time. She thinks we don’t know, but it’s written on her face. I think you did fine. You still look a little queasy. I can’t hug Nikkie Jean—she jumps like a scalded cat every time anyone tries—but I can hug you.”
“Yeah, right. You’re a big teddy bear, aren’t you? You should keep your arm still for a while, at least. Not be lifting me around.” Why wasn’t she climbing off his lap? That was the million-dollar question.
All that sun-kissed male muscle was right there next to her, practically at her fingertips. The fingers of her hand curled. He had very little chest hair, making his muscles practically gleam in the light from the sunroof above them.
Izzie most definitely wanted to touch.
The urge was almost irresistible. What she should do was hop off of his lap and head for the hills. Before she did something that would change everything between them forever.
“Have you tried for any scholarships? I know FCU offers a lot of financial aid,” he asked. It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about.
She finally wrapped her head around it, and was able to come up with a somewhat cohesive answer. “I could. Most of the ones I’d qualify for require you to be a full-time student. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to be full-time, even living with Jake. Annie and I worked our way through school. She decided not to go on after she took on the three boys. We started off working as CNAs together at County Gen.”
“I’m sorry.” His hands tightened around her waist. The captain’s chair was not meant for two, but Izzie wasn’t exactly in a hurry to move. “I thought about it.”
“About what?” His skin was warm against her, attesting to his time out in the afternoon sun. Izzie wanted to press her cheek against his shoulder and breathe him in.
Pitiful, pitiful, pitiful. If Nikkie Jean and Annie had felt like this, it was no wonder they’d tumbled right off the cliff with Caine and Turner.
Well, Izzie had more self-control than those dorks. Maybe.
She might be stuck with him for now, but she was not going to do something stupid with him. She wasn’t going to fall for him.
She didn’t need that right now. When she did find someone to fall in love with—it would be permanent. Real.
She was tired of feeling invisible. When she did fall for someone, she wanted him to look at her the way Caine looked at Nikkie Jean or Turner looked at Annie. She wanted to know that she was the center of his world, like he would be hers.
That was not what Allen would ever want. He had a crowd of nurses behind him that proved that. The man probably had no staying power in that regard. She had no doubt he’d be loyal during the time of the affair, but…he had a reputation she couldn’t forget.
“Starting a scholarship fund. Not a huge one. Something to help others offset the cost of medical school—or nursing. That would be one way to make Logan’s life…mean something.”
“Don’t scholarships have to be funded yearly?” She had no real idea how the legalities of it would work. “Why would you start one?”
“Logan left me everything. All of his financial resources. Those he’d inherited, and those he had built himself. He was a hell of an investor. Like his mother. Logan owned four medical patents. I can retire now on what I inherited from him. He left me his money—and my sister his properties and possessions. She’s trying to determine what to do with that now. She will once the TSP finally releases everything to her. They have stonewalled over the past year. She’s not big on fighting.” His mouth pulled down, expressing his displeasure with that. “Especially with the TSP.”
“He had no one else?” She realized how that sounded and winced. “I mean…not that you and your sister—”
“He had no family, if that’s what you mean. He had two much younger brothers, but they died from genetic heart conditions before reaching their teens. One when Logan was in high school, the other our first year of med school. Logan was instrumental in pioneering a surgical technique that repaired that condition in infants. He…left his mark. Saved so many kids just in the short time. It was a passion of his, why he went into surgery in the first place. He was a hell of a surgeon.”
“No one doubted that.” His grief was so real she could almost