“As the owner, you can get away with that,” Dylan said. “At least when you have Jess the Angel of Beer on the clock.”
Nate ignored the chatter. Ignored them. Just about ignored the food in front of him, but he figured that would get their notice. He shoved a distracted stream of fries in his mouth and rethought his decision on Sophie Alexander.
Looked like he wasn’t quite ready to walk away after all.
4
Sophie might still feel like her lungs had been used as a punching bag, but she’d never been the type to sit around and do nothing, and she wasn’t doing well with the prospect now.
She was going flipping nuts lying in this hospital bed. Going on forty-eight hours so far, and frankly, she was shocked they’d kept her this long. The nausea and headache were mostly gone, and the worst thing was pain in her throat and lungs, but lying here wouldn’t make them get better any faster.
She longed to be home in her small beachfront condo. Craved the familiarity and security of it as she never had before, even though she was a homebody through and through. It, too, would be quiet, but at least there she could move. Do something. Really, she wanted to be pretty much anywhere but stuck in this lonely, suffocating hospital room with nothing to do but watch daytime TV or think.
She’d never been much of a TV person, but compared to the thoughts knocking around in her brain, soap operas and talk shows didn’t seem so bad today. She’d had the television on for most of the morning, and though she had trouble concentrating on it, due to drifting off to sleep periodically, being hazy from pain meds, and having her mind wander when she was awake, the sound at least filled the room and made it less lonely.
Punching the volume up a couple levels, she tried to get interested in the dramatic woman on the screen’s diatribe, but within moments, Sophie’s mind was back on what she’d been trying to ignore for hours: she’d come this close to dying in a fire.
Dying.
How did someone even process that?
Had the fire department not found her at the exact moment they had, she likely would’ve lost consciousness in a matter of minutes and then died of asphyxiation. And then … what?
If she’d died, what would’ve become of Green Systems? Her company that specialized in making old, often historical structures more efficient and environmentally friendly? Her blood, sweat, tears, and livelihood for the past three years? What would have happened to her creation had she burned to ashes in that fire?
Yeah, she knew the answer. Nothing.
Green Systems would’ve gone away. Her name would live on in a couple of trade magazine articles from the recent past, for jobs she’d already done and awards she’d won, but the company itself… Poof. No more. And no one would likely miss it.
Her tastefully decorated two-bedroom condo would’ve been sold, her SUV sold, her personal belongings liquidated or trashed, since there was no one who’d be interested in them. No one who’d find any sentimental value in any aspect of her life.
And her funeral … that would’ve been a joke. Her assistant, Iona, would’ve shown up, and her hair girl, Lotti, if her schedule wasn’t booked solid with highlights and cuts. There were a few business associates Sophie had formed professional relationships with in the three years since she’d started Green Systems, but most of them were not local, and she doubted many of them cared enough to pay their final respects.
God. Enough of those thoughts. Enough what-ifs.
She had survived. The firefighter had found her in time. And though she’d never asked his name, his concerned eyes and his warm voice had been imprinted onto her brain. She’d have to make a point, after she was released, to track him down and thank him. Somehow.
How in the name of God was it possible to thank a person for saving your life?
She shuddered, and her head pounded harder. She wasn’t accustomed to being indebted to anyone, for small things, even, let alone such an enormous one.
Work was a much more comfortable thing to ponder, more routine, and sometimes when things were too vast and mind-blowing to grasp onto, routine was a good place to default to.
At four a.m., when she’d awakened mostly alert for the first time since the fire, she’d started a list of everything she could remember that was likely destroyed in her office. Hello, depression. Now she turned to a new page on the pharmaceutical-ad notepad the nurse had found for her and wrote the heading: To Do. Much less disheartening than To Replace.
It was a fight, but she managed to write down a couple of client names she knew she owed information. Her brain wasn’t cooperating because, no matter what she tried, it was kind of caught up on the whole if she’d died crap.
“Hey, you.” Iona spoke at the same moment she tapped on the open door and poked her head around the corner into Sophie’s room.
“Oh, thank God,” Sophie said, smiling for real for the first time since the fire as she took in her assistant’s familiar, shoulder-length, sand-colored hair and her pink, round cheeks. “Save me from the quiet.”
“Thank God is right.” Iona set down her bag and rushed to the side of the bed to hug Sophie. “Thank God you’re okay. You look good.”
“Is lying to me part of your job description?” Sophie asked, her smile fading to a grimace. “Because I look like I got dragged by a freight train.”
“You look better than a dead girl. Scared the stuffing out of me when I heard what happened! And then they wouldn’t let me in to see you. They’d only connect me to your room phone, which you didn’t answer. I should’ve told them I was your sister from the beginning.”
“I was out of it all day yesterday. Didn’t even hear the phone.”
