Table of Contents
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
FREE ROMANCE STORY
The Surgeon’s Secrets
The Billionaire Bad Boy Club
The Shameless Billionaire
Unforeseen Treasure
FREE ROMANCE STORY
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“Whips and Chains”
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As a teenager, growing up dirt dirt-poor, beautiful, brainy Tracie Rutherford knew education was her ticket out of this Skunk’s Hollow cycle of poverty. Consequently, she developed a reputation as an ‘“ice maiden’..” But her hard work paid off in the shape of a full scholarship to the University of Georgia. Meeting handsome, charismatic billionaire, Jamie Spelling, seemed like a dream come true. Still a virgin, Tracie’s first sexual experienced with her seasoned lover was mind-blowing. Jamie’s mother’s disapproval of this “trollop” who had forced her way into their family was palpable. She was simply “not their kind.”. But Tracie’s honest, eager attitude won the hearts of Jamie’s grandmother, Audra Spelling, and her companion, bold, brassy, billionaire rancher, Lottie Chambers. When Jamie’s sexual fantasies and his demands made Tracie realize she was merely a commodity to please her husband’s rich clients, she sought the help of these two women who helped her realize her potential.
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The Surgeon’s Secrets
A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance
By Celeste Fall & Michelle Love
Table of Contents
FREE ROMANCE STORY
The Surgeon’s Secrets
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
The Billionaire Bad Boy Club
The Shameless Billionaire
Unforeseen Treasure
Samantha
Dr. Damon Chase just saved my life, going over my doctor’s head to perform a life-saving surgery. He’s taken me from wondering if I’ll die soon to looking forward to my life, and I’m falling for him fast and hard. There are just two problems.
The first one is that the medical ethics board won’t look kindly on a senior cardiologist sleeping with any of his patients, let alone a college student just over half his age. The second is that Damon is a man full of secrets. I can sense it. But what can they be? And how can I get him past them, so that I can have him in my arms?
Damon
I’m stuck on a sweet, young thing I saved on the table, even though I know it could get me in a world of trouble. Samantha North. Every time she makes eyes at me, I want to do something about it ...in as many ways and as many positions as she likes. We’re both alone in the world—and I’ve grown tired of that. I’d consider it more than worth it to risk my professional reputation to have her in my bed and in my life. If that was the only problem, anyway.
But back home in London, I had another life ...a life full of secrets. But abandoning the life of crime that I once led has made me some serious enemies—and that’s about to catch up with me. If they find out about Samantha, her life will be in danger. And if that happens, that oath I took to do no harm is going right out the window.
Part One
Chapter 1
Samantha
“Are you sure Dr. Carpenter can’t at least take a message?” I plead with the receptionist on the other end of the line. “I know he says that the Verapamil takes some time to take effect, but it’s been a week and a half, and I can barely make it to classes.”
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist says in a bland tone that tells me she couldn’t care less. “But his voicemail box is full. He should be back from lunch at 3 PM. If you can catch him before we close, he should be able to advise you.”
“So ...when do you close?” I’m trying not to get upset. The pounding in my chest will only get worse if I do.
I try to distract myself by glancing around at the little stand of trees that surrounds me as I sit on a bench at the edge of campus. I started getting dizzy and sick again just walking up a slight incline for a quarter mile, and it scared me.
“We close at 4 PM.” She sounds disgusted—whether with me, her boss, or her job, I’m not sure.
“Thank you.” I wish that I could reach through the phone and strangle her. Instead, I take a deep, slow breath and struggle to keep my cool as I hang up.
I have to sit there a while as the stress sends a fresh wave of dizziness through me. I’m barely holding back my panic, which I know will only add to the problem. Even then, a few tears roll down my cheeks.
The pills aren’t doing anything. I need real help and expertise. Not that cheap doctor who just throws drugs at everything!
The problem started six months ago: bouts of painfully fast and sometimes irregular heartbeats, with dizziness, weakness, and exhaustion. Dr. Campbell keeps trying different pills on me. But even high doses of beta blockers barely put a dent in my symptoms.
My scholarship includes student medical coverage. Unfortunately, it's low-bidder garbage, and Campbell is the only cardiologist in town who takes it. He and his receptionist team have a habit of treating me like dirt when I can least handle it.
Just calm down, Sam. It will get worse if you don’t.
This is getting humiliating. In my freshman year I was zipping around campus on my bike like it was nothing. Now and again I would feel a little dizzy, but I was used to that. I've dealt with it my whole life.
