скачать книгу бесплатно
Weekend With The Best Man
Leah Martyn
Best man to daddy!Nurse Lindsey Stewart knows that dancing with new, enigmatic Casualty doctor Dante Rossi is asking for trouble…but when he takes her hand at a wedding she’s powerless to resist. As their night turns into a weekend she learns there’s more to this charming best man than meets the eye.Returning to work, neither can escape their undeniable chemistry—even when trying to remain professional! Until Lindsey discovers she’s pregnant, and realises she might hold the key to healing Dante’s damaged heart…
Best man to daddy!
Nurse Lindsey Stewart knows that dancing with new, enigmatic Casualty doctor Dante Rossi is asking for trouble...but when he takes her hand at a wedding she’s powerless to resist. As their night turns into a weekend she learns there’s more to this charming best man than meets the eye.
After returning to work, neither can escape their undeniable chemistry—even when trying to remain professional! Until Lindsey discovers she’s pregnant, and realizes she might hold the key to healing Dante’s damaged heart...
Lindsey swallowed, her heart banging out of rhythm. He was bending towards her, his blue eyes capturing hers with a magnetic pull. ‘Dan...?’
‘Don’t talk.’
In an almost imperceptible movement he slid his hands beneath her elbows and they rose as one. Instantly Lindsey felt her nerve-ends tingling, her breathing grow uncomfortably tight. She lifted her head, searing his gaze with hers.
‘I need to do this again...’
Dan reached up, sliding the tips of his fingers over her face, feeling the gentle throb of heat under her skin, the feminine, fragile line of her jaw. Even as his thumb lifted her chin his fingers were seeking her nape, drawing her to him.
He lowered his head slowly, giving her the chance to end it if that was what she wanted. But she didn’t, and her mouth gave a tiny sigh of welcome as his lips brushed hers, settling over their softness.
Lindsey was drowning in feelings she hadn’t experienced for the longest time. Dan’s mouth on hers felt right, their kiss pure and perfect.
And she didn’t let herself think for one second whether any of what they were sharing had a future. She was just amazed that they should be kissing at all, and that she’d so longed for it without even knowing why...
Dear Reader (#ua8390db7-fd03-5b54-9dd2-ffc07ce1fd9e),
Thank you for waiting so patiently for my new story. This time we’re back in Casualty, with Dante and Lindsey.
It’s true that your soul-mate does not have to be perfect—just perfect for you. And I have to tell you that Dan took a bit of prodding to let his star shine in this story. His past failed relationship has left him wary of looking for love. He wears aloofness like a cloak. Then along comes Lindsey, my gorgeous heroine. Perceptive and smart, she sees a different Dan. She beguiles him, challenges him. Slowly Dan opens the doors to his heart. He tastes heaven with Lindsey. But his past keeps getting in the way. Lindsey puts him on notice and Dan realises he’s been hovering in the shallows. Now he’ll have to make the swim of his life or lose her.
I’m delighted to present for your reading enjoyment Weekend with the Best Man.
Leah x
Weekend with the Best Man
Leah Martyn
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LEAH MARTYN is the author of a number of books published by Mills & Boon. She loves the realism of Medical Romance and bringing her characters to life. She also writes short fiction and the occasional piece for her local paper. Leah lives with her husband in Queensland, Australia. She enjoys country markets, Aussie barbecues, the haunting stillness of the bush in summer and spending time with the people she loves.
Books by Leah Martyn
Mills & Boon Medical Romance
The Doctor’s Pregnancy Secret
Outback Doctor, English Bride
Wedding in Darling Downs
Daredevil and Dr Kate
Redeeming Dr Riccardi
Wedding at Sunday Creek
Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/) for more titles.
For BRISROM—Brisbane Romance Writers—where it all began.
I hope you’re all still out there. And still writing.
Praise for Leah Martyn (#ua8390db7-fd03-5b54-9dd2-ffc07ce1fd9e)
‘A sweet story about a single mother trying to juggle kids and work... I highly recommend this book!’
—Goodreads on Daredevil and Dr. Kate
Contents
Cover (#u6fa6d07a-ebba-5f41-a13a-dba77accf3e2)
Back Cover Text (#u69c527c4-def6-500c-8af0-b51ea36454a8)
Introduction (#uf0a17a8f-221c-5e85-bc0a-ac706a5c8b93)
Dear Reader (#uce61b2fe-a662-58b6-96c6-c00f1b67b4ba)
Title Page (#ub6d59ed0-e783-5cfa-beaa-3d407c33ccbd)
About the Author (#u24cd368e-92e0-5115-a549-85c646b1c082)
Dedication (#u065f440c-2812-5385-8a2d-4fba398f3f6c)
Praise (#ucbfee112-236e-5f43-b129-9d1a56131bb3)
CHAPTER ONE (#ucdc7919e-acad-5138-8b00-3ec5cb6ede7d)
CHAPTER TWO (#u99962cb6-100e-5995-87b6-cb565b252492)
CHAPTER THREE (#u0f1f5f13-c765-543c-8f84-95e3d42ba1d0)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u23cc0174-910c-528e-b1c6-1c458910b426)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua8390db7-fd03-5b54-9dd2-ffc07ce1fd9e)
FRIDAY MORNING IN Casualty was the last place Senior Registrar Dan Rossi wanted to be.
