The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle

by Amalie Berlin

  When he lifted his head, she felt words bubbling out. “When you said to meet you in New Jersey, I joked to Miranda in my best mafia talk, ‘He’s gonna make me an offer I can’t refuse.’ But I really thought maybe you wanted me to meet your parents, or maybe you’d told them about me and they wanted to meet me and asked. But you really did ask me to New Jersey to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “I did.” He laughed again, “But that’s not New Jersey. The Godfather was set in New York.”

  “It was?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve never watched it. I only know that line. I just thought it was Jersey, for some reason.”

  “You never watched The Godfather?”

  She shook her head again and teased, “Is the wedding off now?”

  His disapproving squint was beautiful, and full of charm. “No. It just means we have to watch some movies before we get married. Or on our honeymoon. However, to answer your other question, my parents do want to meet you. Just not today. I want you to myself today.”

  “Me too. Let’s go home.”

  “You’re done with the balloon flight adventure?”

  “It’s cold,” she whispered, then gave him her best sexy eyebrow wiggle over the top of her glasses. “I have another adventure in mind.”

  “Do you?”

  “Mmm-hmm. A sexy adventure. Then a nap.”

  There her stomach pitted a little and she knew she lost the flirty glint in her eyes, but still kept looking over the top edge so he could see her. “And you stay. You’re there...”

  “When you wake up?”

  She nodded.

  “I can guarantee it.”

  “Even if you need to go to the bathroom.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “No. I mean I need you to be there when I wake up, so wake me up first. Or put a sign on the pillow that says ‘Be Right Back.’”

  “We might need to talk about this later.”

  “Humor me.”

  “We’ll have a neon sign made up, and I’ll flip the switch so that it says: ‘Gabriel has Gone to the Bathroom. Don’t Go Looking for Him.’”

  Satisfied, she nodded, grinning and raising her face for another kiss. But he took her cheeks in both hands and pushed the brim of her hat up with his thumbs to bare the space between her brows, then pressed his lips to her forehead and lingered there. A feeling she could only call relief started where his lips touched her head and then seeped into the rest of her body, down to her toes. The need for hungry kisses faded back for the moment, and as the soft, loving kiss faded, she rested her cheek against his shoulder and let that sweetness fill her.

  They stayed like that a long time, paying no attention to the views or the cold. It was the lump on her left ring finger stretching her gloves tight that made her think about weddings. “Oh—ah—are you going to be my date tomorrow?”

  “You can assume I’m going to be your date for everything.”

  His words made her smile, and she had to drag herself away from drifting right back into that happy place again. “Charles’s wedding... I don’t think we should tell the family about our engagement or the baby tomorrow. It’s their special day and I don’t want to stomp all over it. So I’ll need you to put the ring back on me tomorrow when we get home.”

  “And not mention the suspension?”

  Oh, yeah, the suspension. And her father, Chief of the ER before Charles had ascended to his position. “Yeah, let’s leave that out too. I don’t want to...make a scene when Dad decides to drown me in the chocolate fountain.”

  He laughed and made all the right sounds of agreement, then directed her to look toward the other side of the balloon, at the skyline in the distance.

  The captain had turned them back toward land. Bless him.

  “I think we owe him a good tip,” she murmured against his neck.

  “A better tip than ‘Don’t take lovestruck idiots up in the middle of winter’?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s got that one already.”

  EPILOGUE

  Seven months later...

  THE CAB PULLED up outside the emergency doors of Manhattan Mercy, and Gabriel breathed a sigh of relief to see his brother-in-law, Zac, waiting there with a wheelchair.

  In the backseat beside him, Penny held his hand but said nothing. She’d taken up meditation as a way to get through the last few months of pregnancy, when she truly had felt restricted, and now sat with her eyes closed, practicing deep, mindful breathing. It might not be Lamaze exactly, but whatever worked for her, he was happy to support. Especially since one of them needed to be calm for this, and he’d passed calm ten blocks back.

  The hold she had on his hand tightened, clueing him in on the approaching contraction. She squeezed hard enough that he could feel her racing heart.

  “We’re here,” he said gently, then opened the door with his free hand.

  She opened her eyes to the sight of Zac rolling the wheelchair toward the cab, and her heart rate kicked up higher. “Who does he think is sitting in that?”

  No sooner had the words flown than the contraction crested and she squeezed his hand hard enough to pop his knuckles. He sat with her, waiting, breathing, for it to pass. “It’s just until we get upstairs.”

  “I can walk,” she panted, then nudged him so that he took the hint and got out. A short time later he had her out and paid the cabbie, but when he turned back, he found her arguing with Zac about the chair.

  “You’re in labor.”

  “I figured that out when it was my womb that started seizing up.”

