Summer, distracted by the pain in her right arm, glanced down and saw the blood begin to seep from a four-inch gash. Amazed, she stared at it for a full three seconds while her mind completely rejected the idea that blood, her blood, could pour out so quickly.

“Excuse me,” she managed at length. “Do you think the two of you could finish this round after I stop bleeding to death?”

Charlie looked over, a torrent of abuse trembling on his tongue. Instead, he stared wide-eyed at the wound, then broke into an excited ramble of Korean.

“If you’d stop interfering,” Max began, even as he caught sight of the blood running down Summer’s arm. He blanched, then to everyone’s surprise, moved like lightning. Grabbing a clean cloth, he pressed it against the gash in Summer’s arm. “Sit,” he ordered and nudged her onto a kitchen stool. “You,” he bellowed at no one in particular, “clean up this mess.” Already he was fashioning a tourniquet. “Relax,” he said to Summer with unaccustomed gentleness. “I want to see how deep it is.”

Giddy, she nodded and kept her eyes trained on the steam from a pot across the room. It didn’t really hurt so very much, she thought as her vision blurred then refocused. She’d probably imagined all that blood.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” She heard Blake’s voice vaguely behind her. “You can hear the commotion in here clear out to the dining room.” He strode over, intending to give both Summer and Max the choice of unemployment or peaceful coexistence. The red-stained cloth stopped him cold. “Summer?”

“An accident,” Max said hurriedly while Summer shook her head to clear it. “The cut’s deep—she’ll need stitches.”

Blake was already grabbing the cloth from Max and pushing him aside. “Summer. How the hell did this happen?”

She focused on his face and registered concern and perhaps temper in his eyes before everything started to swim again. Then she made the mistake of looking down at her arm. “Spinach casserole,” she said foolishly before she slid from the stool in a dead faint.

The next thing she heard was an argument. Isn’t this where I came in? she thought vaguely. It only took her a moment to recognize Blake’s voice, but the other, female and dry, was a stranger.

“I’m staying.”

“Mr. Cocharan, you aren’t a relative. It’s against hospital policy for you to remain while we treat Ms. Lyndon. Believe me, it’s only a matter of a few stitches.”

A few stitches? Summer’s stomach rolled. She didn’t like to admit it, but when it came to needles—the kind the medical profession liked to poke into flesh—she was a complete coward. And if her sense of smell wasn’t playing tricks on her, she knew where she was. The odor of antiseptics was much too recognizable. Perhaps if she just sat up and quietly walked away, no one would notice.

When she did sit up, she found herself in a small, curtained examining room. Her gaze lit on a tray that held all the shiny, terrifying tools of the trade.