Hank put his arm across her shoulders. “She’s teasing. Actually she’s moving in with me. I’m renting out Kim’s old room.” He winked at his daughter, a sign that he knew he wasn’t fooling her with that story.
“You don’t waste any time, Dad. My bed is hardly cold.”
April knew her friend approved of the relationship. Josie had been there for the family during Hank’s health crisis, and his daughter liked her very much. She sighed. Another happy couple.
As they waited their turn to walk under the tarp, the five of them talked, their voices raised against the backdrop of buzzing chatter all around them. April realized it was slowly quieting and finally stopped just as the crowd parted to let a man through.
It was a man who looked an awful lot like Will!
He walked right up to her. “I’m not okay with you dumping me.”
Surely a heart couldn’t beat as fast as hers was without some kind of consequence. “I thought you were in Chicago.”
“I came back. For good,” he added.
“I don’t understand. What are you doing here?” Why hadn’t he walked across the alley and knocked on her sliding glass door to tell her this?
“You broke up with me in public and I need to get you back the same way.” There was a mother lode of determination in his blue eyes. “Besides, I have a better chance here with the whole town on my side.”
“But how did you know I’d be here?” April glanced at Kim, who was looking awfully self-satisfied. Then it hit her. Why her friend had wheedled and bullied her into coming. “You forced me into this. You knew he’d be here.”
“Actually he ordered me to get you here,” Kim clarified. “And when the sheriff of Blackwater Lake gives you a direct order, it’s always best to do what he says.”
April thanked her friend with a look that she knew would be understood. “So when you bet me twenty bucks he’d be back—”
Kim shrugged. “Sucker bet.”
“I’m not paying you,” she vowed. “You should have warned me he would be here—”
“I told her not to tell you. I was afraid if you knew, you wouldn’t come,” Will said. “And I really wanted—no, needed—you to.”
“Why?” Wariness warred with hope inside her. She was stunned and shocked and so darn happy to see him.
“I thought a career in a big-city police department was running to something, but I was wrong. Everything in the world that’s important to me is right here. I wanted to ask you to come with me when I left, but you’re so happy here.” His gaze never left hers and his eyes were filled with intensity. “The thing is, you’re the smart one. You stayed. But I finally wised up and came back. Not just for you, but this town. It gets into your blood in the best possible way.”
“That it does,” she said.
“And you got into my blood. You stole my heart when you were sixteen years old and you have it now.”
April actually heard a collective sigh from the women in the crowd. “I don’t know what to say.”
“A simple yes would be just about perfect,” he said, his voice low and deep. “Because I love you, April. And I’d really like it if you’d marry me.”
Before his words even sank in everyone gathered around them started chanting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
How could she say no when he was offering her everything she’d ever wanted in her life? She needed no encouragement from the crowd and threw herself into his arms, then said for all to hear, “Yes!”
“And we got an affirmative.” That was Hank’s voice and the words incited applause and cheers.
She smiled up at the man she’d loved for as long as she could remember. “Sounds like your dad approves.”
“I’m glad. But it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t. I can be a bonehead sometimes, but of course you know that better than anyone. On the upside, I don’t very often make the same mistake twice.”
“No you don’t,” she agreed. “Kim was right. I’ve never stopped loving you.”
“I told you everything would work out.” Kim sniffled loudly. “Happy endings always make me cry.”
April had just about given up on living happily ever after but this was definitely worth waiting for. She gave Will a sassy look. “Does this mean I get to be your sidekick?”
“For as long as we live,” he promised.
She would never have guessed it was possible to be this happy and wished her mother was there to share in it. But she had a strong feeling that her mom was smiling down on them. And just maybe had a hand in making her dream of a family with Will come true.
April was no longer the girl he’d left behind, but the one he’d come home to.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from TWO DOCTORS & A BABY by Brenda Harlen.
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Two Doctors & a Baby
by Brenda Harlen
Chapter One
After six years at Mercy Hospital, Dr. Justin Garrett knew that Friday nights in the ER were inevitably frenzied and chaotic.
New Year’s Eve was worse.
And when New Year’s Eve happened to fall on a Friday—well, it wasn’t yet midnight and he’d already seen more than twice the usual number of patients pass through the emergency department, most of the incidents and injuries directly related to alcohol consumption.
