago, single mom and nurse Lacey lost her husband in the same IED blast that left his best friend, ER doc Scott, with an injured leg and survivor’s guilt. Thrill seeker Scott’s sworn to always be there for cautious Lacey… And on one fraught night shift, this leaves them entwined in an electrifying kiss—an impulsive encounter that has him longing to keep her in his protective embrace always…

This book is dedicated to all the hard-working emergency room nurses, physicians and techs I have the privilege to work with. You amaze me with the care and dedication you show every day. You have one of the hardest jobs in the hospital, but you make it look easy.

Also, a special thanks to CAPT David Olson USNR (ret), for founding the Combat Wounded Warrior Challenge, and to his wife Teresa for her work with the veterans. Your work lives on with the veterans you touched.

CHAPTER ONE

FOUR O’CLOCK IN the morning could be considered the witching hour in any ER, Lacey was sure, but for a hospital smack-dab in the middle of New Orleans, where voodoo and ghost stories were the norm, it seemed especially true.

Not that she really minded the unusual assortment of patients who seemed to find their way into the emergency room at that time of morning. If nothing else it definitely helped pass the last few hours before the sun started peeking through the windows—the first sign that the next shift would be there soon.

Unfortunately, the early-morning hours hadn’t seen their usual influx of eclectic patients today, and now the hours till shift-change had begun to drag.

“What’s he looking up now?” the young unit coordinator asked.

Lacey looked over to where Scott Boudreaux, one of the on-duty ER doctors, sat studying his computer screen.

“Planning his next adventure, I’m sure,” she said.

Lacey had never understood the man’s desire to put himself at risk for the thrill of survival, but she had learned she might as well keep her concerns to herself. Hadn’t she had almost the same conversations with her husband when he had been alive? And what good had it done her?

The two men had always been more than she could handle, with neither of them ever listening to her concerns. Then they’d both volunteered for that last deployment to Afghanistan and now Ben was gone.

There had been a time when she had blamed Scott for her husband’s death, though she had known even then that it was stupid to think that way. Ben had wanted to return and help the injured soldiers on the field as much as Scott. The two of them had been like two peas in a pod through medical school, and she had finally learned to accept their adventures together, thinking the two of them would be safe as long as they were together.

She’d been wrong.

Scott had been lucky to come out with only an injury to his leg after an IED had exploded, but he’d been left with this need to always prove himself. She just couldn’t understand why he felt he had to spend his life searching out thrill after thrill. Just the experience of working in the emergency room alone gave her all the taste of adventure that she needed. Add to that the trials of being a single mom and she had all the thrills she could handle.

“The next Extreme Warrior trip is only a couple weeks from now, and I think the winter trip to Alaska is pretty much planned, so he’s probably working on the spring trip.”

“There’s a rumor that they’re going to hunt Sasquatch next,” the unit coordinator said.

Lacey laughed at the idea of a bunch of war veterans trying to hunt down the mythological hairy creature.

“Now, that would be extreme,” she said, then looked over to Scott to see his reaction.

“Y’all know I can hear you, right?” Scott said as he glanced over to the two of them and then winked.

The UC let out an audible sigh and Lacey couldn’t help but understand why. With his longish blond hair curling around his collar and those unusual gray-green eyes that she had always found to be seductive, he’d broken more than a few of her co-workers’ hearts.

“And I’m adding the Sasquatch hunt to my list of possibilities.”

Lacey laughed again when the UC’s mouth dropped open. Though she knew Scott had meant to tease the girl, she wasn’t sure that he wasn’t totally serious. He lived to come up with new ways to challenge the group of veterans he worked with. The whole bunch of them were crazy as far as she was concerned.

When Scott had come back from Afghanistan without Ben he’d been just as lost as her. The two of them had struggled through that time together, and when he had first brought up the idea of starting the Extreme Warrior program that he and Ben had been planning before Ben’s death she had been supportive.

He’d had no idea how fast the program would grow, with more and more veterans attending the meetings and applying to go on the extreme trips that Scott planned. Now, with the fast growth of the program, Scott was looking for some hands-on help, and had begun pressuring her to join the group.

Though she knew Ben would want her to help his friend in any way she could, in her heart she knew it was Ben who should have been there to help Scott, not her. The memories of sitting around the table with the two of them as they made plans to serve the military veterans in the New Orleans area just reminded her of how much of life Ben had missed out on.

The thought of her husband’s death took all the humor she’d felt minutes ago out of her. She’d planned her life so carefully. She’d seen her mother struggle as a single mom, after Lacey’s father had walked out on them, and she had sworn then that she’d make a different kind of life when she grew up.

So she’d gone to college and gotten the nursing degree that had allowed her to live independently and she had been happy. Then she’d met Ben, and had known right away that he was a man she could trust her heart with.

When she had married him the thought that she might lose him had never entered her head. He’d been a doctor, not a soldier. He hadn’t been supposed to die so young. He hadn’t been supposed to leave her with a four-year-old son who couldn’t remember his daddy.

The radio on her desk went off and the voice of one of the city’s emergency medical technicians began spitting out information concerning the patient they were transporting.

“Patient is a fifty-four-year-old male suffering from multiple injuries, including a laceration to the head. No loss of consciousness after a car versus light post MVA. Vital signs are: heart-rate in the one-tens, BP one-sixty-five over ninety and respirations twenty-four, with an oxygen saturation of ninety-two on five liters oxygen. ETA ten minutes, and arriving with New Orleans Police Department officer on board.”

She looked at the room’s tracking board, then hit the button on her radio. The EMTs hadn’t called the patient in as a trauma, and the patients vital signs were stable, so she didn’t want to tie up a trauma bed unnecessarily.

“Room Thirty-Two on arrival,” she said, and then got up to get the room ready for the new patient.

“Am I getting a patient?” asked Karen, one of the RNs who regularly worked the night shift, as she walked by.

“No, I’m going to take this one,” Lacey said.

The night had been dragging, and the fact that a police officer was aboard the ambulance with the patient might prove to be interesting. She wouldn’t mind a little excitement to help the last hours of her shift pass by. She’d spent too much time tonight thinking about things she couldn’t change.

At the sound of Lacey’s laughter Scott pushed back from his desk and looked down the hall to where she stood with one of the other nurses. Unlike the high-pitched giggle of some of the women he had dated, Lacey’s laugh had always been genuine.

It had been her laughter that had caught his attention the first time he’d seen her. With her head of dark red hair thrown back and her bright green eyes shining with humor, she’d been a vision. Never had he seen someone actually glow with happiness till that night. He’d known then that she was one of a kind, and only the fact that his best friend had laid claim to her first had kept him from pursuing her.

But she wasn’t the same woman she’d been then. She was older now, more mature, yet still just as beautiful as the first day he had set eyes on her. Life had knocked her down with Ben’s death, but she’d managed to get back up. It had been hard, and there had been a time when he had thought he would never hear her laughter again, which only made the sound of her laugh sweeter to his ears now.

If only his best friend was there to hear it.

As it always did when he thought of Ben, guilt slammed through him. He’d never understand why it had been him who had made it home and not Ben, who’d had a wife and son waiting for him. He knew it should have been Ben who had survived.

Watching as Lacey continued walking down to the back of the unit, he wondered if she ever thought the same thing. Did those thoughts haunt her as they did him?

Turning back to his computer, he pushed thoughts of his friend’s death to the back of his mind so that he could return his focus to work. After checking the lab work on the elderly patient who was next to be seen, he picked up the man’s chart and headed down the hall.

Lacey had just gotten the room stocked with the suture supplies she thought Scott would need when the ambulance crew rolled in with their patient, and a tired-looking police officer on their tail. The smell of alcohol hit her before she could even get a glance at the patient, which was enough to explain the presence of the officer.

“Thanks, Larry,” she said to one of the techs as he came in, and they both assisted the EMTs in transferring the man over to the stretcher. The patient remained unresponsive as they moved him. Whether that was from the accident or the alcohol intoxication she couldn’t tell.

She hooked the patient up to all the monitors and noted that the man’s heart-rate and other vital signs appeared to have deteriorated from when she had gotten the initial report. She began checking the man’s body for injuries. There was a cut above his right eye that oozed blood. It would need a few stitches. But her real concern was the possibility of a traumatic head injury due to whatever the man had hit his head on during the MVA.

She mentally moved the man to the top of the list of patients who needed to go to Radiology to get a CAT scan. They’d need his chest and abdomen scanned as well as his head.

“You said he didn’t lose consciousness at first?” she asked the EMT who’d remained in the room, and was now filling out the needed paperwork.

“Not that we’re aware of. He was awake when we got there. He passed out on the way here,” he said. “His alcohol level has to be at least in the three hundreds.”

She walked back over to the stretcher and rubbed the man’s sternum hard enough to get a response. The man moaned and one bloodshot eye opened. He looked around the room, moaned again, and closed the eye. So he did respond to pain. But still those vital signs bothered her.

“Name?” she asked.

“James Lyons,” the EMT read off his paperwork, then tore the form from his pad, handed her a copy, and walked out the door.

She looked over at the police officer who had taken a spot by the door.

“What are you charging him with?” she asked him.

“DUI,” the man said. “Along with property damage and driving with a suspended license. He swiped the side of a car before he hit the light pole. It’s not his first DUI. He served time for his last one. If someone had been sitting in the car he sideswiped they’d be dead now.”

“Mr. Lyons, can you hear me? I need you to wake up for me.”

This time the man opened both his eyes. Hopefully his unresponsiveness earlier had more to do with his alcohol consumption than injury. Or the man could be playing possum instead of dealing with the police officer in the room. She didn’t have enough information to know yet.

