After much contemplation, trying on things I hadn’t worn in a while and wishing my roomies were home to give their expert opinions, I settled on jeans and an aqua long-sleeve top and stuck some toiletries into my makeup bag. I decided my slip-ons would be most like slippers and the jeans weren’t too tight, so I could sleep in them.

Because no way was I parading around ER Dano’s place in my nightie.

ER Dano’s place?

I flopped onto the end of the bed and in my wildest imagination could not think of what it would look like. That’d be one step below figuring out what Jagger’s place looked like. That is, if Jagger really lived someplace and didn’t simply drive around in his SUV.

My thoughts were that Dano’s place would have chrome and glass, and be dark, rather scary, and…male.

Since I had a “job” to do, I pushed any Jagger thoughts out of my head, took my scrubs and shoes for tomorrow and stuck it all into my gym bag. My suitcase looked too girly. Too purple. I couldn’t do purple girly in front of such a guy as Dano.

Brown paper bag might do it though.

When I walked down the stairs, Spanky was not on his pillow any longer. And he wasn’t on Dano’s lap as I’d expected. Evidently Jagger was the only one Spanky had taken a liking to other than myself, Goldie and Miles.

“All set?” I asked.

“Um.” Dano stood, wobbled a bit, and steadied himself on the couch’s arm. “Hold on.”

“Wha-”

He was out the door and into the kitchen before I could finish.

“What the heck?” I muttered, and followed.

There near the back door was Spanky eating out of his dog food dish. But not his dry food. Nope. Dano had raided our refrigerator and helped himself to morsels of leftovers that he’d given to the dog.

After my attack of muteness left, I said, “He has to watch his weight. If he gets another pound heavier, his little kneecap goes out of joint.”

Dano looked at me and then Spanky. “He needed a treat. That’s about as low-cal and wholesome as you can get.” With that he turned and walked back out toward the front.

Spanky gave me a quick look, as if agreeing with Dano.

“Shut up,” I said to him, gave him a pat on the head, looked to see no phone messages, and left. By the time I got out to my car, Dano was in the passenger seat, eyes shut and occasionally wincing.

The tough guy was in pain and despite how he felt, he had taken care of an eight-pound dog.

Life has never ceased to amaze me. My mother used to tell me things that I never believed unless I saw them for myself. “Doubting Thomas,” she and my sister used to call me, after the apostle who didn’t believe that Jesus had been crucified and had risen from the dead.

Well, no one could have prepared me for this.

ER Dano’s house.

Yeah, house. First of all I was expecting an apartment, or condo at the very most. But nope. He lived-and owned, I’d learned-an old Victorian house on the west side of Hope Valley, in one of the finer, older neighborhoods.

Bachelor: grumpy at times, grouchy at others. House: burned-out-bachelor pad, it was not.

As I followed him up the pink flower-bordered walkway, I couldn’t even speak. Without a green thumb on either hand, I knew nothing about the flowers other than that they were pink and pretty, and that Dano must either live with someone or had hired someone to landscape. Yet, what would make him do that?

Then he bent to pick a brown leaf off one of the plants and I mumbled, “He planted them.”

“I planted them. Don’t sound so shocked. Did all the landscaping myself. Good therapy to empty my bucket of ambulance runs when I need to forget,” he said, and opened the large, dark paneled wood front door with a leaded and frosted glass window in the center.

“Oh,” was all I could manage until I stepped inside and added, “Oh, my.” Oh, again.

Dano appeared to ignore me as he pointed out, “Here’s the living room, the john’s in there and you can stay upstairs in the room to the left of the railing. When you try to wake me, don’t get close.”

I wanted to ask why, but figured he must have been a deep sleeper and would probably clock me if I startled him.

We went into the kitchen, which had copper pots hanging from the ceiling, large tomato plants growing in pots by the bay windows and old large-plank hardwood floors. At a white enamel sink, he took a glass from a cabinet, filled it and drank it down in one swallow.

“This place is neat,” I said, sitting down at the white wooden kitchen table. There were even crocheted doilies on the table as placemats.

“My grandmother made those,” was all he said when he noticed me noticing them.

“Ah. That’s nice. Look, Dano, I’m here to help you. Let me get you whatever you want while you sit and take it easy. I don’t want your head to start hurting.”

He looked at me.

Gulp.

Damn. The guy had a way of looking that I felt. Actually felt.

“Already hurts like hell. I’d go to bed now, but then I’d be up all night long…thinking.”

There was pain in his voice, and I knew ER Dano had really been on the job far too long. It’d taken a toll on him, and grabbed his life without releasing. I could sense that he didn’t like to go to sleep-obviously since job-demon dreams awaited him.

So I sat there staring at him in the little Victorian kitchen, which looked more like a librarian lived here than a macho paramedic, thinking, What the hell am I going to do? when the urge to kiss him shocked the hell out of me.

I made some excuse about seeing the rest of the house. At least it was an interesting place, and he bought my reasoning for taking the unguided tour while he rested. Naturally Dano had not volunteered to show me around, but had merely shrugged and sat himself at the kitchen table to read the daily newspaper.

Since he hadn’t seemed to mind, I walked through the dining room, which had old mahogany furniture, chairs with needlepoint mauve roses, lacy curtains that looked genuine and antiques-in the corner was an old China tea set on a lace-covered pedestal table.

I had to shake my head. There was an air to the house of antiquity, yet it was freshly kept up and not musty, as one might expect. He had to have inherited this place. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine Dano decorating in this taste. Then again, he lived here without changing anything. Hmm.

ER Dano was one hell of a dichotomy.

In the living room, I sat on the rose-colored Victorian couch. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing; as a matter of fact it made me think of how prim and proper ladies must have been in the Victorian era. They had to be, to sit this straight. White porcelain vases holding silken floral arrangements sat on the sideboards. Wait a minute. I got up and walked to them and ran a finger along the petals, which came off in my hands.

Real flowers.

Real flowers? Dano had real flowers in his house? Man. This was almost creepy. I turned to see him standing in the doorway. Whoops.

“Hey,” I mumbled.

He nodded. “I’m beat. Going up to bed. Remember, not too close when you annoy the hell out of me.”

I smiled. “Um, Dan. These flowers are beautiful. Did you arrange them?” Now if there was one thing I just knew ER Dano would not want to talk about, it would be flowers.

But he looked at them and said, “My therapist had me take a freaking course in floral arrangement.”

I laughed. “Yeah, right. Really. Did you do them?”

He walked over to them and poignantly took a brown petal from a rose much like he’d done outside. “My old lady had a greenhouse. She taught my sister, and I used to watch-as a kid. And, the therapist part is true.” He turned and looked past me as if his mom and maybe sister were in the doorway. “Helps. They help.” With that he walked out of the room and up the staircase.