“Nothing that I can think of. I got up, went to work, basic stuff.”
“Is there anyone who would want to hurt you? An ex-husband? Ex-boyfriend? Anyone with whom you work?” Sorrels probed.
“Old boss? Ex-fiance?” Marsden chimed in.
When her eyes flew open at the last words, Marsden’s face took on that sharp look again.
“Tell me about the ex-fiance,” he said, his gaze intense.
“Oh, not Todd. He would never hurt me. He can hardly kill bugs.” She rubbed at her forehead, which hurt more and more with each passing second. Her rubbing at it didn’t help. “He’s got this reverence-for-life thing going. Went to Tibet to find himself. He got back into town again, and called me yesterday. We were going to have lunch tomorrow after he met with his lawyer.” She had to remember to cancel that.
Todd’s face popped into her mind’s eye, the way she’d last seen him. Right next to him, looming large in her memory was Paul Jameson, Todd’s gorgeous, irritating frat brother, and lawyer. She never thought about Paul without reliving the horrible moment when he’d walked into the bride’s room as she punched Todd.
The images were accompanied by the terrible swimmy feeling in her senses, along with the pounding behind her eyes. “Wow, my head really hurts.”
The nurse had been silent up to this point, a chaperone in scrubs, but at Torie’s complaint, she cleared her throat. “I think you need to wrap it up, gentlemen. Ms. Hagen needs to rest.”
“What’s the ex-fiance’s full name?”
“Todd Alan Peterson.”
“When did you, dum…uh, call off the wedding?”
Torie scrunched her eyes against the pain, which grew worse by the minute. “Five years ago,” she managed to grind out. “Exactly five years to the day, this Saturday.”
There was a lot of beeping and the sound of pings from the machines behind her head. The bed suddenly went flat and her head spun with dizzying force. It was the last straw for her stomach.
With a heave, she vomited. Then choked.
The last thing she heard was the nurse hollering in the loudest voice Torie had ever heard. It rang in her head for hours.
“I need a doctor in here. Stat!”
Chapter Two
There were flowers everywhere. It was only the next morning, but people had already heard about her house, her injuries. Torie counted no less than eight bouquets. They’d begun arriving early in the morning, once she’d been installed in a regular room. There were roses from her brother, who had also called. She’d reassured him that coming home from Russia wasn’t necessary.
There wasn’t much he could do really, and it wouldn’t help his business to fly home and do nothing. The office had sent a plant, and each of the divisions had sent flowers as well. Two of her major clients from TruStructure, her engineering firm, had sent flowers, and one had sent a really interesting looking cookie-tower-thingie from Harry & David.
Other than the fact that she had a concussion, had almost choked to death, hurt all over, and had a partially destroyed house, she felt pretty good.
“Alive and hurting is better than the alternative,” she said into the quiet of the room. She needed to hear something besides beeping.
Pickle was in the gentle and competent hands of her very own vet, thank goodness, so she didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Pam knew to cover for her for their little excursion after drinks and before the grocery.
A niggle of worry wormed its way into her thoughts. What about Dev? Her great-grandmother, GoodMama, had sent a warning. It had been about fire. Surely he’d heard from her, or heard about it on the news. And Todd. Where was he? Even after the horrible way things had ended, they’d somehow managed to stay friends. She’d left a message about lunch on his cell phone, saying she was in the hospital. She’d left the number, too. It wasn’t like him to not call. She looked at the bouquets again. None of them were from Todd, and he was a champion flower buyer.
“How’s my patient this morning?” a cheery voice called from the doorway. Her doctor, a spritely woman in her sixties, bounced into the room.
“I’m good, Dr. Suz, when can I go home?”
“When I say you’re ready.” Suz Pierce smiled and deflected Torie’s protests with the ease of long practice. “A concussion’s nothing to fool with young lady. Not to mention that you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to get your house in order, so to speak. You don’t need to start on that until you’re fit for duty.”
“I’m bored,” Torie sulked. Even she could hear the petulance in the words. “Sorry, but I am.”
“Better bored than unconscious. Too hard to read?”
Nodding, Torie grimaced. Her head still hurt if she made too many sudden movements. “My iPod’s at the house, probably a pile of plastic goo, same as my laptop.” She managed to talk even as the doctor checked her eyes and gently examined the lump and cut on her head. The nurse who had checked her vital signs not ten minutes before came trotting through the door in time to hear Dr. Suz say, “Any friends coming to visit today? Maybe they could get you some magazines or something.”
“Or our volunteers keep a supply, if you’d like some,” the perky woman chimed in.
“I forgot about that,” Dr. Suz said. “Why don’t you see if Nancy can find something from this century, preferably the last few months.”
“She already has some visitors,” Nurse Perky chirped as she held a tray to receive the dressing the doctor was changing. To Torie, she said, “They’ll be able to come back when Dr. Pierce is finished, and you’re ready.”