“Do you hurt anywhere?” she asked as she shone a light into his eyes. His pupils were reactive, but she still felt there was more to his injuries than what she was seeing.

The man moaned, then grabbed his left side and looked over to the corner, where the cop was now sitting. Looking at the monitor, Lacey noticed that his oxygen saturations had dropped again, and his respirations had increased too. Pulling her stethoscope from around her neck, she placed the chest-piece against his chest and listened He was definitely moving less air on the left side.

“If you can get a line in for me, Larry, and draw the standard labs, I’d appreciate it. I’ll go get some orders from Dr. Boudreaux and then we’ll get over to CT,” she said, as she turned the patient’s oxygen up, then started out of the room. “And can you keep an eye on those vitals too? If there’s any change just call me on my radio.”

Not seeing Scott at his desk, she went in search of him in one of his patients’ rooms and found him sitting on a stool having a conversation with an elderly man. The man’s hair was pure white, his body thin and bent with age, but his smile lit his wrinkled face and his eyes sparkled with pleasure.

“Lacey, come in here,” Scott said when he saw her. “I want you to meet Lieutenant Hines. He was in Europe in World War Two.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Lieutenant Hines,” she said to the elderly man, who seemed to be embarrassed from all the attention he was getting.

“It’s Frank, Miss Lacey,” he said. “My days of being a lieutenant are long gone.”

“It’s nice meeting you, Frank,” she said.

She hated to interrupt Scott, but she knew he would be tied up here for a while, talking to and examining this patient. She needed to get her new patient to CT as soon as possible, and with the increase of his oxygen needs she didn’t have time to wait till he was finished.

“Can I speak to you for a minute, Dr. Boudreaux?” she asked.

“Sure. I’ll be right back with you,” Scott told the elderly patient before he left the room with her.

“The man’s almost one hundred years old, but his mind is sharp. The things he saw were amazing,” Scott said.

“What’s he here for?” she asked as they moved away from the door.

“Blood sugar was reported low at his assisted living home. It’s coming up, but his electrolytes are off so I’m going to admit him and get those corrected. He lost his wife over ten years ago, and they never had any children, so he’s alone except for a niece who lives in California,” Scott said.

He couldn’t have been in the room more than fifteen minutes, but he already knew the man’s life history. It never failed to amaze her how he could get people to talk to him. When depression had all but consumed her after Ben’s death, and she’d been at her lowest, not only had Scott gotten her to a counselor, he’d sat beside her for hours and just let her talk. It was a gift that made him not only a good doctor, but also a great friend.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve got a patient who just rolled in and I’m thinking he possibly should have been trauma-alerted. I’m putting in orders for the usual labs, but he’s got a laceration on his forehead that’s going to need some stitches and I’ve ordered a scan of his head. Can you take a look at him for me?” she asked.

“Why do you think he should have been trauma-alerted? His head injury?” he asked.

“Maybe. He’s requiring more oxygen than he needed when the EMTs arrived,” she said. “He’s heavily intoxicated, but there’s something else going on too.”

“Order a portable X-ray for me. I’ll be finished here in just a minute and then I’ll head straight there.”

She watched as he returned to the elderly man’s room. She noticed that his limp was more pronounced than it normally was, but she wasn’t surprised as this was the last of seven straight days on duty. The injury to his leg that he’d received in Afghanistan hadn’t slowed him down a bit, and he had never let it stop him, but sometimes she wished he would. She’d have a lot fewer gray hairs if he’d slow down and quit running around the world chasing the next thrill.

She turned back toward her patient’s room as she called on her radio to have the X-ray tech come down.

Scott reviewed the vital signs on the monitor, then walked over to the man lying on the stretcher as Lacey laid out the chest tube kit. While the CT scans had ruled out any brain injury, they had shown a significant pneumothorax, proving Lacey had been right to be concerned about the patient’s vital signs changes and his decreased breath sounds.

Not that it surprised him. He’d been working with her long enough now to know he could trust her instincts.

“Mr. Lyons, I’m Dr. Boudreaux. You have several rib fractures from the accident and one of them has punctured your left lung, which is affecting your breathing. I’m going to need to insert a chest tube.”

The man didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what he was saying. Instead he seemed to be more interested in Lacey and the tray of instruments that she was setting up.

“Don’t let those instruments scare you. I’m going to inject some lidocaine to numb the site on your chest where I’ll insert the tube. You shouldn’t feel anything,” he said, and he turned toward the sink in the room and began to wash his hands.

Something crashed behind him and he turned back, expecting to see that Lacey had bumped into the stand that held the instruments. Instead he saw the patient he’d just been explaining the procedure to standing beside the bed, holding Lacey against him. The glint of steel caught his eye and he realized that the man had a scalpel in his hand.

As if he had just stepped through a time warp, he was suddenly thrown back into the war zone of Afghanistan, standing in the quickly thrown-up field hospital…

There was chaos everywhere he looked as nurses and doctors worked on the wounded who had just arrived. He looked up and saw Ben standing in front of him. Another man held a knife to his throat while he shouted to them in a language Scott didn’t understand.

Ben told him that the man had an IED, and then he watched as suddenly Ben went down and everything exploded.

He heard screams coming from all around him, and knew one of the screams was his own. A piece of metal had torn into his leg as he was thrown under one of the operating tables.

Then he heard only silence, and it took a moment for him to realize that the blast of the explosion had damaged his ears.

He crawled through the rubble, dragging his injured leg behind him as he looked for Ben. He could see the wounded as they cried out for help, but still could not hear a sound.

He made it over to where his friend lay, pulling him into his lap and propping the two of them against the side of a turned-over table. As tears rolled down his own face he tried to wipe away the blood from his friend’s face.

Ben turned, his eyes no longer bright with life, And Scott watched as his friend worked laboriously to speak, concentrating on the movement of his friend’s lips as he slowly formed words.

“Lacey and Alston,” his friend said. “Take care of them for me.”

“Always,” Scott answered before his friend’s eyes closed for the last time. “Always.”

The tray stand crashed to the floor and just as quickly as he’d disappeared into the nightmare that still haunted his sleep he was back, watching as the man, now totally out of control, wrecked his emergency room and threatened his best friend’s wife.

He took a deep breath and tried to slow his speeding heart. He didn’t have time to deal with his own demons now. He had to get this situation under control before Lacey was hurt. He wouldn’t let Lacey or Ben down again.

“Whoa, man, you don’t want to do this,” Scott said as he slowly approached the wild-eyed man.

The man’s trembling hand tightened around the scalpel he held against Lacey’s throat.

Scott stopped moving and held up his hands with his palms facing forward, showing the man they were empty, letting the man know he wasn’t a threat. He had to find some way to get through to this guy before he hurt her.

He looked from the man’s hands to Lacey’s pale face. She’d gone so still he wasn’t sure she was even breathing. Her green eyes were wide with a look of fear that he was only too familiar with. He’d seen it on a countless number of injured soldiers. He’d seen it on Ben’s face just before that insurgent had detonated the bomb he’d been wearing. It killed him to see it on Lacey’s face now.

Then her eyes caught his and her lips moved.

Alston, she mouthed, and the word was as plain to him as if she had spoken it. Take care of Alston.

No. He couldn’t live through this again. Nothing was going to happen to Lacey. He wouldn’t let it.

Did she think he was just going to stand there and let this guy hurt her? Kill her? He’d lost too many people in his life already. He would not lose Lacey. There had to be a way to get this man to let her go.

“Look, I don’t know your story,” he said to the man as he moved an inch closer, “but I do know that woman you’re holding, and I know that whatever is going on that has driven you to do something like this is not her fault.”

Scott slowly moved closer to the man. The police officer who had been with them earlier took a step into the room from the other side, causing the man to jerk Lacey up closer to him as he tightened his hand around the scalpel at her throat. One slice to her jugular and she’d bleed out before Scott could save her.

“Don’t come any closer. I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m not going back to jail,” the man said. “I want a car outside in fifteen minutes or…”

Scott watched as the man struggled for breath. Was his color a bit cyanotic? If he could keep the man talking long enough he’d pass out with hypoxia. Only that would still leave the sharp scalpel dangerously close to Lacey’s neck when the man went down…

“Do you see how short of breath you are? You need to stay here in the hospital so that we can treat you.”

“She’s a nurse.” The man gestured with the hand that held the scalpel. “She can take care of me.”

Scott had to get through to this man now. It would help if he knew something about him, but he only remembered the basic information. He couldn’t even remember the man’s name now. All he knew was that Lacey was in danger and he was going to have to get her out of it without her being hurt.

He watched as the man’s hand began to shake again. He had to do something—and now. He would not lose someone he cared about again.

“Her name’s Lacey and she’s one of the best nurses I’ve ever worked with,” Scott said as he moved closer.

He made himself look the man in the eyes, all the while thinking about the sharp scalpel lying against Lacey’s neck. His instincts told him to grab her and run, but his training told him that would put her at risk. He had to talk this man down if he was going to have any chance of keeping her safe.

“She’s caring and professional and she treats everyone with respect, no matter what their background. But you’d already know that, wouldn’t you?” Scott said.

The man’s eyes left his and he looked down at Lacey.

Scott took another step—a larger one this time. “She’s also one of the best moms I’ve ever known. She does that thing where she leaves notes in her son’s lunchbox. Not mushy notes. The kid’s eight and she knows better than that. Instead she writes down corny jokes that he reads to his friends every day at lunch,” Scott said, and made a sound as close to a laugh as he could manage.

Yep, there’s no threat here. I’m just a simple doctor having a conversation with his patient…

The man had gone quiet now, though whether it was from listening to him or from the lack of oxygen going to his brain Scott didn’t know. But as the scalpel had moved a fraction of an inch away from Lacey’s neck he really didn’t care which.

