“No. We made ourselves useful. We played games with the residents. Read to them. Visited with them. It wasn’t a wealthy nursing home,” she explained, familiar with the fact that many people thought it odd that children spent so much time in such a facility. “The residents were mostly low-income people. A lot of the time, they didn’t have family. None who visited, anyway.”

“So you and your sister became their family,” he stated rather than asked.

Emma shrugged. “For some of them.”

“They must have lit up every time they saw you,” he said thoughtfully after a pause. “It certainly sounds like a unique way to grow up.”

“That’s a pretty good way to describe it, yeah,” she said with a laugh.

He glanced at her. She saw his small, grim smile in the glow of the dashboard lights. “I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less.”

“Why’s that?” she asked.

“It had to be some unique circumstances. To make you,” he added, his gaze trained on the road again.

It was like a precise, electrical caress in the darkness.

She was so giddy with speed, so caught up in the promise of being with him on that country road as the warm, fragrant summer air rushed around them and the little car ate up the asphalt, that she momentarily forgot their tense parting last Friday night. She was so fascinated by the vision of his hands on the leather wheel that it took her a moment to register they’d come to a halt. She turned to him. He wore a small smile as he watched her unsuccessfully trying to smooth her windblown hair out of her eyes and cheeks. His thick, waving hair looked artlessly sexy, like it’d been fashioned to be caressed and whipped by the wind.

“That was amazing,” she told him. “You’re an excellent driver. How did you get so good?”

He shrugged, his hands still loosely holding the wheel. “My dad loved cars almost as much as I do.”

“Was he a mechanic as well?”

“Yes. And an engineer, although he was never formally trained as one. He put me behind the wheel when I was only six.”

“Six?” she repeated, shocked.

His quick, flashing grin made something leap deep inside her. “He’d put me in his lap to prop me up.”

They laughed. His low chuckle struck her as delicious in the warm, still air, his smile impossibly beautiful on such a typically aloof man. It was like a crack opened up on his cold surface and a bright light shone through. A tightness grew in her chest.

She realized she could see him because of several overhead lights. She blinked, recognizing the parking lot belatedly.

“Lookout Beach,” she said, giving up on her mussed hair and looking around. “My mother used to bring Amanda and me here when we were little.”

“Amanda? The sister you live with?”

Emma nodded.

“Is she a nurse, too?”

“No. She’s going to be a doctor. She starts medical school this fall.”

He studied her for a moment and then abruptly glanced toward the lake, the patrician, cool man returning. “Do you want to walk down? I want to talk to you about something.”

She nodded, too anxious and anticipatory to speak.

A minute later they stood at the rocky bluff overlooking the lake, he to the left of her and several feet away. The sound of the waves rhythmically hitting the shore lulled her a little. They both watched the black lake rippling in the distance. He seemed so lost in his thoughts, so intent, she started a little when he finally spoke.

“How come you didn’t go to medical school?” he asked.

“I didn’t want to. I wanted to be a nurse.”

“The kind of nurse that you are now?” he asked, perhaps a little delicately.

She glanced over at him and saw the slight puzzlement on his face. “Yes. A hospice nurse. That’s what I wanted from the first. I didn’t just fall into it by accident,” she said amusedly.

He frowned. “I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

She broke into soft laughter. “No, it’s not that. It’s just I’ve seen that expression a time or two—or a hundred—when I tell people what I do for a living.” She saw his slanting brows. “That puzzled expression you wore a second ago,” she clarified. “When people understand I actually chose to be a hospice nurse, that I don’t do it just because I couldn’t get another nursing job, they seem confused. Trust me, it’s a pretty good way to clear a room at a party, saying you’re a hospice nurse.”

“I know what that’s like.”

“You know what it’s like to clear a room when you say what you do for a living?”

“No. To have people decide everything about you before they know you. But in your case, it’s the idea of death that makes people prejudge you.”

“Yeah. It does,” she said quietly. “But just because death makes people uncomfortable doesn’t mean that it should be uncomfortable.”

“It’s not uncomfortable for you?” he asked.

She sighed and looked out at the black water. “No. Not anymore. It can be sad at times. Poignant. Full of meaning. But no, not uncomfortable.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t agree with you. Death is random and cruel.”

She blinked at the harsh finality of his tone.

“You’ve known a lot of it?” she asked softly.

“So much so that I wonder at times if life isn’t playing some kind of sick joke on me,” he said, his lip curling. He was trying to be funny, and failing.

“Death is a natural part of life.” He gave her a burning, sardonic glance. “Sounds like an empty platitude to you, does it? It does for lots of people,” she mused thoughtfully, looking at the lake, not at all put off because they didn’t agree.

She looked around when he gave a dry laugh. “What?” she asked, her gaze caught by the flash of white teeth against tanned skin.

He shook his head while a breeze ruffled his hair. He peered at her as if he wanted to bring her into better focus.

“Why are you so confident talking about death?” he demanded. She hesitated, but then shrugged. “I died before,” she said simply. She gave a small smile when she saw his blank expression segue into one of incredulity.

“What?”

She didn’t know why she’d told him. Given people’s reactions to such a declaration, she’d learned early on to avoid the topic at all costs. She sighed.

“I was born with a condition called alpha thalassemia. My body had a hard time making hemoglobin, so I was always mildly anemic as a kid. It wasn’t bad enough to cause any severe symptoms except occasional fatigue, but when I was nine, something happened. My iron count plunged and my organs weren’t getting enough oxygen. I had a heart attack.” She noticed his stiff expression. “Don’t look so worried. I hardly remember any of it. Long story short, when I recovered, I had a profound certainty that death was nothing to fear. Also . . .” She repressed a smile because she was sure he wouldn’t believe her. “I was cured.”

“You were cured,” he repeated in flat disbelief, stepping closer.

She laughed, even though she was set off balance by his nearness. The streetlamps in the parking lot reflected in his eyes, making them gleam in his shadowed face as he studied her intently. She just nodded. “I’m very healthy. My cells now synthesize perfectly normal hemoglobin. The doctors ramble on about how maybe the crisis I went through somehow reset my cells, but technically speaking—”

“You’re a medical miracle.”

She shrugged, hearing the thread of disbelief and amusement in his tone. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Very few people do, except for the staff at the hospital, my mother, my sister, and the physician who researched the case.”

“And you.”

“No. I don’t believe. I know.”

He shook his head slightly, looking puzzled and a little amazed. “I’d almost believe it of you. You’re very . . . odd.”

“I’ve heard that before,” she muttered.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, and even though he hadn’t been sharp, exactly, her heartbeat began to thrum in her ears.