A Home for the Hot-Shot Doc

A Home for the Hot-Shot Doc
Dianne Drake

Dr Justin Bergeron has returned to the Deep South, but this former bad boy’s attempts to introduce modern medicine are met with fierce resistance. His only ally…? Bewitchingly beautiful nurse Mellette! After losing her husband, Mellette is reluctant to let sinfully delicious Justin in – despite seeing that this playboy has a heart that might very well steal hers…Deep South Docs! Swapping the Big City…for the Bayou!

DEEP SOUTH DOCS!

Swapping the Big City … for the Bayou!

When two delectable doctors arrive in America’s Deep South, looking for a fresh start, they soon find themselves falling for the charm of Bayou life—as well as for the attractions of the beautiful women they’re working with!

But big-city surgeons with their bright ideas aren’t always welcome in the Bayou. Especially when they’re super-hot, heart-stopping distractions for the dedicated Deep South nurses. These women have enough complications as it is, without falling for the new docs in town …!

Dear Reader (#ue2b0dd8a-f09a-54b5-bfe2-1dbd2c78f28c)

When I went to Louisiana for the first time a few years ago—specifically New Orleans, and all the deep, dark backwoods of the bayou surrounding it—I knew I wanted to set a book there. It’s a beautiful place, and there’s nothing else quite like it in the United States. In fact, descriptions don’t do it justice … but I’ve tried in this duet titled Deep South Docs.

Both stories, A HOME FOR THE HOT-SHOT DOC and THE DOCTOR’S CONFESSION, centre around the Doucet family and their daughters, all of whom work in the medical field in some capacity. In this duet you’ll meet Mellette, who has to overcome one of life’s greatest tragedies in order to find true love again. And you’ll also meet Magnolia, who just can’t seem to find time for love in her life.

Both meet men who try to capture their hearts, but it’s not an easy thing to do as the Doucet family is filled with eight mighty strong women and one man who sits at the head of it and who’s the biggest softie in the world. But, as both Justin Bergeron and Alain Lalonde discover, the fight is worth the effort … most of the time. At other times Mellette and Maggie are almost too much to handle.

When I was taking a boat ride through the swamps in the Louisiana bayou, perhaps the thing that fascinated me most were these little communities of people who live out there in the swamp, almost totally cut off from society. I could see the shacks almost everywhere. In fact we even took a detour by our tour guide’s shack and saw a whole lot of alligators lounging in his front yard. He said that as long as he didn’t bother them, they didn’t bother him. Well, I don’t know about that, but it certainly made for an interesting trip. So did the alligators that would swim right up to the boat.

I hope you enjoy your trip to the Louisiana bayous. It’s fascinating. And after this trip to the bayous I’m going to hang around to write a few more books based in that part of the world, so look for Sabine and Delphine’s stories coming next.

I like to hear form my readers, so please feel free to contact me at diannedrake@earthlink.net, or visit my website at www.dianne-drake.com (http://www.dianne-drake.com), from which you can link to either my Facebook page or my Twitter page.

As always, wishing you health & happiness

DD

Now that her children have left home, DIANNE DRAKE is finally finding the time to do some of the things she adores—gardening, cooking, reading, shopping for antiques. Her absolute passion in life, however, is adopting abandoned and abused animals. Right now Dianne and her husband Joel have a little menagerie of three dogs and two cats, but that’s always subject to change. A former symphony orchestra member, Dianne now attends the symphony as a spectator several times a month and, when time permits, takes in an occasional football, basketball or hockey game.

A Home for the

Hot-Shot Doc

Dianne Drake

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u18a95caf-408d-5721-98f5-9f5004281ebd)

Dear Reader

About the Author (#ubaf8193f-189f-50f2-b33b-c79c883576e3)

Title Page (#u94dbf845-406a-5e8c-976b-a1018b9527ff)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ue2b0dd8a-f09a-54b5-bfe2-1dbd2c78f28c)

NIGHTS LIKE THIS made him glad he was home again, if only for a little while. The far-off sound of bullfrogs bloating up and erupting with a courtly call to a lady love; the peculiar rhythm of the barred owl, who called to his own love from high atop the cypress trees; the warm breeze blowing in over the water and carrying with it the unique, earthy scent of the swamp … This all meant home to Dr. Justin Aloysius Bergeron. Home, but with that came so many mixed, even conflicting feelings.

With a mug full of sassafras tea and its bitter, soothing flavor, and a plate of his own homemade beignets made from his grandmother’s recipe, Justin was ready to settle in on the porch swing for the evening and simply relax after a long day of doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing took a lot of effort for someone who was used to being active, all that sitting around and thinking. Down here, where life was slower, it wore him out more than a day on his feet in the O.R. did. Those were physically exhausting days, but here his exhaustion was emotional and far heavier. It dragged him down to a place where a good night’s sleep didn’t bring about any kind of recovery.