And not with this patient—a seventeen-year-old drug-addicted youth. He’d arrested. And now the fight had begun to save his life. A life this skinny kid had valued so cheaply. How dared he?
Dan’s thoughts turned dark. ‘Start CPR!’ He bit the words out as the team began the familiar routine, working in concert around the senior doctor, responding to his clipped orders.
Expectations rose and fell as they treated the patient. Rose and fell again. Dan glanced at the clock. They’d done all they could but he didn’t want to call it. Not yet. Not today of all days. And not with this patient. What a waste of a young life. ‘Ramp it up!’
He felt the sweat crawl down his back, his heart like a jackhammer against his ribs. He shouldn’t be here. He’d lost his mental filter. Lost it.
Lost it. Lost it...
‘OK, he’s back.’
Thank God. Immediately, Dan’s chest felt lighter as if a valve had just released the pressure building inside him. He woke as if from a nightmare.
‘Pulse rate sixty,’ Nurse Manager Lindsey Stewart relayed evenly. ‘He’s waking up.’
Yanking off his gloves, Dan aimed them at the bin, missing by a mile. ‘Do what you have to do,’ he said, his voice flat.
And walked out. Fast.
Lindsey’s eyebrows hitched, her green gaze puzzled as she watched his exit.
* * *
‘That was a bit odd back there,’ Vanessa Cole, Lindsey’s colleague, said, as they watched their patient being wheeled out to ICU. ‘What’s biting Rossi?’
‘Something’s certainly got him upset,’ Lindsey agreed. ‘Dan’s usually very cool under pressure.’
‘He hasn’t been here long.’ Vanessa shrugged. ‘And we don’t know much about him yet. Perhaps it’s personal—girlfriend trouble?’
‘Does he have a girlfriend?’
‘Please!’ Vanessa, who seemed to be at the sharp end of all the hospital gossip, gave an exaggerated eye-roll. ‘With that dark, smouldering thing happening?’
‘That’s a bit simplistic,’ Lindsey refuted. ‘Dan Rossi is a senior doctor. He wouldn’t bring that kind of stuff to work with him. I’d better try to speak to him. If it’s a work-related matter, it’ll need sorting.’
‘Oh, Lins.’ Vanessa’s voice held exasperation as she pushed the privacy screen open. ‘Don’t start taking the flak for Rossi’s dummy spit. We run—that is, you run an extremely efficient casualty department. It’s my guess he’ll take a long lunch and snap out of whatever’s bugging him.’
Lindsey’s instincts were not quite buying that scenario. She recognised mental stress when she saw it, and Dan Rossi had been far from his usual self since the beginning of the shift. She frowned a bit, wondering just where he’d fled to.
‘Dan’s usually pretty good to work with.’
* * *
Dan knew he’d been discourteous to the team but today, for very personal reasons, he’d had to get out.
Had to.
In a secluded part of the grounds he sank into a garden seat, taking a deep breath and letting it go. Every sensible cell in his brain told him he shouldn’t have brought his personal problems to work today. In fact, he shouldn’t have come to work at all. If he’d thought it through, he’d have taken a mental health day available to all staff. Instead, he’d come to work in an environment where emotions went from high to low in seconds.
He made a dismissive sound in his throat. Having to treat that last patient had been the trigger that had shot his ability to be objective all to hell.
Addiction. And a foolish boy, abusing his body with no conception of the amazing gift of life. A gift Dan’s own babies had never had. No chance to draw one tiny life-saving breath. Two perfect little girls.
It was two years ago today since he’d lost them.
At the memory, something inside him rose up then flattened out again, like a lone wave on the sea. The grief he felt was still all too real. Grief with nowhere to go.
A shiver went right through him and he realised he’d rushed outside without a jacket. Lifting his hands, he linked them at the back of his neck. He needed to get a grip. Once he’d got through today, he’d regroup again.
Flipping his mobile out of his pocket, he checked for messages and found one from his colleague and closest friend, Nathan Lyons. The text simply said: Grub?
In seconds, Dan had texted back.
Leo’s in ten.
* * *
With things in Casualty more or less under control, Lindsey decided to take the early lunch. She needed to get her head together. In the staffroom she collected the minestrone she’d brought from home and reheated it in the microwave. Ignoring the chat going on around her, she took her soup to a table near the window and buried her head in a magazine.
Halfway through her meal she stopped and raised her head to look out of the window. She’d have to say something to Dan. She couldn’t just pretend nothing had happened. But how to handle it?
It wasn’t as though they had any kind of relationship outside the hospital. What did she really know about him anyway? She knew he’d worked in New York and, more recently, he’d left one of the big teaching hospitals in Sydney to come on staff here in this rural city of Hopeton. But beyond that? Except for the fact that Dan Rossi kept very much to himself—and that alone was an achievement in an environment where you were thrown together all the time—she knew next to nothing about his personal life. But she remembered his first day vividly.
