The Nightshift Before Christmas Read online

  He held his ground. “What exactly are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the divorce papers.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You mean the ones you’ve been sending me by special delivery for the past two years?”

  “I mean the signed ones in your locker.”

  Her stance was defiant but he could see the hurt in her eyes. He wished he’d never put a pen to those damn things. It was the type of thing a trip to the stationery store could never fix. That type of ink was indelible.

  His voice softened. This wasn’t going remotely the way he’d hoped, but at least it was as painful for her as it had been for him to see his name on those pages. “I thought it was what you wanted.”

  “I did too,” she said after a moment, her booted foot digging a sizable divot in the snow.

  “And now?”

  “Now it looks like what I think doesn’t matter.” A guilty frown tugged her lips downward at his raised eyebrows. “I found the job offer and the ticket to Paris. The one-way ticket.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” Josh found himself needing to suppress the grin splitting his face in two.

  “Yes. Or should I say oui?” Katie couldn’t meet Josh’s eyes but she kept on talking. “Looks like you’ve gone and done what I haven’t been able to do.”

  “And what’s that, then?”

  Josh took a step closer.

  Katie put her arm between them.

  “You’ve been able to move on. Get past everything we’ve been through.” She lifted her gaze to finally meet his, her tears only just resting on her lids. They’d spill any second now. She tipped her head back to buy herself a few more moments of dignity, if that was what you could call standing on the roof of your place of work and hollering at your husband—ex-husband—for doing exactly what you’d asked him to do.

  “When you were busy rifling through my things—”

  “I wasn’t rifling. I was—” She stopped to search for a less invidious word than “rifling,” accidentally biting the inside of her cheek in the process.

  “Uh-huh? What were you doing?”

  The twinkle in Josh’s eyes stirred something within her. She knew what it was, but it was embarrassing to admit it considering the turn of events.

  Lust. She just wanted to rip his clothes off and have her wicked way with him.

  Would that ever go away? She stared at him, her body itching to stomp her feet or jump up and down. Anything to stop the skittering of goose bumps working their way across her body. Wow, did she ever need to make a snow angel!

  She shifted her eyes up to the heavens. How the heck was she going to carry on with her life when she still fancied the pants off her husband?

  “Did you happen to see the ticket beneath the ticket?”

  “Um...what was that?”

  Best not to appear too keen to have gotten the wrong end of the stick.

  “Katie McGann.” Josh stepped forward and took both her hands in his. His blue eyes were like sunshine, and a halo of twinkly lights lit him up from behind.

  Oh, no, no, no, no... This can’t be goodbye. Is this really goodbye?

  “I came back here to do one thing and one thing only.”

  She couldn’t speak. The other side of her cheek was being chomped on. Hard enough to draw blood.

  “I came back here,” he said in his soft, beautiful drawl, “with the sole intent of seeing if you would consider becoming Katie West again.”

  She blinked a snowflake out of her eyelashes. The rest of her body was frozen in place.

  “Katie?”

  “Yes?” Her insides had started doing a June-bug dance. Her outsides still weren’t up to much more than providing a landing zone for the supersized snowflakes.

  “I am presuming you heard what I just said.”

  A little furrow was beginning to form between the one pair of eyes that could light up a room. What made them so bright?

  “Yes, I did,” she managed to croak out.

  “And are you planning on drawing out the torture, or are you going to tell me what you think of the idea?”

  “What? About Paris? That job offer sounds pretty amazing. Groundbreaking surgical techniques? Champagne? I bet it’s practically free over there. And the architecture! The Eiffel Tower versus Main Street and grilled cheese sandwiches?” She squawked out a mysterious sound that was meant to say No-Brainer, wondering why on earth she was trying to talk him out of staying when all she wanted was to tip back her head and scream Yes! A thousand times yes!

  Josh rocked back on his heels and gave her comments some thought. Katie’s stomach began to lurch as her heart plummeted.

  Why had she opened her big mouth?

  “A chance to work with the world’s best prenatal surgeon? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer,” he admitted, before a near-wistful look added a glint to his eyes. “And I do love those baguettes. Especially when they’re all crunchy on the outside and that gooey cheese they have is just dripping out over the edges.”

