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 adding 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.
After more than three years of working beside him at the hospital, she would have expected to become inured to his presence. The truth was exactly the opposite—the more time she spent with him, the more appealing she found him. She respected his ability to take control in a crisis situation as much as she admired the compassion he showed to his patients and, as a result, she’d developed a pretty major crush on him—not that she had any intention of letting Dr. Romeo know it.
When the patient had been resuscitated and moved to surgery, he’d simply and sincerely thanked Avery for her help. That was another thing she liked about him—he might be in command of the ER, but he never overlooked the contributions of the rest of the staff.
She’d barely discarded her gown and gloves from that procedure when she was steered to the surgical wing to help Dr. Bristow with a femoral shaft fracture. She passed through the ER again on her way out, and that was when she saw Dr. Garrett hunkered down in conversation with a little boy. The child’s face was streaked with dirt and tears, but it was the abject grief in his eyes that tugged at her heart and had her slipping into the room after the ER physician had gone. She chatted with him and played Go Fish until Victoria Danes arrived. Once she was confident that he was comfortable in the psychologist’s company, she headed back toward the locker room. And ran straight into the one person she always tried to avoid.
“Good—you’re still here.”
Her heart bumped against her ribs as she looked up at Justin, but she kept her tone cool, casual. “Actually, I’m just on my way home.”
“We’ve got two ambulances coming in from an MVA—one carrying an expectant mother.”
“Dr. Terrence can handle it.”
“He can, but Callie asked me to find you.”
“Why?” she wondered.
“The pregnant woman is her sister.”
According to the report from the paramedics, the taxi in which Callie’s sister and her husband were riding had been broadsided by a pickup truck that had sped through a red light.
Avery watched the clock as she scrubbed, conscious that each one of the five minutes she was required to spend on the procedure was another minute the expectant mother was waiting. Dr. Garrett was already working on the pregnant
