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“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.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_23494fef-5c6d-5ffa-a903-959a852ca890)
“WHAT YOU GOT THERE?” Josh stepped up to the desk, shrugging off his jacket as he approached. Out of the corner of her eye Katie could see Jorja’s lips reshape into an O. Josh—or rather his body—had that effect on women. It was why she’d never thought she’d stood a chance. People always mistook her shyness for being stuck-up. But Josh had seen straight through the veneer and gone directly to her heart.
He turned his Southern drawl up a notch. He could do that, too. Pick and choose when to play the Southern gent or drop it if he saw it detracted from his incredibly sharp mind.
“Dr. McGann, may I help keep you out of the fray while you sort out the big picture?”
Katie eyed him warily for a second, then made a decision. By the hint of a smile that bloomed on his lips she could see it was the one he had been hoping for.
He would stay.
Never mind the fact that showing up on Christmas Eve when they were a doctor down wasn’t giving her much of a choice. She had it in her to kick him the hell outta Dodge, if that was where he needed booting. But right now there were patients to see, and pragmatism always trumped personal.
“Twenty-five-year-old male presented with an arterial cut to the bone on his index finger.” She tapped the chart with her own.
“Turkey?”
“Ham. Too easy for the likes of you.”
She pressed the chart to her chest, claiming it as her own. Katie let her eyes travel along all six feet three inches of her ex. Josh had always been a trauma hotshot. And he’d always looked good. She’d steered clear of the Boston General gossip train, so didn’t really know what path he’d chosen professionally after she’d left, but personally nothing had changed in the looks department. He still looked good. She looked away.
Too good.
“You’re the next one down.” She pulled the X-ray down from the lightboard and passed it to him with a smirk. “Make your Gramma Jam-Jam proud. You can put your stuff in my office for now—the staff lockers are further down the corridor and this patient’s been waiting too long as it is.”
She tipped her head toward a glassed-in cubicle a few yards away. Josh took advantage of the broken eye contact to soak in some more of the “New Katie” look. Her super-short, über-chic new haircut suited her. It sure made her look different. Good different, though. No longer the shy twenty-one-year-old he’d first spied devouring a stack of anatomy books in the university library, a thick chestnut braid shifting from shoulder to shoulder as she studied.
He cleared his throat. Whimsical trips down memory lane weren’t helping.
“Green or red scrubs,” she added, pointing to a room just beyond her office.
“You always liked me in blue.”
The set of her jaw told him to button it.
“Green or red,” she repeated firmly. “The patients like it. It’s Christmas.” She handed him the single-page chart with a leaden glare and turned to the nurse. “Jorja MacLeay, this is Dr. West, our locum tenens over the next few days. See that he’s made welcome. His security pass should expire on the first of January.”
“At the end of the day?” Jorja asked hopefully.
“The beginning. The very beginning,” Katie replied decisively, before turning and calling out her patient’s name.
He flashed a smile in the nurse’s direction, lifted up his worn duffel bag to show her he was just going to unload it before getting to work. The smile he received in return showed him he had an ally. She shot a mischievous glance at his retreating wife and beckoned him toward the central desk.
“Don’t mind her,” Jorja stage-whispered. “A kitten, really. Just a grumpy kitten at Christmas.” She shrugged off her boss’s mysterious moodiness with a grin. “As long as she knows you’ve got your eye on the ball, she’s cool.”
Josh nodded and gave the counter an affirmative rap. “Got it. Cool. Calm. Collected. And Christmassy!” he finished with a cheesy grin.
“Says here you’re double-shifting.”
“You bet. Where else would a fellow want to see in Christmas morning?”
Jorja laughed. “Cookies are in the staff room down the hall if you need a sugar push to get you through the night. Canteen’s shut and the vending company forgot to fill up the machines, so there might be a brawl over the final bag of chips come midnight!”
“Count me in! I love a good arm-wrestling session. Especially if the chips are the crinkly kind. I love those.”
“I can guarantee you’ll have a fun night...at least with most of us.” She shot a furtive look down the corridor to ensure Katie was out of earshot and scrunched her face and shoulders up into a silent “oops” shrug when Josh raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“You two don’t know each other or anything, do you?”
“We’ve met.” It was all Josh would allow.
It was up to Katie if she wanted to flesh things out. He’d been the only crossover she’d allowed between personal and professional and he doubted she had changed in that department. She was one of the most private people he had ever met, and when news of what had happened to them had been all but Tannoyed across Boston General, it had been tough. Coal-pit-digging tough.
Jorja giggled nervously and flushed. “Sorry! Dr. McGann is great. We all love her. The ER always runs the smoothest when she’s on shift.”
Josh just smiled. His girl always strove to achieve the best and ended up ahead of the game at all turns. Except that night. She’d been blindsided. They both had.
He shook off the thought and waved his thanks to Jorja. First impressions? Young to be a charge nurse. Twenty-something, maybe. She struck him as a nurse who would stay the course. Not everyone who worked in Emergency did. She was young, enthusiastic. A nice girl if first impressions were anything to go by.
