“Oh, okay. Don’t mention the blanket pjs then.”
“No talking.”
She sighed and closed her eyes, wincing as the cuff expanded. She heard the tick, tick of the numbers going up. When the tension loosened around her bicep, she opened her eyes. Josh was adding another notation on his phone.
“If it’s high, it’s because of Jenny and her book.” After her near panic attack over Brad, her blood pressure was probably off the charts. “There’s no way this thing is going to die down when people find out she’s related to the Seaton sisters.”
“It’s low.”
“That’s great.”
“No, it’s not. It’s too low. Then again, I’m not the expert. You were hypothermic so this might be in the normal range. Can you turn around and pull up your top?” he asked without meeting her gaze.
“Why would I do that?”
He held up the stethoscope. She waited for him to make a joke, saying something about them playing doctor when they were kids. It wouldn’t matter that they hadn’t. Josh liked nothing better than to get a rise out of her. When he didn’t follow up with a joke, she lifted her top. Obviously, they were both uncomfortable, so she might as well get it over with.
He pressed the stethoscope’s cold drum to her back.
“Geez, you could’ve warmed it up.”
That earned her a shush and an order to cough. She sighed and then did as he said. Three times.
“No crackles or wheezing.” He added the positive news to the other readings before texting it to her brother.
Cal responded almost immediately. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“I’m not going back to the hospital. I overdid it today but tell him I promise to rest tomorrow. I won’t visit with anyone.” It sounded like a dream day. No making small talk, and she could stay in bed with Brad all day.
“A perfect day in the life of Em,” Josh said with a laugh. “You could stay in your pjs, not talk to anyone, and watch Stranger Things all day and night.”
She shrugged. “So what if it is.” She tapped a finger on his phone. “Tell him.”
“Cal didn’t say anything about the hospital. He just wanted to let me know that they’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“Oh, okay, that’s good.” She chewed on her bottom lip. She didn’t want to mention the dating thing in front of her brother and Bri. “So, I’ve been thinking I should maybe start putting myself out there again.”
He stared at her like she was speaking a foreign language.
“You know, like dating. And I was wondering if you—”
With a pained expression on his face, he slowly shook his head. “I can’t, Em. You’re an amazing woman. I admire and respect you. But you and me, we’re like family.”
Her mouth fell open, and he took her hand in his. “This isn’t what you want. You just think you do because I saved you. What you feel for me is gratitude, not love.”
She pulled her hand free. “What are you talking about? I didn’t say I love you or that I—”
“Yeah, you did. You looked right at me in the ambulance and told me you loved me.”
There was no way she told Josh she loved him. She searched through her memories of last night. They were foggy but she faintly remembered telling Brad she loved him just before they off-loaded her from the ambulance… and Brad had been standing behind Josh.
“Whatever. I can’t be held accountable for what I said last night. You were there, you’d saved my life, and I was grateful.” She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You sure about that?”
“Of course, I’m sure.”
“Okay, but, Em, you just said you wanted to date me.”
“No. I said I was thinking I should start dating. And before you interrupted me, I was going to ask if you knew anyone.”
“You want me to set you up?”
She hadn’t but the idea held some appeal. Josh could handle everything. All she had to do was show up for the date. “Yeah. I do.”
He surprised her with a gentle smile. She’d expected him to tease her. “Are you sure this is what you want? I heard Todd, Gwen, and Abby telling you it’s time you put yourself back out there but the only one who knows that is you, Em. There’s no time line on grief.”
“You think it’s too soon?”
“Only you can say. Everyone’s different. My situation wasn’t the same as yours. Amber didn’t die, but I did love her.” He raised a shoulder. “I guess that makes me an idiot after everything I found out but the heart wants what it wants. It took me two years before I was ready to start dating again.”
This was a side of Josh she didn’t often see. “Did it help? Dating, I mean?”
He thought about it for a minute and then nodded. “Yeah, it did. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy at first. I’d been out of the dating game for almost five years.”
He’d been out of the dating game a lot longer than she had. Although he’d probably had a lot more experience than her to begin with. She’d only dated two other men before she met Brad.
Josh had started dating again around the time she’d moved back home, a little more than a year ago. “Is it easier now? Do you still miss Amber?”
“I thought it was going pretty well until last night.” He angled his head to the side. “Have you ever heard anyone say I was a heartbreaker?”
“Man ho, a couple times. But heartbreaker, no, I don’t think so.”
“Seriously?”
He seemed genuinely baffled, and she held back a laugh. “It’s a small town, and you do date a lot, Josh.”
“I like women, and I’m a social guy. I like going out and having a good time. But I don’t want anything serious, and around here, if you date someone more than a couple times, people start asking when you’re getting married.” He put his cell phone on the coffee table. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a small-town thing. At our ages, people expect you to settle down and start a family. But it didn’t work out very well for me the first time.”
Em had moved to Tennessee for college, and after her mom died, she rarely visited her hometown so she hadn’t met Josh’s ex-wife. She hadn’t been able to take time off work to come home for their wedding either. She’d heard stories about Amber, of course, but she wasn’t big on gossip and routinely shut it down. Her brother was the same but she knew Cal hadn’t been Amber’s number-one fan. Although, like Em, Cal hadn’t been living in Highland Falls when Josh was with Amber. Cal had moved back to Highland Falls only a couple years ago.
Em was so used to Josh and his easygoing charm and teasing smile that it threw her to see this serious, vulnerable side of him. “Do you still love her?”
“Good question.” He rubbed his hand along the back of the couch. “In a way, I guess I’ll always love her. At least the woman I thought I’d married.”
“You don’t sound like you’ve moved on.”
“It’s always harder to move on when you’re the one who was dumped.” He gave her a half smile. “But in the beginning there was a part of me that didn’t want to. We had a lot of dreams for our future, for kids, and I found that hard to let go of.”