“Welcome.” She sat on the corner of the bed and looked down at Jane Doe. “I’ve got it from here.”
Todd didn’t leave, but his jaw tightened, though Bridget doubted he noticed. A moment later he grinned, but it looked forced. “How long are you staying?”
“All night.” She tried not to sound grumpy, but she wasn’t exactly thrilled. Yes, someone needed to stay with the girl, but she’d appreciate the assignment more if she had the authority to do something. Instead, if the doctor asked anything, she’d have to relay the question to her boss. It wasn’t like she coulddecide for someone else’s daughter. She wasn’t a parent and felt singularly unprepared to pretend she was. Yet that was the position she’d been put in.
“I’ll spend my time looking through the reports I can access from here. If there’s nothing reasonable, then we’ll get the media involved. We should probably do that anyway, so we speed up our Jane Doe reunion with her family.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Todd had shoved his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels.
She tried to ignore the way his hair flopped into his eyes. It was endearing—and she needed to focus on anything but that fact. Desperately needed to avoid the thought of the word endearing and this man. She was too tired and overwhelmed to let herself be distracted by anything else right now.
No, she was going to sit and run through the reports she could find. That would be a much better use of her time than focusing on this man, the one who had rescued the girl in the bed.
Bridget couldn’t think about how she wanted someone to rescue her, because it wasn’t true. She could handle her challenges on her own.
The moment she thought it, she felt a breeze of conviction.
She couldn’t be an island. She needed to remember that God had placed her in community and that fundamentally, He was her source.
That didn’t mean Todd Westmont was someone she could and would rely on during this night. They would work together to find this child’s family, then he would return to his work and she to hers. The chances they’d interact again outside a few social events were slim, and that was good. He could be too distracting if she let him.
He leaned against the sink and studied her as she pulled out her laptop and started clicking to log into the VPN and find theright database with the reports she needed to screen. “How long have you known Dani?”
She didn’t bother looking up. “Danny?”
“Caleb Jamison’s wife. He’s my partner.”
“I knew that. It’s already been a long night.” She glanced up briefly before returning to the files on her laptop. “Not long. She’s friends with my former boss Sydney Sims. They’ve been nice enough to pull me into their circle.”
“Ah, so the connection is Logan.”
“And Tricia.”
“Makes sense. So that makes you and me inextricably linked.”
She didn’t bother to remind him they had met, even as it stung that she’d made so little of an impression.”
“Why haven’t you come to more events at Caleb and Dani’s?”
“Sydney’s my connection.” She kept right on ignoring him, refusing to make it easy on him.
He grimaced, as if picking up her frustration. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“So what about them Huskers?”
His comment startled her. “What?”
He chuckled as he mimed throwing something. “You were so into that basketball game. I’ve never seen anyone yell at the refs like that.”
“We’d never made it that far into the NCAA tourney before.”
“Really?” He looked genuinely perplexed.
That made her laugh. “You need to pay more attention.”
“The Huskers haven’t always been this good.”