Scott saw the police officer behind the man moving closer. The officer had his Taser out, but he wouldn’t be able to use it until Lacey was free. They had the man boxed in now—he wouldn’t be leaving with Lacey—but they didn’t want him to realize that yet.

“The boy lost his dad in Afghanistan, so Lacey’s the only parent he has. He’s got his momma’s red-haired temper, but he’s a good kid and he needs his mom,” Scott said, and took one more step closer to Lacey.

She was within arm’s reach now. The officer behind the man nodded his head. It was time for this to end.

“Like I said, I don’t know your story, but I do know that whatever or whoever you have a problem with, it’s not Lacey’s fault. Let her go and we can talk. Please,” Scott said, as he held out his hands toward the man, “just let her go.”

“I don’t wanna hurt nobody,” the man said, his voice slurred and tears filling his eyes. “I just wanna go home.”

The officer behind the man nodded one more time. It was now or never.

Scott reached out his hand for Lacey’s, felt it tremble as she laid it in his, and with one motion yanked her into his arms.

Police and Security surrounded the man as his body collapsed and convulsed from being Tasered.

CHAPTER TWO

LACEY CLUNG TO SCOTT. Nothing had ever felt as good as being held safe in his arms right then. She’d heard many a trauma survivor talk about having their lives flash before them, but she’d never experienced anything like that until now. With the sharp edge of the scalpel lying against her neck, fear had taken over her body, and with it had come the knowledge that she might have seen her little boy for the last time.

The adrenaline rush she had experienced earlier was gone now and her body had started to tremble. She looked around the hallway Scott had pulled her into. Had it all been real? Her body wanted to crumple there on the floor and curl into itself, protect her from the fear that was flooding through her.

She remembered another time when that had happened—when the chaplain from the base had told her about Ben’s death. She’d sunk to the floor that day and had never wanted to get up. She’d had to fight her way up every day after that, taking it one hour at a time, then one day, one week. At first she had failed more than she’d succeeded, but with counseling, and support from her family and friends, she’d finally gotten to where she was today.

The possibility of becoming that broken woman again scared her more than that scalpel against her neck.

She gave her head a hard shake and pushed away from Scott. “I need some air,” she said, then headed for the exit door.

Outside, the sky was still dark, but from where she stood she could see the city starting to come to life. Lights began to come on all around her as the early shift workers began to prepare for the day.

She leaned against the wall that enclosed the roof and for the first time in her life wished for a cigarette to hold in her shaking hands. The façade she had held on to until she’d been able to make her escape fell, and with it the tears she could no longer hold inside.

Alone in the dark, she let the tears fall as she stared out into the city. She couldn’t let anyone see her like this. She had her reputation as a hard-nosed ER nurse to uphold. Laughter broke through her sobs. Some kick-ass nurse she had turned out to be.

“Lacey?”

She heard a voice call into the shadows where she hid. She mopped at the tears with the sleeve of her jacket, but she didn’t answer—couldn’t speak at all while she worked to hold the sobs inside her. What would Scott the mighty thrill-seeker think of her hiding in the dark, crying like some scared little rookie nurse?

She wiped at her tears again as Scott walked into her hiding place and then pulled her into his arms. The dam broke and she let the tears and the sobs take over.

“I was so scared,” she said, speaking between sobs against his shoulder. “If something happened to me… Alston would be all alone…”

“It’s okay,” Scott said. “You’re okay.”

She knew that, but still she cried.

“I know. It’s just…” she said.

Scott’s hand ran up and down her back, his touch soothing her. Her body began to relax, her breaths becoming less ragged and her heart-rate slowing. Scott whispered in her ear, sweet sounds that calmed her fears. She was safe here with him.

She knew she needed to move away from him, in case someone saw them and took what was simply the act of comforting a friend as something less innocent, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t leave the warmth of his body. A body that was strong and safe…one that fit so perfectly with hers. A hard body that was starting to send all kinds of tingles through hers.

Wait. Something was wrong. This was Scott. Her friend. Her late husband’s best friend. There could be no tingles between the two of them.

Lacey started to push away, but Scott only pulled her closer. One of his hands cupped her face, turning it up toward him, his green-gray eyes captured hers filled with desperation.

“I would never let anything happen to you, Lacey,” he promised as he looked down at her.

She knew he was going to kiss her a second before he lowered his head. She could have turned her face, could have pushed away from him, but his eyes—so earnest—seemed to hold her in place until his lips were on hers and then it was too late. There was no fighting the warm touch of his lips as they met hers.

She had felt so cold and alone before Scott had found her. Now the heat from his body drove the cold away and his arms around her reminded her that she was no longer alone. Her mouth opened and his tongue swept in, scattering all reason from her mind as desire crowded out the fear that had held her prisoner earlier.

In the back of her mind an alarm warned her. But of what she could no longer remember. Right now there was just her and this blessed kiss, which reminded her that she was alive and safe as long as she remained in the strong arms that held her.

She tasted of sunshine and hope and everything that he had been afraid of losing as he’d watched her stand there so still with that scalpel held against her throat. If that man had hurt her…if he had lost her…there would have been no hope left in his life.

He poured everything he had into the kiss, trying to reassure himself that she was real, that she was alive and safe. Her body relaxed into his, melting into him, and then he felt himself harden against her and realized he had taken things a little too far. What had started out as a need to confirm that Lacey was alive and safe had turned into a desire that he had never let himself acknowledge before.

He felt her stiffen against him and knew she had felt the change too. He eased out of the kiss, withdrawing slowly until there was a small sliver of space between them.

She blinked up at him with eyes that went from startled to horrified in a second then stared at him as if she had never seen him before.

But then she had never seen this side of him, had she? Even though the two of them were close, they’d always been careful to keep their relationship free of anything that could be interpreted as something other than friendship.

“This never happened,” Lacey whispered, then backed away from him.

“Wait,” he said as she continued to put space between the two of them. “We need to talk.”

“No, I have to go. I’ve got patients. I need to call the lab.”

He started toward her as she stumbled, but she held her hands up to stop him.

“Don’t. I just need to go,” she said, and she turned away from him and hurried toward the stairs.

He watched as she all but ran from him. What had he been thinking? He’d crossed that invisible line that lay between friends and lovers—a line that no one ever crossed without there being consequences to their relationship. A line he had never dreamed he would cross.

For the second time that day time stood still for him—except that this time, instead of a nightmare, it had felt more like a dream come true.

But nothing could happen between him and Lacey. He’d promised her husband that he would take care of her and Alston and that promise had never included anything but friendship. A friend didn’t make moves on his dead friend’s wife. That was just not done.

He turned east and watched the sun as it rose across the sky, creating a work of art with its blend of pinks, purples and blues that no human artist could ever truly copy. The night was over and a new day was beginning. Each day was as unique as its sunrise, and he’d learned the hard way that no one knew when a day began how it would end.

He lived his life with the motto that you had to live each day as if it was your last. There were no promises of tomorrow. You had to make the life you wanted now, because today was all you could count on till the sun began to rise again.

Only sometimes life came with unexpected complications that you weren’t prepared for—and the kiss he had just shared with Lacey was one big complication.

He headed back to the ER. Maybe he should have fought off the need he’d had to kiss Lacey, but he’d needed to reassure himself that she was alive and with him at that moment.

He’d explain it to her. They’d been friends for a long time and he would never have purposely done anything to threaten that friendship. Surely she wouldn’t let one kiss in the heat of the moment ruin what they had between the two of them? They were both adults and it had only been one kiss. Just one kiss.

But what a kiss it had been.

Lacey tried to pay attention to the convoluted story her eight-year-old was telling her, but her mind kept wandering back to the last shift she’d worked. She’d been able to throw off the fear that had seized her the night before after she’d gotten some sleep, thank goodness. And she’d mostly managed to file the experience with the intoxicated patient in the back of her mind, with all the other memories she hoped to forget someday.

Now she found that it wasn’t the fact that she had been held hostage with a cold scalpel against her neck that occupied her mind. Instead it was what had happened later, between her and Scott. What had he…she…they been thinking?

They’d both been recovering from a flood of adrenaline. They’d both been scared and had needed reassurance that the two of them were safe. She could even have pushed the line a little, with the two of them sharing a hug, a kiss on the cheek, but that kiss…

That hadn’t been the kiss of two friends, sharing their fear of what might have been. No, that kiss had definitely not been a kiss between two friends.

The feel of her fingers against her lips broke through her daydreaming and she jerked them away. Scott would be here at any minute, to take Alston to soccer practice, and she didn’t need him to think she was obsessing over a kiss that had meant nothing to either one of them.

“And then Ms. Little told me to leave the class and never come back,” Alston said.

“What?” she said.

She caught the glass of milk her hand had hit before it toppled over, then sent her son her most intimidating Mommy stare.

“Alston Benjamin Miller—what did you say?” She watched as Alston’s face broke out into a grin.

“Gotcha!” he said, then jumped down from his seat and began dancing around in a circle, making sounds that reminded her of an injured cow.

Marching around the corner of the counter, she grabbed her son up in her arms and squeezed. He was her life, her everything. If anything ever happened to him…

She squeezed him tighter as he made fake choking sounds. He looked up at her and she thought her heart would stop. He’d been born with her red hair and green eyes, but that mischievous smile with its pair of dimples had come straight from Ben. He was growing up so fast and there was nothing she could do to slow the time down.

She gave him another squeeze, then put him back down. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I should have been paying more attention.”

“It’s okay,” Alston said.

“Tonight we’ll order pizza and you can tell me the whole story again.”

