by Janice Lynn
* * *
Sarah’s breath caught. Jude was awake, was looking at her, tracking her with his eyes, seeing her.
He was seeing her!
“Hello, there,” she whispered, not caring that tears streamed down her face.
He wanted to say something back, but couldn’t, seemed irritated at the ventilator tubing. She glanced at his oxygen saturation. With the vent delivering oxygen, he was satting at ninety-nine percent.
She wanted to take the vent out.
If she did and he wasn’t ready, she’d have to put it back in, would be risking injury, might not be able to re-establish an airway and would never forgive herself.
But truth was if it had been anyone else, she’d have pulled him off the vent already because she didn’t think he needed it. Not anymore.
Maybe he never had, but she hadn’t been willing to risk not maintaining an airway.
“I’m going to pull the vent, Jude. Don’t you dare make me regret doing so,” she ordered, gloving up and pulling the tubing from him.
He groaned during the removal, but sighed once he was free of the tube.
His hand went to his throat and rubbed the area as if that would somehow help.
“Your throat is going to be scratchy and sore for a while from the tube,” she warned, as she put oxygen on him.
“Sarah.”
Her hoarse name on his lips weakened her knees. “You shouldn’t be talking. Just be quiet and use your energy to get better.”
He shook his head, put his hand to his throat, and hoarsely whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, Sarah, I put those firefighters—He’s awake!” Shelley stopped short just inside the emergency room bay.
“Yes.” Straightening from where she’d leaned closer to him, Sarah forced herself into professional mode, doing another quick neuro examination, checking sensation and movement and reflexes.
Other than obvious intense pain with movement, all good.
“If you wanted to play with my feet—” his voice was raspy, but understandable “—you could have just told me you had a foot fetish.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “You wish.”
He cleared his throat. “I do.”
That had her pausing in her examination. “You wish I had a foot fetish?”
His gaze bored into hers. “That you had a me fetish.”
Sarah’s breath caught. Shelley, who was still in the room, cleared her throat from the other side of the gurney where she checked lines.
“You’ve had a rough night, Jude,” Sarah reminded him, trying to shake off all the emotions bombarding her. “You should focus on breathing deeply and not talking. Really. Just be quiet and breathe.”
“Breathing hurts.”
“Try not to and what I’ll do to you will hurt a lot worse,” she warned in the sternest tone she could muster.
“Mouth to mouth?”
“There you go wishing again. I’ll shove that tube down your throat again and this time I won’t be so gentle,” she threatened. “So be quiet and conserve your energy for more essential things, like breathing deeply.”
“I take it you two know each other?” Shelley asked as she jotted down numbers from his telemetry.
“He’s my neighbor,” Sarah explained.
At the same time Jude said, “We’re dating.”
Sarah’s gaze cut to Jude. “In case you forgot, whatever was between us ended earlier tonight.”
“What’s between you and I hasn’t ended. Never will.” His oxygen monitor beeped, indicating his oxygen saturation had dropped below ninety percent.
Concern filled Sarah. She needed to focus on his health, not be having a personal conversation with him. He shouldn’t be talking at all.
“Jude, please, stop,” she pleaded, adjusting his oxygen tubing. “Just stop talking and breathe deeply or I really will put the vent back in.”
“I could make a corny joke about you taking my breath away if it would help,” he offered.
“You taking a deep breath would help. Several deep breaths.” Sarah turned to Shelley. “Go tell his crew he’s awake and they are welcome to come back in here so long as they can keep him quiet.”
Shelley nodded and went to get his coworkers.
Jude sucked in a deep oxygen-rich breath, grimaced in pain, no doubt triggered by his fractured ribs and bruised chest. Then he took another, and another. His oxygen saturation instantly rose and Sarah sighed with relief.
“I tell you I’m sorry, that I don’t want to say goodbye to you ever, and you tell me to breathe?”
She took a deep breath herself, then blew it out slowly. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Jude. You suffered multiple injuries, were unconscious for who knows how long. You’re not yourself.”
“Then who am I?”
“Injured. Tired. Confused.”
“I need you in my life.”
She needed him, too. So very much, but it wasn’t enough. Would never be enough. Not knowing what she knew.
“I can’t do this, Jude. Maybe you don’t understand, but I won’t be second best. Not even to a dead woman.”
Proving just how quickly he was recovering now that he’d regained consciousness, Jude scooted up in the bed.
“Have you not heard anything I’ve said?” His voice was still scratchy but getting stronger. “You are not second best. You are best. You, Sarah. You and only you. There is no second best.”
Fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “Please, don’t.”
“Don’t tell you how much I need you? That had we not been interrupted earlier tonight I’d have told you at your apartment? That I’ve known from the very first night, here, that you were special? That I wanted you to know you were different from anyone I’d ever known? Which don’t do you mean?”
“I... But Nina...”
“Nina was an amazing woman, but I’m not in love with Nina.” At Sarah’s open mouth, he held up his hand. “Hear me out. Maybe I was always more in love with the idea of Nina and I than I was with Nina to begin with. Or maybe I didn’t want to acknowledge what a jerk I was to her after she chose Charles. I don’t know. What I do know is that when I thought I was taking my last breaths, I didn’t want Nina. I wanted you, Sarah. Just you. Always you.”
Trying not to let his words poke too many holes in her shabby defenses against him, she arched her brow. “This isn’t some traumatic brain injury talking nonsense that you’re not going to remember tomorrow?”
“I loved you before I left your apartment, before I made love to you last night. I think I loved you even before I took you to see your first Broadway show.”
Sarah’s jaw dropped and she grabbed hold of the bed railing to steady herself. “You love me?”
