Can they leave their past behind...
To save her son’s life?
When paramedic Rhiann Masters’s young son needs heart surgery, there’s only one man she can trust—former best friend and top pediatric surgeon Dr. Patrick Scott. The only problem? After a tragic accident changed Patrick’s life forever, they haven’t spoken in years. Now as they’re thrown back together, they soon remember just how good life can be when they’re by each other’s side...
A first kiss almost two decades in the making.
It was worth every minute of the delay. Delicious and tempting her to want it to never end. Kissing Patrick awakened sensations that had been missing from her life for a while. She’d barely noticed men since everything in her life fell apart, but Rhiann was certainly noticing Patrick now.
She’d been so focused on Levi and just surviving that she’d barely managed to function. The only thing further from her mind than dating had been falling in love again. But the moment his lips touched hers, she wanted things.
...Like promises and forevers.
Patrick eased back. When their lips parted, they stared at each other, trying to process all the emotion and change that came with a kiss of that magnitude. His stunned expression told her he was as shocked by the kiss as she was. He probably hadn’t expected everything that kiss had held, either.
Dear Reader,
After a tragedy, sometimes it can be hard to look forward. So what happens when you open your eyes and see your future tangled with all the painful memories of the past?
Patrick has sworn off relationships in every way, wanting to protect his heart from the pain of further loss. Rhiann is a single mom, determined to get her son the care he needs, even if that means facing her once best friend, now sworn enemy. Despite his determination to push people away, he has a hard time resisting her pleas to help her son. Even as they grow closer taking care of her son, their shared past stands between them.
Thank you for picking up Heart Surgeon’s Second Chance. This story made me laugh, it made me cry, and I hope that you will enjoy reading Patrick and Rhiann’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it. I love hearing from my readers, so if you’d like to get in touch you can find me @AllieKAuthor on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
Happy reading!
Allie
Heart Surgeon’s Second Chance
Allie Kincheloe
Allie Kincheloe has been writing stories as long as she can remember, and somehow, they always become romances. Always a Kentucky girl at heart, she now lives in Tennessee with her husband, children and a growing menagerie of pets. Visit her on Twitter: @AllieKAuthor.
Heart Surgeon’s Second Chance
is Allie Kincheloe’s debut title for Harlequin.
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
This book is dedicated to all those who have helped me along the way, my family and those who have become like family—you know who you are.
And to Victoria Britton—without your belief in this story, this book wouldn’t exist.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM RISKING HER HEART ON THE SINGLE DAD BY ANNIE O'NEIL
CHAPTER ONE
Rhiann
DREAD POOLED LOW in Rhiann’s stomach as the door to the exam room opened with a slow and ominous creak. Broad shoulders in a white coat filled the space and her eyes roamed the doctor’s familiar form, taking in the subtle changes time had wrought.
Three years ago he hadn’t had those deep lines etched into his face. His dark hair had a little more silver at the temple than she remembered, but he was as lean and handsome as ever.
Dr. Patrick Scott stepped into the room, his eyes looking down at the screen of the silver laptop in his hand. His movements carried the spicy aroma of his cologne into the small room, the pleasing notes covering the harsh antiseptic and teasing a part of her that had gone dormant since her divorce.
But on top of the overtly masculine scent he brought with him a wave of sadness that hinted at tragedy.
“Hello, Mrs.... Masters...um...”
His deep gravelly voice trailed off and his sky-blue eyes jerked up to meet hers when he recognized her name. The slight fake smile he’d had on his lips when he’d opened the door faded fast. Judging from the ice that frosted over his gaze, the animosity he held for her hadn’t eased since she’d last seen him.
The exam room door shut behind him with an audible click and the laptop clattered slightly as he set it roughly on the counter.
“What are you doing here?”
The uncharacteristic coldness in his tone sent a shiver coursing down her spine. Patrick’s voice had always held such emotion, its rich timbre broadcasting his feelings with the simplest words. In all the years she’d known him Rhiann had never heard this distant tone.
Rhiann hugged the baby in her arms close to her chest, tears filling her eyes as she fought to keep her emotions from overwhelming her. She’d hoped the time since they’d last seen each other might have given Patrick clarity and smoothed the raw edges of his anger, but clearly not enough time had passed. Now she could only hope that he would be professional enough to put their personal grievances aside and focus on her child’s best interests.
She needed to keep a clear head today, so she stuffed her feelings away as best she could. She had known coming here was a risk, but there was no other way or she’d have explored it already.
“I need your help. Well, he needs your help. This is my son Levi. He has a heart defect, and the cardiologist at St. Thomas’ wants to do surgery to fix it. But if anyone is cutting my baby open I want it to be the best surgeon I can find.” She paused to swallow down an oversized lump in her throat. “And that’s you.”
