Ruby pushed the door open with her hip, the soft click of the latch barely audible in the hushed corridor of Vane Hospital’s private wing.
The ward was almost unnaturally quiet at this hour, the usual beeps and murmurs of the night shift muffled by thick walls and careful staffing.
Jake Vale, former racing champion, current reluctant patient, and still the kind of man whose face sold magazines even from a hospital bed, lay half-reclined against a mountain of pillows.
The heart monitor beside him pulsed in steady green lines. He was recovering, the doctors had said.
The crash had been spectacular, the kind that made highlight reels and then disappeared from public view because the man himself demanded privacy.
That was why Ruby had been assigned. One nurse. One room. No rotating f
