They didn’t look like they believed her, but she’d convinced them. She was good at convincing people when she set her mind to it.
Except for Jesse.
But then, Jesse was different. Special. He always had been. She’d known that from the moment she’d first seen him walk through the doors of the firm she worked for. Used to work for, she corrected herself. They’d fired her. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Except for Jesse. He was special.
Special. And hers.
He was so brave, so selfless. So willing to put everyone else first. That’s why she loved him. Or at least that was one of the reasons. There were so many. She’d need a lifetime to count them. A lifetime that they would spend together.
Once she knew where the ambulance was going, she took off, availing herself of shortcuts in order to get there before the vehicle arrived. She succeeded, beating out the ambulance by a couple of minutes. Even using the siren, it had been slow going. The streets were clogged with lunchtime traffic and there was nowhere for the cars to pull over.
She’d counted on that, on the ambulance arriving at the rear E.R. entrance just as she had. She was in time to see Jesse being taken in.
Because there was so much activity in the immediate area, what with two other ambulances arriving on the heels of the first and the usual general commotion that occurred around an emergency room at midday, she managed to slip in without even being noticed.
She’d gotten very good at slipping in without being noticed.
Just like a little fly on the wall, she thought, her lips framing a smile that didn’t quite move into her soul.
When the fluffy-looking blonde in the lab coat approached Jesse, she’d felt a sharp flare of temper, a surge of red-hot jealousy, but she banked it down. Her anger could be kept in abeyance as long as she thought that the woman was there to help Jesse. Jesse’s wellbeing came first. Always. Besides, he didn’t like shallow types like the blonde. He liked women like her.
He liked her.
Loved her, she silently corrected.
As the minutes ticked away, she finally managed to pass by the room where Jesse was being treated, peering in through the window. He wasn’t looking in her direction, so he didn’t see her. Which was good. But it was so hard to resist the temptation to rush in, to throw her arms around him and tell him that she would take care of him. That she was so proud of him for saving that old man’s property but that he must never, never do that again. He could have been killed. What if that horrible man he’d brought down had had a gun?
She couldn’t bring herself to think about it, it was just too awful.
She hated that man. Hated him for bruising Jesse’s beautiful skin, for making Jesse hurt his head. If she could have, she would have made the thief pay for what he did. She would have stabbed him, then laughed as she watched the life dribble out of him. Someone like that didn’t deserve anything better.
But those stupid policemen kept hanging around. They’d probably arrest her if she punished that man and gave him what he so richly deserved, what he had coming to him.
Jesse had almost seen her when he left the hospital, but she was too fast for him. She was certain that if he had seen her, he would have recognized her even though she wore a disguise.
The heart sees what the eyes don’t.
And he loved her, she knew that. He was just a little confused, that’s all.
He’d loved her once and you just don’t stop loving someone. You don’t.
She’d slipped out of the hospital close behind him when he’d left, but she’d managed to mix in with all the cameramen and reporters outside. She’d been tempted to shove one or two of the women. Women with their perfect hair and their pretty makeup, all trying to get close to Jesse. But she didn’t. She’d kept her cool. Jesse would have been proud of her had he known.
He’d know soon.
Walking back to her apartment, she clenched and unclenched the hands that were thrust deep in her pockets. She had to be patient. She’d make her move soon, but not yet.
Not yet.
It was oh so hard being patient. But it was a small price to pay for forever.
She was sure Jesse would agree.
Tania chewed on the inside of her lower lip, staring at the watch sitting on the desk in front of her. She’d almost forgotten about it until she’d shoved her hands into her pockets as she’d walked out of yet another trauma room and her fingers had come in contact with the leather band.
Jesse’s watch.
In all the commotion this morning and his hurry to get to his meeting, had he just forgotten it? Or had he left it behind on purpose, left it behind so that he’d have an excuse to see her again?
Tania sighed. She had to stop being so paranoid. Sometimes an oversight was just an oversight, nothing more.
Even if Jesse had orchestrated this, the man had no way of knowing that a) she’d be the one to find the watch, which she actually wasn’t, and b) that she’d opt to deliver his watch back to him in person. The most logical way to get this back to Jesse was just to have someone ship it out, the way she’d already mentioned to Shelly when the nurse had brought the watch to her.
But then, she wasn’t the type to make someone do things for her that were not in some way directly related to hospital procedures. And even then, she had a tendency to try to do everything herself. Her sisters teased her and called her an overachiever. On occasion, Sasha had bandied about the word “controlling,” trying, she knew, to make her come around and relax.
She supposed that “controlling” was actually more on target as far as assessing her behavior. She’d always been an overachiever, they all were in her family. But controlling, well, that was a later development. One designed to make her feel more secure.
If you controlled everything around you, or at least as much as possible, then you never had anything unexpected happening to you. You stayed safe. She had made a vow at seventeen never to be at the mercy of circumstances—and especially not at the mercy of any person.
She eyed the watch again, then made up her mind. Her endless shift was just about to finally come to an end. It would be no great hardship for her to drop this off on her way home—provided that the man didn’t live in Connecticut, she mused.
Tania laughed softly to herself. If he did, this was definitely going into the mail. She was not about to go out of her way for any man, even if that man happen to be drop-dead gorgeous. That sort of thing no longer carried any weight with her.
Just the opposite was true.
Rising from the desk and dropping the watch back in her pocket, she went to outpatient registration to get Jesse Steele’s home address.
He didn’t live in Connecticut, or any of the other outlining states, either. As it turned out, when Sally Richmond “conveniently” turned away from the computer screen to let her look without actually saying she could, Tania discovered that Jesse Steele lived right here in Manhattan, just the way she and her sisters did. Jotting the address down on an index card, she whispered, “Thank you” to Sally and slipped away from the outpatient registration area.
Hanging up her lab coat in her locker and resuming her civilian life, Tania took the crosstown bus to the address she’d written down. She’d taken care to write it