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E MILY H AMILTON PLANNED to kill her sister. She just had to figure out where to hide the body. After that, she’d have to explain to Mom and Dad why Amy didn’t attend Sunday dinners anymore. Right now, though, that was all secondary.

Emily parked in front of the Seattle Sharks’ headquarters on a cold, windy Valentine’s Day afternoon, wrestling the biggest balloon bouquet known to mankind from the back of her Ford Escape.

Couldn’t this guy’s girlfriend choose a better method of saying “I wuv you” than seventy-five personalized Mylar balloons, five pounds of Fran’s Chocolates, and a teddy bear the size of Sharks Stadium? A greeting card would work. They’re portable. They’re tasteful. Well, most of them are. The mailman would even pay a visit to one’s very own mailbox to ensure that the Valentine in question found its way into the paw of some neckless, muscle-bound football player in plenty of time for the big day. Then again, Emily didn’t actually know any football players, and maybe she was being a little harsh.

She gazed at the profusion of balloons reading “I love you, Brandon.” Brandon would also be the only man in America who might find such an over-the-top display compelling.

Emily carefully tugged, rearranged, coaxed, and swore under her breath for what felt like a half-hour, and the balloons wrapped themselves around the bear. The bear wedged under the huge box of chocolates. She’d opened all four car doors in an attempt to push or pull the whole thing out. Moving the box was frightening. Even better, it had been an unseasonably cold February in Seattle. The parking lot resembled an ice skating rink courtesy of the last (surprisingly deep) snowfall. Replacing a five-pound box of expensive Fran’s Chocolates meant one less pair of Jimmy Choos in her closet, which was always unacceptable.

Emily pulled on the balloons again as she slid around on pavement that felt like it was greased. She wasn’t exactly dressed for balloon wrangling. The stiletto-heeled boots she’d bought during her last trip to Rome and couldn’t wait to wear looked great at rehearsal. But they didn’t work well in an icy parking lot by any stretch of the imagination. The dress trousers and lacy silk cardigan she had on today weren’t made for flexibility, either.

Emily wasn’t a floral delivery driver by profession. She typically spent her days, and several evenings a week, being rescued from evil spirits, pursued by noblemen, or falling in love with entirely inappropriate scoundrels as an opera singer. Rehearsal was done for the day, however, and she was helping her sister out. Amy’s floral shop had opened less than six months ago, and Valentine’s Day was the biggest delivery day so far. Amy needed the money. After all, her business loan balance was the financial equivalent of Shock and Awe.

Emily needed a stiff drink and an evening with George Clooney, but she didn’t see either materializing anytime soon.

She could free the bear, but that would send the candy box flying. She couldn’t get through the mass of balloons to push the candy box aside. The bear watched her through beady and unmoving eyes as she stopped swearing and started praying. She wasn’t Catholic, but reciting a couple of Hail Mary’s wouldn’t hurt.

Maybe she imagined devil horns sprouting through the bear’s thick plush.

Valentine’s Day was the first night off she’d had in quite some time. Even more than a date or any extravagant Valentine’s observance, Emily wanted a peaceful evening alone in her cozy, early 2000’s up-market townhouse. Besides, she had no use for the holiday. She’d learned long ago that men really couldn’t be trusted. Instead of getting winged by Cupid’s arrow, she’d take a bubble bath with the expensive French freesia-scented bath gel she bought but never had time to use, she’d read her copy of last year’s hottest bestseller, still gathering dust on the nightstand in her room—better late than never—and she’d open a split of Perrier-Jouet champagne. It sounded perfect. All she had to do was finish this, make sure Amy didn’t need any more help, and she could go home. The thought cheered her.

Five sweaty-looking, disheveled men gathered around the front door of the square, three-story team facility, watching Emily’s every movement. Each wore multiple items of clothing bearing the Seattle Sharks’ logo. Did they offer to help her? Hell, no. She saw cash change hands. Of course, she could only imagine what they were betting on: who this crap was for. Whether or not the gigantic balloon bouquet would propel her into the flight pattern at Sea-Tac Airport.

She braced one foot against the car’s back bumper, gingerly tugging yet one more time. She resisted the impulse to cross herself before heaving the box of candy under one arm. She wrestled the evil red teddy bear into a headlock under her other arm.

She extracted the balloons from the back of her car with sheer force of will, gripping them in three-and-a-half fingers, and minced toward the staircase leading to the front door of the facility.

