Marie Ferrarella: Falling for the MD

Peter smiled. “I’d rather talkabout you.”

“And I would rather go to bed.”

No sooner had Bethany uttered the words than her cheeks turned an electrifying shade of pink. “I mean my bed. Alone. To sleep,” she added with an almost desperate note in her voice.

Peter let her off the hook. “Relax, Bethany. I didn’t take that to be an invitation.”

She was relieved, and yet…not so relieved. “Why not?” she demanded. “Do you find me unattractive?”

He looked at her. “If anyone could pull me out of my workaholic state, it would be you.” He paused, adding, “As long as you promised not to launch into another debate in the middle of a heated embrace.”

Flustered and pleased, Bethany was at a loss for words. She didn’t want to encourage him.

Yet if she were being totally honest with herself, she didn’t want to completely dis courage him, either.

MARIE FERRARELLA

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA ®Award-winning author has written more than one hundred and fifty novels, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the first book of the Wilder saga, featuring two brothers, two sisters and a hospital. We first meet the siblings at a sad occasion, the funeral of their father, Dr James Wilder, a man much loved by the community. James was an old-fashioned kind of doctor, and “his” hospital, Walnut River General, has attracted a handful of excellent doctors, two of whom are Peter Wilder and his younger sister, Ella.

This is Peter’s book. The forty-year-old doctor is a carbon copy of his father and, with his father’s passing, he finds himself suddenly filling shoes he feels can never be filled. He also finds himself in the middle of a battle. A major conglomerate is trying to initiate a hospital takeover, and size and money are on its side. The conglomerate also has Bethany Holloway, the newest member of the hospital’s board of directors, a smart, driven woman who thinks Peter is standing in the way of progress and the future. Battle lines are drawn, then blurred as each finds themselves also involved in a war of emotions, because the immovable object and the irresistible force are very drawn to one another.

I hope you enjoy this story and come back for more. And, as ever, I thank you for reading and wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Marie Ferrarella

MARIE FERRARELLA

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To

Gail Chasan

and the joy of family sagas

Chapter One

He’d known this day was coming for a long time.

Death was not a surprise to him. As a doctor, it was all part of the circle of life. But while he always concentrated on the positive, Dr. Peter Wilder could never fully ignore the fact that death was seated at the very same table as life.

His mother, Alice, had died five years ago, a victim of cancer. Now that death had come to rob him for a second time, though, he felt alone, despite the fact that the cemetery was crowded. His three siblings were there, along with all the friends and admirers that his father, Dr. James Wilder, had garnered over the years as a physician and Chief of Staff at Walnut River General Hospital and, toward the end, as the chairman of the board of directors. Despite the cold, gloomy January morning and the persistent snow flurries, there had been an enormous turnout to pay last respects to a man who had touched so very many lives.

Despite all of his professional obligations, James had never failed to make time for his family, was always there for all the important occasions that meant something to his sons and daughters.

Now both his mother and his father were gone, the latter leaving behind incredibly large shoes to fill.

Peter had become the patriarch. As the oldest, he would be the one to whom David and Ella and Anna would turn.

Well, maybe not Anna, he reconsidered, glancing over toward her.

They were gathered around the grave. Typically, while he, David and Ella were on one side of his father’s final resting place, Anna had positioned herself opposite them. Ten years his junior, Anna was the family’s official black sheep.

While he, David and Ella had followed their father’s footsteps, Anna’s feet had not quite fit the mold. He knew that she had tried, managing to go so far as being accepted into a medical school. But then she’d dropped out in her freshman year.

Anna didn’t have the head for medicine, or the heart. So she had gone a different route, earning an MBA and finally finding herself when she entered the world of finance.

But there was an even greater reason why the rest of them considered Anna to be the black sheep. His father had been fond of referring to her as “the chosen one,” but the simple truth of it was, Anna had been a foundling, abandoned as an infant on the steps of the hospital to which the senior Wilder had dedicated his entire adult life.

Since James Wilder lived and breathed all things that concerned Walnut River General, it somehow seemed natural that he should adopt the only baby who had ever been left there.

Or so he’d heard his father say to his mother when he was trying to win her over to his decision. His mother tried, but he knew that she could never quite make herself open her heart to this child whose own parents hadn’t wanted her. Maybe because of this, because of the way his mother felt, his father had done his best to make it up to Anna. He had overcompensated.

For years, James went out of his way to make Anna feel accepted and a wanted member of the family. In his efforts to keep Anna from feeling unloved, James Wilder often placed his adopted daughter first.

Despite all his good intentions, his father’s actions were not without consequences. While they were growing up, Peter and his siblings were resentful of the special treatment Anna received. Especially David, who began to act out in order to win his own brand of attention from their father.

Slowly, so slowly that Peter wasn’t even certain when it actually happened, it became a matter of their breaking into two separate camps—he, David and Ella on the one hand, and Anna, by herself, on the other. The schism continued to grow despite all of their father’s efforts to the contrary. Time and again, James would try to rectify the situation, asking them each what was wrong and what he could do to fix it, only to be told by a tight-lipped child that everything was fine.

But it wasn’t.

He, David and Ella felt that Anna had their father’s ear and the bulk of his love and attention. At the same time Anna, he surmised as he looked back on things now, probably felt like the odd woman out, doomed to remain on the outside of the family circle, forever looking in.

Maybe now would be a good time to put a stop to it, Peter thought. To change direction and start fresh. As a tribute to his father, who simply wanted his family to all get along. They weren’t all that different, really, the four of them. And Anna had loved James Wilder as much as any of them.

Snow was dusting Peter’s dark brown hair, making it appear almost white. He brushed some of it aside. The sudden movement had Ella looking up at him. Ella, with her doelike eyes and small mouth that was usually so quick to smile shyly. Ella, whose dark eyes right now looked almost haunted with sadness.