The Nightshift Before Christmas
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Annie O'Neil
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Chapter One
“OKAY, PEOPLE! LISTEN UP, it’s the start of silly season!”
“I thought that was Halloween?”
“Or every full moon!”
“First snowfall?”
“Hey, Doc? Is that where your locum tenens is? Stuck in one of the drifts?”
“He won’t last long in Copper Canyon if that’s the case. A man needs snow tires.”
“A woman just needs common sense! I follow the snowplows! Got them tracked on my phone!”
Copper Canyon’s Emergency Department filled with laughter. Impressive, considering they were down to a quality but skeleton staff. Never mind the fact it was almost always one of the busiest weeks of the year. The town was full of holiday visitors and the ski resort up the hill always had an emergency or six their small clinic couldn’t handle.
Katie scanned the motley crew who would see her through Christmas Eve and, for some double-shifters, into the Big Day itself. Valley Hospital was no Boston General, and that was just the way Katie liked it. The facility was big enough to have all the fancy equipment, small enough to be able to give the personal touch to just about everyone who walked through those doors. And if they needed an extra hand, there were always the emergency services guys up on the mountain, willing to lend a hand. It wasn’t home yet...but she’d get there.
“Thank you, peanut gallery. Time to focus.” Katie tried her best to smile at the small but vital crew, all visibly buzzing with Christmas cheer. It wasn’t their fault she wanted to rip every bauble, snowman and glittery snowflake from the walls. Someone else took that prize. “Thanks for wearing your red and green scrubs, by the way—you all look very...festive.”
“Who doesn’t love Christmas, Doc?” a tinsel-bedecked RN quipped.
Me.
“Right!” Katie soldiered on. They were used to her grumpy face—no need for Christmas to morph her into a jolly, stethoscope-wearing elf. “Just in time for the lunchtime rush, I’ve got our first Christmas mystery X-ray!”
A smattering of applause and cheers went up as she worked her way through the dozen or so staff and slapped the X-ray up on the glowing board with a flourish.
“Any guesses?”
“Why would anyone stick one of those up their—?”
“I know! Especially at Christmas.”
“At least it’s not a turkey thermometer. We had one of those last year. Perforated the intestine!”
The group collectively sucked in a breath. Ouch.
“C’mon, Dr. McGann, that’s too easy. Give us a hard one!”
“All right, then.” She turned to face the cocky resident. “If it’s so easy, what’s your guess?”
“Cookie cutter?”
Katie winced and shook her head.
“Nope. Good guess, though. Try again.”
She joined the staff in tipping their heads first in one direction then the other. It wasn’t that tough...
“Tree decoration. Six-pointed snowflake. My Gramma Jam-Jam used to have one. It was my wife’s favorite.”
Katie’s body went rigid with shock as the rest of the staff turned to see who the newcomer to the group was. She didn’t need to turn around. She didn’t need to imagine who or what Gramma Jam-Jam’s tree was like. She’d helped decorate a freshly cut fir in her old-fashioned living room as many times as she had fingers on a hand.
As her thumb moved to check that the most important finger was still bare, waves of emotion began to strike her entire body in near-physical blows. She willed her racing heart to still itself, but every sensory particle within her was responding to the one voice in the world that could morph her by turns into a wreck, a googly-eyed teen, a blushing bride...
Dr. Joshua West. Her ex-husband.
Well. He would be her ex if he would ever sign the blinking divorce papers!
She couldn’t even manage to turn around and look at him, and yet her body was already on high alert to his presence. He was close. Too close.
She heard a shifting of feet. Maybe it was one of the nurses... Maybe it was... Her eyes closed for a moment.
Yup. There it was. That perfectly singular Josh scent. The man smelled of sunshine. What was up with that? It was the dead of winter. Freezing-cold, snowing-right-now winter. And yet she could smell warm sunny days and the rural lifestyle only her husband—her ex-husband!—could turn into something delicious. Talk about evocative! One whiff of that man had never failed to bring out her inner jungle cat. From all the excitement swing-dancing around her chest cavity in preparation for a high dive down to her...nethergarden...it was clear the cat had been in hibernation for some time.
Her spine did a little shimmy, as if she already didn’t get the point.
She did a laser-fast mental scan of her medical books. Maybe her body was trying to tell her something different!
Frisson or fear?
Her tongue sneaked out and gave her lower lip a surreptitious lick.
Guess that answers that, then.
How could that rich voice of his still have a physical effect on her? Hadn’t two years apart been enough to make her immune to the sweet thrill twirling along her insides every time she heard him whisper sweet—?
“Nice to see you, Katiebird.”
Don’t even start to go there! She took a decidedly large step away from Josh. Sweet or not, they’d been nothings in the end.