A drunken college student who had put his fist through a wall—and his basketball scholarship in jeopardy—with fractures of the fourth and fifth metacarpal bones. A sixty-three-year-old man who had doubled up on Viagra to celebrate the occasion with his thirty-six-year-old wife and ended up in cardiac arrest instead. A seventeen-year-old female who had fallen off her balcony because the Ecstasy slipped into her drink by her boyfriend had made her want to pick the pretty flowers on her neighbor’s terrace—thankfully, she lived on the second floor, although she did sustain a broken clavicle and had required thirty-eight stitches to close
the gash on her arm, courtesy of the glass vodka cooler bottle she had been holding when she fell.
And those were only the ones he’d seen in the past hour. Then there was Nancy Anderson—a woman who claimed she tripped and fell into a door but whom he recognized from her frequent visits to the ER with various and numerous contusions and lacerations. Tonight it was a black eye, swollen jaw and broken wrist. Nancy wasn’t drunk, but Justin would bet that her husband was—not because it was New Year’s Eve but because Ray Anderson always hit the bottle as soon as he got home from work.
More than once, Justin had tried to help her see that there were other options. She refused to listen to him. Because he understood that a woman who had been abused by her husband might be reluctant to confide in another man, he’d called in a female physician to talk to her, with the same unsatisfactory result. After Thanksgiving, when she’d suffered a miscarriage caused by a “fall down the stairs,” Dr. Wallace had suggested that she talk to a counselor. Nancy Anderson continued to insist that she was just clumsy, that her husband loved her and would never hurt her.
“What did she say happened this time?” asked Callie Levine, one of his favorite nurses who had drawn the short straw and got stuck working the New Year’s Eve shift beside him.
“Walked into a door.”
Callie shook her head. “He’s going to kill her one of these days.”
“Probably,” Justin admitted grimly. “But it doesn’t matter that you and I see it when she refuses to acknowledge what’s happening.”
“When she lost the baby, I honestly thought that would do it. That her grief would override her fear and she would finally tell the truth.”
“She fell down the stairs,” Justin said, reminding her of the explanation Nancy Anderson had given when she was admitted on that previous occasion.
Then, because talking about the woman’s situation made him feel both frustrated and ineffectual, he opened another chart. “Did you call up to the psych department for a consult?”
“Victoria Danes said she would be down shortly,” Callie told him. “Did you want her to see Mrs. Anderson?”
“No point,” he said. “I just need her to talk to Tanner Northrop so we can figure out what to do there.”
“Is that the little boy in Exam Two with Dr. Wallace?”
“Dr. Wallace is still here?” He’d crossed paths with Avery Wallace earlier in the evening when he’d sneaked into the doctor’s lounge for a much-needed hit of caffeine and she’d strolled in, wearing a formfitting black dress and mile-high heels, and his eyes had almost popped right out of his head.
She’d barely glanced in his direction as she’d made her way to the women’s locker room, emerging a few minutes later in faded scrubs and running shoes. It didn’t matter that the more familiar attire disguised her delectable feminine curves—his body was always on full alert whenever she was near.
She’d moved to Charisma three and a half years earlier and started working at Mercy Hospital. Since then, he’d gotten to know her pretty well—professionally, at least. Personally, she wouldn’t give him the time of day, despite the definite sizzle in the air whenever they were around each other.
Although she wasn’t on the schedule tonight, she’d assisted him with a procedure earlier in the evening because they were short staffed and she was there. He’d expected that she would have gone home after that—making her escape as soon as possible. Apparently, he was wrong.
Callie nodded in response to his question. “She’s teaching the kid how to play Go Fish.”
He smiled at that, grateful Tanner had some kind of distraction. The eight-year-old had dialed 9-1-1 after his mother shot up a little too much of her favorite heroin cocktail and wouldn’t wake up. She still hadn’t woken up, and Tanner didn’t seem to know if he had any other family.
“Send Victoria in to see Tanner when she comes down,” he said. “I’m going to see how Mrs. Anderson is doing.”
“Good luck with that.”
Of course, it was his bad luck that he’d just opened the door to Exam Four when the psychologist appeared.
“What’s she doing here?” Nancy Anderson demanded.
“She’s not here to see you,” Justin assured her. Then, to Victoria, “Exam Two.”
“Thanks.” The psychologist moved on; the patient reapplied the ice pack to her jaw.
“Are you planning to go home tonight?” Justin asked her.
“Of course.”
“Do you need someone to call a cab for you?” he asked.
Nancy shook her head. “Ray’s waiting for me outside.”
He scribbled a prescription and handed her the slip. “Pain meds—for the wrist.”
She had to set down the ice to take it in her uninjured hand. “Thanks.”
There was so much more he could have said, so much more he wanted to say, but he simply nodded and left the room.
