to get them out of the car and swim him to shore. After several weeks in a coma, Dallon died one week before Christmas.
Jack didn’t like talking about the accident, but he had given her the details of what happened over and over again in the days they sat beside Dallon’s hospital bed, waiting for him to wake up.
“I miss him,” Jack finally said, his voice gruff. “Remember the way he’d go into detail about every putrid wound he’d come across?”
Holly groaned. Of all the memories. “Always during dinner.”
“And especially if whatever we were eating looked anything like what he’d seen in the clinic.” Jack shook his head. “He knew he’d won when we pushed our plates away.”
“When I pushed my plate away,” Holly pointed out. “You never did.”
“Too much pride.” He let out a low chuckle, causing a close table of doctors to look over in surprise. Dr. Jack Shay did not chuckle. He brooded and stalked and glared, but he was the best radiologist Bridger University Hospital had seen in years, so they dealt with it.
Holly leaned close. “Careful. Your reputation is in jeopardy.”
Jack arranged his features back into a severe scowl, but he couldn’t hide the amused twinkle in his eye that only she seemed to see. “Is this better?”
She let out a fake sigh of relief. “I think I felt the world right itself again on its axis.”
Jack lowered his voice. “You know they all think we’re dating.”
She did know. She was exhausted from refuting the rumors and shrugged her shoulders now when people hinted at wanting to know more. At least it kept well-intentioned, but misguided coworkers from trying to set her up. She’d already had her one great love, and her only interest going forward was to learn about others’ love stories.
She glanced over Jack’s shoulder, back at the adorable couple in the corner. The man now gripped the edge of the table while watching the woman walk their trays to the trash, appearing as though he’d lost his breath at the sight of her.
There was definitely something intriguing about them. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“You’re not going to be able to think about anything until you interrogate them about their love story,” Jack said, bringing her attention back to him, pushing the just-out-of-reach thought completely from her mind.
She laughed. “I do not interrogate people.”
“Whatever you want to call it.”
“Interviewing.” She took a bite of her sticky bun. Inspired by her parents’ great love story—and strengthened by her dad’s numerous painful failures at finding love following her mom’s death—Holly had started a MyHeartChannel show in the long, dark months following Dallon’s funeral.
Jack had worried it was a bad idea, interviewing people about their “meet-cutes” and love stories when she’d lost her own, but it had healed her, and reaffirmed her beliefs about true love. When she’d met Dallon in med school, her heart had skipped a beat, and she often thought that was where her fascination with the heart began. Her followers had grown steadily over the last couple of years, and she hoped a collaboration she’d set up with another famous MyHeartChannel owner would give her even more exposure.
She looked at the couple thoughtfully. “I still need someone for my Christmas show.”
“I thought you usually had these things in the bag months in advance.”
She did, but every time she thought of opening an email labeled “holiday romance” (the subject line she’d asked people who submitted to put if they wanted to be considered for her holiday show), her stomach tightened and she skimmed past it. It turned out her aversion to the holidays was stronger than her love of romance this year.
“It’s probably for the best. Holiday romances are even more doomed than regular ones.”
She folded her arms, ready to spar. This wasn’t the first time she’d come head to head with Jack’s pessimism when it came to love. “Really? And where did you get your data from?”
“Real life,” he said, holding his cup out as if to give her a toast.
She rifled through her memories, recalling that he and his ex-wife had gotten married around Christmastime. She slid her hand across the table and wrapped it around his, her skin warming at the touch of his fingers in hers, like holding a mug of rich, comforting hot chocolate.
Jack tensed at the touch. It took everything in her to resist the urge to offer him any sort of sympathy or comfort, knowing from past experience it would be rejected pretty