LITMIR.BIZ

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her and doubtless Sean, too. To the life-and-death battles going on that very minute inside the hospital.

      He didn’t move, didn’t speak, and she wondered if maybe he just wanted to be alone. But after looking for him the past hour, she was going to offer comfort if it killed her. Then leave if it wasn’t welcome.

      “How are you doing?” she asked.

      “Fine.”

      Okay... She drew the cool breeze into her lungs and tried again. “What do you think about Emma’s prognosis?”

      “Your guess is as good as mine. Liver laceration’s been repaired, ruptured spleen removed. C-section’s closed. Chest tube’s not draining any more blood, so they’ve removed it. Broken arm’s been put back together, and her broken ribs are going to hurt like crazy, but I imagine she’ll barely notice, considering everything else.”

      He didn’t have to say the situation could still get worse fast. Why wouldn’t he look at her so she could see his expression? His tone was flat and emotionless, giving away nothing. It reminded her too much of the way he’d sounded after she’d told him it was over between them.

      “Baby seems healthy, at least,” she said, forging on. “Remarkable, really.”

      “Yeah.”

      “Did Emma tell you what she’d decided to name him?”

      “No.”

      Not a surprise, really, since Sean had made his dismay over Emma’s life choices very clear, and she’d distanced herself from him the past months because of it.

      “She’d decided on Wilson—your mother’s maiden name. She laughed about it, saying his uncle Sean would think it was a weird first name, but she plans to call him Will. I think Will Latham has a nice sound to it, don’t you?”

      “Mom will like that.”

      At least he’d answered in more than a monosyllable, but he still didn’t turn to look at her. Guess there hadn’t been much point in her coming after all.

      “That moment in the ER when we thought we’d lost Emma. That was...” She stopped, because she couldn’t come up with a word even close to how it had felt. She knew how much he loved his sister, and pressed her hand to his warm back as she had earlier, thinking maybe that connection would help him let go and share. “That must have been incredibly hard for you.”

      “Hard?” He suddenly swung to her, and the surprise of it had her taking a step back. He grasped her arms and pulled her flat against him, practically knocking her breath from her lungs. The dark eyes staring down into hers were again fierce, anguished, his features taut granite. “Damn it, Bree. You were in that car with her. It could have been you, too. You lying there dead on that table. I could have lost all three of you at once, in one second. Might never have seen my nephew, might never have been able to give my sister grief about her choices or her life again. Might never have been able to see your beautiful face and feel so mad at you I could barely keep from going ballistic. So angry that you left me I wanted to punch something.”

      His voice cracked on some of the words before his arms wrapped tightly around her and his mouth came down hard on hers.

      Bree curled her fingers into his scrub shirt and let herself feel every emotion in his kiss. The fear, the anguish. The frustration and anger and pain. Everything she’d felt, too, from the second she’d been able to focus enough to look across her car console. To see the mangled door pressing in on Emma. Everything she’d felt in the emergency room as everyone desperately worked to keep Emma alive. To deliver Will alive.

      Everything she’d felt when they’d broken off the relationship that had seemed so foolishly perfect. Today’s intense emotions were confusingly tangled up with Sean and their past. From their instantaneous attraction and passion to the final argument six months ago, and that anger and frustration and pain had been nearly as unbearable as today’s.

      Sean was holding her body so close against his, she wasn’t sure where he ended and she began, but his kiss began to change. It felt less about all those consuming emotions, and more about a deep relief mingling with the simple and profound connection they used to have. Softening into a tenderness that flipped Bree’s aching heart inside out, reminding her with excruciating clarity how good it had been between them. How delicious and wonderful and like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

      “Bree.” His mouth barely separated from hers enough to whisper the word. “Bree.”

      His fingers slipped into her hair, gently holding the back of her head as his lips caressed hers again so sweetly now, so leisurely, it weakened her knees and made her heart thud in slow, heavy strokes as the kiss changed again. Still sweet, still tender, but deeper now, stealing every molecule of breath from her lungs. Shaking, she slid her hands up his chest to cup the sides of his strong neck, to feel the warmth of his skin.

      How could she survive without this?

      Through her misty, single-minded focus on the feel of him and the taste of him, she became vaguely aware of a rhythmic sound, growing louder. The drone of an engine and the whup-whup of helicopter blades. Somehow, she managed to separate her mouth from his and open her eyes to see Sean’s lids lifting at the same time. His eyes were black, glittering like onyx, staring at her. His face was still tight, his jaw clenched. His chest heaved against hers as they stared at one another.

      Bree took that moment to memorize his face, and, even as she did, inwardly mocked herself. Memorize it? Who was she kidding? Every curve and angle was forever etched deep in her mind and heart, and the vision of it appeared, unwelcome, all too often as it was.

      Still, they just stood there, and she couldn’t make herself pull away, even though her preservation instincts told her she should. Reopen the wound on her heart? Their kiss and current closeness had made doubly sure of that, with some serious bleeding sure to follow.

      The roar of the chopper landing on the helipad, the wind whipping her hair into her eyes and across both their faces, finally forced them to slowly separate. Sean briefly shut his eyes, and his chest lifted in another deep breath before he looked at her again, wordlessly grasping her elbow to lead her across the asphalt to the elevator.

      Bree wanted to bang her head against the metal doors. She supposed a kiss between them should have been expected after all the big emotions of the day. But, oh, how she wished they hadn’t, because she didn’t need another ache inside her body to join the outer ones hurting plenty at that moment.

      Sean stood in silence as he punched the button to the NICU floor and they didn’t speak as it lowered there. And what was there to say, after all, that hadn’t already been expressed one way or another? With that “another” way having left her legs still stupidly wobbling.

      She followed him down the corridor, her attention instantly caught by how sexily disheveled his thick, dark hair was. Noting the width of his shoulders tugging at his shirt, how incredibly good the man looked in scrubs. The acrid hurt that he was no longer hers—had never really been hers—threatened to creep its way inside her internal organs all over again, and that really ticked her off.

      Get over it. It wasn’t meant to be.

      Resolutely, she turned her focus to the baby as they approached his incubator. A feeling of utter exhaustion began to seep through her, leaving every muscle a little limp. Between the accident itself, the crises of Emma and the baby in the ER, and the mixed emotions of being with Sean, she was physically and emotionally spent. Her next shift started in a mere six hours, and, if she was going to be functional enough to work, she had to get some sleep.

      With any luck, it would be the deep kind of sleep little Will seemed to be enjoying. So still, he appeared to not even be breathing, but the steady beep of the monitors reassuringly showed he was fine. Which meant she had to spend only a few more minutes with Sean, and then she could say goodbye. If all went well, Emma would improve and be out of Intensive Care fairly soon, and Bree’s interactions with Sean would be brief and limited. Then, in eight days, off to Honolulu for her surf competition, new

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