“You still have the ring?”
“Of course I still have the ring.” Her fingers started to shake.
“On you?”
Her whole body trembled.Where was the ring, where was the ring, where was the ring?“Glove compartment,” she blurted, her heart pounding out the truth in her chest like a marching band.
Not in the glove compartment, not in the glove compartment, oh sweet mercy, not in the glove compartment.
He sank back on his pillow with a sigh. “That’s a relief.”
“Hospitals, you know,” she said with a choked laugh. “Always losing things. Dentures. Glasses. Lives. You think I was going to bring something irreplaceable inside of these walls?”
Oh, she might vomit.
“Good thinking,” he said with a yawn, followed by an even wider yawn, his eyes drifting shut.
“You need rest.” McKenna stumbled for the door. “I’m going to head out and”—find the ring, find the ring, find the ring!—“take care of a few things. See you tomorrow.”
Soon as he mumbled a goodbye, McKenna dashed out of his room, praying Oliver was too tired to think and that Nate was still in the emergency department less than an hour away.
MCKENNA
“Okay, yes. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Obviously I realize now that sneaking a priceless family heirloom inside Nate’s pocket without him knowing wasn’t my best decision. But I think we can all agree that it was a pretty impressive move, right? I mean, I unzipped a side pocket, slipped the ring inside, and zipped the pocket shut without him knowing. Who else can pull off that sort of feat?
“I see you’ve written down the wordcriminal. That’s literally the only thing you’ve written so far. And now you’re underlining it. Great.”
NATE
“Maybe that last kiss was a little more distracting than I originally implied. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Please let me find the ring. Please let Nate still be there. Please don’t ever let Oliver know I snuck his twenty-thousand-dollar diamond inside a stranger’s pocket.McKenna hadn’t stopped praying since leaving the hospital.
How could she have been so stupid? So careless?
Maybe someday a neurology doctor could help unravel the mysteries of the human brain and explain how she forgot the one thing that had been at the forefront of her mind all day.
Until then McKenna was going to keep praying.Please let me find the ring. Please let Nate still be there. Please don’t ever let Oliver know I snuck his twenty-thousand-dollar diamond inside a stranger’s pocket.
“Nate!” McKenna yelled, bursting into the ER where she’d caught a glimpse of him before she followed Oliver to the other hospital. “Nate!” she yelled, rushing straight to the check-in counter. “I’m looking for Nate.”
“Last name?” said the lady behind the check-in counter.
“Boston. Or do you mean his? I don’t know. Bloody eye. Bloody leg. He was the bleeder that came in with the breather. Is he still here? Please tell me he’s still here.”
McKenna didn’t wait for the lady behind the check-in desk to say anything. McKenna could already tell by her confused expression that she wasn’t going to provide answers fast enough. McKenna shoved open the double doors to the department. “Nate?” She started flinging back curtains.
“Ma’am,” a stern male voice said behind her. “You can’t be running around back here.”
“I need to find Nate.”
“Nate who?” The stern voice belonged to an even sterner face. Or maybe it was the security outfit that made him look stern.
“Bloody eye. Bloody leg. Bleeder who came in with the breather. He has something extremely valuable that I need to get back.”
“You don’t know his last name?”
This was the same problem she’d run into when she tried calling during her drive here from the hospital in Omaha. “I don’t know the last name, but I know he wasjusthere.” Good grief. These people acted like they worked in the busiest ER in the country, seeing thousands of patients a day. She wagered they didn’t see more than a dozen patients in a week. “He came in with the big guy? One of the river people?”
