From Neighbors...to Newlyweds?. Brenda Harlen

he assured her. In fact, he hadn’t missed a single one of her birthdays in the past three years, and he was grateful that Brittney’s mother had continued to include him in family events after the divorce. Of course, it probably helped that he and Kelsey had been friends long before he married her sister. “But the last thing I need is my seventeen-year-old niece trying to set me up.”

      “Well, I haven’t found any candidates yet,” she admitted. “Aside from my friend, Nina, who thinks you’re really hot. But even I know how inappropriate that would be.”

      “And on that note,” Matt said, pushing back his chair, “I think I should check in on my patient.”

      Brittney rose with him. “And I need to get back to the E.R.”

      But before she turned away, she gave him a quick hug.

      He was as pleased as he was surprised by the impulsive gesture of affection. But it was the words she spoke—”You’ll find someone, Uncle Matt”—that somehow shifted his thoughts to the beautiful widow living next door with her three children and made him wonder if maybe he already had.

      Georgia didn’t have a lot of experience with her kids and emergency rooms—thank God for small favors—but she knew that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” was an adage that applied in hospitals as much as anywhere else. And when she finally managed to maneuver her family through the sliding doors, with Pippa fussing, Shane crying (and trying to hold a bag of now partially thawed frozen peas against his wrist), and Quinn shouting “Don’t let him die!”, she didn’t even try to shush them. Or maybe she knew her efforts would be futile anyway.

      After she gave the basic details of the incident and handed over her insurance information to the bored-looking clerk behind the desk, she was told—with a vague gesture toward the mostly empty seating area—to wait. But she didn’t even have a chance to direct Quinn to an empty chair when a dark-haired girl in teddy-bear scrubs appeared with a wheelchair for Shane. Though the tag on the lanyard around her neck identified her as “Brittney” and confirmed that she was a member of the hospital staff, she didn’t look to Georgia like she was old enough to be out of high school.

      “I’m just going to take you for a walk down the hall to X-ray so that we can get some pictures of your arm,” Brittney explained to Shane.

      His panicked gaze flew to his mother. Georgia brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead and tried not to let her own worry show.

      “It’s okay if your mom and your brother and sister want to come along, too,” Brittney assured him. “Would that be better?”

      Shane nodded.

      Quinn shook his head vehemently. “I don’t want Shane to get a X-ray. I wanna go home.”

      “We can’t go home until a doctor looks at your brother’s arm,” Georgia reminded her son, holding on to her fraying patience by a mere thread. “And the doctor can’t see what’s inside his arm without an X-ray.”

      “You can make it better,” Quinn insisted. “Kiss it and make it better, Mommy.”

      Georgia felt her throat tighten because her son trusted that it could be that simple, that she had the power to make it better because she’d always tried to do so. But they weren’t babies anymore and Shane’s injury wasn’t going to be healed by a brush of her lips and a Band-Aid.

      Just like when their father had died, there was nothing she could do to ease their pain. Nothing she could do to give them back what they’d lost or fill the enormous void that had been left in all of their lives.

      “Unfortunately, that’s not going to fix what’s wrong this time,” she told him.

      “Does a X-ray … hurt?” Shane asked.

      Brittney squatted down so that she was at eye level with the boy in the chair. “It might hurt a little when the tech positions your arm to take the picture,” she admitted. “But it’s the best way to figure out what to do next to make your arm stop hurting.”

      After a brief hesitation, Shane nodded. “Okay.”

      She smiled at him, then turned to Quinn and sized him up. “How old are you?”

      “Four.” He held up the requisite number of fingers proudly.

      “Hmm.” She paused, as if considering a matter of great importance. “I’m not sure if this will work.”

      “If what will work?” he immediately demanded.

      “Well, hospital policy states that no one under the age of five is allowed to drive a wheelchair without a special license,” she confided. “Do you have a license?”

      Quinn shook his head.

      Brittney rummaged in the pockets of her shirt and finally pulled out a small square of blue paper. “I have a temporary one here,” she told him, and Georgia saw that the words TEMPORARY WHEELCHAIR LICENSE were printed in bold letters across the top of the paper. “And I can give it to you if you think you can steer the chair slowly and carefully all the way down the corridor to X-ray.”

      “I can do it,” he assured her.

      She looked to Georgia, who nodded her permission.

      “Okay, then. But first I have to put your name on here—”

      “Quinn Reed.”

      She uncapped a pen and carefully printed his name. “And the date?”

      He looked to his mother for guidance on that one.

      “May twenty-second,” she supplied.

      Brittney filled in the date, then recapped the pen and handed the “license” to Quinn. He studied the paper reverently for a moment before tucking it carefully into the pocket of his jeans and reaching up to take the handles of the chair.

      “Just one warning,” Brittney told him. “If you bump into anything or anybody, I’ll have to revoke that license.”

      He nodded his understanding, and they set off toward the X-ray department.

      Twenty minutes later, Brittney directed them into a vacant exam room with a promise that “Dr. Layton will be in shortly.”

      But one minute turned into two, and then five turned into ten. And Pippa, already overdue for a feeding, made it clear—at the top of her lungs—that she would not be put off any longer.

      Thankfully, Quinn seemed to have finally accepted that his brother wasn’t in any immediate danger of dying, and he crawled up onto the hospital cot and closed his eyes. Shane was still crying, though there was only an occasional sob to remind her of the tears that ran down his cheeks. So Georgia eased Pippa out of the carrier and settled in a hard plastic chair to nurse the baby.

      She tried to drape a receiving blanket over her shoulder, to maintain some degree of modesty, but Pippa was having none of it. Every time she tried to cover herself, her daughter curled her little fingers around the edge of the fabric and tugged it away, until Georgia gave up. Besides, she didn’t imagine a nursing mother was either an unusual or scandalous sight in a hospital.

      Of course, that was before Matt Garrett walked in.

      In the few moments that Matt had taken to review the digital images before he tracked down the patient, he didn’t manage to figure out why the name Shane Reed seemed familiar. Then he walked into exam room four and saw one little boy on the bed and an almost mirror image in the wheelchair parked beside it, and he realized Shane Reed was one half of the adorable twin sons belonging to his gorgeous neighbor. And sure enough, Georgia was seated beside the bed, nursing her baby girl.

      The baby’s tiny hand was curled into a fist and pressed against the creamy slope of her mother’s breast, and her big blue eyes were wide and intent while she suckled hungrily. It was one of the most beautiful sights Matt had ever witnessed. And incredibly arousing.

      “Mommy.”