“I’ve never felt the way I feel about you. Not for Nina. Not for anyone. Just you.”
His words sounded too good to be true.
“How do you know what you’re feeling is real?”
“Because I feel it with every beat of my heart. I feel you with every beat.” He took her hand into his and placed it over his chest. “Feel it? Sa-rah. Sa-rah. Sa-rah,” he said in unison with his heartbeat.
Eyes blurring at the enormity of what he was saying, at what he was doing, Sarah shook her head. “You’re crazy.”
“About you.”
She fought back a major sniffle. “So I heard.”
“Mr. Johnson?”
Despite the hot-poker pain that moving obviously caused to streak through his body, he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss there. “That’s what I want, Sarah.”
“You want Mr. Johnson?”
This time he shook his head. “I want what he and his wife have. I want that with you.”
“I love you, J
ude, but—”
“Thank God,” he said, pulling her down to him despite whatever pain and trauma her landing against him caused.
“I’m going to hurt you,” she insisted, trying to pull away, certain she was going to do major damage that she’d never forgive herself for.
“Yes, you are. Stop trying to get away and kiss me.”
“But—”
“No buts, Sarah. Just you and me. Forever.”
That had her staring wide-eyed at him. “Forever? I thought you just wanted me through Christmas.”
“Haven’t you figured out the truth yet, Sarah? I want you for Christmas,” he corrected. “Not through Christmas.”
“A doctor under the tree, eh?”
“A fireman in your stocking.”
A fireman in her stocking. She closed her eyes, let herself dream a little, imagining what if what he was saying was true.
When she opened her eyes, looked into his, the truth shone so clearly that she was the one needing to be told to breathe.
“Forgive me, Sarah,” he said. “Let me spend the rest of my life making tonight up to you.”
The rest of his life. Jude and her forever. It’s what she saw in his eyes, what she felt in her heart.
Being careful to try not to hurt him, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’m the one who should ask you to forgive me. I was so scared of getting hurt that I almost threw everything away.”
“I wouldn’t have let you,” he assured her, cradling her against him. “What we have is too special. I’ll always fight for you.”
“I’m dreaming.”
“Then dream that my body doesn’t feel as if a building fell on it so I can do all the things to you that I want to be doing to you.”
“A building did fall on you.” She placed her hands on his cheeks and stared into his eyes. “Please, don’t forget you said all this, Jude. I need you not to forget.”
“I love you, Sarah. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I’m yours.”
“Yeah, and we all heard him say it and will hold his sorry butt to it, right, guys?”
Sarah turned to see his crew standing just inside the bay.
Jude grinned at his guys. “You won’t ever have to. All she has to do is say she’s mine and I’m the luckiest man alive.”
“You are lucky to be alive,” Roger corrected. “Two minutes more and you’d have been buried under the entire building. Not sure if you remember, but the whole thing came down.”
“Thank you for getting me out.”
“Wasn’t just me.” Roger gestured to the others in the room. “Guess we’ll all be getting a chewing from Command.”
“Won’t be the first time,” one of the other crew said.
“Won’t be the last,” Jude finished, then returned his gaze to Sarah. “Think you can put up with having these guys around constantly?”
Sarah looked into his amazing blue eyes and let herself drown in what she saw there, the need to love and be loved.
“I’ve told you I always wanted a big family.”
Cheers went up from around the bed, but neither Sarah nor Jude looked at his coworkers or heard their teasing words.
They had eyes only for each other as Jude said, “Yeah, well, there’s more than one way to give you that.”
Sarah smiled, because she knew what he meant and looked forward to each and every moment of the rest of their lives.
Together.
Forever.
* * * * *
Read on for an extract from A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE by Amy Andrews.
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT
Dr Hayley Clark and Sam Price’s holiday romance was unforgettable – and unrepeatable! Then risk-taking doc Sam arrives at her hospital… Could their fling become something more?
Read on for a sneak preview of
CHRISTMAS WITH HER DAREDEVIL DOC
the first book in the MIRACLES AT MUSWELL HILL HOSPITAL duet
‘Hayley, meet your replacement, Samuel Price. Sam, Hayley’s just been promoted to senior registrar and you’ve taken over from her. You’ll be working together.’
Of all the places…
Sam hadn’t told Hayley that he was about to start a new job in London, and she hadn’t told him where she worked. London was a massive city with quite a few hospitals. What were the chances that they’d end up working together? The way her pupils expanded momentarily told him that she was just as shocked and surprised as he was.
This was going to make things awkward. They’d had a fling in Iceland, agreeing that it would be nothing more than that, and they’d said goodbye. What now? Would she want to see if their fling could be something more, something deeper? Or had he just been her transition person, the one who’d helped her to move on after her partner’s death, so she wouldn’t want to pick up where they’d left off?
The problem was, he didn’t know what he wanted, either. He’d really liked the woman he’d started to get to know in Iceland. But then again he’d liked Lynda, too—and his ex-fiancée had let him down so badly. Could he even trust his judgement any more? Would he be making a huge mistake if he started seeing Hayley?
She recovered first, holding her hand out. ‘Welcome to Muswell Hill Hospital, Dr Price.’
Don’t miss
MIRACLES AT MUSWELL HILL HOSPITAL:
CHRISTMAS WITH HER DAREDEVIL DOC
THEIR PREGNANCY GIFT
by Kate Hardy
Available November 2017
PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Copyright ©2017 Kate Hardy
ISBN: 978-1-474-05177-4
A FIREFIGHTER IN HER STOCKING
© 2017 Janice Lynn
Published in Great Britain 2017
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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