  “You know hospital policy.”

  “I don’t care about hospital policy. Let’s just walk in quickly. You can roll behind us and if I have to sit down, if another one comes...before we get upstairs...we’ll cross that bridge...” Obviously it was his turn to be the calmer one. Luckily, he’d planned for this.

  He took her hand again and didn’t even attempt to drag her the remaining two feet to the chair. Wheelchairs were emotional landmines for Penny. Before they’d decided it was time to come to the hospital, she’d even suggested they should call an ambulance when they still had time, because gurneys were better than wheelchairs.

  He sat in the chair, then gestured to his lap with his free hand. “I’m sitting in the chair, you’re sitting on me.”

  It stopped the argument, and when she looked at him, he saw her eyes soften, and she even smiled.

  “That’s against policy too,” Zac said, but his heart didn’t sound in it.

  “I don’t care about hospital policy.” This time the words came out of Gabriel’s mouth. He simply locked the wheels, then helped ease his waddling wife onto his lap. When they were settled, he unlocked the wheels.

  Zac’s lip service to policy became evident when he fell in behind them and began pushing them toward the sliding double doors and into the hospital.

  * * *

  Nearly twelve hours later, in the middle of the night, Mia Jackson came into the world. Penny handled birth far better than she had handled the last month of pregnancy, when she’d repeatedly insisted she was so large, the baby had invited over friends to have a “pool party” in her womb.

  Now, as Gabriel sat by his sleeping wife, holding his baby girl, throat so full of happiness and gratitude, he half feared he’d drown on the thick, syrupy sweetness filling him if he breathed too deeply. And he couldn’t take his eyes off the little sleeping face, or the tiny hand wrapped around his fingertip.

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  He smiled at his wife’s sleepy, quiet, exhausted voice.

  “Penny’s always in my thoughts,” he whispered, not wanting to wake Mia as she’d had just as hard a day. Catching sight of Penny over the head of their sleeping ne
wborn, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired. Sore. Wonderful,” she said. Then she added, “You didn’t answer.”

  He didn’t answer because his heart was too full to translate any of it into words. Instead, he handled what was before him. “Do you want to hold her?”

  In answer, and with the help of the bed controls, she sat up and held her arms out. “Still not what you were thinking.”

  Slowly, he rose and transferred the warm little bundle into her arms, then stood back to take them both in. Penny had held Mia briefly right after she’d been cleaned up, but a long labor had left her too exhausted to really meet their daughter before. The grin that split her face flashed like a tropical sunrise, and he knew what she was smiling at before she lifted a hand to stroke through the fullest head of downy black hair he’d ever seen on such a tiny baby.

  “I was thinking how much she looks like Baby Penny, but with more enviable locks.” He murmured one of a thousand wondrous thoughts that had filled his mind the past few hours.

  With soft laugh and the misty eyes, she nodded, clearly as overcome as he’d spent the hours being.

  “And that we’re going to teach her to crawl, to walk, and to run. And how to know what things she should always run toward.”

  The family motto, and they still occasionally debated the list of things.

  A tear fell onto one tiny hand, and she smoothed it away just as he reached out to do the same to her cheeks. “Think we’ll have it figured out by the time she’s running?” she asked.

  He knew her way of loving teasing, always sunshine on his days. “We have a good start on it. Always run toward us. That should buy us some time.”

  “Always run toward each other,” she said, lifting her eyes again to him, and that playful light he loved had been replaced by such devoted reverence he almost lost it. It was a promise, one she silently made every day.

  Once again speech left him. All he could do was nod, his life so full of goodness and beauty he couldn’t believe it, but knew he’d never let it go.

  “Hey.”

  He looked up again.

  She slowly shifted to the side to make room in her bed, and looked down at the space she’d made.

  “What about hospital policy?”

  “I don’t care about hospital policy,” she dutifully murmured.

  Moments later, he reclined with her, holding his whole family in his arms. As they looked down at her, Mia quietly opened her eyes.

  “They’re blue,” Penny whispered.

  Gabriel kissed her temple. “I told you they would be.”

  * * * * *

  Welcome to the CHRISTMAS IN MANHATTAN six-book series

  Available now:

  SLEIGH RIDE WITH THE SINGLE DAD

  by Alison Roberts

  A FIREFIGHTER IN HER STOCKING

  by Janice Lynn

  THE SPANISH DUKE’S HOLIDAY PROPOSAL

  by Robin Gianna

  THE RESCUE DOC’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

  by Amalie Berlin

  Coming soon:

  CHRISTMAS WITH THE BEST MAN

  by Susan Carlisle

  NAVY DOC ON HER CHRISTMAS LIST

  by Amy Ruttan

  Keep reading for an excerpt from CHRISTMAS WITH HER DAREDEVIL DOC by Kate Hardy.

