few hours. Surely he would get on one of them.
But when he saw the crowd at the airport, he got a little nervous.
“I’ll park and come in with you,” Max said. “My bet is you aren’t getting on a flight tonight.”
He’d better, because tomorrow didn’t look any better. The flight he had a reservation on was canceled.
By some miracle Max found a parking place. Reece grabbed his small duffel out of the minuscule trunk of Max’s ’Vette, then headed for the ticket counter.
The lines were already snaking through the ticketing area. Children laughed and screamed and ran circles around the adults, most of whom barked impatiently into the cell phones glued to their ears. Even the line for first- class passengers swelled with at least thirty people, and it didn’t seem to be moving.
Out of habit Reece kept an eye on his watch. He tapped his foot and willed the line to move faster. But everyone seemed to be in a bad mood, giving the poor ticket agents a hard time. It almost felt as if the atmosphere was pushing down on them all, announcing the coming storm.
He glanced up at the flight monitor. A number of flights were flashing “delayed” or “canceled.”
“It’s not just our weather problem,” Max said. “New York is having some freakish weather. Maybe you should see if you can get a flight to some other city, rent a car and drive the rest of the way.”
He didn’t want to do that. He just wanted his nice, first-class seat, where he could work on his laptop and prepare for Monday’s meeting. He would undoubtedly have a slew of e-mails from Bret wanting answers to this and that.
“Why’s it so hot in here?” Reece grumbled. “Haven’t they heard of air-conditioning?”
“It’s all these people. Hey, chill out. If you don’t make it home in time, Uncle Archie will just have to understand. You were best man in Cooper’s wedding-it wasn’t like you could just skip it. And a hurricane isn’t your fault.”
“Archie’s vocabulary doesn’t include ‘understanding.’”
Finally Reece made it to the front of the line, and the agent called him.
“What’s your destination today, sir?”
The pain in Reece’s chest returned, the strongest it had ever been. His knees nearly buckled with the pain, he was sweating like a racehorse, and his hands and feet tingled. Hell, this wasn’t indigestion.
“Sir?” the ticket agent said, looking concerned. “Your destination?”
Reece looked at Max. “The closest hospital. I think I’m having a heart attack.”
THE NEXT FEW MINUTES were a blur. Max declared he could drive to the hospital faster than any ambulance, and he made good on his promise, ignoring speed limits, blasting through red lights with a honk and a prayer.
It was fortunate Reece knew where they were going and, with the help of the ’Vette’s V-8 engine, they made it to the hospital in under ten minutes. Max slammed on the brakes in front of the emergency-room entrance; moments later two men in blue scrubs were dragging Reece out of the car and into a wheelchair.
He felt a little better now that they were away from the stifling air of the terminal, but his chest still felt like an elephant was sitting on it.
Before he could blink, they had him on a gurney and were stripping off his clothes.
“Hey, don’t cut that!” he objected. “That’s a brand-new shirt!”
In response the nurse shoved a white pill in his mouth and made him drink water, then slapped an oxygen mask over his face.
They swarmed around him like seagulls over a crust of bread, drawing blood, sticking electrodes all over his bare chest. The nurses barked out his vital signs to the doctor who’d just barged in.
“Heart rate eighty-five…”
“BP one seventy over ninety-five…”
“Oxygen saturation…”
The doctor wasn’t terribly pleased, judging from his response, ordering esoteric-sounding lab tests and a chest X-ray.
Reece closed his eyes. What if he was dying? He didn’t want to die yet. He had a lot of living left to do. Real living, not just existing day to day, letting his father and brother dictate his every move. His only real enjoyment, he realized, was when he lost himself in numbers.
His cousins had been right all along to ditch their jobs at Remington Industries. None of them would ever have risen much higher, not with all those older brothers. But each of them on his own-who knew what they could achieve?
If he lived through this, he was going to resign. And he was going to tell Sara how he felt about her, and that he wanted them to be together-some way, somehow.
Oh, God, what if he never got the chance?
He opened his eyes and tried to focus them on one of the nurses. “Tell Sara I love her.”
“What was that?”
Damned oxygen mask. He reached up to yank it off so he could speak properly. “Tell Sara I love her.”
“Please, sir, try to relax.”
Relax? When his neat, orderly life had suddenly turned into an episode of
The nurse tried to put the oxygen mask back on, but he wouldn’t allow it. This was important. “I need a phone. Get me a phone.”
“Give him two milligrams of diazepam,” he heard someone say, and abruptly he lost any urge to fight what was going on. He lay back on the gurney and relaxed, letting the medical professionals run their tests and talk about him as if he was no more aware than a dead fish.
Maybe this was what dying felt like. It wasn’t bad.
Gradually the frenetic energy around him dissipated as one by one the nurses left, whispering.
Max entered the treatment room. He looked a bit shaken. “Jeez, Reece, you scared the hell out of me. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Did they give up on me? Am I about to croak or what?”
“You big goof. You weren’t having a heart attack. You were having a panic attack.”
“What?” That couldn’t be right. Hysterical teenage girls had panic attacks. He was Reece Remington, thirty- four-year-old financial analyst and CPA.
“The stress finally got to you, dude.”
“Oh, my God. All this because I’m suffering from stress?”
“Apparently so. I told you to chill out.”
“You can’t tell anybody. You can’t tell Archie.”
“Are you kidding? Uncle Archie isn’t exactly on my speed dial. But I did tell someone.”
Oh, no. “Who?”
“Sara. You were yammering at the nurse that you loved her. I thought…well, I thought if there was anybody you really wanted to see…”
Reece pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering what had happened to his glasses. “Did you have to do that?”
“I thought you might die or something. Sorry.”
Reece knew it wasn’t Max’s fault. “It’s okay. I’ll just call her and tell her I’m okay. Where’s my phone?”
“You can’t use a cell phone here.”
“You call her, then. I don’t want her to worry.”
Someone tapped on the door. “Hello?”
Max stood. “Too late. That’s my cue to take a walk.”
“Bring me my duffel, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Sara entered the room and Max slipped out.
Reece groaned inwardly. What on earth was he going to say to her?
“What happened?” Her face was pale, her lower lip trembling. “You had a heart attack?”
Reece realized then that he was still hooked up to an I.V. drip and a couple of other machines-something measuring his heartbeat, maybe his respiration. And he was almost naked, except for underwear and a thin hospital gown.
“I didn’t have a heart attack.”
