Getting her eyes to open required an equal amount of effort, but when she managed that task, she was blinded by a flash of high-intensity light. She groaned and lowered her lashes.

“Am I in the morgue?” she mumbled, having difficulty getting the words over her uncooperative tongue.

“Not yet,” Sam answered.

“That’s reassuring.”

“You’re in the recovery room. Everything went without a hitch. We’re lucky we got the appendix when we did. From the look of things, it was ready to burst, and then there could have been some unpleasant complications.”

“Close, but no cigar, huh?”

“In this case you don’t want a cigar.”

“So I’ll live and love again?”

Sam brushed the hair from her temple. “You’re good for at least another fifty years.”

For some inexplicable reason it seemed easier to concentrate with her eyes closed. Her lids fluttered shut even though she strained to keep them open.

“Go ahead and sleep,” Sam told her softly. “I’m here, like I promised.”

Marjorie wanted to thank him; she searched for some way to let him know how grateful she was that she hadn’t woken up alone. The hospital might seem a warm, congenial place to him, but he was there every day. To her, it was a disinfected torture chamber, and she was scared witless. It seemed so important to tell him that his presence comforted her that she wrestled to keep awake even as she felt herself slipping back into the thick, dark fog.

Pain woke Marjorie up the second time—a dull, throbbing ache in her side, quite different from what she’d experienced before meeting Sam. She raised her hand, rubbed her eyes, and yawned. The room wasn’t as brilliant as before. The light appeared muted, and she was grateful. She rolled her head and realized she was in a small room. The draperies were closed, but a ribbon of light entered between them. A noise distracted her, and she turned her head in the opposite direction and discovered Sam Bretton sitting at her bedside, reading the latest Scandinavian thriller.

“Sam?”

He closed the book, turned to face her, and smiled. “Hello again.”

“What time is it?”

He rotated his wrist. “Almost six.”

“In the morning?”

He nodded and stood, setting his novel aside. He took her wrist and pressed his fingers over her pulse while he stared at the face of his watch.