At a month shy of thirty-six, Justin was at the top of his game back in Chicago. He was well respected as a general surgeon with a career pointed in the direction of chief of services, or so he hoped. Equally well respected as a medical mystery writer with a couple of prestigious awards under his belt and talk of a movie in the works. It took a lot of effort, cranking out all that career, which was why all this nothingness seemed so strange to him.

He wasn’t used to it, wasn’t used to being lazy. But lazy was exactly what he was being, and it was turning him dull and lethargic, which, for the moment, suited him just fine. Because until he figured out his next move, nothing was truly all he wanted to concentrate on. He wrote in the early, early morning, as was his habit, but then there was nothing to occupy his time or to occupy his mind for the rest of the day. He was trying not to think outside the pages he’d managed to bang out. He was succeeding, intermittently.

For sure, life was simpler here in the Louisiana bayou than it was back in Chicago, his home for the past decade. He hadn’t appreciated that singular simple fact when he’d lived here before. In fact, from the time he had been a teenager, all he’d ever wanted had been to get away from the simplicity. Go to the city. Any city. Seek out excitement and anything else that didn’t resemble the upbringing he was accustomed to—an upbringing with a down-home flavor that could only be found in the bayou. Or the backcountry. Or godforsaken nowhere. Or, as this area had been named by its early settlers, Big Swamp.

And he’d done all that. Molded himself into what he’d wanted to be, and set off to become it. Self-made man, he’d called himself in the early days, even though now he knew better. Nobody with the kind of love and support he’d had was self-made, and just thinking about how he used to brag about his self-sufficiency caused him to cringe now. Even so, he was successful. Wealthy. Some considered him a player, although he wasn’t sure he liked that description since he really didn’t have time to play. But it bolstered the image. Playboy. Sports car. Condo on the lakeshore. Medical practice in the high-end Magnificent Mile. Everything about him shooting to the top.

But Justin was also part of Big Swamp—something he was just now beginning to admit. Big Swamp, where his grandmother had done her level best to raise a wayward young boy who hadn’t wanted to be raised, hadn’t wanted to follow the rules, hadn’t wanted anything to do with an old-fashioned set of values that had done his grandmother well for her eighty-nine years on earth. Yes, that was all him, too. The part of him he didn’t talk about, or admit to. The part of him he wouldn’t deny but certainly wouldn’t confirm, either. It had been part of his embarrassment back then, part of his pride now.

No, none of this had been good enough for the young Justin. In a way it wasn’t even enough for the Justin who existed now; he certainly hadn’t made himself right with it. Hence the emotional exhaustion. But at least Justin felt more remorse for his attitude than he’d expected he ever would. And now that Grandma Eula was gone, his regrets weighed him down. Especially on an unsullied night like this, the kind of night she would have loved, where Big Swamp was at peace with itself. And yet Justin was not.

He missed Bonne-Maman Eula, as she’d been called by the people who loved her. More than that, he lamented … so much. And his grief felt so heavy against his heart, at times almost stopping it from beating. He’d owed her better, had always thought there was more time to do better for her. He’d always intended to.

“Now it’s too late,” he said to Napoleon, his grandmother’s big, lazy, orange-striped tomcat. A fourth-, maybe fifth-generation Napoleon, actually. There’d always been a big, orange-striped tomcat living here for as long as Justin could remember, and his name had always been Napoleon. This Napoleon seemed especially mellow, he thought. More mellow than the earlier ones, and it made Justin wonder what the cat knew that he did not.

“I’ve been thinking lately that she’d want you to stay on here,” Amos Picou said as he stepped up onto the wooden porch and took his customary seat on the well-worn wicker chair next to Justin’s porch swing. The same chair he’d been sitting in for every one of the twenty-five years he’d come visiting.

It had been Eula’s favorite chair—her chair of honor, she’d called it, because of its high, fan-shaped back. She’d loved that chair as it had reminded her of a throne, and she had spent many of her evenings sitting in it. Said it made her feel like royalty because she sat so high and mighty, which was why she’d always offered to let her guests sit in it, because in her house guests had always been treated like royalty.

In a way, Eula Bergeron had been royalty in that part of Big Swamp. There’d been no one more trusted or respected. With the way she’d been held in such high esteem in her community, there was no other way to describe it. Justin’s grandmother had been treasured, and that was something he hadn’t seen so much back in his childhood as he’d been too busy seeing other things—dreams, or delusions, of a better life mostly. Life away from here, somewhere, anywhere other than Big Swamp. Something other than what his grandmother had given him.

He hadn’t appreciated her enough, and that had played on his mind more than he probably even recognized. Those sleepless nights, guilt trips, wanting to make it up to her when he could, feeling like hell after it was too late.