The Army Doc's Christmas Angel

“I have a really ridiculous question.” Evie looked at her a bit bashfully.

“Shoot.”

“I’m not exactly sure where Kambela is.”

“Adao’s home?” Naomi knew what Evie was really asking. Is it anywhere near where you’re from? Her English, no matter how hard she tried, was still lightly accented. “It’s on the coast of Africa. Near the Horn.”

Right next door to her country. Zemara.

“Hey...is everything all right with you?”

Uh-oh. Evie’s emotional intuition radar was beep-beep-beeping like a metal detector in her direction...not so good.

“Fine! Great.” Naomi tipped her head toward the glass doors leading out of the front of the hospital and grinned. “Did you see that?”

“Violet being discharged early? Amazing. You did such good work with her.” Evie grinned and shifted Grace from one arm to the other. “Oof! This little girl’s putting on weight at a rate of knots! I’ll have ‘mom arms’ soon.”

Naomi smiled and gave the tip of the baby’s nose a tickle. Hope Hospital had hit the headlines with this little girl and would again soon with Adao...if the surgery went well and the rehab was successful. So much of recovery had to do with a patient’s will. The will to fight. The desire to survive. The stamina to confront what had happened to them head on.

She crossed her fingers behind her back for Adao, ignoring the tight twist of nerves constricting the oxygen in her lungs.

“Are you waiting for Ryan?”

Evie nodded, her smile hitting the ear-to-ear register. If a couple of red-breasted robins flew in the front door and began adorning her with mistletoe, she could easily be the poster girl for Cupid’s arrow. “He’s just come out of surgery. I’m swotting up for nursing college in the new term and he’s promised to talk me through all the signs, symptoms and early treatment for scarlet fever if I make him an early Christmas dinner.”

“Turkey and all the trimmings?” Naomi couldn’t hide her shock. She knew they were in love, but Christmas dinner on a “school night”?

“Giant prawn cocktails and pavlova.” Evie shrugged and shifted Grace in her arms again. Whatever her Australian-born fiancé wanted...

Naomi giggled. “You are well and truly loved up, aren’t you?”

Evie blushed in response. Her whole world had changed. “It’s not just me, is it? Have you seen Alice lately? Sunbeams. Everywhere she goes. And Marco can’t stop humming opera during surgery these days.” She drummed her free fingers on her chin and gave Naomi a mischievous sideways look. “I wonder who’s next?”

Naomi put up her hands and laughed. “Not me!” That ship of possibility had sailed long ago.

“Why not? You’re beautiful. Amazing at your job. You’d be a real catch.”

If cowardice was something a man could ever love, sure. But it wasn’t. Which was precisely why she kept herself just out of love’s reach.

She was just about say “Finn Morgan” to be contrary, but stopped herself. The man had scowling down to a fine art. At least around her. But the season of good cheer was upon them so she stuck to what had served her best when her past pounded at that locked door at the back of her mind: a positive attitude. “I reckon Mr. Holkham down in the cafeteria could do with a bit of a love buzz.”

Evie threw back her head and laughed. “A love buzz? I don’t know if that’s a bit too energetic for him. What is he? Around seventy?”

“I think so. I love that Theo hired retirees who wanted to keep active, but...if anyone needs a love buzz it’s him.” She made a silly face. “Anything to make him chirpier when he serves up the lasagna. Who wants garlic bread with a side of gloom?”

“Good point.”

Naomi could almost see the wheels turning in Evie’s mind...already trying to figure out who she could couple with the sweet, if not relatively forlorn, older gentleman. She’d tried to tease a smile from him every day since the hospital had opened, to no avail. Perhaps she should ask him for a coffee one day. Maybe he was just lonely. A widower.

She knew more than most that with love came loss and that’s why being cheerful, efficient and professional was her chosen modus operandi.

“Ooh, Gracie, look. It’s Daddy!” Evie took her daughter’s teensy hand and made it do a little wave as Ryan approached with a broad smile and open arms.

Naomi gave Evie’s arm a quick squeeze and smiled. “I’d better get up there.”

