Helping Dr. Hottie Read online

  Helping Dr. Hottie

  A Steamy Older Man Younger Woman Romance

  Mia Madison

  Contents

  1. Becca

  2. Owen

  3. Becca

  4. Becca

  5. Owen

  6. Becca

  7. Becca

  8. Becca

  9. Owen

  10. Becca

  11. Owen

  12. Becca

  13. Becca

  14. Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2018 by Mia Madison

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events, locations, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  PLEASE NOTE: All medical situations in this book are completely fictional. The author is not a doctor, and no one should take any medical advice or information from this book. The author assumes no responsibility for anyone who does so.

  Becca

  “Is he here yet?” Andrea’s words weren’t her usual greeting, but then again, today wasn’t a usual day.

  “Not as far as I know.” I twisted in my chair, peering over the edge of the counter in front of me. The emergency room at Hawthorne Memorial Hospital was fairly quiet in the mornings—which wasn’t too surprising in a small town like Taylorsville. As the day wore on, we’d likely see our fair share of action. And even more so on weekends and holidays. “I’m pretty sure we’d have heard something if he’d arrived.”

  “That’s for sure. The nurses haven’t been talking about anything else for days.” Andrea set her bag down and plucked a newspaper off the counter. “Can you blame them?” She took a long, lustful look at the black and white photo and then tossed it down next to me.

  “Nope.” I looked at the picture even though I’d pretty much memorized the accompanying article titled: “Dr. Owen Patrick Hawthorne Returns to Hospital After Ten Years Abroad.”

  As far as headlines went, it wasn’t the best, but with a picture like that, it didn’t need to be. The photo showed a tall man wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He looked more like a ruggedly handsome movie star except for the fact that he had a stethoscope hanging loosely around his neck. And he was standing in the middle of a recovery room in a medical facility in a small village in Sierra Leone.

  On cots behind him lay children and adults, some asleep, but some sitting up and looking at the camera. The article only briefly touched on Dr. Hawthorne’s decade of service with DBW—Doctors Bridging Worlds, but I’d found a lot more information online. Since it’d been announced that Dr. Hawthorne was returning, pretty much every female employee in the place had Googled him.

  Most probably didn’t get past the amazing pictures of him, but I had. In fact, I’d found something last night I was dying to show Andrea. Lowering my voice, I motioned her closer. “I found a video.”

  Andrea tossed her dark curls over her shoulder as she stared at me. “A sex tape?”

  “No!” I laughed and blushed at the same time. “Of course not.”

  “Too bad,” she said, shaking her head. She scooted her chair closer to me. “Show me what you got.”

  Grinning in anticipation, I clicked open a screen on my computer and started the video. It was tempting to watch Andrea’s expression, but as per usual, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Dr. Hawthorne. The man was all kinds of sexy.

  “What is this?” Andrea’s voice was practically in my ear as we huddled in front of the monitor. “Little League gone wild?”

  I laughed. “It’s not little league. Those are his patients. He organized a baseball game for the kids at the hospital.”

  “Ah. That would explain the extremely short short stop with the eyepatch.”

  “And the little girl in the wheelchair at third base.”

  Andrea watched the lively video for a few more seconds. “Umm… should sick kids be playing organized sports?”

  “He’s a doctor, he knows what they’re capable of. Look how gentle he is.” Dr. Hawthorne was the pitcher, and half the time, he stood only a few feet in front of each child and tossed the softest pitches possible. “Oh, wait, here’s my favorite part.”

  A little girl wearing metal leg braces was up to bat. She stood at the plate, a light plastic bat resting on her shoulder. Dr. Hawthorne threw the ball to her at least a dozen times before she managed to hit it. The ball only rolled a few feet, but the handsome doctor scooped her up in his arms and carried her around the bases as everyone else cheered. I’d seen the video dozens of times, but that part always made me tear up.

  “Wow,” Andrea said. “He sure is strong, jogging while carrying a child.”

