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didn’t mention it last time.”
    Morgan shrugged. “You had enough on your mind. And I’m telling you now so you’ll know that even if I didn’t have you breathing down my neck, I honest to God could not go home at night if I wasn’t busting my hump to get to the bottom of this. I couldn’t look Grace in the eye if I wasn’t doing everything I could.”
    Boyd looked at Ray Morgan and saw the fierce love he bore for his wife blazing in his face. The kind of love Josh had believed in and had been holding out for. The kind he had hoped he’d one day find with Hayden. It still pained Boyd to remember that months-ago conversation with Josh and his confession that he loved Hayden. But she was married to her career. She’d shut him down just like she apparently shut down everyone else, but Josh had never been a quitter. He’d said it was a matter of timing for Hayden. She needed to achieve her goals and feel more secure before she could open herself up to romance. He’d been banking on her eventually coming to love him back, when the timing was right. But now his brother would never have that chance, never have a woman he could love as ferociously as Ray Morgan loved his wife.
    He nodded. “Understood. And thank you.”

CHAPTER 3
    Hayden spotted Boyd at a table near the back of the restaurant. He sat studying papers he’d spread across the tabletop, and she caught her breath at the wave of grief that washed over her. God, he looked so much like Josh. Then he glanced up.
    There was nothing of Josh in those eyes as he watched her. Her friend’s gaze had been warm and welcoming. His brother’s, however, cut through her like a laser beam, as if he could see straight to her soul.
    She couldn’t remember the last time someone had had such a profound effect on her. She couldn’t deny there was something about Boyd that drew her to him.
    It’s just because he’s Josh’s brother and both of you are grieving. Squelching her nervousness, she made her way to his table. He stood, pulling out a chair for her. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. McBride had raised their sons to display good manners. Something that had been severely lacking in other men she’d dated.
    Not that she and Josh had dated. And her dinner with Boyd certainly wasn’t a date.
    “Thanks for coming, Hayden.”
    “Happy to help if I can.”
    She took her seat, and he started gathering up the papers. Medical records, she saw.
    “You got the records already?” She gestured to the material. “They must have bumped your request right to the front of the line.”
    He pushed the papers back into the envelope bearing the hospital’s logo and set it on the unused chair to his right. “Charlotte was very accommodating.”
    “Wow.” Her brows shot up. “You’re on a first-name basis with Mrs. Trecartin?”
    He smiled, lifting his shoulders in an easy shrug. “I work fast.”
    Apparently the man was capable of being charming when he chose to be. Not that she’d seen any evidence of that herself. Pretty much all she’d seen from him so far was serious intensity. “It must be hereditary.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Josh could charm the birds out of the trees too.”
    His face sobered immediately, and she regretted raising Josh’s name. And how stupid was that? Josh was the reason she was here after all.
    A waiter appeared to take their drink orders, and she asked for her usual, a Picaroons Blonde Ale.
    Boyd quirked his brow. “Picaroons?”
    She nodded. “Local microbrewery. It’s good.”
    “Then bring me one too.”
    When the waiter left, Hayden picked up the menu and started studying it, even though she pretty much knew it by heart.
    “Do you eat here often?” he asked.
    “More often than I like to admit,” she confessed. “I hate cooking just for myself.”
    He looked up from his menu. “So no boyfriend, then?”
    “Lord, no. I don’t have time for romance.”
    “But you had time for my brother?”
    She closed her menu. “Like I told