The ice crunched under Emily’s feet. Only a couple more steps to that staircase, which appeared to rival the slickness of Vaseline. She hitched the candy box a little higher against her side. The teddy bear would survive a spill, but the candy wouldn’t. Every step proved she’d make it up those damn stairs, delivery intact. A little frostbite wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

She braced the candy box against the metal stair railing. If she wrapped her arm around it, she could slide her way up. Perfect.

“Get that the hell out of here!” an obviously angry male shouted.

It felt like slow motion. The stiletto heel on her boot snapped off as she jumped. The candy box slipped from her grasp. She let go of the railing as she tried to grab it. Both feet slid out from under her, and she had the sickening realization that she was falling. Adrenaline shot through her system. This would leave a mark. Emily tried to grab on to anything at all. The only thing to hang on to was the huge bunch of balloons.

She landed flat on her back. The candy flew in all directions, the bear landed squarely in the middle of her chest, and she heard a loud thunk as everything went black.

E MILY HEARD A voice as she came to. He was close, and he was murmuring to himself. “Shit. Please don’t be dead.”

She felt a weight resting on her chest. She wriggled her toes. They worked. She spread her fingers. They worked, too. She tried to take a breath.

“I didn’t mean to scare you. This is all my fault. I don’t want any more crap from—oh, hell.”

Oh, God. Imagining how she would explain this to Amy hurt worse than her headache.

“Hey.” He patted her cheek. “Are you okay?”

She couldn’t speak. Whoever he was, his Southern drawl dripped like thick, sweet, warm honey into her ear. She smelled magnolias and fresh beignets. She must have been dreaming.

“You hit your head. Let me feel for bumps.” Emily felt the back of her head cradled in a very large hand. Long, warm fingers slipped through her hair and over her scalp, moving effortlessly. “You got the wind knocked out of you. Take a breath.”

“Mmph,” Emily mumbled.

“There. You’re breathing.” He continued rubbing her head, his fingertips roaming as he spoke. The ice and snow burned against her back and legs, but she’d give him an hour to stop. “And you have a cut on your head. It’s bleeding.”

Oh, God.

“It’s pretty dumb to wear spike heels in an icy parking lot.” He sounded angry. She heard the balloons rustle. He must have grabbed one to look at it. “How the hell did she get my name on them?”

Emily opened her eyes to see the evil red bear sitting on her chest, and the puckered brow and concerned blue-green eyes of the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

Amy would kill her when she found out how messed up the delivery was, unless she expired on the spot from sheer embarrassment first.

He studied her. He still knelt beside her. “What’s your name, sugar?”

Any other man would have gotten the full force of her offended feminist sensibilities at that point, but all she could manage to breathe was, “Emily, but not for long.”

She still clutched the balloons. They’d been threaded through a metal weight that looked like an oversized Hershey’s Kiss, but the sheer amount of helium involved threatened to pull her off the ground. Thank God the wind had died down a bit.

Brandon slipped his arm around her shoulders and helped her sit up. “Emily. Let me take those.” He pried her fingers off the tangled, several-inches-thick bundle of ribbon, and put his foot down on it while he spoke. He didn’t have to work very hard. Her fingers went slack at his touch.

“You might need to see a doctor for that cut,” he suggested.

“Looks like it was for you, McKenna,” yelled one of the five guys who’d been watching. They crossed the sidewalk to see what was happening. Emily found herself surrounded by six sweaty and disheveled men, one of whom still checked her for injuries.

“A little help?” A tall guy—hell, they were all tall, but this one had close-cropped black curls—said: “Hey, baby, what’s your name?”

“I’ve got this,” Brandon told them. He still supported her with one arm. “Back off.”

“Ooh, I’m scared of you,” the dark-haired one shot back.

Brandon gave him a look that should have liquefied the parking lot. “You should be.” He shielded her from the other men with his body.

“Emily, I hope you won’t be mad about this, but it’s for the best.”

He stripped the weight off the huge bunch of balloons and let them go. They shot what she imagined to be several hundred feet into the air. The bear on her lap started to spin. Now she was dizzy as well.

“I ... You can’t do that!” she cried and clutched her pounding head. “Do you know how long it took my sister to inflate those balloons? The customer wanted them delivered.”

“I probably should have donated them to Children’s Hospital or something. I wanted them gone. Sick kids don’t need some stupid balloon that reads, ‘I love you, Brandon.”

“The FAA’s scrambling jets as we speak,” one of the guys said. They continued staring at Emily as if they hadn’t seen a woman sprawled on her back in a public parking lot before.

