But it wasn’t a stranger. It was him. All the old memories, all the old attraction—all the old baggage. If he wasn’t such a jerk—

The hormones gave her another thrill along her nerve endings. They didn’t care if he was a macho idiot. All they knew was that he had been cute and now he was a hunkarama, right in the same style and league as some of the gorgeous guys who’d been making beautiful scenery in Last of the Mohicans and Dances With Wolves. Yeah, it was all still there.

“If he wasn’t such a jerk, you’d be in bed with him in a New York minute,” she said aloud, scolding herself. “Jennifer, you are such a pushover!”

Jennifer, you are such a dope. The minute David shows up, you’ve got helium heels.

She put her head down in her hands, and tried to think around the hormones and the anger. I was yelling loud enough to be heard in the next county. I’m sure they heard me inside. If I’m lucky, someone in there will pick up one of those cards, or make David give him one. If I’m really lucky, it’ll be someone with the sense Wah-K’on-Tah gave a gnat, and he’ll call me. If I’m not lucky, I’m going to have to try and talk one of these guys into hearing me out before he pitches me out on my butt.

Well, there was one man who would not be at that meeting. At least one of the men who’d been injured was still in the hospital and not so drugged up that he couldn’t talk. Larry Bushyhead had had something fall on him when the dozer exploded; from the tally at the hospital the injuries were cracked ribs and broken fingers, but not much else. If she left now, she could make it before visiting hours were over.

He wasn’t an ex-employee, either; he was a witness to everything that had happened before the explosion. He could have some valuable information about the guys who’d quit, and about what had happened that day.

And at least he wouldn’t be someone who made her hormones prance around like performing dogs.

The hospital corridor was empty; most of the patients on this floor were drugged into happy—or at least pain-free—oblivion. They’d turned the corridor lights down for the benefit of those who wanted to sleep.

I really hate hospitals, she thought absently. The places always smelled like disinfectant and dead flowers, and they were always too cold. No wonder the nurses wore sweaters on duty. She listened to her own footsteps and the mingled sounds of a dozen TV and radio stations as she walked the empty corridor to a room halfway along its length.