After One Forbidden Night...

He collapsed against her and she could feel the dampness of his skin and the warmth of his breath against her neck. She couldn’t resist the feel of him, satiated and relaxed against her, and gently ran her fingertips of her free hand up and down his back. It was an act of intimacy beyond the passion they had just shared.

She lost track of time, savoring the feeling of closeness, of Tate inside her, until he lifted himself away. He was staring down at her, levered above her, still deep inside her. He was looking at her for answers, for an explanation of how they’d got to where they were and what to do next. She had none.

His hand brushed her hair away from her face. “I can’t talk about this right now,” he said, and she heard enough regret to break her heart.

“Okay,” she replied, lost for any other words. He withdrew from her body and left to go to the only closed room in the loft—the bathroom.

She sat upright and covered herself with one of the oversized pillows. She wanted to move—needed to move, needed to gather her clothes and what was left of her heart and dignity and get the hell out of there. But she couldn’t move. Every muscle in her body was paralyzed by the surrealism of what had just happened. Tate—she’d had sex with Tate. But it hadn’t just been sex. It had been the most cataclysmic physical and emotional experience of her life and in that moment she realized she loved him. And he regretted it. Did she? She had vowed never to act on her feelings, but now that she had how could she dream of taking it back?

The sound of the door opening brought her attention back to reality. Tate strode naked to the platform, with no embarrassment or attempt to hide his nudity. He was spectacular. She had never appreciated the draw of the naked male form until now. She was sure in the knowledge that the sight of him and the memory of how he’d felt inside her would be forever burned into her body, mind and soul.

He turned down the covers on his side of the bed and gestured for her to get in. It was an offer she shouldn’t accept, but it was too hard to say no. As she crawled beneath the sheets he walked to the other side of the bed and did the same. He turned off the lights from a master panel on the nightstand, leaving only the amber glow of the fire and the reflection of the city’s lights through the windows. She lay there still, not knowing what to say or do, until she felt his strong arm snake around her and pull her against him.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered, his lips only inches from her ear and the length of his naked body pressed against her back and bottom.

Impossible was the last thing she thought, before she closed her eyes and her mind gave way to the complete physical and emotional exhaustion of her body.

Tate woke from a deep sleep and felt his body stir and harden. He wasn’t alone—could feel himself pressing against soft skin and tight curves. He opened his eyes to the early-morning light and saw it: red. Red hair covered the pillow that lay beside him. Red hair that was unmistakable.

Chloe. As he acknowledged her identity in his head a replay of last night’s events rolled through his mind. He could see her tremble with his touch, her nipples pressing against the thin fabric of her tank top, the way she’d let him undress her and then reached out for him. And there was the way she’d felt, tight and uncontrolled beneath him so that he had barely managed to hold on for her release.

It was painful to think about it as he felt himself engorge further, pressing deeper into her tight, rounded bottom. He wanted to kiss her neck, caress her breast and slip back inside her—in part for release, and in part to prove to himself that they hadn’t been as explosive together as he remembered. But the cold light of day streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows stopped him.

How had he let this happen—and why? He hadn’t just taken any ordinary woman to bed, he had taken Chloe. Chloe—the beautiful, smart, no-nonsense, caring woman he had known for years. It wasn’t as if he had just realized Chloe’s beauty. He had always felt an attraction to her. But by the time they had met he had already started pursuing Kate, and he’d classified his feelings for Chloe as those of a normal red-blooded male. What had happened last night? Damned if he knew. All he knew was that the attraction he had suppressed for years had boiled over—with considerable consequences.

He ran his fingers through the tumble of red hair adorning his pillow. This was going to end badly. He wasn’t naïve about the nature of the medical profession. Women still had to work harder to prove their equality, especially in fields dominated by men. Women like Chloe—though he couldn’t think of any woman like Chloe—had it the hardest. Looking at her, no one would imagine that she could be as smart and gifted as she was beautiful. Worse, few believed that her success was due to hard work alone.

