It had been a long road to that label. He still felt no small pride whenever he heard it applied to him. “Yes, I am.”
“You know—” Isaac leaned his head in as if he was about to impart a dark secret “—my house could use expanding…”
Jesse couldn’t help laughing. Isaac was harmless and well-meaning, if pushy. He put his arm across the older man’s shoulders, leading him out of the area and to the outpatient station so they could both get on with their lives—especially him.
“I think we need to get out of everyone’s way, Mr. Epstein.” The police had indicated that he could come in later and give his statement, for which he was extremely grateful. “And I need to get to my office.”
They weren’t going to hold the meeting for him forever, he thought. He had a change of clothing at the firm, in case he had to take a sudden flight out on business. The suit might be wrinkled, but anything was better than what he was currently wearing.
“Let me make a call,” Isaac offered. “My cousin’s son, John, he owns a limousine service. You can arrive to your office in style.”
“I can arrive on the bus,” Jesse countered as he walked down the hallway with the older man.
Isaac released a sigh that was twice as large as he was. “I never thought I would meet anyone more stubborn than my Myra.”
Jesse tried to keep a straight face as he said, “Life is full of surprises, Mr. Epstein.”
“Isaac, please,” the man corrected him as they turned a corner.
A little more than two hours later the flow of patients temporarily became a trickle. It was then that Shelly Fontaine, a full-figured nurse with lively eyes and a quick, infectious smile, came up to her, dangling a watch in the air in front of her.
“What would you like me to do with this, Dr. Ski?” The name was one Tania had suggested after Shelly’s tongue had tripped her up several times while trying to pronounce her actual surname.
Glancing up from the computer where she was inputting last-minute notes, Tania hardly saw the object in question.
“Have Emilio take it down to Lost and Found where everything goes,” she murmured. And then her mind did a double take. “Hold it,” she called to Shelly who moved rather fast when she wanted to. “Let me see that again.” She held her hand out for the watch. Upon closer examination, she recognized it. The timepiece was old-fashioned with a wind-up stem. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, it had come off Jesse Steele’s wrist. She had assumed he’d put it back on after she’d examined the scratch beneath the band. Obviously not. But just to be on the sure side, she asked, “Where did you get this?”
“Trauma bay one.” Shelly nodded back toward the room where, even now, another patient was being wheeled in on a gurney. It looked as if the flow was picking up again. “You were taking care of that hunk in there.” Shelly’s mouth widened in a huge, wistful grin. “I thought you might know where to find him. Assuming this is his and not some patient who was there before him.”
“No, this is his,” Tania said with certainty. “I recognize it.”
It would be too much of a coincidence for there to be two watches like this worn by patients occupying the same room on the same day. Rather than give the watch back to the nurse, Tania slipped the watch into her pocket. Hitting several more keys, she saved what she’d input and rose from the desk.
“His address has to be on file,” she said, thinking out loud. She knew for a fact that she’d seen it written on the information form the nurse had taken before she’d come in to treat the man. “I’ll look it up and have someone mail it to him.”
Shelly sighed soulfully as she followed her away from the desk. “I’d like to mail me to him.”
“Shelly, you’re married,” Tania pointed out.
“I’m married, I’m not blind. I can look. And maybe lust,” the older woman added mischievously. “It’s not like Raymond doesn’t look every woman over the age of eighteen up and down when he passes them.”
Obviously not every marriage was made in heaven, Tania thought.
“Hey, you ready?” Kady called, coming around the corner like a runaway steamroller.
Tania made a show of looking at the watch on her wrist. “For lunch or dinner?” It was a blatant reference to the fact that her older sister was more than half an hour late.
“Sorry, it’s been crazy today. I had to perform an emergency cardiac ablation. This man had an attack of atrial fibrillation that just wouldn’t stop. I know I should have called, but there wasn’t any time—”
“Save your apologies.” Tania grabbed her purse from the drawer beneath the nurse’s desk. “You lucked out. It’s been hectic here all morning, too.”
“Did it have anything to do with the camera crews outside?” Kady wanted to know.
She hadn’t seen the light of day since she’d walked in yesterday. Armageddon could have swept the street of Manhattan and she wouldn’t have known about it. “Camera crews?”
“Yeah, outside the E.R.” Only extremely tight security, instituted right after the serial killings that had rocked the hospital last January, had kept the pushiest of the crew members out. “Something about a hero saving a dealer’s diamonds. Security kept them out, but I heard that the media swarmed all over the guy when he finally left the hospital.”
Tania shook her head. “Poor man probably never got to go to his meeting.”
Kady stopped walking and looked at her sister, confused. “Meeting? What meeting?” And then the answer dawned on her. “Did you treat him?”
Stopping by the elevator, Tania pressed for the basement where the cafeteria was located. “I sewed up his scalp wound.”
Kady sighed. “Some girls have all the luck,” she teased. Tania looked at her and for one moment Kady could have bitten off her tongue. Because for one unguarded moment, Tania had allowed the pain to come through and register in her eyes.
But the next, Tania was flashing the wide smile she’d always been known for and nodding her head in agreement. “Yeah, we do. Your turn to buy lunch, by the way.”
Kady was relieved that the moment had passed. “I distinctly remember that it was your turn.”
“Maybe you should be marrying a neurosurgeon instead of a bodyguard. There’s something going wrong with your memory.”
The elevator arrived and the doors opened. Kady put her arm around Tania’s shoulders and guided her in. “Not today, little sister, not today.”
Chapter 3
She’d just wanted to make sure he was all right.
She’d been a safe distance away, trailing discreetly behind him—far enough away not to be noticed, close enough to see—when Jesse had stopped that thief.
Her breath had caught in her throat as she’d watched the two grapple on the ground. And it had taken everything she’d had not to run up to Jesse when she’d seen the blood trickling along the side of his head. She’d wanted to clean the wound with her handkerchief and make it better with her kisses.
In all probability, she would have run up to him to do just that, but the ambulance had arrived in the blink of an eye. When it had, rather than step forward she’d melted back in with the crowd. That was when she’d read the logo on the side of the vehicle. It had been dispensed from Patience Memorial Hospital.
She