“All right. I’ll leave you to it, then,” Evie said distractedly, her eyes firmly fixed on her future husband.

Naomi took the stairs two at a time all the way up to the fifth floor, as she usually did. She put on the “feel good” blinkers and refocused her thoughts. She was feeling genuinely buoyed by her last session. A cheer-worthy set of results for her patient followed by a discharge. What a way to end a work day!

Watching a little girl skip—skip!—hand in hand with her parents straight out of the hospital doors and away home, where she would be able to spend Christmas with her family. A Christmas miracle for sure. Four months ago, when Violet had been helicoptered in from a near-fatal car accident, Naomi had had her doubts.

It was on days like this her job was the perfect salve to her past. Little girl power at its finest. And knowing she was playing a role in it made it that much better.

If she could keep her thoughts trained on the future, she could hopefully harness some of that same drive and determination in Adao. This was definitely not the time to let her own fears and insecurities bubble to the surface.

Then again, when was it the time?

Never. That was when.

So! Eyes on the prize and all would be well.

She hit the landing for the fifth floor and did a little twirl before pushing the door open.

Happy, happy, happy—Oh.

Not so happy.

The doctor’s hunched shoulders and pained expression spoke volumes.

And not just any doctor.

Finn Morgan.

Of all the doctors at Hope, he was the one she had yet to exchange a genuine smile with. Well...him and the cafeteria chap, but she had to work with Mr. Morgan and he made her feel edgy. The man didn’t do cheery. Not with her anyway.

Some days she had half a mind to tell him to snap out of it. He was a top surgeon at an elite private hospital. He worked on cases only the most talented of surgeons could approach with any hope of success. And still... King of the Grumps.

It wasn’t as if he wasn’t surrounded by people doing their best to create a warm, loving environment at Hope Hospital, no matter what was going on in their personal lives.

Not that she’d ever admit it, but most days she woke up in a cold sweat, her heart racing and arms reaching out for a family she would never see again.

If she could endure that and show up to work with a smile on her face, then whatever was eating away at him could be left at home as well.

She pushed the door open wider, took a step forward then froze. Her breath caught in her throat at the sound of the low moan coming from his direction. As silently as she could, she let the door from the stairwell close in front of her so that all she could see of him through the small glass window was his rounded back moving back and forth as he kneaded at something. His knee? His foot? She’d noticed a slight limp just the once but the look he’d shot her when he’d realized she’d seen it had been enough to send her scuttling off in the other direction.

Even so...

He was sitting all alone in the top floor’s central reception area, his back to her, the twinkling lights of the city beyond him outlining his broad-shouldered physique.

Her gut instinct was to go to Finn... Mr. Morgan, she silently corrected herself...but the powerful “back off” vibes emanating from him kept her frozen at the stairwell door.

She’d been flying so high after finishing with Violet she’d thought she’d put her extra energy to use helping Adao settle in. She’d already been assigned as his physiotherapist—work that wouldn’t begin until after his surgery with Finn Morgan—but she thought meeting him today might help him know there was someone who understood his world. His fears.

She pressed her hand against the glass as another low moan traveled across from the sofa where Finn remained resolutely hunched over his leg.

Something about his body language pierced straight through to her heart. A fellow lost soul trying to navigate a complicated world the best he could?

Or just a grump?

From what she’d seen, the man wouldn’t know a good mood if it bit him on the nose.

She pulled her gaze away from him and searched the skyline for Adao’s helicopter. She’d come here to find her patient, not snoop on a doctor clearly having a private moment.

She had little doubt the little boy was experiencing so many things that she had all those years ago when she’d arrived in the UK from Zemara. The language barrier. The strange faces. No family.

She swallowed against the lump forming in her throat and squeezed her eyes tight.

It was a long time ago.

Eleven years, two months and a day, to be exact.

Long enough to have moved on.

At least that’s what logic told her. But how did you ever forget the day you saw everyone you loved herded into a truck and driven away off to the mountains? Mountains rumored to be scarred with pre-dug mass graves for anyone the rebels deemed unfit for their indiscriminatingly cruel army.