Then the attacks started happening. The first time, I was just coming down for breakfast in the dorm cafeteria, ready to face my very last day of finals in my freshman year. I remember walking downstairs to the dorm lobby and stopping short, growing suddenly dizzy as my heart pounded violently.
It's gotten worse since then. Now I shuffle around like an old woman and spend too much of the money I earn at my part-time job on cab fare to get home. I even had to quit my weekly swims.
I can’t even soak in the hot tub anymore—and that used to be my number one way to relax. But, now, the hot water will make me even dizzier, as it drives up my already overactive heart rate.
Dr. Campbell claimed recently that I’m not getting better because I’m not taking my meds. I had to get a test to prove to him that my bloodstream is full of the damn drugs; they just aren’t doing shit. His response was to try a different set of drugs, which, again, do very little.
I get up and lift my art bag, an old, gray, canvas messenger bag covered in spatters of oil paint, smears of pastel and chalk, and smudges of charcoal. I’ve had it since I was twelve—one of the few gifts I ever got growing up in the foster system. Right now, it feels like it’s filled with bricks.
My final class of the day is at six—a night studio where all I have to do is stand there, paint, and try not to fall over. I don’t even have to wrestle any of the big canvases today—it’s all five-minute speed sessions on paper. I’ll grab a light meal, drink something without any caffeine in it, go up the hill, and throw on my smock.
I’m feeling better after a meal and some fluids. I keep trying the doctor until four, but he makes no effort to return my call. “He has other patients,” the receptionist says without apology, while my heart beats so fast and hard it nauseates me.
I wonder if this callous bitch of a receptionist has ever gotten really sick in her life. If things keep getting worse, I’m going to end up in the emergency room again. I already have a huge bill from last month that I can't pay, and the prospect of facing yet another one makes my heart beat even faster.
I agonize over that possibility while I sit on that bench and call Campbell twice more before his office closes. Tears start running down my cheeks after I hang up the second time, and I wipe them away sternly. Enough of that.
I didn’t get this far by giving up or feeling sorry for myself. I’ll find some way to survive this, just like I survived foster care, public school, and getting my ass into college on a full ride. But as I get up and start walking at a painful snail’s pace toward the student center, I’m scared to death.
I spend a lot of my time on campus alone. I’m kind of used to it. In school, I was the kid with no parents, who went home to an institutional cot and food that was marginally worse than the stuff in the dorm cafeterias.
Making friends is a new skill for me. Here, at least, classes are so huge that nobody notices that I’m recycling through the same half-dozen outfits every week. But it doesn’t make approaching people any easier.
Still, when I get back that evening, completely drained and with paint smudges on my hands, I exchange greetings with a few people on my way up to my dorm room. The guard station and a lot of the dorm doors are decorated for Christmas—mostly cheap, printed, paper decorations, tinsel garlands, and sometimes a string of colored or silver LED lights. The bulletin board on my floor is full of seasonal party announcements.
I try to ignore them and just make it to my door. The sight of them tends to leave me depressed.
I was lucky enough to have been assigned one of the rare single rooms. The room is tiny and plain, but it’s the first private room I have ever had in my life, so I refuse to complain.
It’s not even eight, and I know that if I sleep now, chances are I’ll end up getting up at some weird hour. But I can barely keep my eyes open, so I don’t really care. It's bedtime.
I leave my bag and clothes in a pile, pull on a huge, purple t-shirt and shorts, and crawl under the covers, barely remembering to set my phone on the bedside table. If I sleep long enough, the pain in my chest may actually go away for a while.
I wake up hours later to total darkness. I feel like a huge weight has dropped onto my chest. My heart is galloping like I'm running a race, making me dizzy and sick. I gasp and try to sit up, but it hurts too much. Oh my God, am I dying?
I flail for my phone and almost knock it off the small table before managing to grab it. Every single heartbeat pounds in my head, my chest burns and aches, and the sides of my neck hurt, like my veins are going to burst.
I manage to dial for help, but everything after that gets vaguer and vaguer. I give my name, location, and information about my heart condition, but it sounds like my voice is coming from far off, as if someone else is in control of it. It feels like I’m drifting further and further from my dorm room, out over a black sea, where the pounding of my heart is all I can hear.
I hang on through sheer force of will as the 911 dispatcher keeps me on the phone and tries to help me stay conscious. The whine of sirens echoes toward me from afar. Then, the darkness closes over my head, and I hear rather than see my phone drop to the floor.
