Brooke came in and shut the door.
“I was looking for you.”
“You were?” His surprise was genuine. For eight months he’d been bringing patients into West Central. For eight months she’d been ignoring him.
“I wanted to tell you that your decision to underdose the morphine increased the odds in Harold’s favor. Thank you. And thank you for sticking around after the handoff. I think the way you kept him calm also kept him out of severe shock.”
She’d never spoken two complete sentences to him. Zach wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Not a lot of people would have held a patient’s hand like that. Especially not a … well, I was going to say especially not a man, but that would be gender stereotyping, wouldn’t it?”
Gender stereotyping—did she have to speak like a sexy schoolteacher as well as look like one?
“Forget I said that. Job well done, whether you’re male or female.” Apparently done for the day, she started unbuttoning her white lab coat, starting with the button at her chest.
Damn, damn, damn. He was male, all right.
Texas Rescue: Rescuing hearts … one Texan at a time!
Following the Doctor’s Orders
Caro Carson
Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate and US Army officer, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. Now Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in the great state of Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.
MILLS & BOON
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For Katie, who was precious when she was four years old, and is even more precious now
Contents
She heard his voice before she saw him.
Through the constant hum of voices that formed the background noise of the emergency department at West Central Texas Hospital, his deep bass carried. Although he was a fireman by profession, his voice always made her think of cowboys. With its mild Texas drawl and the hint of a wink in the tone, his voice brought to mind a cowboy who’d come to town looking for beer and girls and a good time. He wasn’t a serious man.
She was a serious woman. Dr. Brooke Brown, emergency physician, could hardly be anything else. The buck stopped here—right here, at the pen in her hand. When she wrote a medical order, it was followed, and the results sat squarely on her shoulders. Whether the patient lived or died was her responsibility—medically, legally, morally.
It stood to reason, then, that she was the one female employee in the emergency department that didn’t get giggly-excited when the radio announced that the firefighters from Engine Thirty-Seven were bringing in another patient. Brooke had weightier things to think on than which team of Austin’s firefighters and paramedics had the most bachelors—or which had the bachelor with the sexiest voice.
But Engine Thirty-Seven did.
Brooke would never acknowledge