Blinking back the inevitable sting of tears, she gave herself a sharp shake and forced herself to paste on a smile. Her life was a good one. She was doing her dream job. In one of the most beautiful cities in the world, no less. Every day she was able to help and nurture children who, against the odds, always found a way to see the good in things.

So that’s what she did, too. Focusing on the future was the only way she had survived those early days. And the only way she could live with herself now.

She pressed her forehead to the small, cool window in the door. In the dimly lit reception area—the lights were always lowered after seven at night—Finn had turned his face so that she could clearly see his profile.

He was a handsome man. Not storybook English—blond and blue-eyed, the way she’d once imagined everyone looked before she’d arrived in the UK. More...rugged, as if he’d just stepped off a plane from a long, arduous trek across the Alps rather than a doctor who had taken the elevator up from the surgical ward where he could usually be found. Not that she’d been stalking him or anything. Far from it. He was an arm’s-length kind of guy judging by the handful of terse encounters they’d had.

Come to think of it, every time their paths had crossed since the hospital had opened—either going into or coming out of a session—he’d bristled.

Physically bristled.

Not the usual effect she had on people but, hey...she didn’t need to be his bestie, she just needed a quality working relationship. That...and a bit of professional respect would be nice. Having seen his work on a near enough daily basis, she knew he respected her work...it would just be nice if that respect included the occasional smile or “Thank you.”

His hair was a rich, dark brown. A tangled mess of waves that could easily turn to curls if it grew out. He was a big man. Not fat. No. Tall and solidly built. A “proper” man, as her birth mother would have said. A real man.

She swallowed back the sting of tears that inevitably followed when she thought of her mother. Her beautiful mother, who had worked so hard to pay for her extra lessons from any of the aid workers who had been based out of her hometown for as long as she could remember.

And then, of course, there was also her foster mother. The one who had taught her that she still had it in her to be brave. Face the maze of applications she needed to complete to get into medical school one day and, eventually, fulfil her dream of working as a pediatric physiotherapist.

Touch, she’d come to realize, was one of the most curative things of all.

Finn shifted around on the sofa and—Oh!

Her fingers wove together and she pressed her hands to her mouth to stem her own cry. He wore a prosthesis. She’d had no idea.

And from the looks of things, his leg was hurting. A man as strong and capably built as Finn would have to be in some serious pain to look the way he did now. Slightly ashen. Breath catching. Unaware of everything else around him.

Instinct took over.

Before she thought better of it, she was by his side.

“Please. Perhaps I can help massage...” The rest of her offer died on her lips as she saw equal hits of horror and anger flash across his gray eyes.

She stood, completely frozen, mesmerized by their near-mystical depths.

How had she never noticed them before? So...haunted. She wondered if her dark eyes looked the same.

“What are you doing here?” Finn hastily grabbed his prosthesis and strapped it back on, despite the redness she saw engulfing his knee.

“I was just—I...”

I wanted to help.

“Well?” Finn rose alongside her, the scent of cotton and forest hitting her senses as he did.

She was tall so it took a lot of height to make her feel small. If the irritation radiating from him wasn’t making her feel as if she’d invaded an incredibly private moment, she could almost imagine herself feeling delicate in his presence.

Delicate?

What was that about?

Finn scanned her uniform for her employee badge, though she was sure he already knew her name. It was his signature on the forms requesting her as Adao’s physio.

She sucked in a breath. This was about Adao, not about Finn. Although...

Not your business. You have your secrets. He has his.

“Sorry. Please. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No.” Finn stared at her for a moment then swiped at the air between them, causing her to flinch. “What do you need?”

“I-I was here to help with Adao,” she stammered. “I thought perhaps I could help settle him in.”

“What?” Finn bridled. “You think I’m not up to being my patient’s welcoming committee?”

She tilted her head to the side and pinched her lower lip with her teeth. Was he hoping for an honest answer? Or was this the famous British sense of humor at play?