  “You’ve already been there?” Katie’s dog-whistle voice sprang into the stratosphere, her game face all but disappearing as she spoke.

  “How else do you think I got the offer?” He thumbed away another snowflake. “But then I got to thinking. Do I sign those damn divorce papers you’ve been sending me, move on—or do I try to win back my girl?”

  Katie swiped at a couple of snowflakes that were tickling her nose, too heartbroken to speak. He’d signed the papers and he had a ticket to Paris. Why did he have to be so nice about it all? Where was the adrenaline junkie she’d hardened her heart to?

  “All of which is a really long-winded way of saying—” he paused to run the backs of his fingers across her cheeks before tucking her hair behind her ears “—there are two tickets to Paris in my locker.”

  Her heart gave a particularly large thump.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t see the second one.”

  “That would be a fair guess.” Her voice broke with relief. Josh wanted to be with her. He wanted to start again!

  The questions began tumbling out in a torrent. Would this really be a new beginning or would they fall into old patterns? Had he really thought through where he wanted to be, what he wanted to do?

  She sucked in a breath, closed her eyes and asked the one that scared her the most. “Do you want to try for another baby?”

  She felt his breath upon her lips as he spoke. “More than anything in the world.”

  Their foreheads tipped together and her breath intertwined with his. “Even if it’s the scariest thing in the whole wide world?”

  “Even if it’s the scariest thing in the universe.” He pressed a soft kiss onto her lips. “And I promise to be by your side every step of the way.”

  “Here in Copper Canyon?”

  “Wherever you like.” He started pressing kisses onto each of her cheeks, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. “We do have two tickets to Paris if you’d like to go check it out.”

  Her eyes flicked open. A penny dropped. “Joshua West—you aren’t chicken to go to Paris all on your lonesome, are you?”

  “Ha!” A cloud of breath hid milliseconds of acknowledgment. “As if. But it would be much easier to go into the big new world of surgery with my brave and talented wife by my side. If she’s interested in giving up her job here at Valley Hospital, that is, for one in Paris...”

  “Oh...I don’t know. The boss here is pretty hard-core.”

  Josh grinned broadly. “I hear she has a heart of gold.”

  He dipped his head to kiss his wife again. It was a kiss filled with the deep satisfaction of a man who had found his way in the world again. Katie returned each and every one of his kisses with all her love. As they sought and answered each other’s caresses
, they pulled back for a second to grin when the church bell began to toll midnight.

  Katie’s heart felt full to bursting. Everything was going to get better now—the healing had begun and the New Year couldn’t start at a better time or in a better place...right here in her husband’s arms.

  EPILOGUE

  “DID YOU GET to the bakery?”

  “Hello to you, too, my little Katiebird.” Josh paused to drop a kiss onto his wife’s forehead. “And, excusez-moi, but I think what you were trying to say was did I get to la patisserie.”

  Katie couldn’t help but laugh at her husband’s exaggerated French accent. Tennessee meets Paris was an interesting combo. Not that her accent was all that hot. Just mastering the medical vocabulary had been enough of a challenge. But they had both impressed not only themselves but their new colleagues as well. Sure, they both might sound like yahoos from America—but nearly a year in Paris had changed everything.

  “I thought I’d go for something different, seeing as it’s the holiday season.”

  “And Emmy’s birthday,” Katie added, as if either of them needed reminding.

  Together they turned to beam at their daughter, her face covered in spaghetti sauce after Katie’s unsuccessful attempt to get some of her dinner inside the cheeky nine-month-old. With a head of jet-black curls and a pair of bright blue eyes, she was a reflection of the pair of them.

  “So?” Katie prodded. “What’d you get?”

  Josh pulled out a box from behind his back. A box that wasn’t nearly big enough for the kind of birthday cake she’d had in mind.

  “What’s that?”

  “Not what you had in mind for our cherished daughter’s birthday?”

  She resisted sticking out her lower lip in a pout. Just. “Depends... Is this one of those ‘good things come in small packages’ deals?”

  “In a way...” Josh held up the small box and waggled it in front of his wife’s eyes. This was fun.

