Two Doctors and A Baby

What was on her little mind?

She looked like she was about to jump out of her skin. And he needed to know why.

“So why you’d ask me over?”

Avery’s fork fell and clattered against her plate.

“I just wanted to follow up … about what happened … on New Year’s.”

He didn’t need a reminder. The heat between them had been undeniable, so strong he’d pulled her into the nearest private spot—a supply closet. He’d waited three years to have her, and the memories of that night still played out in his dreams.

“What exactly requires follow-up?” he asked.

She didn’t look at him. “Well … it, um, turns out we didn’t, um … dodge the bullet.”

It took him a minute to figure out what she was saying. Then he felt something deep in his gut. “You’re … pregnant?”

She pulled a narrow plastic stick out of her pocket. Two lines showed in the window. Then she met his eyes. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

* * *

Those Engaging Garretts!:The Carolina Cousins!

Two Doctors & a Baby

Brenda Harlen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

BRENDA HARLEN is a former lawyer who once had the privilege of appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada. The practice of law taught her a lot about the world and reinforced her determination to become a writer—because in fiction, she could promise a happy ending! Now she is an award-winning, national bestselling author of more than thirty titles for Mills & Boon. You can keep up-to-date with Brenda on Facebook and Twitter or through her website, www.brendaharlen.com.

This book is dedicated to all the real-life doctors, nurses, EMTs and others who work in the medical field—because you make a difference, every single day. Thank you!

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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 Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

After six years at Mercy Hospital, Dr. Justin Garrett knew that Friday nights in the ER were inevitably frenzied and chaotic.

New Year’s Eve was worse.

And when New Year’s Eve happened to fall on a Friday—well, it wasn’t yet midnight and he’d already seen more than twice the usual number of patients pass through the emergency department, most of the incidents and injuries directly related to alcohol consumption.

A drunken college student who had put his fist through a wall—and his basketball scholarship in jeopardy—with fractures of the fourth and fifth metacarpal bones. A sixty-three-year-old man who had doubled up on Viagra to celebrate the occasion with his thirty-six-year-old wife and ended up in cardiac arrest instead. A seventeen-year-old female who had fallen off her balcony because the Ecstasy slipped into her drink by her boyfriend had made her want to pick the pretty flowers on her neighbor’s terrace—thankfully, she lived on the second floor, although she did sustain a broken clavicle and had required thirty-eight stitches to close the gash on her arm, courtesy of the glass vodka cooler bottle she had been holding when she fell.

And those were only the ones he’d seen in the past hour. Then there was Nancy Anderson—a woman who claimed she tripped and fell into a door but whom he recognized from her frequent visits to the ER with various and numerous contusions and lacerations. Tonight it was a black eye, swollen jaw and broken wrist. Nancy wasn’t drunk, but Justin would bet that her husband was—not because it was New Year’s Eve but because Ray Anderson always hit the bottle as soon as he got home from work.

More than once, Justin had tried to help her see that there were other options. She refused to listen to him. Because he understood that a woman who had been abused by her husband might be reluctant to confide in another man, he’d called in a female physician to talk to her, with the same unsatisfactory result. After Thanksgiving, when she’d suffered a miscarriage caused by a “fall down the stairs,” Dr. Wallace had suggested that she talk to a counselor. Nancy Anderson continued to insist that she was just clumsy, that her husband loved her and would never hurt her.

“What did she say happened this time?” asked Callie Levine, one of his favorite nurses who had drawn the short straw and got stuck working the New Year’s Eve shift beside him.

“Walked into a door.”

Callie shook her head. “He’s going to kill her one of these days.”

“Probably,” Justin admitted grimly. “But it doesn’t matter that you and I see it when she refuses to acknowledge what’s happening.”

“When she lost the baby, I honestly thought that would do it. That her grief would override her fear and she would finally tell the truth.”

“She fell down the stairs,” Justin said, reminding her of the explanation Nancy Anderson had given when she was admitted on that previous occasion.

Then, because talking about the woman’s situation made him feel both frustrated and ineffectual, he opened another chart. “Did you call up to the psych department for a consult?”