Page 25 of Too Hot to Sleep
Of course, when she held up the needle she was going to stick into his arm, he knew why she was smiling.
"Careful, ma'am," he said. "I'm a sensitive—owwww!"
At last he was the recipient of that radiant smile. "That didn't hurt now, did it?"
He grimaced as she inserted the tube leading to a plasma bag into the end of the syringe. "Not much more than a hot poker in the eye."
"Since your blood pressure is up, you should bleed quickly," she said cheerfully.
"I suppose that's good?"
She smirked. "Unless you're run down by a police car."
He smirked back. "And brought to you for help?"
"I help anypersonwho comes into the E.R.," she said, "even an impertinent, bossy person."
He wagged his eyebrows. "Oh, but I can be an animal sometimes."
"Just bleed, will you?"
But she seemed pleased that she'd gotten a rise out of him. The problem was, with all her fidgeting and adjusting, she was getting too much of a rise out of him. Her phone call tonight couldn't come soon enough.
"Did you find the dog's owner?" she asked.
Her voice sounded not quite friendly but... normal, at least. "I called, but Crash wasn't their dog."
"Crash?"
He shrugged his free shoulder. "Figured I'd better name the little fellow seeing as he might be staying at my place for a while."
She stroked the tube in a pulling motion, facilitating his blood being drawn into the bag. "Does that pose a problem space wise?"
A few seconds passed before he realized she was being conversational. "Um, no, my place is old, but pretty big. And it's just me living there."
"Oh."
So much for conversing. "Do you live alone?" he asked.
"That's absolutely none of your business."
He'd botched it again. "I meant do you live with your family?"
"No."
Not a chatty Cathy, this one. "Do you have a big family?"
"One sister, two nieces, all in Denver."
He remained silent in hopes she would elaborate.
"My father died several years ago, but I still have my mother. She lives with my sister most of the time."
She looked wistful and Ken thought of all the glad and sad moments in her life he would never have a chance to share, the laughter and tears he would never have a chance to witness. Georgia Adams made him feel proprietary—in a noble way, of course. Well, okay, maybeallof his intentions weren't so noble.
"How about you?" she asked.
Ken blinked, so lost in her stunning blue eyes that he'd forgotten what they'd been talking about. "How about me what?"