“Right, everybody! Let’s get these patients better.”
Katie clapped her hands together—more to prove to herself that she had her back-to-work hat on than anything else. That, and she didn’t want anybody around to witness the showdown she was certain was coming.
The group dispersed back to their posts, with a couple of interns still marveling over the human body’s ability to deal with the unnatural. Precisely what Katie was experiencing at this exact moment. Fighting a natural instinct. Every time she laid eyes on Josh it was like receiving a healing salve. Her eyes were still glued to the X-ray, but she knew if she only turned her head she was just a blink away from perfection.
She sucked in a breath. Not anymore! No one and nothing was picture-perfect. Life had a cruel way of teaching that lesson.
“Are you ever going to turn around?”
His words tickled her ear again. The man clearly didn’t believe in personal space when his wife was trying to divorce him.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?” Katie wheeled round as she spoke. Her breath was all but sucked straight out of her as she met those slate-blue eyes she’d fallen so deeply in love with. It had been a long time since she’d last seen them up close and personal. A really long time.
She fought the sharp sting of tears as she gave a quick shake of her head and readjusted her pose. She could do nonchalant while her world was being rocked to its very core. She was a McGann, for goodness’ sake! McGanns were cool, analytical, exacting. At least that was what she’d told herself when her parents had swanned off to another party in lieu of spending time with their only daughter. McGanns were the polar opposite of the West family. The Wests were unruly, wayward, irresponsible! Invigoratingly original, passionate, loyal...
Her teeth caught her lower lip and bit down hard as her brain began to realign the Josh in her head with the one standing in front of her. Thick, sandy-blond hair, still a bit wild on top and curling round his ears, softening the edges of his shirt collar. No tie. Typical Josh. He rarely did formal, but when he did...
She swallowed and flicked her eyes back up to his hair to miss out on the little V of chest she knew would be visible. No hat. Natch. Why follow the same advice you’d give your patients? There were a few flakes of snow begging to be ruffled out of the soft waves. Her fingers twitched. The number of times she had tucked a wayward strand back behind one of his ears and given in to the urge to drop completely out-of-character sultry kisses along his neck...
No! And double, triple, infinity no! No Josh West. Not anymore!
“Didn’t the agency tell you?”
The expression on his face told her he knew damn well it hadn’t told her. The twinkle in his eye told her he was enjoying watching the steam beginning to blow out of her ears. Typical. He always had been spectacular at winding her up and then bringing her to a whole other plane of happy—
Stop it, Katie McGann. You are not falling under his spell again.
“Tell me what?”
“No need to grind your teeth, darlin’.” He tsked gently. “It’ll give you a headache.”
“Headache?” Maddening and headache-inducing didn’t even begin to cover the effect he was having on her. “Try migraine.”
“Good thing I’m around, then.”
He gave her one of those slow-motion winks that had a naughty tendency to bring out the...the naughty in her.
“Those things can knock you out flat.”
An image of a shirtless Josh slowly lowering himself onto her...into her...blinded Katie for an instant. The muscled arms, the tanned chest, slate eyes gone almost gray with desire and lips shifting into that lazy smile of his—the one that always brought her nerves down a notch when she needed a bit of reassurance.
She scrunched her eyes tight and when she opened them again there it was in full-blown 3-D. The smile that could light up an entire room.
“Josh, I can’t do this right now. Our locum hasn’t bothered to show, and as you can see—” her arms curled protectively around herself as the sliding doors opened to admit a young man with a child “—I’m busy. Working,” she added, as if he didn’t quite get the picture.
Never mind the fact he’d come top in the class above hers at med school, so clearly had brains to spare. Or the little part about how she was standing there in a lab coat in the middle of an ER. A bit of a dead giveaway. Urgh! If she used coarse language, a veritable stream of the colorful stuff would be pouring forth! Why was he just standing there? Grinning?
“What’s the game here, Josh? Yuletide Torture? Our last Christmas together wasn’t horrific enough for you?”
His expression sobered in an instant. She’d overstepped the mark. There was no need to be cruel. They’d both borne their fair share of grief. Grinding it in deep wasn’t necessary. They would feel the weight of their mutual loss in the very core of their hearts until they each stopped beating. Longer if such a thing was possible. Forgetting was impossible. Surviving was. But only just. Which was exactly why she needed him to leave. Now.
“Sorry, Kitty-Kat. You’re stuck with me. I’m your locum tenens.”
To explain why he was late for his first shift, Josh could have told Katie how his car had spun out on some black ice on the way in, despite it being a 4x4 he drove, and the all-weather tires he’d had put on especially, but from her widened eyes and set expression he could see she had enough information to deal with. The latest “Josh incident,” as she liked to call his brushes with disaster, could be kept for another time.
