Chapter 5
Sage
Noise echoed from floor to ceiling. The scent of garlic bread wafted through the Mendon armory, but the real treat was coming—the favorite spaghetti sauce of every person who’d attended Mendon High in the past forty years.
“You taking plates to your parents when it’s over?” Kennedy asked, sipping from the sweating water goblet. She’d come down from Reedsville for the weekend.
“They’d disown me if I failed in that mission.” Sage tried not to gulp her ice water.
Kennedy fanned herself with her printed program. “They should have spent last year’s proceeds on air conditioning for this year’s event, I say.”
“Air conditioning is for the weak, they’d probably say.” Sage dabbed at her neck with her handkerchief. There were entirely too many people in this room at once to not have the tiny windows high up on the Quonset’s arched walls thrown wide.
“Not only is it a sauna, it’s too loud in here to have a civilized conversation.” Kennedy leaned close, but her voice still had to be loud.
Sage glanced up at the curved steel ceiling where talk and laughter bounced around like so many erratic steel balls in a pinball machine. “We may have to text. I want to hear about what’s going on in Reedsville.”
“I want to hear what’s going on with you and Hot Kiss,” Kennedy hollered.
Naturally, that moment contained a lull in the sound, and every eye turned their way.
Okay, probably not. But Sage’s face still flushed with heat as she shushed Kennedy. “Come on. Dr. Hotchkiss and I are colleagues.” Sort of. As much as a nurse anesthetist could be on the same level as a surgeon.
And a highly skilled surgeon, at that.
The way he’d executed that appendectomy the other day? It was as if his hands had been guided by a divine force. Sage shivered. And there had been two other surgeries since then—a tonsillectomy and a lumpectomy, which had proved benign.
The patients probably wouldn’t even scar.
Babbage had managed those, naturally. Sage had merely watched from the sidelines as his assistant.
“Colleagues, eh?” Kennedy winked. “You could be kissing colleagues.”
“Please. He’s not thinking of me that way.” Other than the fact his eyes had made a few rambling journeys up and down her scrubs as they passed in the hallways. “He’s a professional.”
Should be a professional kisser. Possibly. She’d like to confirm that fact.
Until, of course, she remembered her very good reasons why that would be a terrible idea.
“Well, now.” Up sauntered the last person Sage wanted to see. “I hope you remember the secret I told you.” McGreasy was hunkered down in his cologne cloud. It was even thicker tonight, away from the hospital.
“Trust me, I recall every detail.” She gave him a tight smile full of go away, please.
He winked at her, ran his tongue across the front of his teeth—so gross—and then strutted away to the banquet table at the front of the room where all the bachelors’ date lists were on display.
Across the room, Jasher Hotchkiss tugged at his collar. He wore a tailored blue suit and crisp white shirt open at the neck. Boy, had he grown up since that day back in high school. If he’d been a clean-faced little hottie at fifteen, he was a stubble-faced juggernaut of masculinity now. Her upper lip trembled, and she had to touch it to keep it still.
Oh, mercy—chances were he’d improved his kissing technique since high school at high speed. Sage picked up her printed program for the evening’s events and fanned herself, too, at high speed.
“Big crowd.” Kennedy looked around. “Kind of a community-wide wake for Dr. Parrish, according to the program here.”
“Brent Parrish helped a lot of people at his clinic.” Sage stared at the heir of the town’s admiration. Jasher was lucky to be taking it over. Shouldn’t his connection to the region’s most beloved doctor cancel out whatever damage Jasher had done at a basketball game a long time ago?
Seriously, people of Mendon. Give a good doctor a break!
Across the room, Mrs. Parrish sat at a head table of VIPs. Which, wait a second. That made her Jasher’s mom. Sage leaned to see who else was with her. Sure enough, next to her sat Redmond, that kid a couple of years older than Sage in school. Redmond Parrish. That’s right. He still looked basically the same—wispy hair, almond eyes, big smile. Sage lifted a hand to her heart. So good to see him again.
“Hey, look, Kens.” She tried to casually point to Redmond. Not that he’d probably care if they pointed, so long as they waved, too. “Remember Redmond?”