Never Been Kissed. Linda Turner

eyes during the night, she’d seen nothing but Reilly Jones and the coldness in his eyes when he’d told her he wasn’t interested in her. When she’d finally fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, the infuriating man had followed her into her dreams.

      Cursing him, she rolled out of bed with a groan and hoped she wouldn’t have the misfortune to run into the irritating Dr. Jones today. Because if she did, she promised herself as she changed into her nurse’s uniform and left for work, she just might tell him what she thought of him. It was no more than he deserved.

      Her chin set at a determined angle, she marched into the nursing home a few minutes before seven with a look in her eye that had her co-workers lifting their brows in surprise. She never came to work with an attitude, and more than a few of her fellow nurses didn’t know what to make of it.

      “Are you okay, Janey?”

      “Has something happened to your mom?”

      “It’s not Merry and the baby, is it? When is she due?”

      Realizing she must look awful, Janey shook her head, her smile more than a little forced. “Merry’s due Christmas Day. And no, nothing’s wrong. I just didn’t get much sleep last night. I couldn’t seem to turn my brain off.”

      That wasn’t the complete truth, but she had no intention of sharing her experience with Dr. Jones with the entire nursing home staff. And that’s what would happen if she made the mistake of telling so much as a single soul. The story would spread like wildfire through every room in the nursing home within an hour.

      There was, fortunately, no time for anyone to ask her what she’d been thinking about that had kept her up all night. It was time for her shift to start, and she had work to do. Sending up a silent prayer of thanks, she headed for the east wing nurses’ station and began the day just as she always did—by reading her patients’ charts to see if there’d been any change in their conditions since yesterday.

      She was well into the first chart and wondering if Mr. Drisco needed his medication changed when Cybil Greer, one of the night shift nurses, stopped to talk to her. “I guess you heard about Hannah.”

      There was only one woman there by the name of Hannah, and she was not only Janey’s patient, but one of her favorite people. And she hadn’t been doing well lately. Alarmed, she said, “What’s wrong?”

      “She’s developed pneumonia,” Cybil said grimly. “It doesn’t look good.”

      Already rising to her feet, Janey said, “Thanks for telling me. I’ll check on her right now.”

      Hannah Starks wasn’t the oldest patient on Janey’s floor, but she’d been there the longest, and there was just something about her that touched Janey’s heart. Small and frail, with eyes that still sparkled like a girl’s, she, like so many of the other women in the nursing home, had lost her husband years ago and now had to depend on the mercy of strangers to get her through the day. And she did it all without complaint.

      If she’d been in her shoes, Janey wasn’t sure she could have been as gracious. It wasn’t as if Hannah had no one to care for her. She had a son—William—who lived in Seattle, and Hannah adored him. If William’s love was as strong as his mother’s, he gave no sign of it. Over the course of the last year, he hadn’t been to see his mother a single time. Both Dan and Janey had both talked to him on several occasions, telling him how desperately his mother wanted to see him, but he still hadn’t come. And poor Hannah kept making excuses for him.

      Her heart breaking for her, Janey wasn’t surprised to find her frailer than yesterday. At eighty-two, she was as thin as a rail and had little strength to fall back on when she became ill. Still, she smiled at the sight of Janey and struggled to sit up.

      “No, you don’t need to get up!” she said quickly, hurrying across the room to help ease her back against her pillow. “You lie there and take it easy. I heard you weren’t feeling up to snuff this morning. Can I get you anything? Breakfast, maybe? Scrambled eggs? Or how about some pancakes? You name it, and I’ll get it for you.”

      If she’d said eggs Benedict, Janey would have called Ed’s diner and asked Ed to make the special dish for her, but Hannah had simple tastes and there was only one thing in life that she really wanted. Pale as the bedsheets, she smiled and shook her head. “No, thank you, dear. I’m not really hungry this morning. But I would like to see William. Once he hears that I need him, I’m sure he’ll come.”

      Her faith was unshakable, the love in her eyes heartbreaking to see as she lifted her gaze to the wall across from her bed. There, family photos covered nearly every available space. Some of the pictures were of Hannah’s parents and husband, all of whom had died years ago, but the majority were of her only child, William. Taken at all stages of life, there were pictures of him at two and eight and forty-two, with his first dog, his first girlfriend, his first wife.