He had heard the rumors about her and resented them. Unfortunately coming to her defense would only fuel the fire. Personally, Tate could care less what people thought or said about his personal life. He made his own decisions—for himself and no one else. But as a woman and as a resident Chloe didn’t have that luxury.

The rumors would be vicious. The effect on her career would be unpredictable. And for what? What did he have to offer her? He had tried to settle down for a life of commitment and had it thrown back in his face. He wasn’t prepared to go down that road again, but he also wasn’t prepared to hurt Chloe just to satisfy a need in him he hadn’t known existed until last night. He had crossed a line last night that he’d had no business crossing and hated himself for it.

He needed to end this before it started—or went any further.

Chloe stirred, her eyes opening to unfamiliar surroundings as she took in the flood of natural light and the expanse of the room around her. She blinked and the scenery remained unchanged. She looked down, acknowledging her nudity before confirming to herself that last night had not been a dream. She was in Tate’s loft and they had made love.

Slowly she turned towards the other side of the bed—only to find disappointment at its emptiness. The feeling did not last long as her eyes caught sight of him sitting across the room in the kitchen, staring back at her. He appeared to have showered and was already fully dressed in black pants and a crisp navy blue button-down shirt with a pewter tie at the collar. An uneasy feeling came over her.

“Good morning.” She waded into conversation cautiously.

“Last night was a mistake.”

His words broke through her and her perfect dream instantaneously changed into a nightmare. He remained across the room, still making no effort to close the distance between them.

“I think it would be best if we forget it ever happened and moved on with our separate lives. Take your time this morning. I have to go to work, but the door will lock behind you.”

She didn’t have time to argue with him. She didn’t even have time to respond. She just watched dumbstruck as Tate walked out, pulling the door shut behind him and signaling the end to their conversation. How could he just walk away? Easily, she thought. He didn’t have feelings for her. A physical attraction, yes, but not the same depth of emotion she felt for him or he had felt for Kate.

She remembered him after their breakup—how angry he had been, how devastated. She was a simple night’s mistake compared to Kate, whose loss had almost destroyed him.

CHAPTER ONE

Six weeks later …

CHLOE STOOD FROM her chair and felt a familiar wave of nausea and dizziness encompass her. She steadied herself before considering moving again. If she had thought things couldn’t get worse, she had been wrong. Her relationship with Tate remained unchanged. She had made attempts to talk to him but it was clear he was avoiding her. The hope that every day she would feel better, less rejected, was long since gone and every day she felt worse.

She needed to finish with her last patient and go home. The symptoms which she had originally attributed to heartbreak had become unremitting, and it was getting harder and harder to function. Ironically, the last patient of the evening emergency shift was feeling the same. An “LOL” in distress: a “little old lady” presenting with feelings of weakness and dizziness.

These patients were always complex, taking a lot of time and attention to detail in order to rule out conditions that could cause the patient serious harm, and most commonly nothing was found. In this case Chloe had managed to work out a cause and had reduced her blood pressure medications. If only her own case was that simple.

“Are you okay?”

A voice cut through her thoughts. She turned too quickly and immediately regretted the action, feeling her heart beat overtime to maintain her balance and remain standing on her feet.

Her attending physician, Dr. Ryan Callum, was staring at her intently and Chloe was grateful that it was him. He was seven years older than her and had completed a decorated military career as a trauma specialist before starting practice at Boston General. He was very attractive, with an athletic frame, a rare combination of brown hair and blue eyes, and a collection of scars and military tattoos that completed the package and led to him being sought after by the entire nursing staff. To Chloe, he was a trusted friend and mentor.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re lying.” He wasn’t angry, but he was making it clear he did not believe her.

“Yes, but you are a good enough friend not to push the issue.”

He reluctantly nodded his agreement and Chloe relaxed. She didn’t have the energy to pretend right now as she rubbed her aching shoulders.

