Countdown to Midnight

by Katy Regnery

  “Amity,” said Jane in a broken whisper, overcome by the earnestness of his words and the way they requited something inside of her that had dreamed about Amity Atwell since she fell at his feet so many years ago.

  Inside the restaurant, the music stopped, and the revelers started their New Year’s countdown.

  Ten.

  Nine.

  Eight.

  “I know I want a chance with you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.

  “I want that too,” she said.

  Six.

  Five.

  Four.

  His face was set, resolute in his new plan, his eyes sparkling like he knew a secret. “And if that means moving to Philly? So be it, love. Philly it is.” He grinned at her. “CHOP, here I come!”

  “You mean it?” Inside her chest, her heart burst with joy, and she smiled up at him as he bent his head closer to hers.

  “I mean it.”

  One.

  “Happy New Year, Jane,” he whispered against her lips.

  “Happy New Year, Amity,” she sighed, the words barely audible as he tightened his arms around her pressed his lips to hers for the very first time.

  Her hands were flattened against the starched white cotton of his tuxedo shirt, but Jane slid them up, over the ridges of his muscle, skimming the sides of his throat to the warm flesh of his cheeks under soft stubble. She stood on tiptoes, with the steel band of his arm around her back, letting his mouth ravage hers with four years of pent-up attraction and a deep well of hope for the future.

  Slanting his mouth over hers, he ran his tongue over her lips, and Jane arched her back as her lips parted. Slowly, so slowly, he slid his hot, velvet tongue down the length of hers, and she gasped, breathing him into the depths of her lungs, the hidden corners of her heart.

  This is Amity.

  Amity is kissing me.

  The words resonated in her head, half disbelief and half delight, as she slid her hands into his thick blond hair, pulling him impossibly closer. Her nipples, hard pebbles under her strapless dress, rasped against the silk, aching for his touch.

  His lips touched hers gently in one kiss, two, three, intoxicating and whisper-sweet before skimming to her jaw. She bent her neck to the side, and the soft raze of his beard caressed her delicate skin, the touch of his warm lips making her moan with the dizzying combination of sensations.

  “Amity,” she breathed into the night, opening her eyes to watch her breath turn to mist as a light snow dotted the midnight sky.

  “I’m crazy about you,” he whispered, pressing kisses to her pulse before pushing the collar of his jacket aside so he could run his lips along the line of her collarbone. “Thank God I found you again.”

  “Thank God for second chances,” she hummed, smiling drunkenly at the dark lake over his shoulder as he hugged her close.

  As “Auld Lang Syne” played in the background, Amity held onto Jane, swaying to the music in the almost-darkness with his girl. And Jane Story, who’d waited half a lifetime for Amity to finally catch up with her, knew that this year, which started with a long-awaited kiss from a man she’d adored for years, would be the best year ever.

  EPILOGUE

  Six months later

  Jane’s pager buzzed for the second time, but she kept her attention focused on her patient as a nurse entered the room.

  “Hey, Sam, do you think you can show Nurse Clark what you were just showing me?”

  She grinned at the six-year-old sitting on the bed, watching as he showed the nurse how he was now able to extend and bend the broken arm that Jane had set six weeks ago.

  “Sam,” exclaimed Misti, one of Jane’s favorite pediatric nurses, “you’re doing so great!”

  Jane unclipped the pager from her belt loop and took a quick look at the message, and her heartbeat sped up:

  Transition over. Hurry.

  She gasped softly, darting her eyes to Misti. “Misti, is there any way you could handle Sam’s discharge papers?”

  “Sure thing, Doc.”

  “You good, Sam?” asked Jane.

  “All better!” cried Sam, giving Jane a toothy grin. “Thanks, Doctor Story.”

  “Thank you for healing so fast!”

  She winked at her young patient, made prayer-hands thank-you to Misti for finishing up Sam’s discharge papers, then ran out of the room.

  Luckily, the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, where Alice was laboring, was right next door to CHOP, so Jane could be there in about ten minutes if she hurried.

