The Nightshift Before Christmas

Katie saw the sting of hurt her words caused and wished she could yank them straight back. Josh might do wild but he also did wonderful. If only he hadn’t kept pushing the boundaries after their loss. If only he’d convinced her he could play things safe—even for a while—they might...

“I best get on, then.”

Katie watched as Josh turned and made his way toward the curtained cubicle where his patient was waiting. There was something...different about his gait. Something different about him. He’d changed. Really changed. Her teeth caught hold of her lip and gave it a contemplative scrape.

Changed enough to hear what she had to say?

A series of loud guffaws burst from the curtained area where Josh was de-sharding his patient’s booty.

No. Same ol’ Josh! Some stray Christmas spirit must have sneaked into her coffee that morning. No one changed that much. She would just see through the time they had to work together as professionally as she could. No point in reopening old wounds. She’d borne enough hurt for a lifetime.

She scanned the board and picked a good old-fashioned broken arm. Some enthusiastic decorative touches to a snowy rooftop, no doubt. Fixing. Setting. Repairing. That was what she did. It was how she survived.

Once again she shook on her bright smile and pulled open the curtain.

“Right! Mr. Dawsen, I understand you’ve broken your arm?”

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e6a71838-cb82-543c-9cc4-25d09f14b755)

“I’LL JUST BE in the residents’ room—cool?” Josh popped a finished chart onto the RNs’ central desk, flashing a smile to the two nurses trying to untangle a set of twinkling lights. A patient’s or some late decorating? They paid him no attention, so he hightailed it down the corridor, hoping for a few moments to regroup. It was time to pull up his socks and tell Katie the truth. The real reason he was there.

She’d yanked six of his safety-net days out from under him, unwittingly putting all his partridges in the one pear tree. It was do-or-die day now. For a man who didn’t plan much, he had definitely planned this out. A whole week to gauge her mood...time to maybe inject a bit of romance into snatched moments alone. But with this stupid twenty-four-hour thing she showed no sign of shifting from, he had to get a move on. They were just a few hours away from midnight, and once that clock pinged upon the Christmas star, his time would be well and truly running out. Josherella was going to have to get a move on.

He looked at his backpack, slung on the back of the lone chair parked across from the bunk he’d thrown himself on for a catnap. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the sheaf of official papers lurking in the side pocket had taken on a life of their own, unzipped the bag and come out and danced at him like an evil sugarplum fairy...or whoever the evil one was in The Nutcracker.

He cursed silently. He’d once loved Christmas and all the schmaltzy, cheesy, sentimental stuff that went along with it. When they’d lost their daughter just a few days before the holiday, it had sucked the season dry of any good feeling. He wanted that back—and the only way to get it was to woo his wife back into his arms. And if this was the season for miracles he was a first-rate candidate.

Otherwise...? Otherwise he would have taken the job in Paris when he’d got the offer. Moved to France to study with the most elite team of minimally invasive fetoscopic surgeons? Hell, yeah! It would have been a gargantuan leap forward for his career. He’d spent the past two years doing locum residencies in every single obstetrics unit he could. He would never know why his little girl had been stillborn—but if he could help other women he’d be there.

But his heart wouldn’t be. And to end up in the City of Love without the woman he adored by his side would have been pointless. Not to mention the fact that Dr. Cheval insisted on total focus. No distractions and no demons. Right now Josh was hauling those things around big-time.

When the job offer had come, he’d seen it as life’s way of grabbing him by the scruff of the neck, giving him a right old shake and demanding, for once, that he take responsibility for everything he had done. Own up to how his behavior had driven his wife away. And after she’d gone he’d pushed at life a bit more. A lot more. Life had pushed back, and now he had the metal infrastructure to prove he hadn’t come out the winner.

He gave his head a good old scratch, shooting a look up to the heavens to see if there were any clues there.

Mistletoe.

Of course. Love. The high-voltage current he’d felt the first, second and every other time he’d laid eyes on his wife was electric. But going to the city where hand-holding and kisses on bridges and feeding each other delectable morsels of...