“You expect me to save someone you love. How ironic.”
A single dark eyebrow raised as he stared down at her, his expression unreadable and as cold as marble. His eyes searched hers—for what, she didn’t know.
Just as she was sure he was about to tell her to leave, to scream at her like he had the last time she’d seen him, his gaze flicked down to the baby in her arms and the ice in his eyes melted the tiniest bit.
“Please, Dr. Scott.”
The formality felt stiff and awkward as it rolled off her tongue without the teasing tone she’d used each time she’d called him by his title in the past. Years ago they had been the closest of friends, sharing every secret with each other. They had even flirted with the idea of a relationship on an occasion or two.
But it no longer seemed appropriate to call him by his given name. Not when their friendship had crumbled on the back of accusations and misplaced blame. Their personal connection was more of a hindrance than a help in her quest to get her son the care he needed, so she kept things formal, hoping to appeal to his professional side.
His eyes snapped up to meet hers and that hint of softening was gone. “You ask too much.”
The once ha
ppy-go-lucky Patrick had earned a reputation over the last couple years for taciturnity. His white-hot talent was tempered by his ice-cold bedside manner, but he was the best pediatric cardiac surgeon in the southeast, and that fact made people overlook his brusque manner.
He’d changed three years ago—just as she had.
Rhiann remembered the caring man he’d used to be, though, and she hoped there was enough of that man left deep inside for him to agree to help. Her son’s life depended on it.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come here, but I had to try. I had to give my sweet baby every chance possible. Because he’s just a baby.”
She reached for any way to connect with the man standing before her, sensing that rejection sat poised on his lips.
“Look at him. He’s an innocent child who needs your assistance. Can you live with yourself if you don’t at least try to help him?”
“I’ll have my partner—”
“I didn’t come here for your partner. And even though I know he’s an excellent surgeon, I refuse to let you pass Levi off to Clay. Because I came here for the best surgeon I know. Not for second-best.”
He muttered a curse, so low it was barely perceptible, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know if he needs surgery we’ll be seeing each other a lot over the coming weeks and months? Do you know what seeing you that often is going to do to me?”
Clearly not a single thing had changed between them. He still hated her. But that fact changed nothing about her mission today.
Emotions threatened to clog her throat and Rhiann coughed a bit to clear it. She swiped at a hot tear that had leaked from her eye and run down her cheek. With a hard inhalation she tried to lock those feelings away, because she needed to keep a cool head. She had to convince Patrick to help Levi.
“Whatever you think I did or didn’t do, that was in the past and between us. It has nothing to do with my son. I’ve run that day through my head no less than a thousand times, but there’s nothing I could have done that would have changed anything. I can’t change the past, but you can change Levi’s future. You can give him a future.”
His brows furrowed, Patrick pressed his lips together tightly, but her words must have touched something in the man she’d once known because he was pulling his stethoscope from around his neck.
“Let me take a look at him, run a few tests, and we’ll go from there. His records from his previous doctors haven’t been transferred yet, and I’d like to review those as well.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Rhiann’s heart thudded in her chest as Patrick sat on a rolling stool and pushed it over to listen to Levi’s heart. His hand brushed hers, warm despite his cold manner, as he moved the stethoscope gently over her son’s back. He sat close, his knee bumping into her thigh when he shifted to listen to Levi’s chest.
She inhaled sharply at the touch and he looked up at the sound, their gazes meeting over Levi’s head. The spark that fired up in his eyes brought back a time when distance between them hadn’t existed and their lives had been far easier, and she wished they could return to the easy-going camaraderie of those days.
The exam room suddenly shrank in size as new strain filled the space and fire warred with the ice in Patrick’s eyes.
The silence amped up the tension until finally he snapped back to the present enough to speak. “What tests has he had done? And how recently?”
“Most recently he’s had chest X-rays and an EKG. Two weeks ago.”
Rhiann swallowed hard. Her own medical training made this harder, because as a paramedic she knew enough to know that Levi’s heart condition was really bad.
“They told me Levi had a heart murmur when he was born—but a lot of babies have murmurs, you know? So, I was watching it, but it only kept getting worse. Then he started turning blue, and I knew it was more than just a murmur. I pushed and pushed until we saw a specialist. Six months ago he had a shunt put in that was supposed to help. But, as you can see from his coloring, it’s not enough. I’m not even sure the shunt has helped at all.”
“I’m not sure it has either.”
Patrick rolled the stool over to his computer and Rhiann breathed deeply for the first time since she’d made the appointment to see him. The keys clicked and clacked beneath Patrick’s nimble fingers as he made some notes on Levi’s chart.
He spoke without looking at her. “You might want to have Pete with you for the tests, for emotional support. How’s he handling all this, anyway?”
