Doubt flooded her features. “If I even can dance, that is.”
“Baby, you definitely can. Let me show you.”
Still, Andi hesitated, but not for long. A few seconds at most passed before that stubborn gleam hit her eyes, and she nodded again. Carefully, she pushed out of her chair and stood, reached for his hand and, ignoring her cane, allowed him to lead her to the center of the enclosed area. To the dance floor, where there were already several people dancing. “I’m nervous,” she admitted in a low, barely audible voice. “I don’t want to fall.”
“I won’t let you fall.” Whether it was fate or coincidence or something else entirely, he couldn’t say, but the band finished their upbeat song and moved on to a slower one. A song meant for couples. And finally, Ryan pulled this woman he worried about, thought about, wondered about … dreamed of, into his arms. “Trust me on that, if nothing else.”
The Colorado Fosters:
They’d do anything for each other … and for love!
From Good Guy to Groom
Tracy Madison
TRACY MADISON is an award-winning author who makes her home in northwestern Ohio. As a wife and a mother, her days are filled with love, laughter and many cups of coffee. She often spends her nights awake and at the keyboard, bringing her characters to life and leading them toward their well-deserved happily-ever-after, one word at a time. Tracy loves to hear from readers. You can reach her at [email protected].
To the many good guys I am fortunate enough to have in my life. You fill my world with light.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Chaos. Panic. Screams of terror.
Huffing short, heavy breaths, Andrea Caputo used her hands as leverage to push herself across the hard, cold floor, trying to get out of the line of fire. How many others had been shot? She didn’t know, could barely see—let alone think—due to the pain exploding throughout her entire right leg. One bullet to the femur, she guessed, and one to the tibia.
Both bones were likely shattered, and, due to the amount of blood, one of those bullets had hit an artery. Which meant she was in even more trouble.
If she made it through this moment of pure hell, her future would include several surgeries, a long recovery and months, if not years, of physical therapy. And Lord, she’d take it all. Happily. If only she survived long enough to get there. Please let me survive.
Okay. Okay. In order to survive, she had to get out of the damn hallway and into the closest trauma room, where she’d call 911. Chances were high that someone had already made the call, but what if everyone else thought the same and help wasn’t on the way?
The madman with the gun would continue to shoot his way through the trauma center until doctors and nurses and patients alike were dead. Unfair, maybe, to characterize an out-of-his-mind bereaved husband who blamed the hospital for his wife’s death and was now hell-bent on retribution as a madman, but with the blood, bedlam and horror engulfing the ER, the title fit.
Another booming shot. Another scream.
Not right. This wasn’t right. Juliana Memorial Hospital was, at its happiest, a place for healing and miracles, and, at its saddest, where people said goodbye to their loved ones. As a trauma nurse, Andi had experienced hectic shifts, slow shifts, heartbreaking moments and peaceful ones. After five years, she’d thought she’d seen it all. But this...this was a battlefield.
Why couldn’t she move faster? Focusing on the trauma room to her right, Andi fought against the dizziness and the fear that consumed her, and pulled together every ounce of strength she could to breach the few feet that lay between her and what she hoped would prove to be safe ground.
Please, please let this stop.
Now in the otherwise empty room, Andi reached for the bottom of the privacy curtain and yanked hard, sliding it about halfway across the bar before her strength evaporated. Good enough. It would have to be good enough. She didn’t have much left in her.
She fumbled for her phone, hit 911 and Send, and tried not to think of all the people around her who were hurt—possibly worse than she was—or dead. Tried not to remember the look on the attending physician’s face in the seconds before a bullet tore into his stomach.
Andi had not been able to help.
She’d tried. Her training and instinct had overtaken her shock and her fear, and she’d rushed toward the fallen doctor—her friend—but she’d gone down just as fast as he had, when the gunman turned on her and fired twice in quick succession. Andi didn’t know if he’d been aiming for her leg or if she’d simply been moving too fast for a direct hit to her chest or, like Hugh, her stomach. Didn’t matter. What did was that she hadn’t been able to get to Hugh, hadn’t even had the slimmest opportunity to try to save him.
In that group of minutes following her collapse, she didn’t remember anything except the seemingly endless screaming, the blast of gunfire, the excruciating pain that enveloped her leg and, within seconds, had magnified and was pulsating throughout her entire body. Pain like she’d never experienced before. Dizziness, blurred vision and then, for a blessed minute, numbness took over. Believe it or not, that was what got her moving again.
Numb was bad. Numb meant she was losing too much blood.
She’d looked at Hugh, whose prone body was several feet from where she’d been shot, and had made a decision. But what if she’d been wrong in her assessment? What if...? No. Surely, she’d been correct, that his pallor, unmoving chest and closed eyes meant that Hugh had bled out.