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here.” Her reply came through his car speakers. 
    He gave a nervous glance over his shoulder at the bags of presents in the back seat. This wasn’t going according to plan at all. “You’re making the kids spend Christmas alone?”
    “Yeah, I put getting stranded at work, and working a twenty-four hour shift on my Christmas list. You know, for fun.”
    He swore there was enough ice in her tone to frost the windows a little more. That’s not what he’d meant. You’d think after all these years, he would have figured out how to communicate with his own wife, but he’d still found a way to push her buttons. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry you’re still at work, but I hate it that the kids are alone.”
    Jaycee’s sigh came over the speakers. “I can’t help it, and I can’t fix it. You could have come to town for the holiday, like you promised them, too.”
    Derek pulled the wrapped wedding ring box out of his pocket and glanced at it, then put it back. “My timing seems to always be a little off.”
    She snorted. “Ya think?” The call disconnected.
    Derek shook his head. Over the years, they’d developed the habit of never saying goodbye. Something Jaycee started, and he supposed it made sense in her line of work. She dealt with the kind of goodbyes you couldn’t come back from to fix later. Life and death goodbyes. Some habits never changed, and in this case, he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
     
    ***
     
    Jaycee wandered back into the kitchen to find Chris with a rolling metal cart filled with cafeteria junk food and candy. “This stuff is supposed to go in the vending machines.”
    Chris gave her a sheepish shrug. “We’re stranded in a blizzard. It’s like the zombie apocalypse. Normal rule don’t apply.”
    Jaycee laughed, then headed to the huge industrial refrigerator along the far wall. She opened the door and rummaged through the labeled contents. The kitchen staff wouldn’t be thrilled when they had to clean up and figure out what they’d used out of their planned menu supplies, but Chris was right about at least a bit of his statement about normal rules not applying.
    The next thing she knew a pair of strong male arms wrapped around her. Chris, yes, but it still startled her enough she jumped and spun around, knocking the heavy refrigerator door shut. Worse yet, she lost her balance and fell—into him.
    He steadied her, then pressed her against the cold steel door and kissed her. Really kissed her. Hands roving over flesh kissed her. A musky tang of his cologne filled her nostrils and Jaycee’s body responded to his touch without asking her mind for permission. 
    The overhead lights flickered, and they both jumped. The distraction gave Jaycee a much needed moment to regain control of herself. She took a step toward Chris’s cart. “You’ve got enough junk food to feed the National Guard unit they might need to send to get us out of here.” The few steps away from him helped her racing pulse to slow.
    Why does he get to me like that? She already knew the answer to the question though. It had been over nine months. She wasn’t like Diana, acting on all of them, but she was still a woman, and still had desires. Now wasn’t the best time in the world to have this revelation, either. It would take some time to process this new information. She cleared her throat. “We should go check on our patients and make sure we have flashlights.”
    Chris grabbed a basket of mixed fresh fruit from a shelf and put it on the cart. He tossed a sign that read, “50 cents each,” onto a nearby lunch counter. “See, I picked something nutritious.” He grinned and headed for the door. Halfway there, he turned, rushed back to Jaycee, and kissed her again. His voice dropped to a husky rumble in her ear. “This is killing me. I don’t think I can stand it if we’re stuck here another night.” 
    Warning bells went off in Jaycee’s mind. She took a quick step away from him.