  As Jane made her way out of the building to South Thirty-Fourth Street, her pager buzzed in the pocket of her lab coat, and she fished it out.

  Two words—She’s crowning—made Jane speed walkthrough the hospital’s main entrance, weave around the reception area to the Ravdin elevators, and press the up button three or four times.

  “Janie!”

  She turned around to see her sister Margaret and brother-in-law Cameron rushing toward the elevator, their arms laden with flowers and balloons.

  “Where are my nephews?” Jane asked, kissing her sister’s cheek.

  “We left them with the nanny.” Margaret grinned. “Trying to change your luck, huh?”

  It was a standing joke among the Story sisters that regardless of the fact that Jane worked closest to the hospital where Margaret and Priscilla had given birth to their four children, Jane, the family’s own pediatrician, had missed the main event every time, arriving seconds after the babies had already been delivered.

  “Gonna be close, Janie,” said Cameron with a grin.

  “I’m not missing it this time!” she said, frowning at her sister’s husband. “Damn it! I’m taking the stairs!”

  She ran back to the main entrance and hoofed it up the flight of stairs, beelining for Labor and Delivery. Her CHOP identification card opened the double doors, and she stopped at the nurses’ station.

  “Doctor Story!”

  “Hey, Abby. You know where my sister is? Alice Story?”

  “DR3.”

  “Got it,” said Jane, power-walking down the hallway to Delivery Room 3.

  Betsy, who was standing in the hallway outside of Alice’s room, came into focus as Jane rounded the corner. Beside Betsy was her fiancé, Merit, and on her other side, Priscilla’s husband, Shane.

  “Hurry, Janie!” urged Elizabeth.

  “How did you beat me here from the office?”

  “Merit was on the text chain. As soon as he got the first message, he came and got me.”

  “Dragged her from her desk,” said Merit, kissing the top of Elizabeth’s head.

  Jane winked at her soon-to-be brother-in-law. “Nice work.”

  “Go on in, Jane,” said Shane, giving Jane’s cheek a quick kiss. “P’s already in there.”

  Suddenly, Priscilla, dressed in scrubs, peeked into the hallway. “Jane! Get in here!”

  She didn’t need to be told twice.

  Slipping between her older sister and the door, Jane entered Delivery Room 3, where a sweaty, red-faced Alice lay on her back with her feet in stirrups.

  “J-J-Jaaaaaaane!” she wailed, holding out her hand.

  Jane locked eyes with her sister, grabbing her hand to anchor it. “You’re almost there, Alice. Almost.”

  “I tried…to wait…for you,” panted Alice, squeezing Jane’s hand in a vise-grip. “Oh, God, anoooooooother!”

  “Alice, you’re doing so good. So good,” said the obstetrician. “We’ve got the baby’s head out. We just need one more big push for the shoulders, and then you’re done. You ready?”

  Alice nodded, and Jane, who’d been getting messages for the past four hours, finally had a chance to scan the room for the eyes she wanted to see the most after Alice’s. Carlos stood on Alice’s other side, leaning close to his wife’s head, supporting her. There were two nurses, then Alice’s obstetrician between her legs, and then—

  Standing beside the fetal monitor in a corner of the room behind her:
Amity.

  She found his eyes, though hers were so full of tears of love and gratitude, she could barely see them clearly.

  Hi, she mouthed. I made it.

  Barely, he mouthed back, grinning at her.

  He glanced at the monitor, then shifted his gaze to the cries of Alice’s baby, who slid into the waiting hands of her doctor.

  “It’s a girl!” cried the doctor. “Congratulations, Alice!”

  There was a sudden flurry of activity as nurses rubbed the baby with towels and placed Alice and Carlos’s daughter into Alice’s waiting arms.

  Jane turned and moved slowly through the chaos to Amity, who waited for her off to the side.

  “Thank you for being here,” she said, letting him pull her close.

  “We had a deal, Doctor Story,” he said tenderly. “If you were working a shift, I’d be here the whole time.”

