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not and you know it.” His eyes held mine and I looked away first.
    “Now, I don’t care what you say. I’m buying you dinner. What do you want to eat?” he asked in a low seductive voice.
    Talk about a loaded question.
     

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    I WAS EXPECTING A call from Carl the next morning. By 10 o’clock it still hadn’t come. I started to call him. Then the pleasant memory of my evening of food and flirting with Rollins stopped my fingers before they could punch the numbers. Spending my evening with another man, and dread over wondering what was up with my own man, made me suddenly not quite so eager to know what was going on. I was sure I’d be finding out soon enough. Instead, I put on a pot of coffee and settled down at my kitchen table with a cranberry muffin and the newspaper. I was scanning the local news section, glancing over the emergency squad runs from the night before, when a name jumped out at me: Audrey Grant. I quickly read the brief blurb.
    Audrey Grant, 29, of 1291 Pensacola Pike, taken by squad to the emergency room of Willow Memorial Hospital due to illness. Admitted for treatment .
    Audrey was in the hospital? I wondered what could be wrong with her. She seemed healthy enough at the meeting last night, maybe a little tired from chasing around five kids, but otherwise healthy. I wondered if she was still in the hospital. There was only one way to find out. I made a call to Willow Memorial and asked to be connected to Audrey Grant’s room.
    “One moment, please,” replied the mellow-voiced operator. Seconds later the sound of a busy signal filled my ear.
    “Ma’am, that line is busy. Would you like me to put you on hold or will you call back later?”
    “I’ll call back. Thanks.”
    So, Audrey was still in the hospital and judging by the busy signal she wasn’t ill enough to not be on the phone, which made me even more curious about what was wrong with her. I hung up and headed for my bathroom. It was Saturday. I had nothing else to do that day and decided that visiting Audrey would be better than sitting around waiting for Carl to call.
    An hour later, and armed with a cactus plant from the gift shop, I was standing awkwardly in the doorway of Audrey Grant’s hospital room. She was propped up in bed dressed in the requisite blue gown with the same plaid headband she’d had on in the meeting last night, only now it was crooked and pieces of hair had escaped and were falling in her face. She was also as pasty as the white sheet that was bunched up under her large breasts. Dark smudges under her eyes looked like bruises on her pale skin. An IV of clear fluid was hanging from a pole on the right side of the bed with the line inserted into the back of her right hand and held in place by clear tape. Audrey was staring off into space in a daze. I knocked softly on the open door and she snapped out of her trance and looked over at me.
    “Kendra?” she said in a surprisingly strong voice for someone who looked so ill.
    “I hope you don’t mind,” I said, coming into the room and standing by the side of the bed. “I read in the squad runs this morning that you’d been admitted to the hospital. Are you okay?” I set the cactus down on the table by the bed.
    She glanced at it then back at me without speaking. She continued to stare at me without speaking and looking quite confused, I might add, for a full minute and it took everything in me not to squirm.
    “Okay. Well, I should probably go so you can get your rest. Sorry to have bother you.” I turned to go.
    “Wait,” she called out, stopping me before I could get out the door. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m just a little out of it.” She shook her head as if to clear it and gestured for me to sit in the chair by the bed. I sat.
    “What happened? You seemed fine last night.”
    “That’s a good question,” she said with a laugh.
    “What do you mean?” I leaned forward in the chair.
    “They told me that I had