First Real Kiss

Chapter 1

Sheridan

I paced from one end of the tiled, luxurious room to the other. Everyone else in the cardiothoracic surgeons’ clinic waiting room sat like they were bored, watching television or phone screens, or flipping through magazines. Not me. As I strode back and forth, I nearly plowed into a grandmother and accidentally kicked a small child’s binky.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I bent to pick it up.

“Do you have someone back there?” The mother’s face was kind, compassionate.

I must have looked as wretched on the outside as I felt on the inside. “Yes.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “If you need to talk …”

I straightened. “Oh, wait. No, no. I’m just here for—” Um, no. I shouldn’t tell her why I’d come to see Dr. Luke Hotwell. A lot of people here probably needed to put their trust in him, and anything I said at this point would decimate any chance of that. “Thank you.”

Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. Simplify thoughts. Focus. Look for the calm center.

None of my professional training worked on me in the moment. And it only made things worse that the TV news blared stories nonstop about the upcoming Great Quake Commemoration—the last thing I wanted to think about today. Unless I can find the firefighter there. Which—I couldn’t. It’d been too long.

“Ms. Chandler?” A perky nurse held the door to the back room open. “Come on back.”

My stomach and lungs swapped places as I followed her into the inner sanctum of the offices of Dr. Luke Hotwell, cardiothoracic surgeon.

Also, killer.

And that was why I was here. Someone had to call him out on what he’d done to Roland.

“This way, please.” Perky Nurse took me through a sconce-lit hallway toward an ornate white office door, probably built solely out of saltwater residue from his patients’ tears. “He made time to meet with you, but he’s got a heart surgery he needs to prep for in a few minutes, so his tone may be … curt.”

Hello. That was exactly his problem: curtness. With matters of a person’s lifespan on the line, curtness was simply unacceptable.

“I’ll be brief,” I promised, crossing my heart. Brief in my scathing remarks. Even though scathing remarks were not my wheelhouse.

Perky Nurse rapped her knuckles on the thick oak door. “Dr. Hotwell? Miss Chandler is here.”

No response.

The nurse abandoned me with a soft, “Good luck.”

Alone, waiting. I shifted my weight. I picked a little pill off my emerald green sweater.

Was I supposed to go in, or wait for His Highness to deign to open the door? Possibly he had a butler on the other side with the same sneery scowl Dr. Hotwell likely wore.

Three deep breaths. Come on, Jane. Help me remember the words. I channeled my lawyer bestie’s confidence—since she was the one who’d talked me into confronting the … murderer.

Yes! Because that’s what he was, and he needed to acknowledge it!

The door swung wide. “Yes?”

Before me, wearing a lab coat over hospital-green scrubs, stood a handsome impersonation of Luke Perry, my girlhood crush. Dark hair, a brooding brow, and—ooh, yuck, a frown.

“Yes?” he said again. “Miss Chandler, is it?”

I stood dumbly, imagining him with his twin sister Brenda in a Beverly Hills zip code.

Yes, I freely admit I have watched far too much television in my life and see a celebrity’s face in almost everyone I meet.

“It’s Ms. Chandler. Not miss.”