One More Try

by Rachel Hanna

  One More Try

  By Rachel Hanna

  www.RachelHannaRomance.com

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Author's Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Thank you so much for choosing to read "One More Try". I know that this story is going to touch your heart in so many ways. In each of my novels, I try to dig into the deep emotions that so many of us feel. We've all been through tumultuous times in our lives, and you will certainly see that in Jake's story.

  I also want to invite you to join my Facebook fan page where we discuss all kinds of great stuff relating to my books, characters and romance in general. We have a wonderfully supportive group of people there, so I hope you will come over and hang out with us! Simply click the link below and click "Like"!

  Plus, I do LOTS of giveaways including gift cards, so make sure to LIKE my page.

  https://www.facebook.com/rachelhannaromance

  Again, thanks so much for reading "One More Try”!

  Chapter 1

  “I can’t wait for the concert tonight!” Sadie raised an eyebrow at Joan as she hung up the phone. They sat at the nurse’s station on the ground floor, facing a slow emergency room shift. Joan rolled her eyes. “You’re the rock goddess, Sadie. How could you not know that Cryptic is in town?”

  A sharp, tingling jolt shot down Sadie’s spine at the mention of the British group in the midst of a huge invasion. With three number one releases on the charts in the last two months, Cryptic was blowing up. But Sadie’s feelings about the group, and one member in particular, differed immensely from the rest of the world’s.

  She stood, stiff and aching. “I hope you enjoy it.” She walked away briskly, needing time to cool off as images of Jake Donovan flashed through her mind.

  The beginning was vague, blurry, faded after two years. She remembered laughing and joking with a gorgeous guy with a British accent at her friend Marissa’s big birthday bash. They’d drank a little too much, flirted a little too much, and Sadie had been giddy about the amount of attention she got from the guy with the sexy sounding name all the girls fawned over.

  She remembered kissing him, his hands teasing her, squeezing her ass and pulling her against him so she could feel his arousal, his desire for her.

  At some point, they’d left the party together, and she found herself back at his hotel room. Only then did memories come clear, searing, painful.

  Jake fisted his hands in her hair and tilted her head back, pushing her against the closed door and taking her mouth with a demanding, tormenting tongue that danced over her teeth, lips, the roof of her mouth. She moaned, her hands searching for the hem of his tight black T-shirt so she could feel the smooth skin of his back stretched over the taut muscles. His groin pressed against her stomach, and his erection stood at attention, hard and enticing, and she hesitated but wanted desperately to reach into his pants and feel it in her hand.

  Jake squeezed her breasts, pushing her shirt and bra up and latching onto one nipple with his teeth, making Sadie cry out, her nails digging into his back. He growled, the vibration moving through her chest, and she wanted to climb him and crawl inside. He pulled away and dragged her shirt over her head, unclasped her bra and pulled it down her arms, and she ripped at his shirt until he tore it from his body.

  His skin burned against hers, the heat between them explosive as he took her mouth hostage once again, his palms working her breasts in sensual circles, kneading and squeezing until pools of warm moisture built between her thighs. She whimpered into his mouth, her tongue tangling with his as she fought to taste more of him.

  This time, she didn’t hesitate as she reached for his fly and opened his jeans, thrusting her hand inside and clamping it around his cock. Jake’s whole body shivered with excitement and need, and a deep, lusty chuckle came from Sadie’s throat as she stroked him up and down. He thrust his body against hers and, while they stood locked in a heated kiss one moment, before she knew it, he’d lifted her and tossed her onto the bed unceremoniously and mounted her like an animal coming for its prey.

  She pushed at his jeans, freeing his hard on so it stood, huge and erect before her, and he made fast work of her jeans as well, cursing in frustration when he had to stop to remove her shoes. She lay bare before him and would have been embarrassed but for the starved look in his eyes as he stared down at her. She didn’t have a chance to protest as he began running hands and tongue down her torso until he reached the place where her hips met her legs.

  He shoved her knees apart and thrust two fingers into her, and she shrieked in pure ecstasy as she exploded all over his hand as he assaulted her g-spot. She squirmed and tried to pull away, an automatic reaction, but he had hold of her, and she wasn’t going anywhere. When she thought she couldn’t take anymore, he tongued her clit in long, forceful strokes, then began to circle it, his fingers still inside her for ultimate stimulation.

  She came again, this one making her see stars with the force of it, and she fisted her hands in his hair, begging him to stop and not stop all at the same time. He laughed, and it only made the orgasm more intense with the breath and vibration so she shook with her release. And when he finally did release her from the sweet torture, she rocked to a sitting position and pushed him onto his back, crawling down his body and taking his cock in her mouth.

  Jake’s eyes rolled back in his head as he moaned in pleasure, and she licked and sucked at him until his dick quivered. He practically knocked her away, then grabbed her hips and sat her atop him, his cock buried deep inside her in a single thrust so she instantly came with a rush of dizziness. And yet, she couldn’t help but ride him, rolling her hips to move him inside her and touch every part of her while Jake moved her up and down on his shaft in a frantic rhythm.

