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Back in the Bachelor's Arms
Victoria Pade
“So do you think we can do this? Let bygones be bygones?”
Reid studied Chloe for a long moment with those brilliant green eyes.
“I can give it a try,” he said when he finally did answer.
“I’d like that,” Chloe said softly.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then. I’ll be especially quiet until I know you’re up.”
She nodded.
“Good night, then.”
“Get home safely,” she joked, making him smile a little again.
For another moment they remained standing there, not too far apart, just looking at each other.
As they did, Chloe couldn’t help recalling so many other times when they’d said good-night at the door much like that.
Only then he would have kissed her.
He would have kissed her in a way that would have filled her with a special kind of heat. That would have made her feel like his and his alone….
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Northbridge! I hope it’s beginning to feel as much like home to you as it is to me.
In this book Chloe Carmichael is making her own return—temporarily—to Northbridge, too. She isn’t so happy to be there at first and that’s actually how this book came into being. I love it there but I started to think about the good and the bad of a small town. About the people who stay and the people who don’t. About why someone might leave somewhere this warm and friendly and fun (because I’d love to find my own Northbridge and I can’t imagine leaving if I ever did). I started to think about the history, the memories we all carry around with us. About how sometimes there are secrets, too. And scars and old wounds that can make even the most ideal surroundings not so appealing. Then I threw Dr. Reid Walker into the mix—hot hunk with a hurt heart. Hmm…
Anyway, that’s where this story came from. And along with it, you’ll also learn a little more about the scandal that rocked Northbridge back in the sixties when Reverend Perry’s wife Celeste ran off with the bank robbers. I still don’t know all there is to know about that one but as it comes to me, I’ll pass it along to you.
In the meantime, I wish you a pleasant visit to my little town, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you enjoy it there as much as I do.
Happy reading!
Victoria
Back in the Bachelor’s Arms
Victoria Pade
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
VICTORIA PADE
is a native of Colorado, where she continues to live and work. Her passion—besides writing—is chocolate, which she indulges in frequently and in every form. She loves romance novels and romantic movies—the more lighthearted, the better—but she likes a good, juicy mystery now and then, too.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter One
“I’ll see one more patient and then that’s it for me for the next week—I’m on vacation as of midnight. So what’s up?” Dr. Reid Walker asked the emergency room nurse he was working with.
“We only have one patient left, period,” the nurse responded. “Second week of October, first snowstorm of the season, icy roads—she slid into a telephone pole just outside of town. She says she’s fine but the air bag deployed and you know police policy around here—when the air bag inflates, they bring ’em into the E.R. to be checked out no matter what the vehicle occupant says. Her name is Chloe Carmichael.”
Reid stopped short at that. “Say the name again.”
“Chloe Carmichael,” the nurse repeated. Then, without noticing the effect that particular name was having on Reid, she said, “I’ll release our flu case, hopefully you can wrap up the car accident, and we’re clear. Next shift will be in any minute. They can handle anything that comes in after this, and we’re both outta here.”
Reid didn’t respond as the nurse left him. He also didn’t move. Instead he stayed where he was, just outside the counter that surrounded the area that staff referred to as the fishbowl, where medical personnel convened to talk, pick up charts, get supplies and do paperwork.
The emergency room of the only medical facility in the small town of Northbridge, Montana, had just four rooms branching out from the fishbowl. Two of them were dark and unoccupied. Reid had just left the third after informing a girl from Northbridge College that she could relax, she wasn’t pregnant and had only a case of influenza. Which left the fourth room the only possibility for the location of his next patient.
Chloe Carmichael.
Sunday night, 11:45. It was a hell of an end to the weekend. A hell of a beginning to his vacation.
Still, Reid didn’t budge. He glanced across the fishbowl to Room 4.
The lights there were on. The wall facing the fishbowl was glass above the cupboards where gowns and necessary equipment were stored in each of the triage rooms. The privacy curtain wasn’t completely pulled around the bed and there, in the small gap left, he could partially see the patient.
But partially was enough.
She was sitting up in the bed, dressed in a hospital gown, appearing none-the-worse-for-wear given that she’d just been in an automobile accident. Looking better, in fact, than the last time Reid had seen her.
Fourteen years ago.
She’d been seventeen.
He’d been eighteen.
It seemed like yesterday.