Hey! Now, there was an idea. He and Katie had always enjoyed a good picnic. Out on the common—or on a bench if it was pouring down—regardless of the sideways glances they’d received from passersby. It was what supersized umbrellas were made for, right?

A smile lit up his face. He’d do a Christmas dinner picnic! The smile faded just as fast. The canteen was closed. The way the snow was coming down meant leaving the hospital would be a challenge. Or just plain stupid. He’d already done stupid...

“Hey, Dr. West.” Jorja poked her head round the corner with an apologetic expression. “Sorry to ruin your break, but we’ve got mass casualties coming in!”

Adrenaline shot through him and he was up and out of the bunk before Jorja had even removed herself from the door frame.

“What happened? How many? Do we have enough on staff? Is there any chance of diverting any of the patients to another hospital?”

Jorja’s eyes widened, along with her mouth. Streaks of red began to color her cheeks.

“Uh...” She pushed at the floor with the stub of her toe.

“Sorry, too much television! I forget Copper Canyon is totally different from what you get out east.”

“There are two. Patients, that is. With gastro. Dr. McGann is already down there.”

Josh’s heartbeat decelerated and he tried not to laugh. Much. The poor girl looked mortified. He slung an arm around her shoulders and tugged her in for a half hug as they made their way out into the main corridor. “Hey, Jorja, don’t you worry. I can adjust my big-city ways...”

The words stopped coming. What the heck was he doing, bragging about his big-city machismo when he’d grown up in a town with two unlit junctions? Junctions where he’d been guaranteed to see his math teacher or his father heading off to the cattle markets. There was no hiding anywhere in that place if you stuck around—which was why he’d loved losing himself in the big city. And then he’d met Katie...like an angel he hadn’t known he’d needed to meet. Found him. That was what she’d done. She had found him. Shown him how important it was to be grounded.

He looked straight up, silently cursing the invisible heavens. She was his lighthouse, his beacon, his...whatever analogy best fit the scene. She was his heart. His soul. And if he didn’t get a move on he was going to lose her for good.

“Uh... Dr. West? Are you trying to...?” Jorja was shifting underneath his arm, turning toward him, shifting her gaze upward as well.

Damn. Mistletoe.

* * *

Katie heard them, then saw them. A twist of nausea squirled around her stomach as she took in the nervous laughter, the awkward shuffle of feet and the chins tipping up toward the ceiling. Jorja had practically covered the hospital in mistletoe, so it was hardly surprising that the one person who would find a way to put it to use was Josh. He had always been a flirt. It was his nature. To charm, to delight, to dazzle.

She turned away quickly, not wanting either of them to see the hurt in her eyes, the sheen of tears she’d only just managed to check when she’d spotted them. The last thing she was going to do was stick around and watch her husband kiss someone he’d only just met!

At least she knew Josh showing up out of the blue wasn’t some clever plot to see her. It was a fluke. A needle-in-a-haystack chance of Yuletide torture. Just terrific. She’d spent two entire years patching the shredded remains of her heart together, and just when she’d come to terms with her play-it-safe, hiding-out-in-Idaho lifestyle, Josh had parachuted in and undone years of exacting damage control.

Adrenaline began to surge through her. She tugged at the high ribbing on the neck of her sweater, suddenly wishing she had scrubs on. Why hadn’t one of her patients thrown up on her? Then she could have missed this nauseating scene of mistletoe magic. She checked herself. Wishing patients ill wasn’t her style, and thankfully the two gastro cases had turned out to be overindulgence rather than food poisoning.

Who ate massive portions of something called Chocolate Decadence and didn’t expect a sore stomach? People who weren’t careful. People who were reckless. People who made decisions on a whim—like Josh.

She made a beeline for the doctors’ locker room and grabbed her winter coat before pushing through the heavy door into the stairwell and pounding up step after step toward the roof, letting out an involuntary wail of relief when she found it was empty.