  She felt him falter, and he screamed out when he spilled inside her, coming so hard she felt it and came with him. He held her tight against him, quivering from head to toe, and she writhed with her final release, and when he finally relaxed, Sadie collapsed on top of him, exhausted from the furious pace of their escapade.

  That wasn’t the end of it. They’d spent most of the night going round after round, until Sadie was so sore she was shocked she wasn’t bleeding. They fell asleep shortly before dawn, spent and satisfied.

  Sadie woke the following morning and rolled over to find the bed empty, all of Jake’s things gone, and she sat up with a sharp gasp before noticing the note on the pillow next to her. With disappointment and anger, she opened it and read it several times.

  ‘Dear Sadie, I had a wonderful time with you, and while I need to move on with the band, I hope that, should our paths cross again and you find interest in doing so, we can again spend some time together. Stay as long as you like; the room is paid up for the day. Sincerely, Jake Donovan.’

  Only then had she realized she’d spent the night with the lead singer of Cryptic, who had taken her for a one-night-stand and disappeared. Never before had Sadie been used, and it made sharp pains pierce her heart, her lungs, so she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even cry.

  The bastard!

  “Are you okay?”

  Sadie jumped, dropping the cigarette she’d lit when she’d made it out to the smoking area, and blushed. One of the RNs from upstairs had come out, and obviously, she’d gi
ven the last comment aloud. Pink faced, she nodded and said between clenched teeth, “I’m fine.”

  The RN gave a disbelieving look. “Sounds like you’ve got man troubles.”

  She shrugged. “Nothing new.” And it was true. She’d hated Jake Donovan since that day when she was twenty-one years old, nearly three years ago now, and she’d never forgiven him the transgression. She’d gone home to her mother and sobbed, and her mother had given her a lecture on safe sex and sex before marriage rather than comforting her for her misjudgment. Sadie had spent the last several months trying to avoid the rise of the band in the US, and she’d been on edge, the memories and the pain still fresh in her heart.

  At the same time, she’d started to let it go. After all, she had a career now. She’d finally graduated and gotten a fantastic job in the critical care ward at Fraser Hospital, the top trauma center in the region, where she did ER rounds for just twenty hours a month. She couldn’t ask for a better life, and she’d really moved on and grown up over the last two months she’d been here.

  But the mention of the upcoming concert tonight had been a trigger, like a dull razor tearing open old wounds and letting them bleed with nothing to help staunch the flow. How she wished she could go back in time and change things. That night had been the most passionate of her life. She didn’t so much regret the sex. But she could have turned down his advances. She could have drank less and had more sense. Or, if she really wanted to get laid, she could have cut off all emotion and expectation and realized it was going to be a quick fling and end.

  But it was too late now. She had to suck it up and get back on the job. She couldn’t risk her career based on some old battle scars that were her own fault. She put out her cigarette and walked determinedly back inside to wash up and get back to work.

  From the appearance of the waiting room, Sadie returned not a moment too soon. Apparently, there’d been a rush while she was gone, and Joan moved frantically between the intern on the computer, checking patients in and triage, where she called each person back to check vitals and log the complaint. In fact, the crowd kept her busy enough she seemed to have forgotten about Sadie’s unorthodox departure.

  Instead, she handed Sadie a stack of charts. “We’ve got everything from stomach flu to broken arm to someone who thinks they were poisoned out there. You ready for this?”

  Sadie nodded. Staying busy would keep her mind off everything else that had popped up to haunt her today. Opening the chart on top, she called the patient’s name, and a woman with an eight-year-old boy came her way. His arm was wrapped in a cloth spotted with blood, and she could only imagine what kind of rough housing had caused this injury. At least the mother was calm as Sadie checked his heart rate and blood pressure and wrote down height, weight, and pain level.

  She sent them back out to the waiting room and marked it a priority – the gash was pretty large – and moved on. Over an hour passed before there was even room to breathe, and when she and Joan had processed all the patients waiting for treatment, Sadie wiped the sweat off her brow and shook her head at Joan, who plopped heavily into a chair. “I like staying busy, but damn.”

  Sadie laughed without humor. “That was a lot of work. But hey, it’s practically the end of your shift.”

  Joan nodded. “Forty more minutes. And then I’m on my way to a crazy night!” She brightened momentarily, then snapped her fingers. “That’s right. I meant to ask you, but things picked up so fast I never got a chance.”

  With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, Sadie turned away, feigning interest in something on the computer so Joan wouldn’t see her face. “You ran off in a bit of a hurry when I mentioned the concert tonight. You got a problem with Cryptic?”

  Sadie didn’t answer right away, pondering what to say. She couldn’t be completely honest, but the acidic taste in her throat made her want to spit some venom. Hell, it might help her feel better about the whole blast from the past. “I...had an ex that left me with a bad taste in my mouth in regards to the band.” It was close enough to the truth without giving up the whole story.

  With a sympathetic nod, Joan took her own understanding. “I get it. Sometimes, a bad relationship can ruin the best things in life. Nonetheless, I’m going to be front and center with Jake Donovan dripping sweat on me tonight.”

