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couldn’t handle himself and some moron in a Hummer had decided that red lights didn’t mean “stop,” they meant “gun through the intersection and take out anything in your path.” Both Finn and the Hummer driver had walked away from the accident with bruises, a few cuts, and concussions.
    It was Oliver who’d woken up in a hospital bed after surgery to be told that a piece of metal had sliced up his right hand, and his chance to finally play in the divisional series after fifteen fucking years of professional baseball was over. The sprained ankle—Lucas had told him he was lucky that he hadn’t actually broken it—and various other cuts and grazes were just the icing on the cake.
    He played first base. He needed his damned hand to work.
    Lucas hadn’t been able to tell him that it would recover fully. The slice had been deep. Apparently the surgery—Lucas had dragged the best microsurgeon in the city out of bed—had taken hours. Nerves and tendons sewn back together. But that didn’t mean they were going to be as good as new. And without full function, more than his chance at playing in the divisional series would be gone.
    Lucas had told him it was too early to panic; he had to wait and see.
    Maggie, white-faced, had told him that the police were charging the Hummer driver with half a dozen offenses. Alex, who’d been there with her when Ollie woke up, told him that if he wanted to sue the driver, the Saints would pay.
    Oliver didn’t care about money. He cared about losing his career. And ever since that moment of waking up, even during the times he’d been delirious on morphine, he’d felt nothing but rage.
    Rage and flashes of pain, and then the drugs would suck him back down into sleep full of dreams that he couldn’t remember but made him wake up gasping each time.
    Which was why he wanted to ditch the drugs. Or at least wean himself onto something less heavy-duty. It had been three hours now since they had taken out the morphine drip and his hand was starting to complain. Loudly.
    But he wasn’t going to ask. Not just yet.
    Drugs weren’t going to help him recover sooner. Not soon enough to make any difference anyway. He was missing the play-offs. Nothing to be done about it.
    He felt his good hand curl at the thought, resisted the urge to smash it against the bed frame. Just. Instead he dropped his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes, and yelled “Fuck!” in as loud a voice as he dared, not wanting to have three nurses come barreling through the door to pester him.
    “Sorry, is this a bad time?” a voice came from the doorway. Female. One he didn’t immediately recognize.
    “Go away,” he growled.
    He heard a sigh but no sound of the door closing again. Then another sigh and footsteps came closer to the bed.
    “I said go away.”
    “I heard you,” his unknown visitor said. “But I wanted to say something first.”
    “If you’re a reporter, I’ll have security here in about three seconds,” he said, still keeping his eyes closed. He knew exactly where the call button was. He’d been bargaining with himself to delay picking it up and asking for a painkiller.
    “I’m not a reporter,” she said.
    “Are you a doctor?”
    “No. Economist.”
    His eyes flew open. Milly the economist? What the hell was she doing here?
    He blinked as he turned his head, the lights in the room dazzling him for a second, but when his vision cleared, it was definitely her. Milly of the big blue eyes and wicked laugh. Here in his hospital room.
    Wearing a very sleek suit in a greenish-brown shade that made her hair—pulled back in a bun that was far more orderly than the style she’d worn at the club—look more red than blond.
    “Do you remember me? I’m Milly—Amelia—Graham. We met at the party.”
    “Yes. What are you doing here?” he said, confused. Maybe he should pinch himself. Maybe he’d fallen asleep and was having another very weird dream. But if he was dreaming, surely she would