“I can’t afford to have you die,” he returned. “They won’t give me anybody to replace you. I’ll have to teach your ghost how to type.”

“Mr. Banks...” she protested.

He signed her in. The clerk, who knew him, raised her eyebrows, glanced past him at a red-faced, sickly Clancey, and nodded. “Bring her over and let’s get some information. Then we’ll get her right in.”

Clancey gave the clerk the information and her insurance card. They did have great insurance at work, and maybe she could take Tad and flee to another country before the bill came due for what the insurance wouldn’t pay.

The form was filled out, and a nurse came for Clancey. She was escorted back to a room where, a few minutes later, a smiling technician came to draw blood. The doctor came in long enough to ask her a couple of questions and listen to her chest. He grimaced and ordered a chest X-ray, then went back out again.

It was almost an hour later when she was diagnosed with pneumonia, given two prescriptions, and sent back out to the waiting room.

She was wondering how she’d get back to the office when she saw Banks still sitting there, patiently waiting for her.

She burst into tears. He’d been impatient, irritable, insulting, all sorts of things over the months she’d worked for him. But when she was sick, here he was, taking care of her when nobody would have faulted him for leaving her and going back to work.

He got up and went to her. “What’s wrong?” he asked in the softest deep, gentle tone she’d ever heard from him.

She swallowed a sob. “It’s so kind... I thought you’d go...back to work,” she sobbed.

“And leave you here alone, to find your own way home?” he asked.

She looked up at him with wet cheeks and glistening pale silver eyes. And she fell in love. Just that quickly.

It was a long walk down the hospital corridor to the exit. She had to stop and breathe twice before they got to the door.

Once outside, he swung her up into his arms and curled her up against his broad, muscular chest.

“Sorry,” she managed. “I’m so heavy...”

“You aren’t heavy.” His chin was resting on her dark hair. She closed her eyes, sick and vulnerable, and curved one arm hesitantly around his neck. She nestled close with a sigh.