  “She doesn’t look like she weighs very much.” Like many of the children in the video, she looked malnourished. But I was happy to admit that Andrea was right. Dr. Hawthorne was in excellent shape. His short-sleeved shirt did little to hide his bulging biceps. His stomach was flat, and he ran easily, as if he could do so all day.

  “Holy crap, he looks good. No wonder they call him Dr. Hottie.” Andrea was practically licking her lips, staring at the screen, and I didn’t blame her. Don’t get me wrong, there were some good-looking, fit guys who worked here at the hospital, but they looked like they got their muscles from endless reps on machines. Dr. Hawthorne looked like his fitness came from real life activities, not a gym.

  For a man who had just turned forty, he certainly didn’t look his age. In the final shot of the video, one that froze on an image of him in the middle of a line of smiling children, you could see his hair was graying a bit at the temples. But the rest of his hair was a deep chestnut color as was the sexy stubble lining his jaw.

  The video ended, and I grinned over at Andrea. “Definitely play it again,” she said, and I nodded, clicking the button.

  “Play what again?”

  “Oh, hi, Dr. Miller,” Andrea said as I hastily closed the video on my screen. But the sound wouldn’t stop for a few long seconds.

  “Good morning, Andrea. Rebecca.”

  Finally, the sound stopped playing, and I sheepishly looked up. “Hi, Dad.”

  My father had an eyebrow raised, but he didn’t say anything about the video. At least not at the moment. With a sinking feeling, I realized there was a better than average chance he would once we got home tonight. During the school year, I lived on campus at a university two hours away, but I came back to Taylorsville each summer.

  “Everything going smoothly so far, Rebecca?”

  Mentally, I groaned. This again. Last summer, I’d worked at the information desk, pointing visitors to the gift shop and the cafeteria. Dad thought that was an appropriate speed for me. But now that I had three years of college under my belt, I’d asked for something a little more demanding. My father hadn’t wanted me to man the desk in the emergency room, but they’d been short-staffed. As the chief of surgery, he was rarely overruled around this place, and he didn’t much like it.

  “Everything’s going great.”

  “That’s good. And it’s just for another week.”

  I exchanged a quick glance with Andrea. Her expression was full of commiseration. Leave it to my dad to think that my upcoming work-related trip would be a walk in the park. Every year, Hawthorne Memorial sent a small staff out into the rural towns in the surrounding countryside to do outreach. Last year had been my first time, and as the only non-medical member of the team, I’d bee
n in charge of all the scheduling and logistics. It had been fun and interesting, but definitely not a breeze. I wished my dad would realize that I could handle a lot more than he gave me credit for.

  He was still staring at me, a tall, imposing man, so I said, “I’m really looking forward to the outreach tour this year.”

  “Good.” There was a beep, and he pulled out his phone, stepping a few feet away from the desk.

  Andrea whispered, “He knows you’re twenty-one, right?”

  I looked at my dad’s back. He was wearing a white lab coat over dress pants, a crisp white shirt, and a tie. Though he was the chief of surgery, the administrative side of things took up most of his time. As I watched him, I thought about Andrea’s question. The weird thing was that he did seem to know that—sometimes.

  When I was away at school, he was a fairly hands-off parent, much to my relief. My mom had passed away ten years ago, so it had just been the two of us since then. At home he usually didn’t hover—although he worked really long hours, so he wasn’t there a lot of the time. At school, he let me live my own life. He only micromanaged me—and continually underestimated me—here at the hospital.

  My dad finished his call and turned back toward us. Andrea, who worked here year round, apparently decided it was time to come to my defense. “Dr. Miller, it’s been so great having Becca here in the Emergency Room. She—” Andrea stopped as we both registered the expression on my dad’s face.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Multi car crash on the interstate. Ambulances have been dispatched. Make sure everything’s good to go down here.” With that, he strode away, presumably to alert other staff and to check that the operating rooms were prepped and ready.