The doorbell rang, which sent him running for the door.

“Slow down!” she called after him.

She caught herself questioning her choice of shorts and an old hospital T-shirt. What was wrong with her? One kiss with a man and all of a sudden she was making a fool of herself. This had to stop now. She’d been kissed many times before she’d met Ben.

But you’ve haven’t been kissed since Ben.

Her mind froze on that thought. Was the problem she was having with the memory of kissing Scott as simple as that? If so, then this strange quiver she had in her stomach at the thought of seeing him would surely go away soon.

She had just loaded the last glass into the dishwasher when Alston and Scott came into the room.

“Hurry and grab your shoes,” she said to her son. “You don’t want to keep Scott waiting.”

She tried to make her eyes look up at Scott, but instead she busied herself wiping down the counters. She turned her back to him to clean the stove top, and then stopped. She was acting like an immature teenager instead of the mature single mom that she was.

Turning around to face Scott, she pasted her most friendly smile on her face—the one she used when a patient was really annoying, but she knew she had to play nice.

“You okay? I’m sorry that happened yesterday,” Scott said as he moved over to where Alston had dropped his soccer bag. He grabbed the bag, then moved to the counter. “I started to call last night, to check on you, but I didn’t want to wake you. I figured you’d have had a hard time sleeping. I know I did.”

Did he really want to talk about this now? Where did they start?

You shouldn’t have kissed me?

I shouldn’t have kissed you back?

What did he mean, he’d had a hard time sleeping? Had thinking of that kiss kept him awake like it had her? Did he have the same strange quiver in his stomach that she had? And he wanted to talk about it now? No, that couldn’t be what he meant. They had to put that kiss behind them. They had a great relationship and they couldn’t afford to lose it.

“We can’t do that again,” she said, then squeezed her eyes shut. Why couldn’t her mouth get on track with her mind? She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes. “What I meant to say is that I think it would be best if you didn’t kiss me again.”

“Um… Lacey, I was talking about that patient grabbing you and trying to take you hostage,” Scott said, his eyes now looking away from her.

Of course he was talking about the patient with the scalpel. He probably hadn’t given the kiss they’d shared another thought. The man probably went around kissing women all the time. What would one kiss shared with a friend mean to him?

They both looked up as Alston came back into the room.

“Why’d someone grab you?” Alston asked, hands on his hips as if he was preparing to interrogate her.

Scott gave her a guilty smile, then ran his hand over her son’s ginger hair. “Nothing for you to worry about,” he told the boy, who was now making a show of studying the two of them.

“If someone hurt my mom I’ll punch them in the nose,” Alston said, and he brought his small fist up and shook it.

She watched as Scott’s lips twitched and they both held back laughter.

“Mikey said his big brother punched his sister’s boyfriend in the nose. He said there was blood everywhere. Mikey’s mom got mad about the blood and made his brother apologize to the jerk.”

“Jerk?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s what Mikey called him. Was it a jerk that grabbed you?” he asked her.

“It was definitely a jerk,” Scott said. “But the cops took care of him so you don’t need to punch him.”

She could see that her son was ready to argue the point and she wasn’t prepared for that now.

Alston took his position as the “man” of the house very seriously. He’d begun by taking out the garbage, though at first that had been more of a mess than if she had done it herself, but she’d known it made him feel like he was helping out so she’d watched him drag the trash bag out through the back door and then hurried to clean up the mess he’d left on the floor before he could return and see it.

“Y’all better get going or you’re going to be late for practice,” she reminded the two of them.

“Let’s go,” Scott said, and he wrapped his arm around her son’s shoulder as they headed for the door.

“Oh, and about that other thing… If you want to talk about it later we can,” Scott said, though from the tight expression on his face she knew he would prefer not to talk about it.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Everything’s good. We’re good, right?” she asked, and held her breath waiting for his answer.

“Yeah, sure. We’re good,” Scott said, and he hurried out the door with her son without looking back at her.

She took in a deep breath as the front door shut. The man was certainly not going to make this easy for her. And it was entirely that kiss’s fault.

CHAPTER THREE

WITHOUT THE BUFFER of Alston between the two of them Lacey and Scott had fallen into an awkward pattern of nods and one-word comments, which were not making their work situation a good one.

She looked over at him now, as he carefully numbed her patient’s arm. While most teenagers would have been looking away or turning pale on seeing the long needle, this kid was totally enthralled by the scene.

Scott reached for the suture she had prepared for him just as she reached for a four-by-four, and their hands touched for a second before they both pulled back as if burnt, the motion sending the tray stand rocking precariously.

Grabbing the stand support, she steadied the tray, then looked over at Scott. “Sorry, I’m a bit clumsy today,” she said, as she tried to cover the new self-consciousness she felt when they were this close.

Scott acknowledged her comment with another of his nods before he reached again for the suture and carefully sewed the cut closed.

“Wow! Mom, are you watching this?” asked Kevin, their patient. “This is sick.”

“No, Kevin. I do not want to watch,” the boy’s mother answered back “And you’re right. Anyone who’d want to watch is sick.”

Lacey looked over to where the woman sat on an old plastic chair that had been pushed into the corner when she had brought the tray stand into the room. The woman, who had been handling her son’s skateboard wreck well enough when they had first arrived, was now pale and diaphoretic.

Lacey felt like kicking herself. If she hadn’t been so absorbed in her own feelings she would have seen this coming sooner.

Leaving the boy’s side, she went over to where the woman was now hunched over with her head down between her legs. Kneeling beside her, Lacey ripped open an alcohol swab package and handed it to her.

“This will help some. I’ll get you a washcloth. Dr. Boudreaux is almost finished,” Lacey said.

The woman looked up and gave her a weak smile. “I’m sorry about this. I’ve never had a problem before,” she said.

“I’ll tell you a secret, but don’t tell any of the other staff members,” Lacey said as she moved closer to the woman. “I can handle the most gory trauma patients that come in here, but if my son gets a cut I have to call Dr. Boudreaux to handle it every time. It’s just different when it’s your kid that’s hurt.”

“Yeah, it is,” the woman said.

Lacey noticed that some of her color was back and she had started to sit up now.

“Okay, I’m finished,” Scott said. “Kevin, you are one tough kid. Maybe you should think about being a surgeon when you grow up.”

“Maybe,” Kevin said. “It would be real cool to be able to sew people up. But I’m more interested in electronics. Especially robots.”

“They are pretty cool. Did you know they’re using them in surgery now?” Scott said. “Someday it might be a robot stitching you up.”

The boy’s eyes grew big and his mother rolled her eyes.

“Let’s not plan on getting any more stitches,” she mother said as she moved from the chair to the exam table.

She thanked Scott, then turned to Lacey when he’d left the room.

“He’s a very nice man,” she said to Lacey, “and good with kids.”

“Yes, he is,” Lacey said.

“And he’s hot, too,” the woman said.

Lacey laughed as Kevin moaned at his mother’s comment, and then excused herself so that she could get the necessary discharge paperwork. As she walked back to the nurses’ station she saw one of the security guards heading her way.

“Hey, Lacey!” Karen called to her. “We need some help.”

“What’s up?” Lacey asked, as she signed on to her computer.

“There’s an elderly man in the lobby who insists his wife works here, but I’ve called all the units and all the offices are closed,” the guard stated.

“He doesn’t know where his wife works?” Lacey asked as she worked to finish up Kevin’s paperwork.

“That’s it—he seems very confused and I don’t know what to do with him,” Karen said. “He can’t give me an address or a phone number so that I can call his family. I’d feel better if you could check him out for me.”

Lacey looked up at the large screen hanging over the station. They were busy, but there were still a few open rooms.

“Take him to Fifteen and I’ll come by as soon as I get this discharge done,” she said.

Lacey finished the discharge, then headed to Room Fifteen. She’d worked with Karen long enough to know she wouldn’t have asked for help unless she had legitimate concerns.

An elderly man with mocha skin and snow-white hair sat in the chair next to where Karen stood. He was dressed in gray striped dress pants and a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows. The fact that he was clean and well-dressed told her that the man was not homeless—or at least hadn’t been homeless for very long.

“Lacey, this is Mr. Myers,” Karen said. “Mr. Myers, this is Lacey. She’s the charge nurse on duty right now.”

The man stood and offered Lacey his hand.

“Can you help me find my Janie?” the man asked after they shook hands.

“I’m not sure, but I’ll try,” Lacey said. “Karen says that your wife works here at the hospital. Do you know what she does here?”

Lacey found it hard to believe that this man’s wife would still be working, if she was near his age, but they did have some older volunteers who worked at the hospital. She watched as the man tried to work through her question. She could see his frustration and understood why Karen had brought him to her.

“I tell you what, let’s work through this another way. If you can give me your first name and your date of birth I can go check our records. Maybe then I can get a phone number, and we can call her and let her know you’re here to see her.”

To her relief the man rattled off his birthdate without any trouble.

“And your first name?”

“Pop,” the man said.

“Pop?” she asked.

“Yes, they call me Pop,” he said.

“I’m going to go see what I can find out. Can you wait here for me? I’ll try not to be long.”

The man agreed, then sat down in the chair. She noticed for the first time the small bouquet of daisies held in the man’s hand. Hoping she’d be able to pull up his information in the hospital data bank, she went back to the nurses’ station.

She caught herself looking over at Scott, where he sat across from her, working on his own computer. She thought about what the woman had said before she’d left and she had to agree. Scott was hot.

He’d let his hair grow out since he’d come home from Afghanistan, and he’d pulled it back today into a stubby ponytail. She’d joked with him last week about him growing out a man bun, pulling it back from his face to show him that he was close to having enough hair to put it up. But that had been before the kiss that had made things awkward between the two of them. Somehow that now seemed too intimate.

