Gideon had set the shower to blast as hot as possible, but as soon as steam started to rise, he shifted the water to cold. He didn’t care how uncomfortable it was; he didn’t want the reminder of the smoke curling along the ceiling of the home he’d had for the past thirty-five years.
Bowing his head under the spray, he let the icy water sluice over his muscled back, bracing his large hands against the tiled wall. The shower smelled like the rest of the hospital—antiseptic and fear and every bodily fluid under the sun. He would have turned it down if Rachel hadn’t insisted he needed it. Even now, she stood in the doctor’s locker room, waiting with clean scrubs for him to emerge.
“They’ll help you blend in here,” she’d argued, her blue eyes flashing. “You don’t really want to be drawing eve