“You would tell me if you needed something, right?”

She looked at her friend and a little bit of her misery and pity lifted. She might not have love, but she had amazing friends who would do anything for her. If only she knew how she could be fixed.

“Yes, I would.”

“Okay, then, go home. You look like hell.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Chloe discharged her patient and made her way to the women’s locker room, located within the emergency department. Her head throbbed, and pushing open the door took the last effort she had inside her. Between the rows of lockers was a bench and she’d stepped toward it, planning to rest, when a sharp pain in the right lower quadrant of her abdomen overtook her. The pain was so severe that she didn’t feel the impact as her body hit the floor. She tried to call for help but didn’t get the words out before curtains of black entered her vision.

Someone was screaming, but it wasn’t her. Everything was muted as she struggled to see and hear what was going on around her. She felt herself being picked up and carried by a pair of strong arms.

“Tate,” she whimpered as the pain gripped her again.

“No, Chloe, it’s Ryan.”

Disappointment filled her before she lost consciousness again.

Tate scanned the operating room slate for the night’s booked cases. The locked doors to the secure unit opened and a porter entered, carrying a sealed box from the blood bank. The unit clerk who had been assisting him shifted her attention from him. “Is that the blood for Theater Seven?”

“Yes, it’s the second four units of packed cells and two units of fresh frozen plasma matched for a Chloe Darcy—D-A-R-C-Y. Date of birth: March twentieth, 1983. Blood bank number: 4089213.”

“Perfect. You can leave it there and I’ll take it back to the room.”

Tate’s body had frozen at the sound of her name and his eyes landed on the box, confirming everything he had heard. The box was labeled just as the porter had read—for Chloe. He replayed the exchange. This was the second four units, which meant Chloe was in serious trouble.

“I’m already changed. I’ll take it in,” he told the unit clerk as he picked up the box and made his way toward Theater Seven without waiting for her response. It was ironic that for the first time in the operating room he felt fear. Never had he felt that when working, but right now he was helpless. It was a novel and terrifying feeling all at once.

He fastened a mask across his face and paused at the window in the door. There were two anesthetists at the head of the bed and the patient was surrounded, but he couldn’t tell by whom. On the operating room floor a collection of bloody sponges lay soaked through and counted off. He could see the suction canisters that were filled with over two liters of blood. Was it Chloe’s blood? It looked like a scene from a trauma case, and he couldn’t comprehend that Chloe lay in the center of it.

He walked into the room, his confusion growing as he identified members of the gynecology team as the operating surgeons. At the same time his eyes glimpsed the trademark red hair that flowed from the top of the operating table. It was definitely her.

He handed the box to the circulating nurse. “Do you need help?” He directed the question toward the team, needing to do something.

“You need to leave, Dr. Reed.”

The voice came from the gowned surgeon in the hibiscus-blue cloth scrub hat. He narrowed his focus on her and through the confusion surrounding the case was able to identify Erin Madden, chief gynecology resident. Her voice and hat identified her without her needing to look away from the operative field. He had known Erin casually for years, and more so in the past two through her friendship with Kate and Chloe, but even so he wasn’t in the mood to be told what to do. He normally encouraged resident autonomy, but not today—not when it involved Chloe.

“Dr. Thomas?” He addressed the staff surgeon whose back was to him.

“Dr. Madden is right. This is not a vascular case, Tate. We are going to have to ask you to leave.”

He looked around the room once more, noticing the discomfort of the nursing and other teams. It felt like a betrayal from the people he worked with day in and day out, but on the other hand he knew enough to know that he had become a distraction—one that Chloe couldn’t afford.

“Okay.” And he left, going as far away from her as he could handle being, which was right outside the operating theater doors.

His mind raced with possibilities? What the hell had happened to Chloe? How did a healthy young woman end up in a critical condition without warning? And why the hell was gynecology in there?