She was letting that stupid kiss, that hot and toe-curling kiss, ruin everything. All she wanted was for things to go back to the way they had been before they’d muddled things up.

Using the frustration that filled her, she hammered the keys of her keyboard. Right now she needed to be more concerned with finding information on Mr. Myers than how she was going to work things out between her and Scott.

“What’s wrong?” Scott said from behind her.

Jumping, Lacey swore, and then turned her chair around to face him.

“Excuse me?” she said.

She heard the anger in her voice and stopped. This was not the way to fix things between the two of them.

“I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated,” she said. “I’m trying to find some information so I can call this man’s family, but he can’t tell me his phone number or where he lives. He says his name is Pop, which has to be a nickname. It’s probably what his grandkids call him. Not surprisingly, I can’t find anything under the name Pop Myers.”

“Pop Myers? The Pop Myers?” Scott said, and smiled for the first time that day.

“You know him?” she asked.

“I know of him,” Scott said. “He’s an amazing blues and jazz piano player.”

“That’s great, but what I need right now is a number or an address for where he lives. His wife is probably out looking for him,” Lacey said as she turned back to her computer screen.

“Hold on,” Scott said. “I think I know someone who can help.”

Lacey watched as Scott pulled out his phone and started going through his contacts. This was the Scott she knew. The Scott she was comfortable with. The take-charge-and-make-it-work Scott.

Leaving the mystery of Pop’s family in Scott’s hands, Lacey went to the waiting room to call her next patient to be examined. Peeking into Pop’s room as she ushered an elderly woman who was suffering from shortness of breath down the hall, she saw that he was sound asleep in his chair, his respirations even. And although he looked a bit uncomfortable, she thought it was safe to leave him alone for a little bit longer.

After getting her new patient a stat breathing treatment and ordering the needed lab work, she decided she’d better check on Pop to make sure he didn’t need anything. She wasn’t surprised to find Scott in his room. Pop was awake now, and showed none of the signs of fatigue and confusion she had seen earlier. Moving into the room, she noticed a younger man standing by.

“I don’t understand, Pop—why did you leave the house without calling me? I could have brought you to the hospital if you weren’t feeling good,” the young man said, and then turned toward her and Scott. “Is he okay? He has some problems with his heart, but the doctor said all his tests were good at his last visit.”

“Hi, I’m Lacey,” she said. “Are you related to Mr. Myers?”

“This is his son, Jack,” Scott said. “He lives with his father.”

Lacey was impressed with how fast Scott had been able to locate Pop’s family—but then he was Scott. The man had a ridiculous amount of contacts in the city. If Scott didn’t know someone who could help someone, he knew someone who knew someone who could. It was why his local veterans’ program was doing so well. He had the will and the contacts needed to make a success of it.

“Jack, your father came here to see your mother. He says she works here, but we haven’t been able to find anyone by her name.”

Jack winced as if she had struck him. She watched as he took in a deep breath, then bent down in front of his father.

“Daddy, Momma passed last year. We went by the cemetery last Sunday after church—remember?”

The pain in the room was almost palpable. She knew first-hand that while grief would fade it never disappeared, and she could see the moment Pop comprehended what his son had said. The heartbreak in this elderly man’s eyes touched her so much that she found herself wiping away the tears that had gathered unexpectedly in her own eyes.

As the son hugged his father he looked up at her and Scott with searching eyes. And when Pop had calmed down, Jack asked to speak with Scott. The two of them walked out, leaving her and Pop alone in the room.

What could she say that would help him? While she knew now that the man had lost his wife several months ago, to someone with the memory problems he was having it had to feel just like it had when he had first been told of his wife’s death. She couldn’t imagine having to live through hearing about Ben’s death over and over. She had to say more than the sometimes scripted-sounding I’m sorry for your loss.

Kneeling down by the man, as his son had done earlier, she took his hands into hers. “Mr. Myers, I didn’t know your wife, but I’d like to hear about her if you feel like talking,” she said.

Talking about Ben with Scott and with her counselor had helped her deal with her loss. Maybe it would help this man too.

After a moment, with a faint smile on his lips, he began to tell her all about his Janie and the life they had built together.

Scott watched as Jack Myers escorted his father out of the ER. He’d had a long talk with the younger Mr. Myers and had recommended a local doctor who worked with dementia patients. While his father had not officially been diagnosed with the disease, Jack had known for a while that his father was having short-term memory problems. But, as most children were apt to do, he had been blaming his father’s behavior on his age.

“Were you able to help Mr. Myers’s son?” Lacey asked as she came up beside him.

“I gave him the name of a doctor to follow up with. And there are some medications that can help his father at this stage. He apparently started deteriorating after his wife’s death. He cut himself off from his friends soon after that. He hasn’t even been playing the piano since her death, which is something that has really surprised his son. Pop’s been playing since he was a young kid.”

“He’s suffering from depression as well as the dementia,” Lacey said.

Scott wasn’t surprised that Lacey had picked up on that fact. She’d suffered from depression herself after Ben’s death, and had cut herself off from her friends and family before he had made it back to the States and forced his way back into her life.

And now the two of them were back at square one in their relationship. Even so, as hard as it was for him to admit, while part of him wanted to forget the kiss between the two of them had ever happened, there was another part of him that couldn’t forget the pleasure of holding Lacey in his arms. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but it was something he needed to face if he was going to be able to set things straight between the two of them.

“It’s almost as if it’s better for his mind when he forgets that his wife is gone,” Lacey said.

“Yeah, that’s what his son said,” Scott said. “I also put him in contact with a friend of mine, to set up a time for Pop to go play at his club. Jack’s going to bring him around and see if maybe that will lift his dad’s spirits. I think getting him back out in the clubs is just what he needs. They were setting a date when I left them on the phone. You want to come if you’re off? You connected with Pop and I’m sure he’d love to see you again.”

“He might not even recognize me.” She started to walk away from him, then turned back. “Do you really think it’d help if I was there?”

“I do,” he said.

“And he’s really that good?” she asked.

“One of the best,” Scott said, then smiled.

“I’ll let you know,” she said as she walked away.

He knew she had a weakness for elderly gentlemen. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself from wanting to be there to support Pop.

Scott looked around the unit after Lacey had left to deal with the next patient. They’d held a normal conversation for almost five minutes. Maybe they could put the kiss they’d shared behind them. Maybe a night out was what they needed. A night away from everyone, where they could relax back into the relationship that they were both comfortable with.

But as he watched the redhead bend over a computer screen as she helped one of the newer nurses on the unit, he wondered if that was really what he wanted.

Lacey smoothed down her dress as she waited for the doorbell to ring. Nerves skittered down her back as she told herself once more that this was just Scott. She had no reason to be worried about tonight. It wasn’t the first time they’d been out to listen to a live jazz or blues band.

Only this time it felt different—and it wasn’t just the fact that she had taken the time to dress up in her favorite strapless dress and a pair of killer shoes that she knew made her legs look great.

It was entirely that kiss’s fault. But it was totally ridiculous, and she had to stop letting that one small moment in time mess up her life. She’d liked how things were before they’d crossed that line from friends to…to something more. The two of them needed to discuss things between them like adults, instead of letting things continue the way they were now, and tonight, while they were away from the hospital and out of earshot of Alston, would be the perfect time.

The doorbell rang and, as usual, Alston beat a path to get the door.

Standing up to greet Scott, Lacey suddenly felt as if she was waiting for her prom date. Blowing out a breath, she made herself head toward the door after giving the babysitter some last-minute instructions. She knew Alston would try to wait up for her, but he needed to get to bed for school the next day.

She stopped as she rounded the corner and caught site of Scott. Standing there in a simple chambray button-down and dark navy dress pants, the man was a romance novel hero come to life.

There had always been competition between him and Ben, with the two of them arguing about who was the tallest, but height was the only thing the two of them had had in common as far as looks were concerned. Ben had been the dark and dangerous type—something that had pulled her to him—while Scott, with his blond curls and light green-gray eyes, had looked more like a beach bum than a doctor.

“Ready?” Scott asked as he smiled at her. “Alston says he’s got the hottest babysitter on the block tonight.”

She watched as a blush stained her son’s face—one of the many things he had inherited from her when he’d gotten her red hair.

“You’re not supposed to tell my mom things like that. It’s in the man code,” her son said, then ran back to the living room where said babysitter was waiting.

“Sorry, I forgot,” Scott called after him, then looked at her and winked.

“Man code?” she asked. “Why hasn’t someone shared this with me? I might need to see this code before you start teaching it to my son.”

Lacey let herself relax into the laughter they shared on the way to Scott’s car, and to her relief the conversation between them remained on Alston’s soccer schedule and Scott’s work with the next Extreme Warrior challenge.

Arriving at the bar, which was named Jazzy Blues, after both types of music that could be found there, Lacey was surprised to see how many people were out on a week night.

It was easy to see that the bar had seen very little renovation in the last few years, with its scuffed-up wooden floors and whitewashed old wooden planked walls. The bar itself ran the length of the room, and a small corner stage was set into the back of the room. In the middle of the stage sat an old piano, and she saw that Jack and his father had been seated next to it.

Making a path through the crowd, she headed toward the two of them.

“Wow,” she said to Scott as the two of them wound their way through, “I didn’t expect to see so many people here.”

“I suspect the owner, Ronnie, has told a few people that Pop is going to be here tonight,” Scott said.

He had moved closer to her so that she could hear him, which put his mouth dangerously close to her ear and neck. She felt a shiver run through her. Then the movement of the crowd, as someone next to her pushed their way to the bar, pushed her back against him.