  The intern wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I don’t care how hot he is or who he is. I wouldn’t want him dripping on me like that.”

  Sadie kept her thoughts to herself about being covered in Jake Donovan’s sweat. If anyone here knew what that was really like, it was her, and she wanted nothing more than to erase the memory. In fact, right now, her biggest wish was that time would speed up and Joan would head home so all talk of concerts and Cryptic would end, and her wretched thoughts about irreversible mistakes would end.

  She started to tell Joan to just leave early, but before she could get the words out, the emergency doors burst open and two of the EMTs who had brought in an elderly woman suffering from a mild heart attack, hit the desk. “We got a big one coming in.” Instantly, she and Joan were on their feet, the intern wide-eyed but serious as she waited for the news.

  “Six-car pile-up behind a bus that rolled three times after being struck in the side by a jack-knifing 18-wheeler. Looks like we have somewhere around twenty-four patients en route, some of which I’m told are high profile. We need to start getting stretchers set up in the halls and see how many patients we can release or move upstairs.”

  The intern, whose name Sadie couldn’t remember for the life of her, started typing, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “6B, Fay Walker, needs a room in ICU. She’s stable but on a breathing machine. 6C, Marcus Phelps. He’s stitched up and has release orders and scripts waiting.” She continued down the list of people who could move as Sadie and Joan directed orderlies to gather beds and equipment in preparation. The EMTs helped with setup until their radios blared that the first three medics were rolling into the bay.

  Sadie went into crisis mode, a calm, cool demeanor overtaking her. In these moments, she disconnected her emotions, unable to perform her job if she thought too hard about the pain and suffering of the victims of such an accident. She couldn’t let the woes of mortality stop her from being the best nurse she could be, the person these patients counted on to get them in and treated as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  Her determination, conviction, and ability to function under pressure were the traits that had landed her this amazing position. So, when the first wave of crash victims rolled in and two of them were unconscious children, she didn’t even bat an eyelash and proceeded to ignore the distraught look on the intern’s face. She and Joan gave them numbers rather than names, making it impersonal so they could be objective.

  As they rolled the three individuals back to rooms in the ER, EMTs spouted off injury information.

  “Patient twelve years old, unresponsive at the scene. Lacerations on the face and arms, and possible spinal injuries.”

  “Likely shattered pelvis, broken ribs, and possible punctured lung.”

  “Conscious on the scene, but heavy blood loss and suspected internal bleeding. Lost consciousness on the ride over.”

  Beeping machines and shouted orders for blood, IV fluids, and other equipment and supplies blended into a cacophony, and the raucous only grew as more patients arrived. Sadie concentrated on one case at a time, stacking charts in order of severity as trauma teams and ER doctors moved into rooms with the worst victims. She headed the effort, but Joan was on her toes, and finally, everyone was logged and there were thirty seconds to breathe as teams of doctors took over the worst of it.

  She knew she’d be back on rounds in no time, but she wanted to find Joan, tell her to head out and go to her concert. The next shift had come in and started working frantically with them, and it was already far past time for Joan to go home. When she found her friend, the woman was pale, her eyes rimmed with red, and she sat at the front desk next to the intern, loo
king for all the world like a patient in shock.

  With a frown of concern, Sadie asked, “Joan, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  Joan nodded, a single tear spilling from her eye, and she sniffled. “I’m fine.”

  Wondering if Joan could be that upset about being late, Sadie offered a small smile. “You know, you don’t have to stay. You’re welcome to leave and go enjoy your concert.”

  Suddenly Joan’s lip quivered, and she burst into sobs, covering her face with her hands. The intern looked up at Sadie, who thought, her name is Tiff, a random thought out of nowhere as the girl’s green-tinged face with big, sad eyes, seemed to plead with Sadie. “How did you not hear?”

  Sadie was confused, and she felt as if she’d been left out of something. With a sigh of frustration, she put her hands on her hips. “Will someone please explain to me what’s going on? I mean, I know we’ve got a lot of very injured people in there, but I’ve never seen this sort of reaction from you, Joan.”

  Tiff shook her head. “The concert’s canceled, Sadie. The bus in the accident...it was the tour bus.”

  Sadie’s heart stopped, and the room spun. With the children, she’d thought maybe a school bus, and no one had given her any information on celebrity status. But most of all, she hadn’t seen a certain person that would have alerted her to the fact that the Cryptic tour bus had been involved in this catastrophe.

  “Give me the charts,” she demanded, holding out her hand, but neither of the other women moved, and when she glanced at the wall where they should be awaiting attendance by doctors and physician’s assistants, several of them were gone. Insistently, she nudged Tiff out of the way and reached for the keyboard, her eyes glued to the computer screen. Her fingers found the right keys, and she entered her search in the ‘patient name’ field.

  Jake Donovan.

  Chapter 2

  All warmth drained from her body. She didn’t bother reading any of the notes; the severity of his condition wouldn’t be listed there yet. Most of the important notes would be in his chart, needing to be logged into the system soon. But that didn’t matter. She found what she was looking for – the ER room number, and as Joan and Tiff called out after her to ask where she was going, she jogged down the hall and around the corner.