  “Everything went well?” she asked, leaning back to look up at him.

  Two weeks after she’d returned from Saranac, Jane had been on rotation in the Ped Ward of CHOP only to run into the newest pediatric oncology fellow, Dr. Amity Atwell, who had reversed his decision to accept the fellowship at St. Jude’s and would spend the next three years in Philadelphia instead.

  They’d halfheartedly looked for an apartment for Amity while he stayed at Jane’s, but as days turned into weeks, her place became his place too. Though Jane worked in the same hospital as Amity and shared the same apartment in Rittenhouse Square, she’d never get used to having him so close. She’d never get over the wonder of calling him hers.

  He glanced at the monitor, then back at Jane. “Picture perfect.”

  “I love you,” she said. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for choosing me.”

  “I love you too,” said Amity. “Thank you for giving us a chance.”

  Jane turned in his arms to look over at her sister, who held baby Melissa against her chest, her cheeks glowing, her eyes filled with love as she looked at her husband, Carlos. Surrounding the new parents were Carlos’s parents, all the Story sisters, and all their significant others: Priscilla and Shane, Margaret and Cameron, and Elizabeth and Merit, all taking turns admiring sweet Melissa, the newest in a fierce tribe of strong women.

  Jane placed her hands over Amity’s, her heart swelling with love for the sisters that surrounded her and the man who stood behind her.

  “Think that’ll be us someday, Jane Story?” asked Amity, resting his chin on her shoulder and speaking softly, close to her ear.

  “I hope so,” she answered.

  “I know so,” he said.

  One of his hands under hers slipped away for a moment, and when he reached for hers again, it was to press something small and sharp against her palm.

  “What’s this?” she asked, whirling around to face him before opening her hand and looking down to find a diamond ring sparkling back at her. She gasped. “Amity!”

  “Bad timing,” he said, lowering himself to one knee. “It’s what we do best, remember?”

  Plucking the ring from her hand, he held it out to her. “Marry me?”

  Around Alice’s bed, a wall of people celebrated Melissa’s arrival, no one noticing as Amity Atwell proposed to her aunt Jane in the corner of the room.

  “I’ve been carrying that ring around with me since I moved to Philly,” he admitted, grinning at her. “I bought it at the gift shop before leaving the View on New Year’s Day.”

  Tears welled in Jane’s eyes and slipped down her cheeks.

  He was wearing light-blue scrubs and a white coat. A stethoscope hung from his neck, and a hospital ID badge was clipped to his pocket. And in Jane’s eyes, he was the handsomest, most perfect person she’d ever seen.

  “I love you. I chose this life with you. And the timing,” he said, looking over her shoulder at her family clustered around her sister’s bed, “is terrible, which means for us, it’s perfect.”

  “We nail t-terrible t-timing,” she said, a happy sob breaking her words.

  “My savior. My friend. My lover.” He smiled up at her with tears in his eyes too. “Be my forever too?”

  “Yes.” She held out her trembling hand, nodding through her tears as he slipped the ring onto her fourth finger.

  And after Amity stood up and kissed his fiancée in the corner of Delivery Room 3, Jane took her place with her sisters to welcome the newest Story into the world.

  THE END

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at Priscilla’s story, THE BOHEMIAN AND THE BUSINESSMAN!

  **ONE CLICK ON AMAZON NOW**

  (Excerpt from THE BOHEMIAN AND THE BUSINESSMAN by Katy Regnery; all rights reserved.)

  EXCERPT

  Priscilla, who had been listening to Shane and her father’s conversation outside the study door, ran to the staircase, climbing up halfway, then turning around to wait until Shane exited the study.

  She and Shane both had a problem, and in a very strange turn of events, they could also be each other’s solution. As long as Shane would agree to marrying her instead of Margaret, she would have a preapproved father for her unborn child and full access to her trust fund after a year…and Shane could marry into the Story family, ensuring his eventual control over Story Imports.

  Her hands sweated as she heard the knob turn on the study door, and she started down the steps, looking up just as Shane stepped into the hallway.