Her silence seemed to give him the “No” he was expecting. His swift change of expression told her he was already dismissing her.

So much for trying to go the extra mile! She was about to tell him Adao was her patient too when, mercifully, Finn’s phone buzzed and those penetrating, moonstone-colored eyes of his relaxed their spotlight grip on her.

He was as chatty on the phone as he was with her. A few responses of “Yeah. Yeah. Got it...” later and he was beckoning her to join him.

Okay.

He swiftly crossed to the bank of elevators—so quickly it was difficult to see how he hid the pain—and punched the illuminated button as he pulled his key card out of his pocket. Only staff were allowed up onto the roof and the magnetic key cards were the only way of taking the elevator up there. “Adao’s ten minutes out. You done any helicopter arrivals before?”

She shook her head. Not here anyway. She’d seen more than her fair share before she’d left Zemara, but usually those helicopters had been filled with rebels wielding machine guns. Not charity workers with patients about to undergo life-altering surgery.

“Right.” Finn pulled a crumpled bit of notepaper out of his pocket. “Adao’s seven years old, suffering from—”

“Multiple injuries as a result of a landmine explosion,” Naomi cut in. She’d read the case. Memorized it. It had all but scored itself straight into her heart if the truth be told, but that wasn’t what this showdown was about. She kept on talking as the elevator doors opened and the hit of wintry air all but took her breath away. “Adao’s injuries include loss of his right arm. Efforts have been made to keep infection to a minimum, but our goal is to ensure he retains as much use of his shoulder as possible so that any use of a pros—’ She stopped, her eyes clashing with Finn’s—Mr. Morgan’s—as he wheeled on her.

“Fine. Good. I see you’re up on the case. How’s about we have a bit of quiet time before the chaos begins, yeah?”

Naomi nodded and looked away, forcing herself to focus on the crisp, starlit sky above them.

No problem.

She’d obviously seen far more than Finn—Mr. Morgan—had wanted her to. An incredibly private moment for a man who clearly didn’t do vulnerability.

Vulnerability and strength were two of the reasons she’d chosen to work at Hope. Most of the children here were going through something frightening. Loss of a limb. Surgery. Illnesses that meant they would be facing a future that would present hurdle after hurdle. And despite all the pain and all the suffering, the bulk of the children confronted their futures with a courage that amazed her on a daily basis. If she could be a part of making their future something to actually look forward to, then she was going to give it her all.

She tipped her head up and let the wind skid across her features as she sought out the Milky Way. The night was so clear she spotted it almost instantly. She was constantly amazed by the band of light made up of so many stars, so faraway, they were indistinguishable to the naked eye. In Zemara, they called the spiral galaxy they were such a small part of the Path of Spirits. This was where her family must be now...far above her...looking down...

A rippling of goose-pimples shot across her arms, but it wasn’t the cold that had instigated them.

Guilt had a lot to answer for. Here she was at one end of the galaxy while her family were...only heaven knew where. It wasn’t fair.

“Look.” Finn’s rich voice broke through the thick silence. “Over there.”

She turned and followed the line of his arm and saw the helicopter emerging from the darkness.

CHAPTER THREE

NAOMI’S EYES WERE trained on the helicopter but all Finn could focus on was her.

Why had he snapped at her like he had?

It wasn’t her fault she’d seen him in the lounge...without his leg...exposed as the embittered man he’d become ever since the future he’d thought he’d have had literally been torn away from him.

It also wasn’t her fault that every time he saw her his senses shot to high alert. There was no way he was going to put a name to what he felt each time their paths crossed, but his body was miles ahead of him on that front.

A white-hot, solitary flame had lit that very first staff meeting when they’d all gathered together in the hospital’s huge atrium and he’d first seen her. Even at—what had she been? Fifty meters from him? Twenty? Whatever. The impact had been sharp, forceful, and, if today was anything to go by, unabating.

From the response his body had had to her, she may as well have sashayed up to him in a curve-hugging negligee and wrapped him round one of her long, elegant fingers.