“Hey, pretty lady,” one of the guys said as he stepped forward. Brandon glared at him, and he rapidly stepped back.

“I said, I’ve got this,” Brandon told him. “Show’s over. Get lost.” He picked up the evil red teddy bear and threw it at them. This brought on a chorus of responses from the guys still standing around her.

“McKenna, you cranky bitch,” one of them said. “That’s what happens when you go without.”

“Dawg, I like her better than the last one.”

“At least she’s got curves. Junk in the trunk. Hey, pretty lady, have dinner with me.” The guy with the black curls, eyes like a melted Hershey’s bar, whipped out his smart phone. “I’ll get us a table at Seastar at eight.”

“Go fu— She’s not going anywhere with you, dirtbag,” Brandon snapped. He took her elbow and helped her up.

She swayed toward him, still dizzy. All she had to do was get in her car and drive away. She would put a Band-Aid on whatever was bleeding. Lying in a bubble bath would fix it all. She’d explain to Amy later.

She couldn’t seem to move.

“You’re not okay,” he said. “I broke it, now I have to fix it.” To her amazement, he scooped Emily up in his arms. “Do you feel sleepy? Dizzy? How about double vision, or a headache? Nausea?”

He was walking away with her. She could hear voices as the guys followed them.

“Well, that’s one way to get a date for Valentine’s Day.”

“Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

“Hey, Balloon Girl, I’ll give you a ride.”

Brandon’s lips compressed into a thin line, and a flush spread over his cheeks and the tops of his ears. “Sorry about that,” he told her. “They don’t know any women they can actually be seen with in public.”

Her stomach lurched and rolled with each footstep Brandon took. She was not going to throw up. She tried not to think about how much she weighed as Brandon carried her. He did not slip and slide on the ice. He wasn’t even breathing hard as he settled Emily on the passenger seat of her Escape.

“Hang on.” He hurled himself into the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing? You can’t drive my car. The insurance—” she cried out. She clutched her aching head in both hands.

“You need to get looked at, and you’re not driving yourself to the hospital.”

He pulled away from the curb. Emily saw the other five guys on the sidewalk, debris at their feet, receding in the rear-view mirror. All that chocolate ... Somebody was going to have a mess to clean up.

She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

Brandon’s voice was sharp. “Don’t go to sleep. You have to stay awake till we get to the emergency room.”

He held the steering wheel as he reached out and shook her shoulder. He glanced over at Emily as he maneuvered in and out of traffic. “Emily, I mean it. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Obviously he was great at multi-tasking. She forced her eyes open.

“Good girl,” he said.

Her car would need a detailing when this was all over. She was bleeding. The t-shirt and shorts he wore were drenched in sweat from what must have been his workout. Even sweaty, he smelled wonderful. Clean, with the faint scent of Old Spice. It was surprising to her he wore such an old-fashioned aftershave, but it fit him.

“Keep talking to me, sugar. You don’t look like any delivery person I’ve ever seen.”

She’d have to marshal enough brainpower to answer. It was all she could do not to close her eyes. “My sister Amy owns a flower shop. She needed a driver. It beats the hell out of sitting around at home watching reality TV.”

“That’s nice of you. What’s her shop called?” The dimple in his left cheek flashed as he grinned at Emily. He turned into the emergency room’s driveway.

“Crazy Daisy. It’s on Broadway,” she said.

“I’ll have to remember that.” He came to a halt in front of the sliding front doors, threw the car into park, hopped out, and hurried around to open Emily’s door.

“Easy,” he said, and reached in to unsnap her seat belt. He also grabbed her handbag off the floorboard.

Brandon was all business. “Here. Take my hand.” Emily clutched his bigger, slightly rougher hand. He eased her out of the seat. She tried to stand on her own but swayed again. He glanced around, frowned a little, and told her, “No wheelchairs, damn it. I think you need a ride.” He scooped her up once more.

“I can do this myself.” She could barf on his shoes, too.

“And have you pass out on the sidewalk and hit your head again? My mama taught me better than that. I’m already in enough trouble.”

Brandon strode into the emergency room. Every time Emily had visited a hospital emergency room in the past, no one had rushed unless a patient was bleeding from multiple places. Maybe the key was being carried in by a big jock in sweaty workout clothes. Nurses scurried toward her.

“What do we have here?” one of them asked Brandon.

“She decided to try ice skating in stiletto heels. She’s bleeding a little.”

“We’ve got a room with her name on it.”

