Forgotten First Kiss

Chapter 2

Good thing the flowers in these four bouquets from the hospital gift shop were already cut and therefore more-or-less on their way to dead. My grip on the stems would’ve strangled anything trying to stay alive.

At the information desk, I stopped to talk to Margie Fenway. “Danica Denton’s room, please?” I shifted my weight multiple times while the volunteer in the sea green smock eyed me. “I’m an old friend.”

She pulled her glasses down to the edge of her nose and peered over them at me. “You look like that Hotston kid.” Her lips thinned. “I was at Angelica’s wedding. When you know what happened.”

I didn’t blink—on the outside. On the inside my eyes were squeezed shut in a horrified wince. So, my big moment lived on in the memories of the Wilder River populace. Twelve years! They should have done me the courtesy of forgetting, even if they couldn’t forgive.

However sick I felt on the inside, externally I matched Margie, stare for stare—a tactic I’d learned in the army, and which had become my negotiating bread-and-butter in business. After a full thirty seconds, she relented.

“Danica is in room twenty-three. But if I hear that anything—and I mean anything—is wrong when you go to her room, you’ll never set foot in this hospital again, even if you’ve been decapitated.”

Wow. That was quite the image. “Thank you,” was all I said and then swallowed hard as I made my way into the hospital proper. Whew. I’d passed the first test—of the dragon guard.

Unfortunately, the bigger test lay ahead. Every step, my feet grew heavier. This was it. I was seeing Danica for the first time in over a decade, and she might not even remember who I was.

This could go either way.

And I wasn’t ready.

“Knock, knock.” I rapped my knuckles on the frame of the open door. A curtain on rings hung to block the top half of the hospital bed. “Are you all right for visitors?”

The curtain whooshed back with a metallic swish. “Hi?” a feminine voice asked.

Danica! She looked the same as always but more beautiful. Her strawberry blonde hair curled in thick ringlets, and her soft blue eyes took me in.

My stomach and my heart and my throat all swapped places a few times. How could she have become even more stunning than she’d been when we were young? A swell of memory and love rushed up from the base of my soul, filling every cell of my body and spilling out in an overflow of emotion.

“Hi,” I managed, but then had to clear my throat. The cellophane of the flowers crackled in my hand, like the electricity of longing crackling inside me. “How are you feeling?”

A white bandage wrapped from her forehead around her head, but her curls spilled out all around it. Her eyes raked over me with a questioning gaze. Her clear, pale skin was whiter than normal, or than I remembered, but that might be due to the hospital stay. Her rosebud of a mouth parted, and she spoke.

“Forgive me if I need an introduction.” She touched her temple. “It’s getting pretty old, having to be reintroduced to everyone I know and love. Even my mother had to tell me who she was, although she freaked out more when I couldn’t remember my third great-grandmother’s name, so, please, don’t take it personally.”

See? This woman was every bit as wonderful as I’d built her up to be. So thoughtful—even of her enemy!

“No worries. I heard about what happened and came as soon as I could.” I placed the flowers on the counter beneath the window—beside ten other bouquets. Not surprising. She was universally loved. “I’m Jeremy. Jeremy Hotston.”

I waited for the scowl to form, for her to press the nurse button and request security to escort me out. None of that happened.

At her blank look, I continued, “Jeremy Hotston. We went to school together.” And I was the guy who chipped your tooth when I made you a batch of brownies and a piece of gravel ended up in it. The guy who left a standee of your favorite boy band’s lead singer in the shower to surprise you but only ended up scaring the living daylights out of you when you saw it in the middle of the night. The guy who managed to foul up every single attempt to impress you. That guy.

“I was at your older sister’s wedding.” Might as well see if mentioning my final, most egregious offense triggered any big reaction.

Nope. None.

“My older sister Penelope and your older sister Angelica were best friends.”

Nothing still.

I gave it one more shot. “You introduced me to Pepsi when we were kids?”

She slowly shook her head and lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s no use.” She grimaced. “I’m basically at everyone’s mercy. You say we’re old friends, I have to trust you.” A little smile formed—and then she looked me over, not with questioning, but assessing me.

After years of gauging competitors’ reactions during medical practice brokerage deals, I’d gotten pretty good at reading nonverbal cues. To my shock, Danica Denton was appraising me and giving me full approval, right down to dilating pupils and touching her collarbone.

She was into me.