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“I only said I’d have dinner with you. I never said I’d spend the night with you.”

He smiled at her but his expression turned hostile as his team members looked surprised.

“Yes, I have a date. What a damn miracle,” he said belligerently. “And don’t look at her that way. I found her first.”

A man who must have played football because his neck was as wide as his head looked at her with kind brown eyes.

“Too bad,” he said. “Hell, if I’d known she was here, I’d have thrown myself into the hail of gunfire, too.”

“Shut up, Kevin,” Wade muttered, glancing back over at Jeremy. “Do I really have to go?”

“Yes, you do,” she said, although she didn’t want him to go, either. “Come on, now, and sit up. I shall go get a wheelchair.”

She walked around the gurney as his team members heaved him up into a sitting position. The moment she left the room, Wade’s teammates bombarded him with questions about the gorgeous nurse. He put up his hand to shut them up, wincing.

“God, you are making my head hurt. Not everybody all at once.”

“So tell us about her,” Peter nudged him.

Wade shrugged, desperately groggy. “Not much to tell,” he replied. “She sewed me up and I asked her out.”

“How romantic,” Peter said drolly. “What a smoothie you are, Wade.”

Wade looked at him. “Well, she’s going so I must not have done too badly.”

Kevin, slightly behind him shook his head. “When did you last ask a woman out, Wade? Five, six years ago?”

“Up yours, buddy,” Wade snarled, leaning back against Peter. “She’s not like any other woman I have met. She’s….different. I do not know, maybe she shot me full of a love potion instead of Demerol.”

“You have known her for ten minutes and you already know she’s different?” Peter scoffed. “Guys, it must be love.”

Wade frowned threateningly at him, lacking the strength or the coordination to do much else.

“So why didn’t you introduce us?” Kevin wanted to know. “Are you afraid we’ll offend her and she won’t go out with you?”

“Probably,” Wade nodded. His leg was throbbing and his head hurt and he didn’t want to do anything now but sleep, hoping if he gave them one-word answers they’d get the hint and leave well enough alone.

Jeremy came back into the room then, pushing a wheelchair. Wade was sitting up, looking at her with a twinkle in his eye that she knew was brought on by the drug. Too bad, too; she would have sold her soul for the look to have been real.

“I have just been tongue-lashed for being rude,” Wade said groggily, then gestured to the men standing around him. “Allow me to introduce you to these fools I work with. From my right, Peter, Kevin, Michael, Dennis, Jason and Mark. Gentlemen, meet my future wife, Nurse Jeremy.”

He was drugged and teasing and she teased back. “In your dreams, buster,” she said, kicking the brake down on the wheelchair. “Come on, time to go home.”

Peter and Michael, a man that was at least a half a head taller than the rest of the guys, helped him into the chair. Jeremy pulled two bottles out of her coat pocket and placed them in Wade’s hands.

“In my dreams?” Wade repeated as he opened his palms. “That’s probably true. It’s the only place I’d ever get lucky with a woman like you.”

Jeremy grinned, ignoring his comments. “This is the painkiller should your leg hurt a lot,” she tapped one bottle with a coral-colored fingernail. “And the other one is the antibiotic. The instructions are on the bottle, and you don’t have to start it until tomorrow, okay?”

He looked at the bottles before turning his face up to her.

“Okay,” he replied. “So where do I pick you up?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow for our dinner date. I only have forty-eight hours, remember?”

She stood back, crossing her arms across her chest. “Are you sure? I mean, you may not be feeling so great by tomorrow.”