His arms came up around her, to steady her, and suddenly her knees felt weak. She paused for a second as another man passed in front of her. The feel of Scott’s body against hers was tantalizing. Then, taking in a breath, she forced down her body’s irritating reaction and made herself continue toward the back of the room.

She had been hoping that tonight they’d be able to slide back into their comfortable friendship, but if she couldn’t get control of herself the evening would be a failure.

Finally reaching the table, they took the two seats beside the Myerses. Pop Myers sat with his hands resting on the table, looking around the room. Would the man even recognize them or should she introduce herself to him again?

“Pop, do you remember Scott and Lacey? We met them at the hospital last week,” Jack said.

His father smiled at her and Scott, then went back to studying the room. She watched as the younger Mr. Myers drummed his fingers against the table, then reached for the empty glass that sat on the table. Putting the glass back down, Jack laughed.

“I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” Jack said.

“Don’t feel bad. I’m nervous too,” Scott said.

He looked from the son to the father. Had he done the right thing, recommending that Jack got his father back into the world of music? He knew he sometimes had a tendency to get carried away with his wanting to help others, but it had seemed such a simple thing to get Pop back out in the music community he had enjoyed for over fifty years.

The last thing he wanted, though, was for Pop or his son to feel pressured by something he had put in place. And it didn’t help that he had brought Lacey there too.

He had thought it would be good to have her there, to give Pop and Jack the support they might need, but he hadn’t known she was going to wear that sexy-as-hell dress tonight. And why did it bother him? He’d seen her in that same dress just a couple months ago, at a local art benefit, and it hadn’t affected him the way it did tonight. He’d planned for the two of them to share a nice night out as friends, listening to some live music as they had dozens of times before. He needed to be thinking “friend” thoughts, not “boyfriend” thoughts.

“We never had this kind of crowd back when I played here,” Pop said, startling all of them.

“You’ve played at Jazzy Blues before?” Scott asked.

They all waited while Pop seemed to be considering this.

“No, not Jazzy Blues… It was Norma’s then, but it looks the same,” Pop said. “But Norma never had this crowd. There must be someone special here tonight.”

Scott wondered if they should tell him that he was the special person everyone had come to hear. Probably not, since that might be something that could upset the man. They didn’t know for sure if he would want to play for them. Scott was only hoping he was right in assuming that since music had been such a big part of the man’s life he would still be able to.

Scott recognized the owner, Ronnie, as he walked up onto the stage and a small trio, made up of a guitar player, a drummer and a sax player, followed him. Scott felt as nervous as he had once when he’d been staring down from the edge of one of Alaska’s tallest mountains. He’d asked Ronnie not to make a big deal of Pop being there tonight, but apparently what he thought was a big deal wasn’t to Ronnie.

Taking the mike, Ronnie welcomed his audience, and introduced the band members one at a time. “We also have a very special guest here tonight,” Ronnie said, “Please join me and recognize the great Pop Myers!”

Scott watched Pop’s face as Ronnie called his name. The elderly man had turned toward the rest of the audience when they’d started clapping.

“These people came to see me?” Pop asked, but his face was still calm, no sign of the panic Scott had seen when he’d been lost at the hospital. “Well, isn’t that nice of them.”

To Scott’s surprise, Pop stood and headed toward the stage.

“Pop? You okay?” Jack said, and the panic that Scott had expected to see in the father’s face was now on the son’s.

His father waved at him, then went to the piano. The tension at their table increased as Pop studied it for what seemed like a long time before he struck the first chord and began to play.

The sweet sound of blues filled the room, and soon the band began to follow the piano player’s lead as the crowd of people called out encouragement.

“I didn’t think he’d ever play again,” Jack said, then turned toward Scott. “Thank you. It means a lot to see him up there, happy again.”

Scott gave the young man’s shoulder a squeeze, and then let the music relax him.

“I have to say I had my doubts,” Lacey said. She leaned over toward him and her auburn curls fell between them.

He felt an undeniable urge to reach up and brush them back over her shoulder, but knew he couldn’t. Their relationship was fragile right now, and he didn’t want to send her running from him. He wanted to deny the attraction he felt for his former best friend’s wife, but it was getting harder to do that every day.

Was it just the kiss that had changed things between the two of them? Or was it that he was only now acknowledging that he felt more?

Realizing she was still talking, he leaned further over so that he could hear her above the band.

“It’s amazing that this is the same man we saw in our ER. He hasn’t missed a beat and the crowd loves him,” she said, as she swung her head around to look at them.

He caught a whiff of the perfume she wore. He recognized it as the scent she wore when she was dressed up, like tonight, and remembered that she had mentioned it was Ben’s favorite. And she wore Ben’s favorite perfume because she had been Ben’s wife.

Pushing himself back from the table, he motioned to Lacey that he was going to get drinks. He didn’t even have to ask her what she wanted; like many things concerning Lacey, he’d memorized her favorite drink years ago.

Scott stopped in front of Lacey’s house and got out. While he had bought a loft apartment in the warehouse district, Lacey and Ben had purchased in a new gated subdivision north of the garden district, which had been built after Katrina.

Lacey gave him a speculative look as he came around the corner of the car to the sidewalk that led to her front door. “You don’t have to get out,” she said. “Aren’t you working the first shift in the morning?”

He wasn’t surprised that she was nervous about having him walk her to the door. Hell, he was nervous himself after The Incident, as he had come to call it. Calling it The Kiss had brought thoughts of Sleeping Beauty, and he knew he was no Prince Charming.

Princes didn’t kiss their dead friends’ wives.

“Your babysitter forgot to turn the light on for you,” he said as he pointed toward the front porch. “I’m just going to make sure you get into the house okay.”

“I’m not helpless, you know,” she said, then turned on her heels and headed to the door almost at a run.

He started to tell her to slow down before she broke her ankle, but the view she was providing for him from the rear took his speech away.

Nope, he was definitely no prince.

She punched a code into her front door and then, breathless, turned back toward him. He could understand why Lacey had been a bit skittish these last few days, but he was starting to wonder if maybe it was more than just the fact that he had kissed her. Was there something else that was bothering her?

“I’m so glad I got to go tonight. Pop was amazing on the piano and I think it helped him to be out there. Did you see the smile on his face when he finished the set and everyone was clapping?” she said.

“I think he enjoyed the attention as well as the playing, but we both know that tomorrow he might not remember that he even played there tonight,” Scott said.

“I know… But Jack said the doctor you recommended has started his dad on new medication, and he seemed very hopeful. The owner of the club was talking to Jack about having Pop perform again.”

Scott felt the awkwardness between them as they stood at the door. He felt like a teenager, working up the courage to go in for his first kiss.

That thought sent him scurrying back off the porch. Now who was the skittish one?

“It was a good night,” he said as he started backing away from the house. “Goodnight,” he called.

He headed back to his car. Then sat in his seat for a moment after Lacey had shut her door. It was as if that one kiss they’d shared had turned on some sex-starved gene in his body and now he found himself acting like a fool every time he was alone with her. And that was not going to be tolerated. Either they worked this thing out between the two of them or…

Or what? That was the problem. He wasn’t certain how they could work things out without them going either one way, in which he returned to the comfortable relationship of being her late husband’s best friend, or another way, in which they moved on to something else. Something more than friends?

Shaking his head at that prospect, he turned his ignition on and headed for home, where he knew he would spend another sleepless night.

CHAPTER FOUR

SCOTT HUNG UP the phone and checked off the last number he had on the roster of volunteers who helped with events on his Extreme Warrior program.

When John, one of the nurses who had signed up to help with the swamp hike, had been called out of town with a family emergency, Scott had never thought he wouldn’t be able to find a replacement for him, but it looked as if every volunteer he had was either out of town or already working.

The only person left for him to call for help was Lacey.

Up to this point the only work Lacey had done with the program had been to help with the registration and the running of the marathon they held every year in the city, with the proceeds going to help with the funding of the program. She’d always shied away from being involved in the more extreme challenges the group of veterans took part in.

She had never been able to understand why he and the others felt the need to climb the tallest mountain or shoot the most dangerous rapids. He’d tried to explain to her that he and the other veterans felt a need to prove to themselves—and, yes to others too—that they could still do all the things they’d been able to do before they had been injured, as well as things they had never dreamed of being able to do even before their injuries.

And then there was the issue they were having with being comfortable around each other now.

Things between the two of them were complicated, but he still felt sure Lacey wouldn’t let him down. And, while Lacey had never claimed to be a fitness junkie, hiking some of the swamps in Louisiana was a very tame trip compared to most of the events the program sponsored.

He decided it would be better if he texted her instead of having to grovel on the phone. If he couldn’t get another volunteer, another nurse to go with him, he would have to cancel the hike, and he didn’t want to disappoint all the vets who had been planning for and looking forward to the hike for weeks.

Pulling out his phone, he began to type.

Hey, I’ve got a problem and I need some help.

He waited a moment to see if she would respond. There was the possibility that she was working and wouldn’t be able to get back to him right away.

Then she texted back.

Okay. What do you need?

There’s a little problem with the hike this weekend.

What kind of problem?

I need a volunteer to go with me. John had a family emergency and had to cancel.

He waited a minute. There was no sign that she was typing. If she couldn’t do it he would just have to cancel. He couldn’t take a bunch of beginners out without the help he would need if something happened.

Finally she texted back.

The hike in the swamp? Where there are mosquitos as big as herons and nasty water filled with snakes and gators? Do you realize how many germs there are out there in that water?

He couldn’t help but laugh.

Yes, that’s the one. I promise I’ll protect you from any gator that decides to get frisky with you.

