The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle

“Would be wet if I had. But I think you have the right idea.”

She fumbled for her zipper, fingers suddenly stiff and wooly, and failed to sufficiently grab the tab to draw it down three times in succession. Her fingers just slid right off the end when she pulled. A mild sound of alarm was all it took to set him into motion, and suddenly he was in front of her, taking over.

Under any other circumstances, she might hesitate to strip down to her undies with the partner she’d been actively trying to ignore her attraction to, but him peeling the sodden, freezing material down her arms at least provided an excuse for the wash of goose-bumps she knew were as much to do with him undressing her as her looming hypothermia. When he knelt to help her with the boots, she put her hands on his shoulders, and immediately wanted to mash her whole body against his. The man was hot, in every sense of the word.

At least that fear that had been pitting through her was gone now. She wasn’t feeling...all that hesitant anymore either. “How do you feel about underwear hugging? You, me, mashed together. You’re giving off heat like a space heater and I really like that about you right now.”

“I’m a normal temperature. You’re just cold. It doesn’t have to be freezing temperatures to get hypothermia. You know that.”

Yes, she did.

Despite the irritation lingering in his voice, his touch was gentle. Large, strong hands cupped the back of each leg as he helped ease her clothing off.

Beneath her suit, she generally dressed for comfort. That meant white cotton bikinis and a snug strappy tank top. Being endowed with modest curves had advantages, one being the ability to skip confining undergarments, especially under such unstructured clothing as a flight suit.

She puffed as he stood back up and she had to clamp her arms to her sides to keep from flinging herself at him. “Yell at me later.”

“I will. After you’ve had a shower and warmed up.” And he sounded like he meant it.

Gabriel pulled her back sometimes, providing a special kind of stoicism that balanced her out. She was used to some measure of grumpiness when she did something he found dumb, but after the day they’d had the idea of him yelling at her made her stomach churn.

“Do you hate me?” The words erupted from her mouth before she could give them a proper spin around in her head, and even though she’d just told him to yell at her later.

“Hate you?” He shook her sodden flight suit out and draped it over the other chair, then looked back down at her, his still handsome scowl flickering in the light of the candle. “Why on earth would I hate you?”

“Because I almost crashed us. I couldn’t... I couldn’t outrun it. I thought... But then the wind...” She faltered around, and suddenly the words caught up with her emotions, and she knew she was crying by the hot rivers on her frigid cheeks.

“You did outrun it,” he said, his voice gentle. One strong arm wrapped around her, propelling her toward the bathroom. “You got us here. It was supposed to go south of us. Everyone said so.”

Everyone said so. She nodded, squeezing her eyes tightly shut to stop that horrifying leaking. But it wasn’t enough. Several big, gulpy breaths later, she gave up and turned to fling her arms around his waist.

Everywhere their skin touched, she grew warmer. The firm wall of his chest under her cheek, the strong arms that immediately came around her wrapped her in heat.

She needed comfort, to know that her partner, a doctor who treated her—the only Davenport at Manhattan Mercy without the title—like an equal, still had faith in her.

“You won’t be afraid to fly with me after this?”

Her underthings were wet, she realized as she felt his skin start to cool, or at least stop feeling quite so warm through the soaked material. She was getting him wet.

“I won’t. We’ll talk about that later, but right now you need to get in the shower,” he said, his mouth against the crown of her head. “Who knows if the water will stay hot for long, and you’ve stopped shaking.”

“It wasn’t raining that hard when I left,” she muttered. The colder she got, the less intelligent her foray into the blistering rain seemed. No matter how good her reasoning at the time.

You’ve stopped shaking. His words swam up to her as he wrapped his arms around her hips and lifted, then walked into the darkened bathroom to deposit her right in the tub.

People stopped shaking when they warmed up, or when they got too cold and their bodies gave up shaking to get warm.

He adjusted the water quickly, then stepped in with her, positioning her under the spray so that the almost too hot water hit the back of her neck, then her head, and once it had had a few seconds to cascade over her, he turned her by the shoulders so that her back came against his chest, and the water warmed up her front side.

She shivered again for a couple seconds, and then relaxed back against him, her head on his shoulder, and her hands seeking his on her hips to drag his arms back around her waist. Standing under the spray, in their underwear...

“This went a lot different in my head.”

“Did you sing and dance your way through the rain in your head?”

“No, the rain didn’t factor in. I just thought, get the wine, get some food, get candles, cards, munchies... Talk to Gabriel and give him a good night to make up for whatever you had planned at home.”

“I had nothing planned.” His mouth was at her ear, and the words should’ve taken the edge off somehow, but she found herself spinning to face him instead.

Probably her third dumb idea of the day, but, unlike the first two dumb ideas, she just didn’t care.

It was dark, the candle left in the other room, but as she pulled the tank top over her head she heard his breathing hitch. He couldn’t see anything as with the lights out the small, interior bathroom was little more than a cave, even with the door open to a slightly less dark room beyond. But he felt her skin when she pressed forward. Lifting her arms and rising on tiptoe, she didn’t stop, although she satisfied that urge to mash herself against him, and still didn’t stop when his head dipped to meet her kiss.

CHAPTER ONE (#ucd27e015-8e66-5f10-adae-7cdade0b876c)

Two months later...

LOCKED IN A stall in the ladies’ room at Manhattan Mercy, Penny leaned against the polished metal separating wall and stared at her watch.

Across from her, perched atop the toilet-paper dispenser, sat a white plastic wand that could change her footloose existence forever.

It seemed emotionally safer to watch the hand on her watch ticking by than to stare at the tiny display for the entire minute it would take for the one line to appear, or two—results on the test she’d put off taking for three weeks.

At first, she’d been unable to accept it was necessary. She’d had condoms. They’d used condoms. They hadn’t even been purchased at the cheapo general store, they had just been in her bag in case some kind of life opportunity happened. It was New York City. She could conceivably run into anyone. Like that guy from that movie...the one with the smoldering eyes. And maybe he’d be drunk, bored, or somehow seduced by her ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and then...magic would happen. If she had condoms.

A week later, she’d accepted they may have been old condoms.

Last week she’d known for sure she needed to take a test. It had really only taken a week or so to take it...

Still, hoping it was negative felt wrong. Because what if it wasn’t? She’d already be in the running for Mother of the Year from procrastinating on a pregnancy test without making disappointment the first emotion she felt for a tiny life she’d created.

Definitely the sort of thoughts you never ever tell your child. Or anyone else.

Or even better, thoughts to avoid having altogether.

Every second the tiny hand ticked, her stomach grew heavier and more rumbly. When it finally passed the sixty-second mark, she lowered her wrist but still couldn’t bring herself to look at the test.

This was not how women took pregnancy tests in commercials. They had pink bathrooms and a partner waiting outside the door, ready to celebrate, with something bubbly but nonalcoholic.

Which she didn’t want anyway.

It would be all right. Everything would be all right. Nothing bad would happen just because she looked at the little window...

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, shoring up her flagging courage that came with a twinge of self-disgust. The fact she even needed to boost her bravery should shame her into looking. Courage was a cornerstone of her entire personality. If something scared her, Penny had a personal maxim to run toward the thing, unless it was a bear.

Another deep breath slowly exhaled didn’t help either.

Nope.