“I have no idea. Pete sent me divorce papers shortly after Levi was born. I haven’t seen or heard from him since before Levi had his shunt put in. Last I heard he had moved back home to California and was living near his parents. Despite loving all the music here, you know he always hated Nashville. Not close enough to the water for him. And once he gave up on the idea of a music career—well, I’m afraid it’s just me and Levi now.”
Patrick spun on the stool and stared at her for a minute. “I didn’t know,” he finally acknowledged.
“Well, now you do.”
Patrick had never liked Pete, so it would surely make him happy to hear that he’d been right when he’d warned her it would never last. The teensiest bit of joy flashed in his eyes and his lips curled up momentarily before he brought his emotions back under the icy veneer.
Her spine stiffened as she waited for the I told you so from her former friend.
“What happened?”
She sighed and let an abbreviated version of the story slip past her lips—a story she’d told more than once. “I had a hard time getting pregnant. We needed help from a donor. Pete never really connected with the thought of a baby that wasn’t his biological child, and... Well, when the news came in that Levi wasn’t absolutely perfect, that he had a heart problem, Pete just couldn’t escape fast enough.”
Levi was her family now. The only person in the world she had to love and to love her in return. She didn’t need a man like Pete. She didn’t need anyone at all except Levi. And for Levi she’d cross as many rivers and boundaries as she had to in order to get him the help he needed.
Right now Levi needed the surgeon sitting in front of her, and she was definitely crossing over the boundary lines he’d thrown up between them. Not just crossing them, but stomping on them and maybe setting them on fire for good measure.
Patrick snorted. “If only someone had told you that loser wasn’t worth your time...”
Despite expecting the rebuke, the frigidness in his tone shocked her. Rhiann blinked away more tears. The man sitting before her bore little resemblance to the friend she’d once known. That man would never have spoken to her with such vehemence.
She hugged Levi closer, knowing she couldn’t leave here without Patrick agreeing to help her son, and determined to take whatever Patrick felt he had to dish out in order to make that happen.
Very little in her life had come easily, and if there was one thing she knew it was how to stay strong and fight for what mattered. Levi was worth every fight she’d faced already, and he’d remain worth any fights there were to come.
The baby squeaked in protest as she unconsciously tightened her grip on him as she stiffened up her resolve. She eased her hold and rested her cheek on the top of Levi’s head, murmuring an apology.
She’d surprised Patrick, based on how his body stiffened beneath her hand when she reached over and put her hand on his white-cotton-clad forearm. His arm was warm beneath her fingers, which was surprising, since she’d almost expected his arm to feel like solid ice to match his demeanor.
“You can fix him, right?”
Patrick
Emotions rolled over Patrick. Waves of anger swirled around spikes of sympathy, and even a hint of something he didn’t want to put a name to. He shut his feelings down and didn’t allow himself the luxury of emotions.
No feelings meant no pain. And i
f anyone had ever perfected the art of depriving themselves of all emotion it was Patrick.
He pushed the stool back away from the teary-eyed blonde and her tiny son before the sweet scent of vanilla and apricots that wafted from her overwhelmed his sensibilities and made him do something stupid.
Like pull her into his arms and whisper reassurances about her son’s future that he wasn’t sure he could fulfill. Or kiss her to see if she still used the strawberry lip gloss he’d been so desperate to taste once upon a time.
He cleared his throat and pulled up the cold professionalism that had served him well these last few years. No matter how good Rhiann smelled, no matter how many sparks shot up from his arm at her simple touch, he would not allow himself to think of her that way—not her, not after what she’d done.
“I don’t want to make any promises until I see exactly what we’re looking at. But I don’t like what I’m hearing. You have to know that Levi’s in poor condition.”
From what he’d heard of the little guy’s heart, surgery was almost a guarantee. But promises were wasted words when he was talking about a heart the size of a plum. And, with their past, if Rhiann had sought him out, surely she already knew things were bad.
“I can’t lose him,” she whispered, her lips feathering across the baby’s forehead. The shadows in her eyes darkened as she processed his words. “He’s all I have. Please, help him.”
A mother’s love visibly permeated her every move. It had brought her here today, despite knowing she’d have to face him again. That courage ripped open something deep in Patrick’s chest, and he knew it would take more than a hastily slapped-on bandage to patch the gaping hole Rhiann’s reappearance in his life had rent.
He stood abruptly, the stool rolling back into the wall with a rattling thud that echoed in the quiet stillness of the exam room. Fighting back the emotion that Rhiann kissing her child had triggered, he snapped out a quick response. “Levi needs an echo and a heart catherization. Once we get the results of those, we can go from there. I’ll have my nurse schedule the tests.”
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