The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove #1)

He hesitated, which was odd for Mateo, who was a straight shooter. Then he slid her a look. “Professional interest?”

“Of course,” she said, because personal interest would yield her nothing thanks to privacy laws.

Mateo looked at her for a long beat, then shook his head. “Damn, woman. You and that poker face. But you know the drill. If you want info on a patient, you’re going to have to see if he’ll allow visitors and talk to him yourself.”

She sighed. “Or you could just give me a hint.”

“I’ll say this. You and Levi both got damn lucky.”

“You know his name.”

“Yeah. I know his name.”

“You worked on him in the ER?”

“I did. And also . . . we go way back.” And then he went back to typing, shoulders a little atypically tight.

Seemed everyone had their secrets.

As for her and Levi getting lucky, she wasn’t sure luck had anything to do with it. Levi had thrown himself across the gondola to protect her body with his. If he hadn’t, he’d be fine. And she’d be . . . not fine. “I’ll take lucky any day of the week,” she said softly.

Mateo’s eyes softened. “Same. And since you’re not going to ask on the details about yourself, I’ll just tell you. Your wrist is sprained and the contusions on your jaw and cheek, while probably painful, are nothing to worry about.”

“So you’re releasing me to go home and take a nap for real.”

“Yes.” Mateo pushed the keyboard away and turned back to her. “How you going to get there?”

“I don’t know yet.” The old Subaru she drove, which was Charlotte’s spare car that she always lent to Jane when she was in town, was still in North Diamond’s parking lot. Problem was, she’d lost her keys at some point between the gondola and the hospital.

“I’ll take you home,” Mateo said. “I was off thirty minutes ago. I stuck around to spring you free.”

She smiled at him. “You’re the best, Dr. Hottie Patottie.”

He face-palmed. “You promised you’d make all the nurses stop calling me that.”

One of the five urgent care clinics she rotated through, Sierra North, was attached to the hospital. There was some staff crossover, and she knew a lot of the same nurses he did. “Oh, I got them to stop.” She hopped off the cot. “That was just for me. I enjoy watching you squirm.”

“You’re a sick woman.”

“Tell me about it. Let’s go.”

Mateo went to get his stuff and Jane took a stroll down the ER hallway, gait purposeful so people would assume she was on official business.

She needed to see Levi for herself and know he was okay on top of lucky. Because actually, thinking about it, it would just be just plain rude to not check in . . .

He wasn’t in any of the ER bays. Wasn’t in Imaging either. She found him in a patient room, hooked up to an IV, asleep. “Thanks for saving my life,” she said softly. “I owe you one.”

He didn’t give so much as an eye flicker, so she turned to go and . . . bounced off Mateo’s chest.

He gave her a long look as he shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. He didn’t say anything, not on the walk out of the hospital and not when they walked across the snowy, slippery parking lot to his car. On the heavily foot–trafficked path, the thick layer of newly fallen wet snow crunched beneath her feet, giving away slightly with each step like a sponge. A few snowflakes drifted down from the sky utterly silently, looking innocuous, landing on her head. She tilted up her face, feeling them settle on her eyelashes, gentle as a kitten’s kiss, making her marvel at the difference between this morning’s weather and yesterday’s.

He turned on the engine and cranked the heat to high, aiming the vents at her before finally pulling out of the lot.

They stopped at the Cake Walk, which was Sunrise Cove’s local bakery. Jane was convinced the place was actually heaven on earth. She quickly grabbed Charlotte’s favorite muffin and coffee, and then they got on the road again.

Slowly. God, so painfully slowly. She looked over at Mateo. “You know, for a guy who works in the ER, moving at the speed of light all day long, you drive like a grandma.”

“You’re just panicked because you want to beat Charlotte home so you can shower and get to bed before she indeed freaks over what happened to you and then mothers you to death.”

“Yes! Join my panic, won’t you?”

He laughed and turned onto their street. Then he stopped laughing. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh? What uh-oh?” She leaned forward, trying to peer out at the bright morning, but she didn’t have her sunglasses. Sun on snow glare was the absolute worst. “You know I don’t like uh-oh.”

Mateo pointed to the car in front of them.

Charlotte’s.

Shit. Jane sank down low into her seat. “Just park and get out of the car and leave me in here. I’ll sneak out once she’s inside.”

Mateo made chicken sounds.

“Oh, like you’re in the clear. You’re still totally in the doghouse with her for clearing our driveway of snow in that last storm.”

“Yeah, and maybe you can explain that to me. She actually put the snow back.”

Jane laughed at his confused expression. Men were slow sometimes. “She doesn’t like to accept help. She’s . . . stubborn.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Okay, true. Jane was incredibly stubborn. She knew this about herself. She wasn’t sorry. “Just don’t let her see me.”

Mateo’s and Charlotte’s houses shared a driveway that split off at the top to two different parking areas. There was enough room for two lanes of cars at the top, but Mateo stopped right next to Charlotte’s car.

“Wow,” Jane said, still scrunched down low, out of sight. “Seriously?”