The gators get frisky? Nope, sorry. I am not having any part of frisky gators.

Come on, Lacey. I’ve called all the other volunteers and I really need a nurse beside me, just in case something goes wrong.

Yeah, it’s the something going wrong with the gators that I’m worried about.

He waited for a minute. Lacey knew most of the vets on the program and he didn’t believe she would let them down.

She typed back.

Did you ask Sarah?

Grandkid’s birthday.

Ryan?

I’ve asked everyone. You’re the only one who isn’t either out of town or working. You’re not working, are you?

No…

Alston can stay with my mom for the weekend. I’ll get my sister to pick him up from school Friday. He’ll love it.

He waited. No response.

Please?

She sent him a series of expressive emojis that he knew implied that she wasn’t happy.

Okay, but there’d better not be any frisky gators within twenty yards of me at any time.

Ten yards…?

He laughed when she sent him an extremely rude emoji, then put his phone down and went back to his maps.

If Lacey was going to agree to come with them he’d have to do something about the second part of the trail he had planned to take. Nothing extreme…just something special that she would be sure to enjoy.

Lacey parked her car. She’d wanted to call in sick today, but how did you call in sick if you were a volunteer? Not that she’d really volunteered for this… But Scott asked so little of her that she couldn’t turn him down.

Since Ben’s death he’d been there whenever she had needed him. Though Scott had been in the hospital long after the explosion had killed Ben, he’d still called her every night just to see how she and Alston were holding up. And after Scott had finished rehab he’d been over to their house at least once a week, helping her with the chores that normally Ben would have done.

She had started to remind him that she had handled everything by herself before, when Ben was deployed, but she’d been able to see that it had helped him to feel that he was needed so she’d accepted his help.

He’d even driven her to her grief counselor the first time, and when the counselor had recommended doing yoga he’d taken a couple of classes with her. She still had a couple photos of him trying to do the Downward Dog that she had kept for blackmail purposes.

Scott had also been there the day she’d decided it was time to pack up Ben’s closet. He’d held her as she had broken down over and over again that day. He’d even broken down with her at one point. He’d been there and he’d understood what she was going through because he had loved Ben too.

It was all those things that they had shared for those first few months that had bonded them together as friends. And now she could feel that things were changing between the two of them and she was afraid of where that change would lead them.

A knock on her car window brought her back to the present. A woman she had seen at the last marathon stood by the door. Katie? Kathy?

Lacey got out of the car. It would be okay. If this woman who’d lost part of her arm could stand there with such excitement on her face at the prospect of hiking in the humid September heat, she could and would do this. She owed it to Scott and to the rest of the party to make the best of this situation and she would.

“Hello, nice shoes,” the woman said as she looked down at the waterproof hiking boots Lacey was wearing—pink, covered in rubber duckies. “Scott asked me to keep a lookout for you. He seems to think you might bolt once you get here.”

“Thanks—and, nope, I’m here to stay,” Lacey said. “I’m Lacey.”

“I’m Katie,” the woman said as they started toward the group that was surrounding Scott’s car.

Scott had talked about this hike while he had been planning it, so she knew it had been organized for a small group, with a combination of beginners and some of the older hikers in mind. She moved into the group and listened as Scott explained that they were taking two cars up to the Chicot State Park, where they would start the first leg of their trip, and then they would move out into the more isolated part of the hike.

When he told them he had a bit of surprise for them on the second leg of the hike Lacey moaned. Knowing Scott, a surprise on a hike through a swamp could be anything.

Scott looked over at her and smiled. Seeing how happy he was that she was there almost made this whole crazy trip worth it.

What had gotten into her? It was as if ever since that kiss they’d shared everything between them had changed. Scott had smiled that same smile thousands of times before, but never had it made her feel so warm and gooey inside. This was not acceptable. They needed to sit down and talk things out together, though there was very little chance of that while they were surrounded by eight other people.

Scott divided the group, and Lacey hopped into the car being driven by one of the vets she had known for several years—Dennis, who was the oldest in the group, and had been injured years ago during the Gulf Wars.

Scott had met him when he’d started planning his very first trip and had been looking for someone to help coordinate transportation. Since Dennis had opened a tour company after leaving the military, he had been the perfect person to help out. Ever since then Dennis had been part of the program, lending help wherever he could.

They arrived at the park and everyone began loading their backpacks. Scott had told her he would provide everything she needed for the trip except for her personal items, so her pack was lighter than the rest of the group.

She saw Scott loading his pack and went to offer to help.

“Hey, you ready for this?” Scott asked her.

She watched him heft the heavy pack up onto his shoulders and was amazed that he could still stand upright under the weight.

“I am. Do you want me to carry some of that?” she asked. It didn’t seem right that he had to carry her provisions as well as his own.

“I’ve got it for now. Dennis and Max are helping too,” he said, then reached into the backseat of his car. “Here, I thought you might be able to use this.”

He held out a long wooden stick. It was a walking stick, with a carving of a series of alligators, going from a small one and progressing down the stick to larger alligators, till it ended with the carving of a swamp, with one large gator rising out of the water.

“Wow. Nice stick,” she said.

“I thought you’d like it,” Scott said. “Now if one of those frisky gators decides to go after you, you can just pop it on the head.”

“Thanks,” she said.

The thought of live gators being anywhere near her made her head spin, but at least now she had something to protect herself with—though she wasn’t sure just how much this stick was going to help.

They headed to the start of the hiking path and Lacey fell into step beside Scott. “So how far are we hiking today?”

“Only twenty miles today,” he said, and then smiled at her.

“Only twenty?” she said.

Lacey had always considered herself in good shape—she’d even run a couple of marathons back when she was younger—but walking twenty miles in the Louisiana heat was not something she was looking forward too.

One of the vets pointed out a large heron that was feeding next to the path. Its long legs allowed it to stand in the water and look down into the murky depths as it searched for prey.

As they walked the group became quieter, as if in consensus that they would try not to disturb the peacefulness of the park.

Lacey found herself looking for gators as they traveled farther into the hike, and she stopped when she spotted a head sticking out of the water. She’d swear those beady eyes were looking right at her. She gripped the stick in her hand tighter. Just let one of those monsters come toward her. She’d show them who was at the top of the food chain.

“Do you need a break?” Scott asked, and laughed when she jumped.

Looking around, she noticed that she had fallen behind the other hikers.

“Sorry. I’m good. I just wasn’t paying attention like I should have been.”

She’d kept her eyes on that floating head, and noticed that it had sunk back under the water when Scott had arrived. She’d rather it had stayed up above the water, where she could watch it. Now it could be anywhere.

She picked up her pace so that she could catch up with the rest of the group. There was safety in numbers, she’d always heard.

“Whoa, you don’t have to run. We’re doing well with our time so far. We’ll make it to the campground in plenty of time to set up camp,” Scott said.

“Good,” she said, as the path took a turn away from the swamp and into an area heavily populated with cypress trees.

Oh, great. Now instead of gators she had to worry about snakes.

When they’d caught up with the rest of the group Scott headed back to the front of the hikers and Lacey found herself beside Katie. They walked along the path with only the sounds of their steps and the sounds of nature surrounding them.

If it hadn’t been for her fear of being eaten by an alligator or bitten by a snake, she would have seen how the beautiful surroundings could be peaceful and calming. She even found herself relaxing as the sounds of birds seemed to echo through the trees. A mockingbird started its complicated song, and she searched the trees trying to locate its position.

Katie stopped and pointed over to a log, where several turtles had hauled themselves out of the water and now sat sunning themselves. Lacey watched as one more turtle tried to crawl up the log and sent another one sliding off. The splash of the water almost covered the laugh Lacey hadn’t been able to hold back.

She smiled as Katie turned around and they shared the moment. Lacey had always liked turtles. They were cute and mostly harmless. The world could use more of that, she figured.

After what seemed like hours had passed, Scott stopped and they all began pulling out water bottles and sandwiches. Scott had told her the camp they were staying at the first night would have provisions ready for them for the rest of the trip.

It was the rest of the trip that had her worried.

When their break was over they started down the path again, which seemed to wind itself back to the bayou. She continued to watch out for anything that could possibly eat her, but found herself relaxing when Scott fell back to walk with her. The miles started to stretch out as the afternoon heat began to cut through the coverage of trees.

Stopping to catch her breath, she motioned for Scott to continue without her. “Don’t stop…save yourself. I’ll just stay here and be gator bait,” she said.

She pushed the wet tendrils of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail off her face. It wasn’t that she was particularly a Barbie doll kind of girl, she just didn’t see the need to go outside and do things that made you sweaty and stinky—both of which she was now.

“Come on, we only have another mile and a half to go,” Scott said as he looked down at his phone. “You can make it.”

Lacey took in a couple more deep breaths, then straightened up. She could do this.

As Scott headed back to the front of the group, so that he could show them the course to take toward the campsite, Katie dropped back with her.

“I’m sorry I’m slowing you down,” Lacey said. “You don’t have to wait for me.”

“You’re fine,” Katie said. “I’m starting to get tired too.”

“You don’t look it. I’m sweating like a wild pig,” Lacey said. “You don’t even seem winded.”

Katie smiled at her. “You haven’t had the training I’ve had. Besides, summers in Afghanistan were hot and dry. I prefer humidity.”

“Wow. I’ve never heard anyone say they like the Louisiana humidity,” Lacey said. “It must have been really bad over there, huh?”

“The temperature was bad, but that was definitely not the worst the place had to offer,” Katie said.

Katie’s face fell, and Lacey knew she was thinking of the fighting and loss of life she had seen. Katie’s life had changed when she’d come back without her arm. Lacey’s life had changed when Ben had been killed. They had both lost, but the two of them were still here, still fighting to make a life out of what they had left.

