Sleeping With Santa Read Online Free PDF Page A

in a disorienting red hot and blue time warp. Blinking hard, her vision turned gray before shrinking to the size of a suffocating pinhole.
    Then.
    Everything.
    Went.
    Black—

Chapter Four
    With the department SUV’s siren blaring and lights flashing, Nick and Maresca followed the ambulance with Sophia and Bob in the backseat.
    “Stick around, will ya. We’re gonna check on Lily.”
    “You got it, Chief.” Nick took a seat in the emergency room lobby that reeked of disinfectant and looked just as sterile and uninteresting as the one in Star Harbor. He grabbed the first magazine from a stack on the end table and flipped mindlessly through the glossy pages.
    At first, Lily’s fainting spell seemed like a good act. If he was sure of one thing, it was women were mental terrorists capable of anything. They could play the damsel in distress at the drop of dime whenever the mood struck. Sometimes for effect. Sometimes for real. Something about stress levels short-circuiting the nervous system like a defense mechanism—the fight or flight reflex at its primordial best.
    He’d been married to the best of the best when it came to drama queens. And he’d responded to enough 911 calls to know when to worry and when to walk away from a false alarm.
    Lily looked like a pretty healthy female. However, when she went down, he sprang to her side. Her usual fair complexion was whiter than the pale moon. Even her pink lips had lost their hue.
    Thank God, she didn’t need CPR. But being unconscious wasn’t a good sign.
    A couple of hours and a dozen magazines later, Nick was restless for Maresca to emerge with news regarding Lily’s condition. With nothing else to do, he reviewed his list of to-dos.
    A few fire alarms to test.
    A couple of chimneys to inspect.
    Then there was the whole Santa-gig.
    Overall, it wasn’t a lot to handle, and it certainly wasn’t rocket science. The hardest part of the job was keeping up with Maresca’s ad-hoc requests—until now. This sitting and waiting for an update on her was torturous.
    Nervous energy urged Nick to his feet. Pacing gave him something to do. And when he got tired of pacing, he went back to sitting.
    Planted in a plastic chair, he watched the clock on the wall. Stifling a yawn, he fought the need to shut his eyes and ran his hands through his hair, pulling at the root to wake up.
    The assortment of wounds parading through the door provided better entertainment than any reality TV program and reminded him of his own myriad of trips to the ER.
    Besides the routine check-ups from the neck-up from firefighting injuries, most of his visits had been from drunken bar fighting. A few fractured bones. A couple of concussions. And a broken nose, twice. The garden variety of idiotic injuries that went along with binge drinking.
    Thank God he gave up booze and found salvation in sobriety.
    He was glad not to be the patient this time.
    However, Lily was, and that bothered him. A lot.
    He didn’t have any good reason to care so much, but he did. That bothered him even more.
    For the first time in a while, a little itch inside him begged for scratching, and it had him on his feet ready to find the closest pub for a little comfort in a shot of Southern…
    Better make it a double…
    A triple if he wanted to get Lily off his mind.
    He sat back down. No thanks. Been there. Done that. Blacked out. Passed out. Rinse, repeat. Those days were over. He’d thank his conscience in the morning.
    If he had such good self-control, then why did his moral compass keep pointing at Lily?
    Nick recalled all the things the Star Harbor chief had said about using the transfer to get a fresh start in a new place. Maybe she was the reason destiny brought him to this one traffic-light town. At least that’s what he’d thought up until the point when she collapsed.
    He got up again to stretch his legs, tempted to march behind the ER doors to find Maresca—and Lily—but went out to find some air instead.
    There