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“You want me to take you back out to your friends? I think you’ll need each other tonight.” Jude’s eyes pricked when he thought of the redheaded man on the floor, the devastation he must be feeling. “Dr. Frost?”
“Snow,” he growled into Jude’s neck. “I told you to call me Snow.”
The doctor pulled back and kept going until his spine was to a wall. Watery blue eyes fell shut and he leaned his head back. He had a long neck and broad shoulders. With those sharp eyes closed and grief softening his features, he held a kind of masculine beauty that stole Jude’s breath. But it wasn’t the face and body that drew Jude to him so strongly. Those were both off the charts and everything he liked in a man, yeah, but Snow had something more that was drawing Jude in so much. A kind of need that burned underneath all that heady confidence.
Jude wanted to know him. Not just sleep with him—and he wanted that pretty damn bad. No, he wanted to just be around him. “Come on,” he said softly. “Last time I checked your friends were still here. Dr. Sanders moved them to an empty room.” He thought of holding out his hand but knew the doctor’s moment of weakness was over and he’d see holding hands in the hospital as a huge sign of weakness. Nobody here would care but that wouldn’t matter to Snow.
They made their way through the throng of celebrating people, who all quieted this time. One of the staff must have shushed them and asked them to respect those who weren’t getting good news this evening. Jude glanced over his shoulder at the tall man behind him often as they walked, hating to see him so sad, but also drawn to look at him over and over.
Dr. Sanders spotted them and pointed to the room she’d given Snow’s friends to use. Her pretty face was drawn in lines of worry and exhaustion so he showed Snow to the room and kept walking to her. He glanced over his shoulder once again to find Snow hovering in the doorway. He turned back to the pediatrician. “Why are you working the ER tonight?”
“They needed the extra hands. A school flooded this afternoon and we were busy, so I stuck around. I didn’t know you and Dr. Frost are friends.”
“We’re not. I was the one who brought his friends.”
“It’s just so sad.”
He nodded as all the events of the day started to really hit him. Closing his eyes, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the headache creeping into his skull.
“And there he goes,” Dr. Sanders murmured.
Jude turned in time to see Snow striding angrily from the hospital. Coatless. He started to follow then decided to grab his coat for him. When he arrived at Ian’s room, the young man was still asleep. He had another man watching over him—one with long black hair tied back off his face. He looked vaguely familiar from the newspapers. Dark eyes lifted to pin Jude for a second before he nodded. Jude grabbed the doctor’s coat and hurried back out.
Those men all seemed to adore the young man lying on that hospital bed. Jude had overheard a nurse say earlier that Ian Pierce had absolutely no family to call. She was wrong. Maybe he didn’t have blood relatives, but there was no mistaking the fact that the men who rallied around him were most definitely family.
Jude didn’t catch Snow in time and he didn’t want to disturb the grieving widower, so he took the coat home. He’d bring it back to work with him tomorrow.Chapter 5Daisy was stretched out beside him, her head resting in his lap. Rowe scratched the German Shepard behind the ear, but her tail didn’t thump the floor like it normally would when he hit her favorite spot. She knew something was wrong. All three dogs knew.
For the first several hours, they paced from him to the front door, waiting and watching until he could no longer take it. Rowe moved to the bedroom, but he couldn’t sleep. Not when he could smell her on the sheets, her flowery shampoo on the pillow beside him.
Melissa Ward was everywhere. Sitting on the floor in the corner of the bedroom, he held the T-shirt she’d slept in the night before. A pair of running shoes stuck out from under the bed while he could see two pairs of heels piled beside the dresser. A worn, muddy pair of gym shoes were by the front door — she wore those when she walked the dogs — and a pair of slippers in the form of the killer rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail were somewhere in the living room. The woman was horrible about leaving her shoes everywhere. At least, she had been.
