Christine Flynn - Dr. Mom And The Millionaire

She’d already seen her patient’s X-rays. The femur, the long bone of his upper leg, had fractured in two places. The distal break, the one closest to the knee, had also splintered into a jagged spike.

The good news was that she’d seen far worse. The bad news was that this sort of break often led to nasty complications.

“Was anyone able to get a medical history from him?” she asked.

“They had him full of morphine when they brought him in, but we got enough to determine that he’s never had any medical problems. Except for his injuries, he appears to be in excellent shape.”

“Excellent is an understatement.” A gowned and masked surgical nurse with an awestruck look in her heavily made-up eyes rustled through the bright, white-tiled room in her paper booties. “That has to be the most gorgeous hunk of muscle and testosterone to ever grace an operating table. No man that rich should look that good.”

Alex glanced up. As a surgeon, the emergency patient’s identity made no difference to her. She helped where she could, in and out of the operating room, and this man definitely needed her assistance. But the female part of her—the part she tended to neglect the most—was suddenly curious to know who she was about to put back together.

The X-rays had been labeled C. Harrington. Beyond that, all that had registered was the damage done to an otherwise impressively healthy bone.

Rita Sanchez, one of Alex’s favorite scrub nurses, approached the door of the surgical suite. “He may be gorgeous, Michelle,” she conceded, her tone disapproving, “but he’ll walk over anyone to get what he wants. That’s what I read in the papers, anyway.” Her back to the door to push it open, her hands in the air to keep them sterile, she paused. “I wonder what he’s doing in Honeygrove.”

“There can only be one reason Chase Harrington would be here.” Pushing forward on the horseshoe-shaped knee handle to turn off the water, Whitfield snagged a sterile towel. “The man lives, eats and breathes mergers and takeovers. We’ve had a couple of manufacturing facilities take off here in the last couple of years. I’ll bet my golf clubs he’s after one of them. I just wish I knew which one it was,” he muttered. “The stock is bound to go up.”

“What about you, Doctor?” the matronly nurse asked Alex. “Why do you think he’s here?”

“I haven’t a clue.” Alex flashed her a smile, taking a towel herself. “I really don’t know that much about him.”

All she did know was that Chase Harrington was one of those people whose name popped up on newscasts and in print because what he did and what he owned set him apart from the masses. As she understood it, the man’s lust for multi-million-dollar mergers and trades was as legendary as his drive, his ambition and his tendency to run over anyone who stood in his way. Since his image routinely graced the covers of Time and Newsweek in waiting and exam rooms, she even knew what he looked like. She wouldn’t go quite as far as the early-twenty-something Michelle had in her sighing description of the man, but he was rather attractive—if one was drawn to the lean, chiseled type.

As for the body the impressionable nurse had described, when Alex, gowned and gloved, backed through the door of the surgical suite, all she could tell was that it was…long.

The familiar beep of the heart monitor underscored the quiet murmur of conversation as she approached the blue-draped form on the operating table. The trauma doctor and the anesthesiologist hovered at the head. At the other end, the surgical nurses and another assistant were setting up stainless-steel trays of barbaric-looking instruments that appeared more suitable for torture than healing.

The only exposed parts of the patient were the facial laceration Whitfield had already starting suturing and the thigh she would repair.

The thigh was what had her attention.

It was a mess.

“Ouch,” she whispered, and reached for the large plastic bottle of clear antibiotic wash Rita had anticipated she would want.

“Was he alone?” she heard Michelle ask.

Rita clamped a gauze pad with a hemostat, holding it ready. “You mean, was there a woman with him?”

“This suture’s too big.” Metal ticked softly against metal when the curved needle Whitfield tossed landed on a tray. “I need a one-point-three.”

Michelle was the float nurse, the one who moved about the room taking supplies and materials to and from the team members at the table. “I’m just curious,” she defended on her way to the supply cabinet a few paces away. “If he’s alone, he might appreciate a little extra TLC when he wakes up.”

“I’d give up that idea right now,” Alex’s assistant chided. “I’m sure he has someone waiting to give him all the TLC he needs. The man dates models.”

Paper crackled as Michelle peeled a small packet open and held it out. “Maybe so. But no one’s been able to get him near an altar yet. Maybe he’s tired of male-fantasy quality women and rich society types.”

The bushy-browed anesthesiologist snorted. “I doubt it.”

Whitfield held up the fine-threaded and curved suture, eyed it, and went back to work. “I don’t think he spends as much time running around as the press says he does. I read an article in Forbes that said he puts in sixteen-hour days. His latest thing is the high-tech market. And sailing,” he added, as he methodically stitched. “It’s his passion. That same article said he’s putting together a team to race in the next America’s Cup.”

Checking his patient’s vital signs on the monitors, the anesthesiologist tweaked the flow of gas keeping the man under discussion…under. “I thought it was rock climbing he was into. Didn’t he climb Mt. McKinley last year?”

“I’d heard that, too.” Reverence entered Whitfield’s voice. “The man never slows down. I don’t know which I envy more. His investment portfolio or his stamina. I hiked the Grand Canyon a few years ago, but I can’t imagine climbing a mountain.”

Michelle sighed. “I wonder what he’d planned to do next.”

“I hope it wasn’t anything he had his heart set on,” Alex murmured. “The only thing this guy’s going to be climbing for a while is the training stairs in the physical therapy department.”

Looking from the four-inch gash in his thigh, she critically eyed the X-ray on the monitor beside her to judge the position of the upper, unexposed break. The team was still talking, their voices low, but everything they said only made Chase Harrington sound more and more like a man who played as hard as he worked and who wouldn’t have anything left for a relationship even if someone did slow him down long enough to snag him.

No woman in her right mind would want to fall for a man like that. A woman needed a partner, someone to share with. Someone who cared enough to be there even when things got rough. Someone who wouldn’t walk away, leaving her to handle everything alone just when she needed him most.

She jerked her glance toward the head of the table, annoyed with herself for becoming distracted, displeased with the unwanted direction of her thoughts.

“Move that retractor higher. Perfect,” she murmured, pointedly turning her attention to debriding the open wound. “I need to cauterize these bleeders.”

Ian took his last stitch. “I’m ready to assist.”

“Would you like your music, Dr. Larson?” Rita asked her.

Alex usually liked to have music while she worked, preferably classical and mostly to keep from inadvertently humming whichever Disney tune her four-year-old son had plugged into the car stereo. But she declined the subliminal diversion tonight. As she set about the painstaking task of manipulating, drilling and pinning to stabilize the breaks, her only other thought was that Chase Harrington was going to slow down for a while, whether he liked the idea or not.