He’d gone with his gut when he’d met Katie. Made a silent vow she would be his wife one day. It had taken him a while, but he’d got there in the end. And today the vow still hit him as powerfully as the day they’d made good on a whim to elope. Five years, two months and fourteen days of wedded... He sighed. Even he couldn’t stretch to “bliss.” Not with the dice they’d been handed.
He thought of the divorce papers stuffed inside his duffel bag. There was only one way Katie could ever convince him to sign them. Prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she felt absolutely nothing for him anymore. He gave a little victory air punch. So far he’d seen nothing to indicate she would be able to get him to scrawl his signature on those cursed papers tonight.
Just the shift of her shoulders when she’d heard his voice had told him everything he needed to know. She could change her name, her hair and even her dress sense if she wanted to—but he knew in his soul that time hadn’t changed how his wife felt about him. No matter how bad things had become. She couldn’t hate without love. And when she’d finally turned round to face him there had been sparks in her eyes.
* * *
Katie stuffed her head into the stack of blankets and screamed. For all she was worth she screamed. And then she screamed some more. Silent, aching, wishing-you-could-hollow-yourself-out-it-hurt-so-bad screams. There was no point in painting a pretty picture in these precious moments alone.
Seeing Josh again was dredging up everything she had only just managed to squeeze a lid on. Just. In fact, that lid had probably still been a little bit open because, judging by the hot tears she discovered pouring down her face when she finally came up for air, she was going to have to face the fact there was never going to be a day when the loss of their baby didn’t threaten to rip her in half.
What was he thinking? That he could saunter into her ER as if it were just any old hospital on any old day? With that slow, sweet smile of his melting hearts in its wake? She’d not missed the nurses trying to catch his eye. Jorja’s giggles had trilled down the hallway after she’d stomped off. Josh did that to people. Brought out the laughter, the smiles, the flirtation. The Josh Effect, she’d always laughingly called it. Back when she’d laughed freely. Heaven knew, she’d fallen under his spell. Hook, line and sunk. If only she’d known how far into the depths of sorrow she’d fall when she lost her heart to him, she would have steered clear.
She swatted away her tears and sank to the floor of the supplies cupboard, using her thumbs to try and massage away the emotion. Her patient was going to be wondering where she was, so she was going to have to pull herself together. Shock didn’t even begin to cover what she’d felt when Josh had walked into her ER. Love, pain, desire, hurt...those could kick things off pretty nicely.
“Of all the ERs in all the world, he had to walk into this one.”
Talking to herself. That was a new one to add to her list of growing eccentricities. Maybe she should have fostered some of those friendships she’d left behind in Boston.
“Sounds like the start of a pretty good movie.” Josh’s legs moved into her peripheral vision as his voice filled her ears.
“More like the end of one.”
“No, that’s the start of a beautiful friendship.”
“Well—well...” She trailed off. Playing movie quotation combat with Josh was always a bad idea.
She huffed out a frustrated sigh. Couldn’t she just get a minute alone? She should have gone to the roof. No one went there in the winter, and she relished the moments of quiet, the twinkle of Copper Canyon’s Main Street. She swiped her hands across her cheeks again, wishing the motion could remove the crimson heat she felt burning in them. Against her better judgment she whirled on him and tried another retort.
“Should I have said ‘of all the stalkers in all the world’?”
“Oh, so going to the supplies cupboard to track down some mandated holiday scrubs has turned me into a stalker, has it?” he asked good-naturedly.
The five-year-old in her wanted to say yes and throw a good old-fashioned tantrum. The jumping-up-and-down kind. The pounding-of-the-fists kind. The Why me? Why you? kind. The Katie who’d shored up enough strength to finally call their marriage to a halt knew better. Knew it would only give Josh the fuel he wanted to add to a fire she could never put out.
She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much she still cared. That had been his problem all along. Too trusting that everything would be all right when time and time again the world had shown him the opposite was true. Who else had become an adrenaline junkie after their daughter had been stillborn? Hadn’t he known how dangerous everything he’d been doing was? And she’d always been the one who’d had to pick up the pieces, apply the bandages, ice the black eyes, realign the broken nose... Trying her best to laugh it off like he did when all she’d wanted to do was curl up in a corner and weep.
Couldn’t he see she had to play it safe? That losing their daughter had scared her to her very marrow? If she were ever to feel brave enough to move forward—let alone try and conceive again—he needed to call off his game of tug-of-war with mortality.
She scratched her nails along the undersides of her legs before standing up, using the pain to distract herself from doing what she really wanted.
“Large or extra-large?” she bit out.
“Guess that depends on if you need me to play Santa later.” He grabbed a pillow from a shelf and stuck it up his shirt.
Without bothering to examine the results, Katie yanked a pair of extra-large scrubs from a nearby shelf. Not because she needed a Santa but because she didn’t need to see how well he filled out the scrubs. The first time they’d met—woof! And she was no dog owner.
The first time they’d met... He said it had been in the library, but she was convinced to this day that he’d made it up. The day she’d first seen him—easily standing out in a crowd of junior residents, all kitted out in a set of formfitting scrubs—his eyes had alighted on her as if he’d just gained one-on-one access to the Mona Lisa herself... Mmm... That moment would be imprinted on her mind forever... She’d never let anyone get under her skin—but she’d been powerless to resist when it had come to Josh.