  “Shane.”

  He blinked at her, as though surprised to see her. “Priscilla.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  He nodded curtly, turning toward the door. “Yes.”

  She hurried across the hallway to catch up to him. “How was dinner?”

  “Terrible.”

  He opened the front door, stepping onto the outside landing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, following him outside and pulling the door shut behind her.

  He turned to look at her, his eyes connecting with hers, then sliding lower to land, for a second, on her lips. He huffed softly, reaching up to drag a hand through his hair. “Good night, Priscilla.”

  She reached out and grabbed his arm just as he turned away. “Wait.”

  He pivoted slightly to look at her, but suddenly she was distracted by the bare forearm she held tightly. She had expected Shane to feel elegant, not muscular, and the hardness under her fingers surprised her. She stared at his arm for a moment before sliding her eyes up his chest to his face.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said.

  “It’s been a long evening. I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “No games. I promise,” she said, releasing his arm. “Just a possible solution.”

  “To what?”

  Her cheeks flushed. There wasn’t much that embarrassed Priscilla, but she was about to ask a virtual stranger to marry her: this was downright awkward. “To the reason dinner was so terrible.”

  He flinched, then straightened, his eyes shrewd with interest. “How do you mean?”

  She flicked a glance at the house, hoping that her father had fallen asleep on his desk but not willing to risk his involvement should he see them talking outside. Cocking her head to the side, she smiled, hoping to lighten the mood and put Shane at ease. “Walk with me for a little bit?”

  Shane sighed. “I’m really not up for—”

  “Shane,” she said, using the same no-nonsense tone that Margaret and Alice used when they wanted to be taken seriously in business, “what I have to say is worth a few minutes of your time. I promise.”

  Without waiting to see if he’d follow, she slipped around the side of the house, her bunched shoulders relaxing when she heard his footsteps crunching on the gravel behind her.

  “What’s this about, Priscilla?”

  She slowed down so they were walking next to one another, over the white stone path that cut across the great lawn of Forrester and up to the stables on a hill. “We both have a problem.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, it is.”

&
nbsp; “Well, you weren’t at dinner…so what’s mine?”

  “Voices carry…especially when they’re upset,” she said. Then, taking a deep breath, she turned, stopped walking, and seized his eyes. “My father wants a son-in-law to run Story Imports, but Margaret won’t marry you. It’s never going to happen.”

  “How do you—?”

  “When Margaret was eight, our nanny made us a breakfast of English porridge. She set it in front of us on the nursery table, all jiggly and gray. Margaret took one look, and without trying it, she declared it disgusting.” Priscilla laughed softly, remembering the look on her older sister’s face. “Nanny didn’t want to hear it. She told Margaret to eat, and again Margaret refused.” She looked up at the barn, at the spring sun setting behind it, bathing it in gold. So beautiful. She’d love to paint it or grab her camera and—Don’t get distracted. “So Nanny said that Margaret would sit at that table until the porridge was gone. The rest of us held our noses and ate the porridge. And Margaret was right,” she said. “It was disgusting.”

  “I really don’t know what this has to do with—”

  “How long do you think she sat there?”

  Shane shrugged. “I don’t know. Until lunchtime?”

  “Longer.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Longer.”

  “Bedtime?”

  “No,” said Priscilla. “She sat there until the breakfast dishes were cleared the next day when she was finally excused. She missed two meals in a row, peed her pants twice, and slept with her head beside the bowl of cold, congealed porridge.”

  He screwed up his face in shock. “Margaret?!”

  She nodded. “Mm-hm. She’s got a backbone of steel.”

  “Margaret,” he said again, shock still thick in his voice. “But she’s so…so…”

  “Polished? Proper? Yes, she is. But she’s also strong, and she knows her mind. And in case you missed it, she’s a romantic.” She gave him a look, then sighed. “And your proposal wasn’t exactly romantic, Shane. Your proposal wasn’t even in the same universe as romantic.” Priscilla started walking again. “She will never, ever marry you.”