Chapter 2
Damon
I'm dreaming about the night of the heist again when my phone goes off and drags me straight up from the depths of sleep. One minute I'm jumping into a bank vault while the explosion drops the entire building around me, and the next, my eyes are opening in my posh Chicago penthouse and I'm fine. Except, of course, that my phone woke me up at three in the fucking morning, and who wants to deal with that?
I check the text and immediately sit up. "Shit."
There's a college girl in the ER with some kind of severe heart issue. Her cardiologist isn't returning his calls, and since I'm the cardio man on call tonight, it's time for me to hop to it. I leap out of bed and head for my closet, grumbling curses the whole time, but ready to get my game on.
The new game. The one where I’m saving lives instead of chasing cash and trouble back in London. New game—new name, new identity, new life. And I have work to do.
I text the desk nurse back as I take the elevator down from the penthouse. How are her vitals?
She gets back to me quickly. Rapid, irregular heartbeat, with dizziness and pain in her temples, chest, and the sides of her neck. She's diagnosed with congenital arrhythmia and tachycardia, the latter presumed to be anxiety-related. She's on a calcium blocker and a sedative.
Arrhythmia? There are many kinds of arrhythmia, and it doesn't bode well that her doctor hasn't put an exact diagnosis on her chart. What's her electrophysiology study say about it?
She hasn't had one. Her insurance barely covers the specialist, and her doctor wouldn't do it pro bono. She would have had to pay for it out of pocket.
"Which, of course, she can't fucking do because she's a dirt-poor college student. Fuck," I mumble under my breath. I step out of the elevator into the garage and head for my black Prowler. "I hate for-profit medicine so damned much."
I slide into the driver's seat and text back. All right. Stop the calcium blockers, keep her calm, and introduce the following into her IV cocktail. I give a list of three drugs I know they have on hand. We're going to need to do that study as soon as she is stable enough.
We'll get it done. ETA?
Ten minutes, barring traffic. Whose name is on the chart as her specialist? I have my suspicions, but I still grit my teeth when she confirms them.
Campbell.
"Fuck." Adrian Campbell is the worst, most negligent cardiologist in Chicago. The two of us are colleagues, but every time I run into him at a conference, I want to punch him in the face.
I've never met a man who mixes arrogance with incompetence as thoroughly as Campbell. He always has at least three malpractice cases pending, and he's killed more patients than he's saved. That girl is as good as dead if she stays in his hands.
Going to have to do something about that, I think to myself.
I put my phone down and strap in, then start the engine and go roaring out into the street. It's chilly out; early December hasn't put snow on the ground yet, but I keep an eye on the road, wary of black ice.
Chicago on the cusp of winter reminds me a bit of London, though the streets tend to be wider and more organized, and the weather's more changeable. Bits of rain spatter my windshield, making tiny, distracting taps against the glass. The streets aren't quite deserted, even at this hour; a few people fight the wind in flapping raincoats as I drive by.
It’s Christmas season again, which usually leaves me a bit melancholy. It’s not like I can call my family back in London, let alone see them. The colored lights and the wreaths on the lamp-posts are just another reminder that I’m out on my own here in the States.
I speed where I can on the way to the hospital, but keep it sane. I'm not some twenty-something idiot behind the wheel of my first sports car any longer. I just feel a strange urgency with this particular patient, maybe because she's young.
Nineteen-years-old with heart problems. What a fucking bad hand she has been dealt. Barely old enough to vote and she's dealing with an issue most folks don't have to face until their sixties or beyond.
I make my way into the staff parking section and ease the Prowler into my space, making sure to lock up before hurrying over to the ER. My foot slips slightly on a patch of ice outside the entrance, and I bite back a curse. I rarely swear on hospital grounds.
"Morning, Dr. Chase. You're in early," Tom, the security guard, greets me.
I give him a dis
tracted nod hello. "Emergency. Some nineteen-year-old girl's down with a congenital heart problem. Time to pop in and roll up my sleeves."
"Nineteen? Damn. Well, I'm sure you'll be able to help her." He smiles and buzzes me in, and I hurry through.
It's a slow day in the emergency department. The waiting room, with its slowly blinking lights and silver tinsel tree, only has two people, and though every treatment room is full, only one of them has nurses rushing in and out. I feel my heart sink when I see them scurry. You didn't code while I was on my way, did you, darling?
"Dr. Chase!" One of the senior nurses, a skinny, bespectacled, older woman named Sarah, bustles toward me with an armful of files. "Thanks for coming so quickly. She's down here."
This is the only place in the world where a guy gets thanked for that. I keep my filthy thoughts to myself as I follow her to the curtained-off room for my first look at Samantha North.
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