If she left him here, he could die.

If she took him home, he would certainly die.

Knowing that he would never need to understand her decision, Timmie kissed him and walked out into the hall that seemed suddenly much too bright for her eyes.

* * *

By eleven that night, the weather had cleared. The moon skirted fitfully among the ragged clouds, and a crisp breeze teased the trees. There was soft music drifting from the car stereo and the subtle scent of Aramis in the air.

"Surely you'll let me see you to the door."

Timmie looked over to where Alex's head gleamed faintly in the passing streetlights and smiled. She'd been preparing for this moment since she'd met Alex at Cafe Renee three hours earlier. Actually, she'd been dreading it. She'd intended to avoid the moment when Alex walked into her house by meeting him at the restaurant. But that had been before Cyrano had decided to have an uncommon hissy fit. Timmie had ended up walking over, and knew better than to think Alex would let her walk home. So she moved to plan B.

"This is Puckett, Alex," she assured him. "Nobody's going to mug me on my sidewalk. Besides, you've been yawning for the last hour. Get home and get some sleep."

Alex slowed his silver-gray Lexus to a perfect stop at the cross street before turning onto Timmie's block. "I'm really embarrassed about that, Timmie. I don't want you to think I haven't had a good time. I really enjoyed myself this evening."

Timmie smiled. "So did I."

Alex was a gentleman. He was dear and polite and sincere. Timmie was sure that it was the fact that she'd been distracted by everything on the planet that had made him seem so...

Nope. A woman who had just had a twenty-year-old fantasy fulfilled did not court words like "boring."

Alex was tired. Timmie was frustrated. She had had the evening scripted for almost a hundred years. Somehow it had never included endless paeans to her father, intensive instruction on everything to do with Alzheimer's, and a blow-by-blow description of the struggle to attain a new PET scanner for the unit.

Next time they would talk about world events, places each had traveled, the effect of any national policy that didn't have a direct impact on health care. Next time they'd laugh like kids over silly jokes and the foibles of lesser humans.

"I haven't had much sleep the last few nights," he apologized for the third time. "I just can't figure out why Barnaby graduated."

"Graduated." The favorite among the vast and varied euphemisms for dying Alex was so fond of using. It still amazed Timmie that Alex couldn't actually say the word "died." His patients graduated or passed or expired or went on. They never just died. Which was what they did. Another one two nights earlier.

She should ask now. She should demand an explanation.

"It's almost enough to make a new customer nervous," she said. "It does seem we've been seeing a lot of your... residents in the ER lately."

She couldn't say clients. She just couldn't.

His expression stayed tight. "It happens like that sometimes. You know that. But it's been a really tough autumn for me."

She was going to ask more when they turned into her drive, and Alex abruptly smiled. "I've always loved this old house," he said, leaning forward a little to catch sight of the old Victorian with its soft red brick washed in porch light. "It's such a dignified old lady. Our house was brand new when I was a kid. No ghosts at all."

Timmie almost said that there weren't any ghosts in this house, either, but she couldn't quite believe it. "Yeah," she said instead, "our house in St. Louis was pretty boring, too."

"You never did tell me," he said, pulling the car to a stop. "How's your mom? Last I heard she was working up at Barnes Hospital."

"She still is. Assistant director of nursing. She's fine."

"And Rose and Margaret?"

The girls who, if Alex had ever thought to look their way, would have been much more of an age to attract him. "Fine."

Timmie heard the snap in her voice and almost apologized. But if Alex heard it, he didn't interpret it. He only nodded and smiled, a handsome man wearing his regulation-gray tailored suit and blue-and-red-patterned tie, in his perfectly nice car. Putting the car in Park, he yanked on the brake, and turned to her. "I'm glad you're back, Timmie."

Timmie smiled back at him. "Me, too, Alex. Thanks for dinner."

Murphy would be waiting to hear that she'd finagled a confession out of Alex. He'd want something more than Alex's admission that his own first marriage had failed because of his commitment to his work and that he was troubled by people... graduating in his unit. Timmie couldn't pry any deeper, and not because she'd dreamed of Alex since she'd been seven.

"I'll probably see you at Restcrest tomorrow," she said, fiddling with the tiny bells that dangled from her earrings.

His smile grew. "You're a good daughter."

Timmie damn near laughed. Just the testimonial she wanted in a darkened driveway from the man of her dreams.

"He's quite a dad," she said, as she always did, and unhanded the bells to grab her purse. Definitely time to go.

"He's a lion of the hills."

That almost did it. Timmie nodded and struggled to get the door open. "He is that. Good night, Alex."

She made it all the way up to her front porch before it dawned on her that she hadn't even waited to be kissed. Or that Alex hadn't pressed the point. Definitely out of stage three of divorce, then, she decided, pulling out her house key.

Trying hard not to giggle, Timmie turned to wave good-bye. After she put that key in, Alex would go home and she'd be faced with that house again. With all the crap that she kept hidden behind that door. Well, hell, she might as well get it over with.

Except that the door was already open.

Timmie realized it when she went to slide in the key. The door creaked with the pressure of her hand. It swung in a little, and for the first time Timmie saw that she was standing in a pool of shattered glass. Somebody had broken out the door window.

She froze for a second, staring. The door kept swinging and she got a good look at her living room. "Aw, hell."

She should have expected this. A lovely night out with a man, and she came home to find her house broken into.

Her first reaction was that somebody was going to be mighty disappointed. Her second was that only one person had ever broken into her house before, and that that person had started calling again.

He'd warned her. He'd served her with a notice. She'd ignored it, as she'd tried to before.

"Jason Michael Parker," she snarled, "if this is your work, I'll fry you like a hush puppy!"

Furious and frustrated and frightened, Timmie shoved the door all the way open and stormed inside.

"Timmie, don't go in there!"

Timmie hadn't even realized that Alex had gotten out of the car. But there he was, loping up the porch steps. Timmie didn't have any choice. Whirling to face him, she threw her arms wide to block his way in.

"Alex, no!"

But Alex didn't hear her. Before Timmie could get the door shut, Alex was pushing her out of the way. "Get in my car," he demanded. "I've called 911... Oh, my God," he gasped, stumbling to a sick halt. "You've been vandalized!"

And Timmie, more ashamed than she'd been since her father had thrown up on her at the father-daughter dance, had to stand there next to Alex as he took in the sight of the living room she'd been rooting through for two days and admit the truth. "No one's touched anything, Alex. This is the way it looks."