A previously unimaginable explanation filled and settled into his mind. He watched, his eyes oscillating between the anesthesia monitors tracking Chloe’s vitals and the actions of the surgical team.

“Tate.” He heard Kate’s familiar voice and felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I think she is stabilizing. They kicked me out of the room, so I can’t tell for sure. But they have stopped calling for blood and I can see the anesthesia monitors. Her heart-rate has come down and her blood pressure is back up.”

“What happened?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything. The usual patient confidentiality. I only got here about fifteen minutes ago. I was checking the operating room slate to see how many cases were lined up for tonight at the front desk when the porter from the blood bank came to drop off blood. I overheard him verifying her name and blood bank number with the unit clerk.”

“Who is in with her?”

“Gynecology.” His resentment was coming through clearly.

“Oh.”

“Is it a hemorrhagic ovarian cyst?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know, Kate. Like I said, they won’t tell me anything.”

She stopped asking questions and he wondered if she had come up with the same diagnosis he had. Either way he was grateful for the silence. He needed to keep his entire focus on Chloe.

Twenty minutes later Kate gently pushed Tate to the side and went through the operating room door. He watched the interaction, unable to hear the exchange between her and Erin Madden, but noting that she was getting further than he had. She pushed through the doors again, returning.

“She’s okay. They won’t tell me what happened, but they opened her up, stopped whatever was bleeding, and she’s stabilized. She is going to go to the Intensive Care Unit overnight because of the large amount of blood products she received.”

“Thank you, Kate,” Tate replied, his eyes still trained on the window, not budging from his spot outside the door.

“Tate, they have asked us to leave and I think we should. She is stable and there is nothing we can do except get in the way and distract the team.”

“I’m not leaving her.”

“We’re not leaving her, Tate. We’re helping her by getting out of the way and letting them do their job. The same thing we ask other people to do for us.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him a little, to ease him away from his spot. “Tate, we need to go. You know Chloe would never want us to see her like this.”

His mind replayed all the ways he had seen Chloe and he knew she was right. Staying away from her had been the hardest thing he had ever done, but it was for her he’d done it. God knew that every time she had tried to talk to him there’d been nothing he wanted more than to take her in his arms and kiss her, to see if everything they had done together had been real and not just a memory that had reached fantastical proportions in his mind.

Who was he kidding? In truth he was terrified of the feelings she’d brought out in him and what it would cost him to have and then lose her.

He looked back at Kate, feeling nothing for her. How could he have been such a fool? He respected Kate, and intellectually she made perfect sense, but he had never been in love with her and she had never sparked the intensity of emotion that Chloe did in him. He had asked her to marry him because it had seemed like the next logical step, just like the series of steps he had taken in his training. He was tired of the single life, needed a wife, wanted a family and Kate met the criteria he was looking for. His use of logic had failed him for the first time in his life. Kate’s rejection had angered him and wounded his pride at the time. Now he was grateful for the near miss.

“Are you in love with Matt McKayne?” he asked, without emotion.

She seemed surprised by the question, whether it was at his directness or his reference to the man he knew she was in love with, he didn’t care.

“Yes. I think I always have been—even when I hated him.”

“Then you should be with him. Forget everything that has gone wrong between you and be together.”

“It’s not that simple, Tate. I can’t trust him.”

“Kate, that’s not simple,” he replied, pointing toward the door. Then he took one last look through the window and walked away—from both Chloe and Kate.

His steps were slow and purposeful as he returned to the front desk and the unit clerk he had spoken to earlier. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the response he was dreading. “Am I up next after the ruptured ectopic pregnancy?” he asked as casually as he could while his heart was racing.

He held his breath as the unit clerk double-checked the confidential surgical slate that listed patient names, procedures and diagnoses. “Yes. As soon as they are done with Dr. Darcy we will be sending for your patient, Dr. Reed.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled and he kept walking, not thinking about his destination but more of the confirmation he had hoped not to receive. Chloe was pregnant—or had been pregnant. Was he the father? Was he responsible for the pregnancy that had almost killed her?

