“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?”
“Hey, if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.” He opened his door, got out, and . . . didn’t shut his door.
“Payback sucks,” she warned him, then braced to get fussed over. But somehow she got lucky, because when Charlotte got out of her car, she didn’t so much as glance over at Mateo’s. Instead, she stood there, hands on hips, in her midnight-blue scrubs, her white doctor coat, and a thick pink down jacket, unzipped, which billowed behind her in the chilly breeze. Same with her blond hair, loose from its usual bun, flying around her face like a halo, giving her the look of an animated action hero. She gave Mateo a single nod and said “Doctor” in a tone so chilly Jane almost got frostbite.
“Doctor,” Mateo repeated back to her, sounding amused.
Charlotte stared at him, but Mateo didn’t turn to stone. “It’s going to snow again later.” She said this in that classy southern drawl of hers, the one that always sounded like maybe she was on the way to an opera or something equally sophisticated and elegant. “When it does, don’t even think about plowing my driveway.”
“Just trying to help,” Mateo said lightly.
“Who said I needed help?” She shivered and then zipped up her pink down jacket.
Mateo’s lips twitched, and Jane knew his amusement resulted from the fact that the badass Charlotte had one weakness—for anything pink. Then he slid a knowing look at the strings of twinkling Christmas lights lining Charlotte’s house’s eaves.
Charlotte was back to hands on hips. “They’re hard to get down.”
“I offered to help you.”
“Maybe I just want to be ready for the holidays ahead of time.”
“It’s only February.”
She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Mateo said. “You don’t need any help on anything, ever.”
“Now you’re getting it. And anyway, I don’t see you plowing Stan’s driveway. Or Peter’s.”
Stan and Peter, both elderly men, were neighbors. And Jane knew that Mateo had indeed plowed their driveways as well, many times. But Mateo didn’t tell Charlotte that or try to defend himself. He just stood there with a small smile on his face. Like Charlotte being all hoity-toity and contrary somehow amused him.
Jane had never understood why Charlotte didn’t like Mateo. The woman liked almost everyone, but if you were one of the few unlucky ones—well then, she could cut you dead with a single slice of her icy blue eyes. And those eyes were frigid right now. She might be a sweet steel magnolia who never swore in public or wore white after Labor Day, but she never, ever backed down from a confrontation.
The cold air coming in the open car door was sucking the breath from Jane’s lungs. Plus, she was hungry, tired, and needed to pee. With a sigh, she got out.
Charlotte glanced over and paled.
Jane hoisted the coffee and pastry bag. “Look, breakfast!”
Charlotte drew in a deep breath before sending Mateo a hard look that had something else in it as well, something Jane couldn’t place for certain but thought was maybe . . . hurt?
“It’s not what you think,” Mateo told her calmly.
That was when Jane realized she was wrapped in Mateo’s jacket—which covered her from chin to her thighs—hood up, arriving home with the guy at just past dawn, like two teenagers trying to sneak back into their house without getting caught. “Definitely not what you’re thinking,” Jane said, with a face that made Mateo give out a rough laugh.
“Thanks,” he said dryly and then turned to Charlotte. “She landed in the ER while you were in surgery.”
“In the ER? Oh my God.” Charlotte moved quickly toward Jane. “What happened? Are you okay?”