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The Nightshift Before Christmas
Annie O'Neil
All through the hospital…magic was stirringIt may be Christmas, but Dr Kate McGann would prefer to bury her head in her work than celebrate. Until her estranged husband Dr Josh West strides into the ER, turning heads, and making her heart flip.Two years ago their world and dreams ended, and they had to part. But Josh vowed never to stop fighting for his wife, and with the clock about to strike midnight, he knows he has one last chance to heal Kate’s heart…one kiss under the mistletoe at a time.Christmas Eve MagicReunited on the night before Christmas!
All through the hospital...magic was stirring
It might be Christmas, but Dr. Katie McGann would prefer to bury her head in her work than celebrate. Until her estranged husband Dr. Josh West strides into the ER, turning heads and making her heart flip.
Two years ago their world and their dreams ended, and they had to part. But Josh vowed never to stop fighting for his wife, and with the clock about to strike midnight he knows he has one last chance to heal Katie’s heart...one kiss under the mistletoe at a time.
Dear Reader (#ulink_c254b91f-bddd-5929-b004-19148eab88d0),
Thank you so much for coming along to The Nightshift Before Christmas. I realise I have said this before—but this book really, really ate my heart alive when I was writing it. Josh and Katie were so real to me that my friends began to wonder if I actually knew them!
I don’t want to give anything away at this point, but the loss they have each suffered is something I can imagine might too easily define a person. Grief is a strange beast, and it can shape-shift even the strongest of people into someone even they don’t recognise themselves. Coming out of the fog of initial grief and back into ‘the world of the living’ is often overwhelming—especially if you don’t have the one you love most by your side.
This is such a journey. One in which the gorgeous Josh and the heartbreakingly wonderful Katie are just trying so hard to live again—despite all that has happened to them. I hope you are as swept away as I was as they quest for their HEA in a busy mountainside hospital in Copper Canyon. And at Christmas! I do love a good holiday story, don’t you? Just perfect for a little miracle of the L.O.V.E. variety.
Happy (Ever After) Holidays to you! And don’t be shy about getting in touch. I can be reached at annie@annieoneilbooks.com or on Twitter @AnnieONeilBooks (https://twitter.com/annieoneilbooks?lang=en).
Annie O’ Xx
The Nightshift Before Christmas
Annie O’Neil
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ANNIE O’NEIL spent most of her childhood with her leg draped over the family rocking chair and a book in her hand. Novels, baking and writing too much teenage angst poetry ate up most of her youth. Now Annie splits her time between corralling her husband into helping her with their cows, baking, reading, barrel racing (not really!) and spending some very happy hours at her computer, writing.
Books by Annie O’Neil
Mills & Boon Medical Romance
The Monticello Baby Miracles
One Night, Twin Consequences
The Surgeon’s Christmas Wish
The Firefighter to Heal Her Heart
Doctor...to Duchess?
One Night...with Her Boss
London’s Most Eligible Doctor
Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk) for more titles.
This one’s for my guy. You’re my Christmas, birthday and HEA all wrapped up into one handsome, blue-eyed Scottish package. Wifey xx
Praise for Annie O’Neil (#ulink_10cf1e86-9285-5ea7-8160-3e8fa03bf9eb)
‘This is a beautifully written story that will pull you in from page one and keep you up late and turning the pages.’
—Goodreads on
Doctor...to Duchess?
Annie O’Neil won the 2016 RoNA Rose Award for her book Doctor...to Duchess?
Contents
Cover (#ue7993137-6991-597e-9dce-5aaa9ff7fa53)
Back Cover Text (#ua5e84b83-9245-5427-a882-c5111acaba70)
Dear Reader (#ulink_a2a9f7df-617b-5ca0-ba44-f5bbef601cc2)
Title Page (#uc102f2fc-6b9c-53e0-b936-4cc3ec5090f2)
About the Author (#u1be08ddb-748a-5a7d-a38e-de6782408915)
Dedication (#u33f18341-2830-5f04-a2ee-52cec9feea1d)
Praise (#u1fc4972f-4959-5b77-9c66-f4a9504c73b5)
CHAPTER ONE (#u08254d09-661a-5209-b1dd-9f224532e447)
CHAPTER TWO (#u961c6aa1-7a77-5af8-8973-baed992e620e)
CHAPTER THREE (#ue775170b-bf16-5ddd-8d96-4c88d7ecf49a)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_48f4fb4b-a50e-56be-96e7-77b999b35074)
“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.