They were shown to a dimly lit room painted the shade of Silly Putty and dominated by monitors, IV medication pumps, a rolling cabinet with clean linens, and a computer setup. Brandon laid Emily down on a narrow bed. He dropped her purse next to her.

“No sleeping,” he warned again, pulling a chair up beside her. He threw himself down in it. They didn’t have long to wait. A doctor breezed through the doorway.

“Hi, there. I’m Dr. Su. What have we got?”

“This is Emily. She wiped out on some ice in the parking lot,” Brandon explained.

The doctor moved closer and pulled a small flashlight out of his breast pocket. “Emily.” He sat down on a rolling examination chair as he took her hand. “I’ll bet you think you’re the first person I’ve seen today who had an encounter with some ice.”

Emily glanced over at Brandon, and he gave her a reassuring smile. She tried to look pitiful in response. She turned her head and focused on the doctor again.

“I’ll bet none of them were wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of Italian leather boots at the time.”

While she spoke, the doctor examined the back of her head, shone a light in her eyes, and said, “How many fingers, Emily?” He held up two.

“Three,” Emily responded. Brandon let out what sounded like a groan.

“That’s never happened to me before,” he muttered.

“Are you sleepy? Nauseated? Have a headache? Follow my fingers, okay?” He asked the same questions Brandon did. They didn’t sound any better the second time.

“I mostly feel stupid.”

She glanced over to see Brandon eying the clock on the wall in the opposite corner of the room. His eyes slid back to her, but he seemed distracted.

“I’ll be fine. It’s okay if you leave,” she said.

“No, no,” Brandon insisted, but he looked at the clock once more. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Just to be safe, Emily, I’m ordering a CT scan. We’re also going to stitch that cut. Sit tight for a few minutes, and I’ll send the nurse in to start this process.”

Emily tried to sit up. “I’m fine. I have to make some other deliveries for Amy. I ...” The room spun around. The doctor caught her just before she fell off the side of the narrow bed.

Brandon jumped out of the chair and arrived at her bedside in one long stride. He pulled up the bedside railings. “Doctor, may I talk with you in the hallway for a moment?”

Emily heard only broken bits of their discussion. It didn’t sound positive. Brandon gestured toward the room a few times with his hand while they talked. The noise in the hallway finally dropped a little and she could listen in.

“Look, Doc, I’m late. I want to stay, but I really can’t,” Brandon said.

“Emily needs ...” but whatever it was the doctor thought she needed was drowned out by yet more voices, one high-pitched and panicky, from an adjoining room.

“If you tell us what you took, we won’t tell anyone else. We need to know before we can treat you.”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“You’re going to have to talk about it at some point. You’re not the first guy that showed up at this hospital after an erection of more than four hours. Did you take something besides an ED drug? Recreational drugs? Did you drink alcohol tonight? This isn’t a joke.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day. My girlfriend expected something special.”

“She’d like it better if you both were around next Valentine’s Day, too.”

A nurse shut the sliding glass door in Emily’s room, pulling a floor-to-ceiling cloth curtain around the bed Emily lay in.

“The admitting person will be here shortly, but let’s get you into a stylish hospital gown while we wait.”

The nurse was tall and stocky. She wore her hair in a long, dark pigtail. She had what appeared to be a permanent grin, and her nametag read “Cheryl.” She undressed Emily with a speed and gentleness that showed many years of practice. Emily pushed her arms through the hospital gown sleeves, and the nurse draped a warm, fluffy cotton blanket over her as she lay down again.

“It’s just like the day spa.”

“Those boots must have been gorgeous before the heel snapped off.”

“Thinking about how much they cost makes my headache worse.”

“So, Emily, how’s your pain level on a scale of one to ten?”

“My head’s a seven. The boots are a twenty.”

“Isn’t that Brandon McKenna of the Sharks?”

“I picked him up in the parking lot,” Emily sighed.

It was increasingly evident that Emily needed a ride home. After hearing a little of Brandon’s conversation, he wasn’t going to be around. There were signs all over the hospital stating that the use of cell phones was not allowed. The TV remote control fastened to the side of the bed didn’t have texting capability, either.

“I’d like to call a friend. Is there a telephone I can use?”

Cheryl must have misheard her. “We don’t allow non-family members in here, unfortunately. Your valentine is on his way to the waiting room.”

Family member, Emily thought. “Valentine” wasn’t exactly a family member, but she needed to get Brandon back in here. If she could find someone to pick her up, he’d be able to leave.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“You know,” Emily said, “You’re right. It’s a special day, and I really want to spend some time with him. Is there any possible way he could sit with me while I’m waiting?”

