CHAPTER ONE

      SHE had to hide the evidence.

      Marissa Benson stared at the bouquets lining the counter of Hope City Hospital’s intensive care unit, hardly able to believe that her perfectly normal morning had become the opposite in the space of a few minutes. While the unexpected was only to be expected in any hospital, she had never dreamed that one minute she would be snowed under with doctors orders and the next she would be standing up to her earlobes in flower petals.

      “You must have had some date last night,” fellow nurse Kristi Thomas teased with a glint in her eyes. “I’ve never gone out with anyone who sent flowers the next day.”

      “We had a nice time,” Marissa said primly. Although she and Kristi were both single and often compared notes on their dating experiences, the details of her evening were still too special to share, even with someone as close as Kristi.

      Kristi leaned over to sniff a carnation. “Come on, lady. ’Fess up. Where did you find this guy?”

      Marissa grinned. “At the health spa. He took the treadmill next to mine.”

      Kristi grimaced. “Ouch. Exercise. Still…” Her tone grew thoughtful. “If working out yields results like this, I may have to reconsider. Does he have a footloose brother or cousin hanging around?”

      “No to the brother. Don’t know about the cousin.”

      “Well, find out. That is, if you ever get to the talking stage.”

      “We talk a lot,” Marissa protested at Kristi’s teasing wink. “In fact, last night we talked all though dinner and for hours after the community theatre performance.”

      Kristi smirked. “Yeah, right. If you say so.”

      “I do.” The words sent a fresh surge of heat to her face as she remembered…. “Look,” she said, certain that she was grinning like a loon, “it isn’t that I don’t want to tell you, but—”

      Kristi stepped up and hugged her. “I know. Some things are so good that you have to hold them inside and savor them for a while. I understand.”

      “Thanks.”

      “Just promise me this. When you’re ready to tell all, I’m first to hear the scoop.”

      Marissa laughed. “I promise.”

      “Now that you’ve hooked yourself a winner, throw any others you find my way.”

      “I will.”

      Kristi’s smile faded as she touched a rose petal. “It’s too bad these didn’t arrive before you went off duty. Now you have to stash them out of sight until you leave. And pronto.”

      It didn’t seem fair that such a thoughtful and flattering gesture would also create a monumental headache. Marissa sighed. “My thoughts exactly. If I wait until the end of my shift, Lorraine will go ballistic.”

      Lorraine Hawthorne was the sixty-two-year-old director of nursing who firmly believed that flowers didn’t belong in the ICU. If a patient was well enough to enjoy them, she claimed, then they didn’t belong in the unit. And while that might be true to a certain extent, a cheerful spray of color on the nurses’ station counter gave a spiritual boost to everyone who passed by.

      Unfortunately, a small, cheerful spray of color was one thing. Seven bouquets fell into the ostentatious category.

      “Any ideas?” Marissa asked.

      “Other than an empty patient room, not one.”

      “That would work, I suppose,” she said as she tried the suggestion on for size. “I could close the privacy curtains and no one would see.”

      “If the boss walks in, she’ll wonder why the drapes are pulled,” Kristi warned. “And if we get another patient…”

      Marissa didn’t need Kristi to finish her sentence. A new admission would only mean she’d have to move her flowers again. The place she chose had to be secure enough to avoid discovery for the entire day.

      “What are you going to do?” Kristi asked, her expression a mixture of concern, curiosity and envy.

      Marissa glanced at her floral line-up. While she was thrilled by Travis’s grandstand gesture, she wondered what he’d been thinking. Her work environment wasn’t