  Who was he kidding? There hadn’t been a moment in the past year when the smile had been wiped off his face. The world’s longest honeymoon, he had billed it. And a move to Paris. His wife back by his side. A daughter to crow over whenever he wasn’t learning about mind-blowing surgical techniques with his new mentor.

  “Want to open it?” He held up the package when Katie snatched at it.

  “You know I do—I need cake!”

  “Need or want?” he teased.

  “Both.”

  He handed the box over, watching with bated breath as Katie ripped it open with the glee of a five-year-old.

  The myriad of expressions playing across her face as she took in the contents of the box only broadened his grin.

  “This is a napkin from Rooney’s...” Her big brown eyes met his.

  “Best chocolate cake in Copper Canyon,” they recited in unison.

  “Um...” Katie looked up at him quizzically. “I hate to point out the obvious, but there isn’t any cake in here, buster.”

  “What’s below the napkin?”

  “Oh, my gosh...” Katie’s cheeks pinked as she lifted the tickets out of the box. “Are we really?”

  “I think the first place our baby girl should make a snow angel is in Copper Canyon. Don’t you?”

  Katie rose up on her tiptoes and gave Josh an appreciatively lingering kiss.

  “I couldn’t agree more, my love. Christmas in Paris and New Year in Copper Canyon. Doesn’t get much better than that, does it?”

  “So long as I have the two of you, Katiebird, I have everything I need.” He gave her another kiss and dropped a wink in their daughter’s direction. “But some of Rooney’s finest chocolate fudge for our daughter will be the icing on the cake.”

  * * * * *

  EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT

  Paramedic Holly Jacobs knows that her night of scorching passion with Dr Daniel Chandler meant more than just lust. Playboy doc Daniel has sworn off love – but he can’t resist Holly! By the time they get snowed in on Christmas Eve Daniel finds himself asking if Holly is for life, not just for Christmas!

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  PLAYBOY ON HER CHRISTMAS LIST

  by Carol Marinelli

  Holly wanted a kiss, Daniel knew, but he was also rather certain she wanted a whole lot more than that. Not just sex, but the part of himself he refused to give.

  ‘What?’ he said again, and then his face broke into a smile, as, very unexpectedly, Holly, sweet Holly, showed another side of her.

  ‘Are you going to make me invite you in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not even going to try and persuade me with a kiss?’ Holly checked.

  ‘You want me or you don’t.’ Daniel shrugged. ‘There’s no question that I want you. But, Holly, do you get that—?’

  She knew what was coming and she didn’t need the warning—he had made his position perfectly clear—so she interrupted him. ‘I don’t need the speech.’

  She just needed this.

  Holly had thought his hand was moving to open the door but instead it came out of the window and to her head and pulled her face down to his.

  He kissed her hard, even though she was the one standing. The stubble of his unshaven jaw was rough on her face and his tongue was straight in.

  He pulled her in tight so that her upper abdomen hurt from the pressure of the open window and it was a warning, she knew, of the passion to come.

  Even now she could pull back and straighten, say goodnight and walk off, but Holly was through with being cautious.

  Her bag dropped to the pavement and he then released her.

  Holly stared back at him, breathless, her lipstick smeared across her face, and all it made him want to do was to kiss her again.

  But this was a street.

  Holly bent and retrieved her bag and then walked off towards her flat. There was a roaring sound in her ears and her heart seemed to be leaping up near her throat.

  Daniel closed up the car and was soon following her to the flats.

  She turned the key in the main door to the flats and clipped up the concrete steps.

  She could hear his heavy footsteps coming up the steps behind her as she turned and Holly almost broke into a run.

  Daniel actually did!

  He had thought her cute, sweet and gorgeous these past months and had done all he could not to think of her outright as sexy.

  Except she was, and seriously so.

  Don’t miss

  PLAYBOY ON HER CHRISTMAS LIST by Carol Marinelli

  Available December 2016

  PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  Copyright ©2016 by Carol Marinelli

  ISBN: 978-1-474-03772-3

  THE NIGHTSHIFT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  © 2016 Annie O’Neil

  Published in Great Britain 2016

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

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