DEACON"Deacon!" Emma jerked back away from Noah, her face pink and suffused with what looked a hell of a lot like guilt to me. "I thought you went home.""Well, I didn't. Not yet." I glared at both of them, waiting for some kind of explanation. "Noah's upset." She said it so reasonably, as if those two words gave me all the answer I needed. They didn't. "He came to talk to you, but you weren't here. I was." Emma lifted one shoulder. "Which is probably a lucky break for him, since I'm not nearly as much fun to hug as you are." I knew I sounded petty and childish, but at the moment, I couldn't care less. Noah glanced from Emma to me, his expression confused and a little uneasy. "Uh, you know what, I think I'll go back and sit with Ang and let you two . . . talk." "Yeah, you do that." My eyes never left Emma's face. "Go sit with your sick wife. That's where you should be." One of his eyebrows shot up, but Noah didn't say anything as he strode out of my office. I sla

EMMANoah barely glanced up at me. His eyes were fastened on Angela's face, as though he was memorizing every line, every change in expression. Her chest was moving up and down rapidly, and her forehead was creased in pain."Hey, there." I took the hand that Noah wasn't holding. "What's going on, Ang? I thought we had a deal when I left yesterday-you were going to get some rest and feel better, because you promised me a girls' weekend with all your sorority sisters, remember?" The ends of her lips tipped up just slightly. "Sorry . . . Em. Might have to . . . take a miss on that one." "Hmmm." My gaze flickered over to Noah. His eyes were bleak. "Listen, Angela. I talked to Deacon and Jenny-they told me that you don't want to go up to the ICU. I understand that you feel like you're never going to be better, that you've been fighting for a long time, but if you can be brave and strong just a little longer . . . you'll be so happy that you did. I can make sure that you get the be

EMMA "UGH! Where the hell are you?" The fact that the man in question didn't answer me wasn't his fault, since he wasn't anywhere in the vicinity of my voice. That was part of the problem; I didn't know where he was, and he wasn't picking up his phone. He'd promised to be here at my little home on wheels fifteen minutes ago, and I was impatient. I peered out my window, frowning. My most recently cultivated garden plots were just a few feet away, and there were promising rows of happy green plants lined up in each of them. I'd decided to leave the trailer here as a resting place for when I was out working in my fields and as a reminder of how far I'd come in a little over a year. Maybe someday, I'd gut the trailer and remodel it as a guest home, but for now, I had my hands full with my new cabin, the plants I was cultivating-and my full-time job as a naturopath at St. Agnes Memorial Hospital.Building the cabin while trying to help run the oncology wing at St. Agnes hadn't be

EMMAAnna wasn't kidding-they were there and ready to help the next time we met up to work.. Jimmy was a little quieter than his wife about his support, but it was stalwart, just the same. When Darcy-who had joined our happy band by that time-shared with us that the Monroe family was auctioning off the contents of their late parents' house and suggested they might have furniture and appliances I could use, it was Deacon's grandfather who had insisted that I store anything I bought in his barn. And that was why Nico and Noah were currently lifting a long wooden table from the back of Jimmy's old box truck-the one he usually used to haul produce to market. Behind them, Jimmy carried an antique rocking chair. "Where does this go, Emma?" he called as he maneuvered it up the porch steps. "The bedroom, please." I stepped aside to let him pass. Alison rose from the corner where she had just finished cleaning up the last bits of sawdust from around the baseboards in the living room.

EMMATaking a sip of my beer, I watched as Noah chugged his. His throat moved up and down, and his eyes closed, his long eyelashes-how was it fair that guys got those?-fanned out on his cheeks. I thought about how odd it was that since my arrival in Florida, I'd gotten close to two men who were such complete opposites in many ways. Deacon was an irresistible mix of the cerebral and the physical, between his crazy intelligent brain and his farmer boy physique. When he wore a suit, he looked as though he'd been born in one, but when he was in jeans, there wasn't any doubt that he was all rugged man.Noah, on the other hand, was so blatantly, in-your-face physical-all muscles and size and incredible sensuality. It would be easy to assume that a dude like him didn't have much going on upstairs, but that would be a mistake. Noah was a gifted mathematician who'd minored in British literature, simply because he loved to read Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott and Austen. He could've had any care