My Billionaire Cowboy Under the Mistletoe

Chapter Three: The Hospital

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that it was Gert who picked me up.

She's been in my life since I was a kid and she's the only other person I know in Montana other than my father. Her presence has always relaxed me.

But she also owns the most famous bakery in Mistletoe and it's impossible to spend any significant amount of time with her without gaining at least five pounds. Two pastry boxes had been stacked at my feet when I'd gotten into the truck.

Somehow during the drive, they'd moved into my lap.

Something about her baking has always set me at ease. When I was young, and my dad accompanied my mother to chemo, Gert would babysit me by putting me to work at her bakery.

I could still remember the way the dough folded between my knuckles, the taste of sugar on my lips. The first bite into every donut sent a shiver down my spine. Every pastry filling me up, my stomach aches, distracting me from the pain in my heart.

It was a miracle I hadn't been an obese child.

The drive passes in a daze. I'm not sure when I opened the first box of pastries but after two croissants and four donuts, my hands are covered in powder and the belt of my jeans is digging into my stomach.

Just like when I was a kid, her pastries had the power to keep me in the present. I can only focus on the taste of the dough, each chew forcing me to keep my breathing even, my mind focused only on swallowing the next bite.

Her baked goods have the power to keep my mind clear, forcing me to keep my fears at bay. There is a magic to these pastries that I'd forgotten.

That spell vanished when Gert pulls up outside the emergency room of the Mistletoe hospital. Only then do my eyes focus on the polka-dotted box in my lap. A delivery stamp in the corner reads Genie Wilson.

"Oh, shit," I whisper, blinking as I twist in my seat to look at her. "Did I just eat someone's order?"

Gert smiled and patted my knee. "It's okay, honey. I figured you needed them more than Ms. Wilson today. I can always make more."

"Thank you." My hands went numb and my voice came out stiff and strange. "Did they say what was wrong with him?"

"I'm sorry, sweetie, I don't know any more than you. I just got a call from the doctor that I should pick you up at the airport. I promise I would tell you if I knew more than that. All the doctor said was that the ambulance dropped him off here."

Here.

My legs lock and everything in the front seat of the truck starts to spin. My neck tenses from straining to keep my eyes on the ground instead of what's outside.

I peel my gaze off the box of pastries and glance at the sliding doors of the emergency room.

A cluster of mistletoe is hanging above the entrance.

"Who the fuck puts mistletoe outside an emergency room?" Suddenly, a laugh bursts out of me and I can't rein it in. The sound shocks me and I press my hand against my mouth, my fingers trembling. "Sorry." Tears pool in my eyes.

"Sarah," Gert says. "The nurse would have said if it was an emergency. This isn't..." Her voice cracks and she hesitates. "what I'm trying to say is that I'm sure everything is going to be fine."

This isn't like my mother.

That's what she had been about to say.

Why does this have to be the same hospital where my mother spent so much of my childhood at?