Chloe Carmichael.
Her family had moved to Northbridge when she was in elementary school. They’d lived a few doors down from the house Reid’s family owned, the house where his mother still resided. The Carmichaels had lived there until fourteen years ago when they’d left town abruptly. They’d rented the house out ever since. A few months ago it had gone up for sale, and Reid and his brother Luke had put in an offer on it. Rental property in a college town was a good investment. Even if it was still connected to Chloe Carmichael.
Reid and Luke were about to close on the sale of the house she’d inherited from her parents. But Reid had been told that the Realtor would be acting as Chloe Carmichael’s proxy because she didn’t want to return to Northbridge.
So what was she doing here?
“Oh, good, you haven’t gone in to see the other patient yet.”
The nurse’s voice caught him by surprise. Reid had been so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t been aware that she’d rejoined him.
“You were going to write a script for birth control pills so our college girl doesn’t have any more pregnancy scares,” the nurse reminded him.
Reid finally glanced back at the nurse. “Birth control pills. Right. Good invention.”
“I think so,” the nurse agreed in a puzzled tone of voice.
Reid didn’t explain himself. He merely filled out and signed the prescription and handed the pad back to the nurse.
But even once she’d left him alone again he remained where he was, returning to his study of the room he was supposed to be going to.
The room where Chloe Carmichael awaited him.
She still had that wavy, licorice-black hair. Only as far as he could tell from his limited view, it was shorter now, ending just below her shoulders rather than falling to the middle of her back.
She still had the most flawless porcelain skin he’d ever seen—he could tell that even through the scant gap in the curtain. The softest, smoothest skin he’d ever touched.
She still had the straightest nose. The most luscious pink lips. And despite the fact that he couldn’t see them because she was looking down at the bed, he had no doubt she also still had the biggest, bluest eyes….
No, those fourteen years hadn’t harmed her any. They’d only made better what he’d thought was perfect before.
Damn it.
And just like that Reid flashed back to one of the last times he’d seen Chloe Carmichael—the beginning of the end for them….
It had been a night in early summer, in the front yard of that house that would be his and his brother’s very soon. The house he and his mother and the town minister had been thrown out of. The house he’d been banned from. The house Chloe Carmichael had had to sneak out of to talk to him.
The memory was so vivid. The memory of cupping the soft skin of her beautiful face between his hands. Of kissing warm lips and tasting the salt of the tears that had brimmed from those eyes.
“I don’t care what they say, this isn’t the end of us. It’s only the beginning. I’ll make sure of it,” he’d told her that night.
Big words. A lot of bravado. All for nothing.
Nothing but misery.
“What are you doing?” the nurse’s voice intruded again. “I thought you wanted to get this over with so we could go home. But here you are. Are your feet glued to the floor or what?”
Reid didn’t respond as the nurse entered the center of the fishbowl to do the paperwork that went with the release of the college girl.
He merely continued staring across the distance at the patient he was supposed to see. The patient who wasn’t just another patient.
The patient who was Chloe Carmichael.
And it astounded him suddenly that that was all it took—her name, a glimpse of her, knowing he was about to come face-to-face with her again—to make old feelings spring to the surface.
Old, ugly feelings.
Red-hot anger.
And plenty of it.
Even after all these years…
“Dr. Walker will be in to see you soon….”
The nurse’s words rang in Chloe Carmichael’s ears as she nervously plucked the hospital bedcovers into pyramids.
Dr. Walker…
She wanted to hope that the Dr. Walker who was to examine her was from a different Walker family than the one she’d known growing up. The Walker family who had been her neighbors. Her friends. One of them more than just her friend.
But what were the odds that the Dr. Walker she was slated to see was a different Walker than the Walkers she’d known?
Not great, she thought.
At least the Walker family she was familiar with had been a big one. Five kids—Reid, Luke, Ad, Ben and Cassie. Cassie—the one girl.
Maybe I’ll luck out and Dr. Walker is Cassie Walker—a woman doctor. All the better…
But while Chloe wouldn’t be thrilled with being examined by Luke, Ad or Ben if one of them was the Walker who had become a doctor, she just hoped it wasn’t Reid.
Please don’t let it be Reid…
It was bad enough to be back in Northbridge, let alone in the emergency room there. But to be waiting for a doctor who might be Reid?