Not that he’d thought about her naked.

Okay, fine. Of course he had.

But it had just been the once, and the woman had all but floated out of the hospital’s therapy pool in a scarlet swimsuit that had made him jealous of the droplets of water cascading down her body.

What else was he meant to do?

Treat her with respect, you numpty.

Everything about her commanded a civility he could tap into for the rest of his colleagues, but Naomi? Whatever it was he felt around her it meant he simply wasn’t able to extend it to her. Not in the manners department anyway.

Naomi’s entire essence sang of grace and an innate sensitivity to both her patients and her environment. Her movements were always smooth. Fluid. Her voice was carefully modulated, lightly accented, but he didn’t know from where. He’d thought of asking once or twice, but that would’ve verged on curious and with half the hospital staff staggering around the hospital with love arrows embedded in their hearts...bah. Whatever. He should just stuff his hormones in the bin and have done with them.

And yet...even now, with her head tipped back as it was, the wind shifting along that exquisitely long neck of hers, there was something almost regal about Naomi’s presence. Not haughty or standoffish, more...wise.

Where he shot from the hip, she always took a moment before responding to his sharp comments and brusque reactions to her.

She wasn’t to know his brush-offs were the age-old battle of desire versus pragmatism.

Where he felt big and lunky, she was lithe and adroit.

Long-limbed. Sure-footed. High, proud cheekbones. Skin the shade of... He didn’t know to describe it. A rich, warmly colored brown? Whatever shade it was, it was beautiful. The perfect complement to her full, plump mouth. Not that he was staring at it. Much.

There was something fiercely loyal shining in those dark eyes of hers. He saw it whenever she was with a patient. But he could also see it now as she trained her eyes on the sky above. For whom or what it shone, he would never know, because he didn’t do personal. Didn’t do intimate. Not anymore.

As if feeling his gaze on her, she turned and met his eyes.

“Is there anywhere we’re meant to stand when they land, Mr. Morgan?”

Finn scowled. Why’d she have to catch him mooning over her? And what was with this Mr. Morgan business? Made him sound like a grumpy old man.

Humph.

Maybe that was the point she was making.

“It’s Finn,” he said. “Over there.” He pointed toward the covered doorway where a porter was wheeling a gurney into place then turned his focus on to the approaching helicopter...willing the beats and syncopation of the blades cutting through the thin, wintry air to knock some sense back into him.

Bah.

He hadn’t been mooning. It had simply been a while. Once he’d cut ties with his past, he’d thought that part of him had all but died.

He should be relieved his body was still capable of responding to a woman like a red-blooded male. So many of the soldiers he’d met during his stint in hospital...hell...he didn’t wish their futures on his worst enemies.

All these thoughts and the raft of others that inevitably followed in their wake fell to the wayside as the helicopter hovered above them for a moment before executing a perfect landing.

And then they all fell to what they did best, caring for their patient.

* * *

There were too many people in Adao’s room. It was easy enough to see from the growing panic in his wide, dark eyes as they darted from person to medical contraption to yet another person.

When they landed on her, all she could see was fear.

He was strapped to the gurney, completely surrounded by medical staff from the charity and the hospital all exchanging stats and information at a rate of knots that would have been impossible for him to comprehend.

Short, sharp counts dictated the swift shift from the gurney to the hospital bed and yet another stream of instructions flowed over him as they hooked him up to fresh IVs and peeled out another ream of information as they pressed monitors to his skinny, bare, little-boy chest. And when he called out for his parents it was all she could do not to tear her heart from her own chest.

“It’s too much!”

The room fell silent as all eyes turned to Naomi.

“I beg your pardon?”

Finn hadn’t moved a muscle, but his voice may as well have been a drill boring straight into her chest for the pain it caused.

She lifted her chin and met his steel-colored gaze. Yes, she was still smarting from his curt form of issuing orders.

“Not on that side.”

“Not too close.”

“Not too far.”

There didn’t seem to be a single thing she could do properly under his hawk-eyed gaze. But when it came to the child—this child—enough was enough.