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repeated.
    Her question remained unanswered while the two men continued arguing. While she hated to be a pest, her question seemed kind of important. Didn’t the doctors and nurses need to know if she’d been poisoned?
    “Are you trying to piss me off?” Detective O’Connor demanded.
    “No. I’m trying to help Ms. Hunt,” Dallas said.
    “Hey,” Ms. Hunt said, her mind still on the possibility of being poisoned. “Was I—”
    “You don’t even know her,” Detective O’Connor accused.
    The PI smiled at her. “We bonded.”
    “Did someone really poison me?” she repeated again.
    “Was that before or after she puked on you?” Detective O’Connor asked and the PI looked back at him.
    “I think it was during.” Dallas turned his grin toward her again.
    “Bonded my ass. She puked on you. Next you’ll tell me you consider that your retainer.”
    Dallas shifted his attention back to the cop. “Hey, that works.”
    “I asked a question.” Nikki’s stomach cramped and she put a hand on her middle. She felt sick, but how sick? What kind of poison had she ingested? Was it lethal? Was she bleeding to death on the inside while these two stood by arguing about God only knew what?
    A cell phone rang. Detective O’Connor grabbed the phone from his belt loop, scowled at the PI then took the call. “Hello. You’re breaking up. We have a bad…” He paused. “I know, Dallas just informed me. Get CSU down there. Hey… you’re fading out again. Let me call you back.” Detective O’Connor pointed a finger at Dallas and said, “Don’t do this to me.” Then he walked out of the curtained cubicle.
    Nikki, hand still placed over her roiling stomach, watched the detective leave then refocused on the blue-eyed private investigator. “Did someone poison me?”

 
    T ONY COULDN’T FRIGGIN’ believe his brother would start this shit with him. Frustrated, he dialed Clark’s number. Cell phone pressed to his ear, Tony walked down the hall until he got to the nurse’s station. Clark answered.
    “Hey, it’s me again,” Tony said. “Just get CSU there. Make sure…”
    Damn!
His phone started fading out again. Looking up at the glaring nurse, he snapped his phone shut and focused on her. “You need to run a tox screen on Ms. Hunt. There’s a chance she might have been given something against her will.”
    “The other cop, the one with manners, already told me,” the nurse said crisply.
    Tony frowned. What had he done to piss
her
off? He recalled getting pushy to get the blonde brought back in the ER right away. Hell, she’d already puked all over his brother, and Tony hadn’t wanted to be her next victim.
    Staring at the nurse, he realized the nicer cop she alluded to had to be Dallas. Tony didn’t bother correcting her. Instead, he started down the hall to find a placewhere he could call Clark back. He went the way he thought would have an exit, but didn’t find it. He looked at his phone, found it had all the bars, then he spotted the visitor’s room. He had one foot inside when he heard a familiar sound.
    He stopped, thinking he’d imagined it. But the lighthearted, warm-the-soul kind of laugh sounded again.
LeAnn
.
    Swinging around, he spotted his wife standing at the nurses’ station, her back to him. He hadn’t known she’d switched hospitals. His chest grew heavy and light at the same time. Damn, he’d missed her. He ran a hand through his hair, and took a step toward her.
    Her hair hung longer. The soft brown strands bounced against her shoulders, and Tony’s hands itched to touch them. He’d loved her hair long and begged her not to cut it. But she’d insisted that short hair would be less time consuming.
    Had it really been nine months since he’d seen her? Not that he hadn’t tried. He left messages on her phone once a week, telling her the same thing. He wanted to talk. He could understand why she was mad. But he was so damn sorry.
    She had yet to call him back. He kept telling