“No. No, I’m sorry, Josh—that’s not possible. We can’t...”
He heard the catch in her voice and had to force himself to stay put. In his arms was where his wife belonged when she was hurting, but it was easy enough to see it was the last place she wanted to be.
He flexed his hands a few times to try and shake the urge. With Katie right there, so close he could smell her perfume... It would be futile, of course, but one thing people could always say about Josh West—he was a man who never had a problem with attempting the impossible. How else could he have won Katie McGann’s heart? Cool East Coast ice princess falling in love with the son of a Tennessee ranch manager, scraping his way through med school with every scholarship and part-time job he could get his callused hands on? It was when he’d finally got his hands on her—man, they’d shaken the first time—he’d known the word “soulmates” wasn’t a fiction.
“Dr. McGann?”
Both their heads turned at the nurse’s call, and the strength it took to keep his expression neutral would have put a circus strongman out of work.
So. Katie had gone back to her maiden name.
Another nail in the coffin for his big plan, or just another one of Katie’s ways of ignoring the fact they belonged together? That everything that had happened to them had been awful—but survivable. Even more so if they were together.
“Can you take this one? Arterial bleed to an index finger. He says it’s been pumping for a while. Shannon’s in with him now.” The nurse held out a chart for her to read.
“Absolutely, Jorja. How long’s a while?” Katie asked, taking the three strides to the central ER counter while scanning the chart, nodding at the extra information the charge nurse supplied her.
Josh took the chance to give his wife a handful of once-overs—and one more for good measure. It had been some time since his eyes had run up those long legs of hers. Too long. He’d been an idiot to leave it so long, but she had been good at playing hide-and-seek and he’d had his own dragons to slay. A small flash of inspiration had finally led him to Copper Canyon—the one place he’d left unexplored.
He stuffed his hands into the downy pockets of his old snowboarding coat, fingers curling in and out against the length of his palms. Laying his eyes on her for the first time in two years was hitting him hard. She’d changed. Not unrecognizably—but the young woman he’d fallen in love with had well and truly grown up. Still beautiful, but—he couldn’t deny it—with a bit of an edge. Was this true Katie surfacing after the years they’d spent together? Or just another mask to deal with the disappointments and sorrows life had thrown at them in the early days of their marriage?
Gone was the preppy New England look. And in its stead... He didn’t even know where to begin. Was this Idaho chic? Since when did his Katie wear knee-high biker boots, formfitting tartan skirts in dark purple and black with dark-as-the-night turtlenecks? Yeah, they would be practical in this wintry weather, but it was a far cry from the pastels and conservative clothes she’d favored back in Boston. The new look was sexy.
A hit of jealousy socked him in the solar plexus. She hadn’t... He suddenly felt like a class-A idiot for not even considering the possibility. She hadn’t moved on. Not his Katie. Had she...?
His eyes shot up the length of her legs to the plaid skirt and then up to her trim waistline, irritatingly hidden by the lab coat. His eyes jagged along her hands, seeking out her ring finger. Still bare. He would never forget the moment she’d ripped off her rings and slapped them onto the kitchen counter. Throwing had been far too melodramatic for his self-controlled wife. The word “Enough!” had rung in his ears for weeks afterward. Months.
He exhaled. Okay. The bare finger wasn’t proof positive she wasn’t seeing someone else, but it was something. He scraped a hand through his mess of a hairdo, wishing he’d taken a moment to pop into a barber’s. But he hadn’t worried a jot about what he’d looked like over the past two years, let alone worried about impressing another woman. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Katie to the moment she’d hightailed it out of his life—their life—he’d known there was only one woman in the world for him. And here she was—doing her pea-pickin’ best to ignore him.
His eyes traveled up to her face as she scanned the chart, listening to the nurse. He knew that expression like the back of his hand. Intent, focused. Her brain would be spinning away behind those dark brown eyes of hers to come to the best solution—for both the patient and the hospital, but mostly the patient. One of the many traits he loved about her. Patients first. Politics later. Because there were always politics in a hospital. He knew that more than most. It was why staying at Boston General hadn’t worked out so well. Why a new job in Paris just might be the ticket he needed to wade out of that sorry old pit of misery he’d been wallowing in.
But he wasn’t going anywhere until he knew Katie was well and truly over him. He checked his watch. Seven days to find out if she was cold-or warm-blooded. It ended at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. He’d either hand her a plane ticket or the divorce papers. He sucked in a fortifying breath of Katie’s perfume. Mmm... Still sweeter than a barn full of new summer hay.
Well, then. He gave his chin a scrub and grinned. Best get started.