The door to the operating room opened again and Ryan Callum walked through.

“Is she still in?” Ryan asked, with a coldness Tate had not expected emanating from him.

He wasn’t in the mood to play games. “Yes. Do you know what happened to her?”

“Yes.”

Tate waited, but no more words came from the other man and new hostility radiated from him. Ryan, who had never been confrontational, had changed from the direct, no-nonsense man he had been. The question was why? In a night with so many unanswered questions it was the last thing he needed.

“I’m asking,” Tate replied, not trying to escalate the conversation, knowing he had a thin grip on his temper.

“If Chloe wanted you to know something she would have told you.”

Told him what? That there was a reason Ryan Callum knew about her pregnancy and he didn’t? It was a thought he couldn’t stomach and he wanted it out of his mind.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the brilliant surgeon, Tate, figure it out.”

He didn’t want to have to think about any more than he already was. At the moment he would much rather be the father of her life-threatening pregnancy than think there was a possibility that Ryan was.

“So I’m to blame? Is that what you think?”

“She said your name, not mine, as I carried her near lifeless body to get help. That is what I think.”

The image flashed before his eyes, and judging from the scene in the operating theater Tate knew Ryan’s characterization was right. Before he could respond Ryan walked past him toward the bank of theaters, which was fortunate because he had no response. Did that mean he was the father? Ryan hadn’t ruled himself out, but what did it say about Chloe that she would ask for him as she lay dying?

CHAPTER TWO

EVERYTHING HURT. IT was her first thought as outside sounds began to intrude. She tried to move, to ease the ache, but nothing in her body responded. She took a breath and became immediately cognizant of pain and pressure in her mouth and throat. She tried to pull at it, but couldn’t move her hands. When she finally moved she felt the resistance of straps on her wrists.

A monitor rang out and it calmed her as a familiar sound. She felt a hand curl around hers and tried to hold it.

“Chloe, it’s Kate.”

Kate. She didn’t know where she was, but Kate was here. She heard her friend’s voice again, but couldn’t make out the words. She strained to understand, wanted to move, to breathe, but everything was so hard and met with such resistance.

She heard the alarm ring again as she struggled.

Someone with a voice she didn’t recognize entered the room and she could hear Kate directing the woman before she felt a hand calmingly stroke her forehead and hair.

She only understood a few of Kate’s words but it was enough. “Stay calm, okay? Intubated … Intensive Care Unit … tube out. Stay calm.”

She focused all her efforts on opening the heavy lids of her eyes to see Kate as her dark hair and her face slowly came into focus. She had to work twice as hard not to give in to the temptation to close them again.

There was another voice she didn’t recognize, and once again she couldn’t understand everything, so instead focused on Kate.

“Chloe, you heard that? I have to go for a few minutes while they evaluate you. No room for big dumb surgeons on these occasions. I am not going to be far, though, and will be back here as soon as they let me, okay?”

She processed the information and finally, with great effort, managed to move her head in understanding. She watched Kate’s eyes fill with relief and felt her friend squeeze her hand one last time before she left.

Over the next few minutes she was aware of the room filling with more and more people. She was also aware that if she wanted the tube out she was going to have to concentrate on everything she was being asked to do, even though it was a struggle. After what seemed like a lifetime she took her first breath on her own, and even the irritation in her throat couldn’t dampen her relief. She felt a nurse thread the oxygen nasal prongs around her face and into her nose as air gently began to blow, and she was grateful for anything that made breathing less hard.

As fast as the room had filled it began to empty, until only one person remained. With only one person to focus on it was easier, and she recognized the face, dark tortoiseshell glasses and pulled-back blonde hair of her friend Erin Madden pulling up a chair beside the bed. Through her emerging fog she could tell Erin wasn’t here as her friend. Why was gynecology involved in her care?