“Dare I hope that things are finally starting to slow down?” a pretty brunette asked when he returned to the nurses’ station. She’d only been working at Mercy a couple of months and he had to glance at the whiteboard to remind himself of her name: Heather.
“I wouldn’t,” Justin advised. “It’s early yet—still lots of champagne to be drunk and much idiocy to be demonstrated.”
She laughed. “How did you get stuck working New Year’s Eve?”
“Everyone has to take a turn.”
“Callie said it was Dr. Roberts’s turn.”
He shrugged. It was true that Greg Roberts had been on the schedule for tonight. It was also true that the other doctor was a newlywed while Justin had no plans for the evening. He’d received a couple of invitations to parties—and a few offers for more personal celebrations—but he’d declined them all without really knowing why. He usually enjoyed going out with friends, but lately he’d found himself tiring of the familiar scene.
“What’s going on with the guy in Exam Three?” Heather asked. “Are we going to be able to open up that room pretty soon?”
He shook his head. “Suspected alcohol poisoning. I’m waiting for the results from his blood alcohol and tox screens to confirm the diagnosis.” In the interim, the patient was on a saline drip for hydration.
“Speaking of alcohol,” Heather said. “I’ve got a bottle of champagne chilling at home to celebrate the New Year whenever I finally get out of here.”
“You plan on drinking a whole bottle of champagne by yourself?”
Her lips curved in a slow, seductive smile. “Unless you want to share it with me.”
What he’d intended as an innocent question had probably sounded to her as if he was angling for an invitation. But honestly, his thoughts had been divided between Nancy Anderson and Tanner Northrop, and Heather’s overture was as unexpected as it was unwanted.
“I’ve got the rest of the weekend off and my roommate is in Florida for the holidays,” Heather continued.
“Lucky you,” he noted.
She touched a hand to his arm. “We could be lucky together.”
He stepped back from the counter, so that her hand fell away, and finished making notes in the chart before he passed it to her. “Sorry,” he said, without really meaning it. “I’ve got other plans this weekend.”
“What about tonight?” she pressed. “Surely you’re not expected to be anywhere when we get off shift at two a.m.?”
“No,” he acknowledged. “But it’s been a really long night and I just want to go home to my bed. Alone.”
The hopeful light in her eyes faded. “Callie told me that you always go for the blondes.”
He wasn’t really surprised to hear that he’d been the subject of some conversation. He knew that the nurses often talked about the doctors. He also knew that some of them weren’t as interested in patient care as they were in addi
ng the letters M-R-S to their names. But the fact that Callie had been drawn in to the discussion did surprise him, and he made a mental note to talk to her. If he couldn’t stop the gossip, he hoped to at least encourage discretion.
“My response has nothing to do with the color of your hair,” he assured Heather. “I’m just not interested in partying with anyone tonight.”
She pouted but turned her attention back to her work.
As he was walking away from the nurses’ station, a call came in from paramedics at an MVA seeking permission to transport multiple victims to the ER. Justin forgot about the gossip and refocused his mind on real priorities.
* * *
Avery Wallace rolled her shoulders, attempting to loosen the tight muscles that ached and burned. She was an obstetrician, not an ER doctor—and not scheduled to work tonight in any event. But she’d been on her way to a party with friends when she got the call from her answering service about a patient who was in labor and on her way to Mercy. She knew the doctor on call could handle the birth, but the expectant mother—a military wife whose family lived on the West Coast and whose husband was currently out of the country—was on her own and incredibly nervous about the birth of her first child.
Avery hadn’t hesitated to make the detour to the hospital. After texting a quick apology to Amy Seabrook—the friend and colleague who had invited her to the party—she’d exchanged her dress and heels for well-worn scrubs and running shoes.
After Michelle was settled with her new baby, Avery headed back to the locker room with the vague thought of salvaging her plans for the evening. She didn’t make it far before she was nabbed to assist Dr. Romeo—aka Justin Garrett—with a resuscitative thoracotomy in the ER.
While she might disapprove of his blatant flirtations with members of the female staff, she couldn’t deny that he was an exceptional doctor—or that her own heart always beat just a little bit faster whenever he was around. He stood about six feet two inches with a lean but strong build, short dark blond hair and deep green eyes. But it was more than his physical appearance that drew women to him. He was charming and confident, and not just a doctor but also a Garrett—a name with a certain inherent status in Charisma, North Carolina, where Garrett Furniture had been one of the town’s major employers for more than fifty years.
How to Land Her Lawman Page 20