Cheryl winked at her. “For today, I’ll make an exception. To the rest of the hospital, he’s your fiancé. You just relax. He’ll be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Cheryl sped out of the room. Emily craned her neck to glimpse Brandon standing at the nurse’s station in the midst of a crowd of people, signing autographs.

Moments later Brandon walked into the room. To Emily’s relief, he was grinning like everything and everyone existed solely to amuse him. He sat down on the rolling examination chair the doctor had vacated.

“Well. Aren’t you the shameless hussy. We haven’t even had dinner yet, and you told the nurse we were engaged.” He raised an eyebrow. “What do you do on the second date? File for divorce?”

“I should have told her you were my baby daddy ...”

“And here I thought I was so irresistible.” He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “Mmm. Red.”

Speaking hurt, but Emily had to make him understand. “I really appreciate your driving me over here, but let’s get real. You obviously have other plans tonight, and I need to call someone to come and get me. You’ve been looking at the clock since we got here.”

Brandon looked a bit uncomfortable and shifted on the chair. “You’ve got me. I have plans. I could cancel them, but I left my phone in my locker.”

Emily produced her iPhone from her purse and handed it to him. “If you make a call for me, you can go. Here, just a minute.” She took the phone out of his hand and scrolled through her contacts list. “My sister is busy, but one of my friends might be available. If you’ll call Sarah—I work with her—she doesn’t live far away, and she might be able to pick me up and drop me off at home.” She nodded at the sign. “You’ll need to go outside.”

“Got it.” He fiddled with the phone for a few seconds, and handed it back to her. “I have a BlackBerry. How do you use this thing again?”

It was a good thing he was handsome, because he evidently wasn’t that smart. Emily hit the keys on the display again. “If you push this, the phone will dial. Ask Sarah to come and get me.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “That whole joking about being engaged thing is not going to be a problem for you, is it?”

He shrugged. “Only on a slow news day. Plus, if anything weird happens, I can deal with it.”

Emily tried to shake her head and winced. Obviously she was a public person, too. There’d be a little interest in Emily’s engagement, but Brandon was evidently some kind of big deal. This was a hospital, though. That stuff was confidential.

“I’m betting you have one hell of a headache. Rest.” He reached out to pull the blanket up beneath her chin. “I’ll get you some water.”

“I’m so sleepy,” she told him. “I don’t understand why you’re still here.”

“You fell down. It’s my fault. I want to make sure you’re safe.”

“I’ll be fine. You can go,” she insisted. “Isn’t that what you want?”

Emily wanted to go home and soak in a hot bath. That bath was assuming mythical proportions by this point.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Brandon rose from the chair, stroked her cheek, tossed a “See ya” over his shoulder, and loped out of the room.

Brandon reappeared less than five minutes later.

“Sarah’s busy. Her boyfriend answered the phone. I believe the message was ‘She’d have to get out of my bed for that, and it’s not happening tonight.’ So, I cancelled my plans, and I will chauffeur you home.”

“Let me see if I can find someone else.”

“Not going to happen, sugar. Everyone is out with their valentine, or they’re staying in and not answering the phone.”

“I can do this.” She took the phone out of his hand and started scrolling through names. “I ... Stop calling me sugar.”

He laughed. It wasn’t that damn funny.

Two male nurses walked into the room. “Emily, we’re here to take you upstairs for some tests. I’m Kevin, and this is Jeff.” Kevin glanced at the phone in Emily’s hand. “You’ll need to put that away,” he scolded.

Emily didn’t remember much of the tests she had. She did remember, however, the stitches she received in the cut on her head. Cheryl the nurse produced two ibuprofens and a cup of cold water as a reward. Emily awoke once more in the dimness of the emergency room cubicle Brandon still sat in. The doctor was talking with him.

“I was at the Minutemen’s game last season,” he told Brandon. “That was quite a sack at the end of the third.”

“What’s a sack?” Emily murmured to Brandon.

His brows drew together, his lips twitched into a smile, but he didn’t answer her.

“I enjoyed it, that’s for sure.” Brandon told him. “I’d like to take my girl home, if that will work for you.”

He set a Styrofoam cup and the newspaper sports page he held on a low rolling table and waited expectantly.

“Shall I tell you the good news or the bad news first?” Dr. Su grinned with what he probably thought was quite a joke.

“Let’s go with the good news.” Brandon patted Emily’s hand as he spoke.

“Hospital cuisine has improved.” Everyone was a comedian. “However, Emily is going to have to stay overnight with us.”