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bed between my wine hangover and the thought of how irresponsible I had been. Not only did I drink an entire bottle of wine on a work night, but I also misled the one person I adored. Seriously, dude? Misled? You flat-out lied. Regardless of the magnitude of my untruth , I could hardly sleep last night for worrying. In order to ensure my beauty sleep, I would have to tell Sebastian the truth. I’m not a girl. I’m a full-blooded man in love with him—okay, maybe I’ll leave that last part out—but the truth must be told tonight. Now, I had to get to work.
    The first thing I did upon arriving at the hospital was visit the pediatric unit. After stepping off the elevator, I followed the walls covered with painted elephants and tigers. Turning right down the hallway and the walls now covered with floating teddy bears, I found the room with my little patient. As I walked into her room, I could see she was awake. Even though I worked as a nurse, it was always hard to walk into a room and see a child hooked up to all the monitors. A young woman, who I assumed was her mother, sat beside her bed holding her hand. I had asked around last night and found out someone at the restaurant had tackled the father after he pulled the gun. The tackle had made the gun go off, and while the mother was not hurt, the little girl had been in the line of fire. But fortunately she was going to make a full recovery.
    Walking over to her bedside, I said hello to her mother and smiled down at my smallest patient. “Hello, little one, my name’s Ashley. I helped take care of you when you came into the emergency room, so I wanted to come by and see how you were doing.”
    The little girl looked up at me and bravely gave me a small smile. Quietly she said, “Hey, you have the same name as me.”
    That made me laugh. Just last night I was cursing my girlie name, and today it made me happy to have it. “That’s pretty cool, Ashley. I think that means we are meant to be friends.”
    Little Ashley smiled again and whispered, “Thank you for helping me last night.”
    My heart melted for the second time in twenty-four hours. Smiling down at her, I responded, “I’ll come back later and check on you again. Would that be okay?”
    She reached up with her tiny hand to grab mine. “Okay.”
    I squeezed her hand before walking out of her room on a cloud, knowing that this was the reason I had decided to become a nurse.
    On my way back to the ER, I stopped by the nurses’ station for some headache medicine. That bottle of wine I had slammed down was pounding me back with a passion. I walked into the restroom to take the medicine and splash my face, hoping that would wake me up. Looking into the mirror with water dripping down my cheeks, I saw my normal hazel-green eyes now had red, crinkly lines, giving them that lovely bloodshot look, thanks to the alcohol’s effect. My hair, which was floppy—for lack of a better word—and generally unruly, was all over the place. Pulling the longer part of my hair up and inspecting the roots, I also realized it was time for a new highlight job. I was a blond, but I did need a little help from my friends at Revlon. Checking myself out one last time to make sure I was presentable, I walked down to the ER to clock in. It was going to be a very long day before I could get home to see if my celebrity crush would contact me again. That is, if it really was him. Maybe in my drunken state, I imagined the entire thing. Ugh, a very long day indeed.

Chapter 3
     
     
    AS I flew through my front door at exactly 6:57 p.m., I dropped my Chinese takeout on the kitchen counter and ran over to my desk. I pulled my laptop over, then threw open the top and turned it on. While it booted up, I rushed back into the kitchen. I glanced at the clock and saw that I had exactly one minute before I needed to be online. Sebastian had said seven o’clock, so I would be on Facebook come hell or high water. I opened the dishwasher and reached