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  Christmas with Her Daredevil Doc

  by Kate Hardy

  PROLOGUE

  HAYLEY DID A double take as her best friend hobbled into the hospital canteen on crutches, with a full-length walking cast up to her right knee.

  ‘What happened, Dani?’ she asked as Danielle heaved herself into the seat opposite hers and rested the crutches against the wall so they wouldn’t be in the way of anyone else in the canteen. ‘Did you break your ankle?’

  ‘It’s not quite that bad—it’s a second and third metatarsal stress fracture,’ Danielle said, grimacing.

  Hayley frowned. They’d been out to their usual dance aerobics class, two nights ago, and Danielle had seemed fine then. ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘According to the orthopods, three or four weeks ago, because the fracture shows up on the X-ray and looks as if it’s been trying to heal for some time—but the actual diagnosis was this morning.’ Danielle sighed. ‘I suppose my foot had been aching for a bit.’

  And Dani, being Dani, had no doubt ignored it because she was too busy. ‘Why didn’t you say something, the other night?’ Hayley asked. ‘We could’ve missed class to let you rest your foot.’

  Danielle flapped a dismissive hand. ‘It was fine.’

  Hayley raised an eyebrow. ‘Fine enough for you to be wearing a walking cast right now?’

  Danielle sighed. ‘OK, OK. I thought it wasn’t anything major and resting it for a day or two would be enough to sort it out, but it felt a bit worse yesterday so I thought I’d better get it checked out. I was pretty sure my doctor was going to roll his eyes at me and say it was just because I still needed to get used to my new running shoes. Except he sent me for an X-ray instead. And apparently almost everyone with a metatarsal stress fracture says the same thing as I did—they don’t remember doing anything different or they’ve just got new shoes.’

  ‘Ouch. So how long are you going to have the cast?’ Hayley asked.

  ‘They said it’ll take between one and three months to heal,’ Danielle said. ‘So it’s crutches this week and then I have to wear the cast and rest my foot as much as possible.’

  ‘Rest’ wasn’t in Danielle’s vocabulary, Hayley knew. It would drive her best friend crazy to have to sit with her foot up.

  ‘And they said if I don’t rest it properly and for long enough, I’ll risk making it worse and then I’ll end up needing surgery to fix it—which will take even longer to heal, so obviously I’d rather avoid that.’ Danielle pulled a face. ‘Bang goes finishing my training for that charity run in October. I won’t even be able to walk the course, let alone run it. I’ll have to return all the sponsor money.’

  And the run was close to Dani’s heart because she was raising money to buy an MRI scanner for newborns on the maternity unit. ‘Unless the organisers will let me run in your place,’ Hayley said thoughtfully.

  Danielle stared at her in surprise. ‘I can’t ask you to do that. You hate running.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s for a good cause. I can run it for you. Remember, we agreed, this is the Year of Saying Yes. We’ve both had a horrible year.’ Hayle
y’s own life had imploded just over a year ago, when Evan, her fiancé, had been killed while trying to rescue someone from an industrial fire; and Danielle’s husband Leo had left her unexpectedly for someone else, nine months ago. They’d supported each other through the wreckage of their lives and, the previous month, when Danielle’s decree nisi had come through and the anniversary of Evan’s death had passed, they’d agreed that they’d spend the next year saying yes to every opportunity that came their way. The theory was, it would help them both to move on and live life to the full. Or, as Dani had put it, living well was the best revenge and she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life crying over someone who didn’t love her any more.

  ‘We agreed we’d make the most out of life and say yes to every opportunity,’ Haley reminded her. ‘So you have to say yes to me taking your place, and we’ll talk the organisers into bending the rules slightly if they have to. They can’t expect you to run with a broken foot—and surely it’s better to have a substitute so the hospital can keep the sponsor money towards the scanner?’

  ‘If you’re really sure,’ Danielle said, ‘then thank you.’ She bit her lip. ‘But that’s not the worst bit.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘I’m so sorry, but I’m not going to be able to go to Iceland with you next week. The orthopods tried to sign me off work. I said I can do a lot of my job sitting down—which I can, so don’t argue,’ she said, holding up one hand to stop Hayley protesting. ‘They’ve agreed to let me have the walking cast, provided I agreed to rest my foot as much as possible. But they said that hiking round Iceland for a week is totally out of the question. And, with the kind of walks we were planning to do, there’s no way you could push me round in a chair—not when there’s loads of rough ground, volcanic sand, and a fair bit of clambering about on slippery boulders. It’s just not doable.’

  ‘Then we’ll talk to the travel agent and reschedule,’ Hayley said.