Now it all seemed so stupid.

I was never my own woman, she thought. I was always dreaming, longing for the day I’d be Mrs. Robert Bledsoe. It’s what her family had hoped for, what her mother had expected of her: to marry well. They’d never understood Nina’s going to nursing school, except as a way to meet a potential mate. A doctor. She’d met one, all right.

And all it’s gotten me is a bunch of gifts I have to return, a wedding gown I can’t return, and a day I’ll never, ever live down.

It was the humiliation that shook her the most. Not the fact that Robert had walked out. Not even the fact that she could have died in the wreckage of that church. The explosion itself seemed unreal to her, as remote as some TV melodramas. As remote as this man sitting beside her.

“You’re handling this very well,” he said.

Startled that Detective Cold Fish had spoken, she looked at him. “Excuse me?”

“You’re taking this very calmly. Calmer than most.”

“I don’t know how else to take it.”

“After a bombing, hysteria would not be out of line.”

“I’m an ER nurse, Detective. I don’t do hysteria.”

“Still, this had to be a shock for you. There could well be an emotional aftermath.”

“You’re saying this is the calm before the storm?”

“Something like that.” He glanced at her, his gaze meeting hers. Just as quickly, he looked back at the road and the connection was gone. “Why wasn’t your family with you at the church?”

“I sent them all home.”

“I would think you’d want them around for support, at least.”

She looked out the window. “My family’s not exactly the supportive type. And I guess I just…needed to be alone. When an animal gets hurt, Detective, it goes off by itself to lick its wounds. That’s what I needed to do….” She blinked away an unexpected film of tears and fell silent.