of the hospital’s nurses. I got the scuttlebutt as soon as I walked out of the locker room just now.” He pulled a pen from the pocket of his light blue scrubs and scribbled something on the paper sheets inside her chart.
She snorted. “I didn’t, Frank Marshall did.” Both Zeke and Jeremiah shot her a questioning look. “He was here to check up on someone for a friend and stopped in. The nurse, bless her heart, thought I was a little loose in the noodle.”
Jeremiah snorted a laugh. “Loose in the noodle?”
She opened her eyes wide and lifted her good arm. “I asked where the Guardian was and told her the shiner I’m sporting wasn’t from the tornado but from a serial killer who clocked me. She heard guardian and serial killer and thought I was the crazy one.” She flicked her hand dismissively. “Serves her right for not believing me.”
Jeremiah looked at Zeke and then they both busted up laughing. She reached up and gently pushed Jeremiah. “Stop it. Both of you.”
Zeke shut her chart while still chuckling. “The surgery went well. You’ll probably be released tomorrow morning.”
She rolled her eyes. “I want to go home today.” She stopped and glanced at Remi. “Except there is no home.”
“We’re staying with Gen until we remedy that situation. Her building is missing shingles, but it was almost as if the tornado skipped some buildings and wiped out others.”
“Usual.” Zeke nodded. “I’m heading next door to check on our friend. I’ll be back north as soon as I can, but with the clinic being gone, I need to talk to the hospital administrators and see if they can put me on a month-by-month contract until I can figure out what I’m going to do.”
Jeremiah glanced at her and she smiled, seeing the question in his eyes. She nodded and mouthed the word ‘yes’.
Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Zeke, I’m going to build a professional space for Eden and me. Adding exam rooms and an office for you wouldn’t be a problem. I made calls on the way down. I can get a construction company from Wyoming to come in and build it after I buy the land from the Hollisters.”
Both she and Zeke shook their heads. “They won’t let you buy it,” Eden spoke for both of them. “They will give you a hundred-year lease on the land for a song, but they won’t sell the land. It’s theirs and they want to keep it.”
“Who would I contact?”
“Andrew Hollister the fifth,” Eden spoke, but she looked to Zeke for confirmation.
He nodded and added, “Andrew the sixth is overseas. He’s in the service. I don’t remember what branch. Depending on the rent for that office space, I’m in.”
“I’m sure we’ll come to some agreement, and if you agree to quit cock-blocking me, I’ll even consider lowering it.”
She gasped at Jeremiah’s words and felt the blush rise from her toes to her cheeks. Zeke chuckled and rubbed his neck. “How about I’ll try to stop? I mean, with my perfect sense of timing, talent like this is hard to keep in check.”
“Deal. Now, go away.” Jeremiah turned his back on Zeke and smiled at her, waggling his eyebrows. She peeked around him and waved at Zeke, who took no offense to the dismissal and laughed as he walked out of the room.
“Now, where were we?” He leaned down and swiped his lips over hers. “Oh, that’s right. You were telling me you loved me.”
Chapter 22
Eden sat on Gen’s back porch and rubbed her arm. The cast had come off yesterday. Eight weeks after the tornado, and what a difference that time had made to her little town. The debris behind Gen’s cafe and Phil’s garage was carted off to either landfills, burn barrels, or metal recycling shops. Jeremiah was down tinkering with his new four-wheel-drive king cab truck. Gen came out of the apartment and handed her a frosty glass of sweet tea, a delicacy that the South Dakotans of Hollister hadn’t adopted.
She took a sip and sighed. “Thank you again for letting us stay here, Gen.”
“No worries. I enjoy having someone around to visit with and you’ve been so much help getting the cafe back together.”
“I’ve been doing paperwork.” She lifted her arm. “This prevented me from doing anything else.”
“If you only knew how much I loved saying, ‘Eden, could you please order this or that?’ and boom, I knew it was done. Plus, you helped me pick out a new counter and booths.