For the first time that day Lacey was glad she had come on the trip. While she had always helped Scott occasionally with the program, she had been careful not to get too involved with its members. She knew that there was a possibility that some of them might have known her husband, and she didn’t know if she wanted to share the memories they had with Ben.

She had still been feeling vulnerable when Scott had launched the program, and she had still been carrying a lot of anger—not only for the man who had killed her husband, but also for the fact that her husband had been over there in the first place.

Ben hadn’t been a soldier—he’d been a doctor.

When they’d first met at the local college Ben had talked of coming back to Louisiana after he’d finished his residency. It hadn’t been until after they had started making plans for their future together that he had brought up going into officer training with the military.

Even after he had gotten her to agree with his plans she had never considered that he might die while serving his country. She had thought that, being a doctor, he would be far away from actual danger.

She had been so naïve. But Ben hadn’t been. He would have had to know that he was at risk of being injured or worse while he was overseas, but he had never told her…never discussed the possibility of his not coming back.

Lacey saw a clearing up ahead and knew it was their camp ground when one of the other members let out a holler. Lacey dropped her pack where she stood and stared at the small buildings in front of her. They might not look like much to some people, and they definitely weren’t five-star hotels, but they were a lot more shelter than she had hoped for on this trip.

Scott assigned the buildings—one for the men and one for the women—and they split up to stow their gear. They were all surprised to find a small bathroom inside the small bunkhouse, and they each took a turn at a cold shower before they headed back out.

By the time Lacey had showered and changed a fire had been built in the center of camp. An in-ground grill had been lit and a large amount of meat was grilling. She stopped by where Scott stood, beside a set of ice chests.

“Where did these come from?” she asked.

“I got one of the park rangers to bring them down from my car. We’ll carry some of the bread for tomorrow night, but the rest we need to eat tonight.” Scott said.

Lacey moved over to where Katie was wrapping potatoes and corn in foil. They worked together quickly, then agreed that they deserved a break after opening another cooler and finding it full of cold drinks.

As the hot sun set they gathered around the table to eat. And after everything was cleaned up around the campsite Lacey wandered over to the fire, where someone had found sticks for toasting marshmallows.

Lacey watched as Scott moved around the camp. His limp was more pronounced tonight—undoubtedly from the amount of time he had spent walking today. She knew that he still suffered pain due to his injury, though he tried to hide that fact from everyone. Watching his face, she saw the small grimace he made as he walked back over toward the fire.

“Come sit down beside me,” she said.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said as he sat on a tree stump next to her. “You’ve been quiet tonight. I figured you’d head to bed the first chance you got.”

“I’ll head that way soon,” she said. “How are you doing?”

She had to be careful when asking Scott about his injury. He made every attempt to ignore it and she knew he wouldn’t want her to be worried about him.

“Tired…but in a good way, you know?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m surprised to say that I can understand that,” Lacey said.

She picked up one of the logs that had been left at the side of the fire and carefully placed it on top of the other burning wood. As they sat there in silence, with both of them staring into the fire, she wondered where Scott’s thoughts were right then. Was he back remembering another time, before the world had changed, perhaps when he’d sat around a fire like this with his friends? With Ben? Or did the bright flames and the smell of burning wood take him back to Afghanistan? To the explosion that had injured his leg? That had killed Ben?

He’d never shared anything about what had happened that day and she had never asked. Some things she didn’t need to know.

Looking around the campground, she was surprised to see they were the only two who hadn’t headed into the cabins. How long had they been sitting there, just the two of them?

She looked up to the sky and saw that there was only a small sliver of the moon shining through the clouds. She heard the hoot of an owl in the distance and heard the crackle of the fire as one of the logs broke apart into bright embers.

“I like this,” Scott said.

“It’s a nice area, and the cabins are definitely a bonus,” Lacey said.

She reached for another log when she saw that the last one had already burned. Then she picked up one of the sticks they had used for the marshmallows and stirred the embers.

“No, I like sitting here with you,” Scott said.

Lacey’s hand froze. The stick in her hand began to burn and she tossed it into the fire. What was Scott saying? She felt that he wanted something more from her. More than the friendship they had shared. Had shared? No, they were still friends. It was just that they had complicated things between the two of them with feelings that they knew weren’t right.

She wanted to beat her head against the ground till she figured out exactly what it was that was going on between the two of them, but she knew all she’d have was a headache and still no answers. She didn’t want to have this conversation, but she knew that it was needed, so that they could return to the way things had been before they’d messed up.

“I enjoy being with you too, Scott,” she said. “It’s something that has always made our friendship special. I’ve never had to watch what I say or do with you. Being with you has always made me feel comfortable.”

Scott knew without her saying anything more where she was headed with this conversation. She found their relationship comfortable. Like an old pair of shoes. Was that what she had always thought of their relationship?

He made himself stop before he said something that would make things worse. And, really, could he blame her for the way she felt? Hadn’t he felt the same? If he had never kissed her at the hospital would they be sitting here now, discussing relationships and feelings?

But had it only been the kiss that had changed things between them? If he was honest with himself—really honest—he had to admit that his feelings for Lacey over the past year had been changing. He’d even stopped dating after he had started to compare the last two girls he’d gone out with to Lacey. He’d told himself that he just needed a break from all the drama that came with dating, and that his life was full with his job and the vets he worked with on the program.

And with Lacey and Alston.

They’d been a big part of his life ever since Ben had died, and at some point his time with Lacey had become less about helping Ben’s widow and more about spending time with her. And that was something that was never supposed to happen and it wasn’t something he was proud of.

He’d managed to put his attraction to Lacey away years ago, after Ben had come home one night and declared that Lacey was the one for him. And since the day he had stood as Ben’s best man at their wedding he had looked at Lacey as his best friend’s wife.

But how did he explain all this to Lacey without it coming out as if he was some jerk trying to hit on his best friend’s wife?

“I’m not sure what to say to you,” Scott said.

He always tried to be honest with people, and this was especially true with Lacey. He didn’t want to lay out all his feelings for her, but he had to at least be honest.

“I’d like to say that I’m sorry I kissed you, that I crossed the line of friendship, but I can’t. We both know that I…we were both upset that night, and maybe if I hadn’t experienced that fear of losing you I wouldn’t have kissed you. But I did. And you kissed me back.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Lacey said.

He watched as she picked up another stick from the ground and began raking it across what was left of the fire.

She looked over at him and he couldn’t help but smile. She’d pulled her hair back from her face, and even though he was sure she’d covered herself in sun protectant a scattering of freckles was now sprinkled across her face. Her eyes were bright green tonight, as the light from the embers in the fire reflected off them. He saw that she was working through what he had said.

“But you did. I can’t lie to you and tell you that I regret that, or that I’m sorry for kissing you in the first place. Whether it was fueled by the adrenaline of the night or it was something that would have happened eventually, I don’t know. What I do know is that it was a wonderful kiss and every time I see you I think about it. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it too,” he said.

“So where do we go from here?” she asked. She dropped the stick she’d been doodling with and looked up at him.

“I think that’s up to the two of us,” he said. “It could be that it was just a onetime fluke, and if we kiss again neither of us will feel a thing. Or it could be that there is an attraction between us that we are only just now discovering.”

“And how do you suggest we find out which it is?” she asked. She was looking down at the ground now.

“There’s really only one way to find out,” he said.

Putting his hand under her chin, he guided her eyes up to his. She stared back at him, then her expression changed. Her chin tilted up and her eyes filled with determination.

His lips touched hers for the briefest of moments and then she pulled away quickly.

“See—nothing. No fireworks, no angels singing. We’re fine,” she said.

Did she really think she was going to get away with that?

“That doesn’t count. I’ve had longer kisses from my Aunt Jo,” he said. “Now, are we going to do this right or are you too scared to find out the truth?”

“I’m not scared,” she grumbled.

He watched as she stuck that same determined mask on her face again. “Okay, I’m ready.”

He felt like a bull having a red flag waved before him.

The hell with it all.

He moved onto the log where she sat and took her face in both of his hands. Impatience drove his lips down to hers, and before she had time to react he had pushed his hands into her hair. Tearing off her hairband, he caught the thick red mass in his hands. His lips pressed into hers and when she opened her mouth his tongue slid in.

He had no time to wait for her response. He’d spent days thinking of kissing her, and if this was his only chance he would enjoy every moment of it. He felt her hands come up between them and feared she would push him away. When she gripped his shirt and pulled him closer he would have sworn he heard those angels she’d mentioned singing.

His tongue tangled with hers and he felt the need to delve deeper, faster. His hand had found the hem of her shirt before he realized what he was doing. Cool skin filled his hand as it worked its way up her chest.

Lacey released his shirt and covered his hand. Pulling back from her, he was surprised to find that she was almost lying in his lap. He removed his hand from under her shirt and she moved away from him. Though neither of them could talk yet, Lacey’s movement told him all he needed to know.

They sat there in silence as they both fought to fill their lungs with air, and then Lacey stood and walked away from him.

There was no way she could deny the attraction between the two of them, but that didn’t mean she liked it. And could he blame her? They’d had a safe relationship, and they both knew that Lacey liked to play it safe.

The clouds cleared from the sky and the moon shone down through the trees, bathing the ground in a soft light. Bending over the log, he could now see what Lacey had been scratching into the ground.

Ben’s name stared up at him accusingly.

He had to accept that his best friend, the love of Lacey’s life, would always be there between them. She had been married to the best man he had ever known, and Scott would always just be Ben’s best friend to her.

And did he really deserve to have it any other way?

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