  Andrea and I sprang into action, too. She cleared off the front desk, making sure all the forms and papers were well-stocked. That would help for the accident victims who were in good enough shape to talk. In the meantime, I examined every inch of the waiting room and hallways, making sure there was nothing that would get in the way. When the medical team brought in trauma patients, every second counted.

  Things were mostly in good shape, but I moved back some trash cans and a plant that could possibly trip someone. I talked to a young mother about keeping her kids away from the hallways. Her husband was being treated for a broken leg. Her two kids had been very patient so far, but as time went on, they’d been wandering farther on their own.

  I even walked the path from the ambulance bay to the elevators, a trip that required passing through two sets of automatic doors. Everything appeared to be in order, so I went back to the desk to wait. I felt helpless—not that there was much I could do to help. I was a receptionist, not a doctor or nurse. But it was frustrating knowing that there were people out there who were hurt, scared, and in pain. And there were people in this building like my dad who could help them. But first they had to get here.

  What must it be like for the medical team waiting for new trauma cases? I’d seen them, pacing the sterile white halls, ready to spring into action. How different it must’ve been for Dr. Hawthorne working in third world nations all those years. Working in conditions so unlike here.

  And then a flood of medical personnel rushed past us, and I heard sirens. Shouts came from out front as ambulances arrived and were unloaded. My dad was still upstairs, no doubt barking orders to the staff that remained.

  Then the first stretcher came in. The first ones were usually the patients who were in the worst shape. This one was a teenage boy in a neck brace. A paramedic accompanied a doctor and two nurses as they hurriedly wheeled him through the front doors, down the hallway, and then past the automatic double doors that led to the elevators.

  Just as those doors swung shut, the main doors slid open again, revealing another stretcher, this time with two paramedics, a doctor, and a nurse. The patient was a middle-aged woman. As they passed, a nurse shouted to Andrea and me. “Call upstairs. We need another doctor down here.”

  Andrea picked up the phone so quickly that her movements were a blur. She spoke rapidly to our counterparts on the surgical floor.

  Then a new voice emerged from the ambulance bay. A rich, deep voice. “Move, people, quickly! But gently, this could be a spinal injury.”

  The stretcher rounded the corner, and I saw an EMT, two nurses from upstairs, and a man in brown scrubs, not a shade we used here. “Watch the corner,” he shouted. “Smooth but quickly, people.”

  He looked up for a brief second, and a jolt of recognition rocked through me. It was him. Dr. Owen Patrick Hawthorne. He had one hand on the stretcher and the other on the woman’s wrist. I couldn’t tell if the patient was a man or woman—whoever it was had a head brace and was obviously in bad shape.

  “Pulse is thready. We need to get her upstairs now.” Dr. Hawthorne was clearly in charge, shouting orders, telling the others what to do. Apparently, after all these years he still remembered his way around the hospital. He was pushing the stretcher toward the—

  Oh my God.

  Only one of the double doors leading to the elevators was swinging open. The other one had opened a little over halfway and stopped. The hallway wasn’t wide, not like in a bigger hospital, and with one door stuck, there was no way the stretcher and the medical team would fit through.

  Without conscious thought, I shot into the hallway, reaching the doors about fifteen feet ahead of the stretcher. With all my strength, I slammed both palms against the door, pushing as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge. The jolt through my arms was painful, but all I could think about was how much worse it would be for an injured person on a stretcher.

  Slipping quickly around the door, I peered at the hinges, trying to figure out why it was stuck. There had to be a reason.

  But nothing seemed wrong. The medical team getting nearer—I had to figure this out or tell them to stop. But it was obvious time was of the essence.

  Anxiously, I yanked on the door, but it wouldn’t give an inch. And then suddenly, I noticed a little lever near the base of the door. Crouching down, I heard wheels and footsteps approaching. I wedged my body into the space between the door and the wall, but it was difficult to simultaneously flatten myself against the wall and reach down. My fingers stopped an inch or two away from the lever. Taking a deep breath, I stretched as far as I could. Finally, the tips of my fingers touched the lever, and I flipped it up, giving the hinges free movement.

  Straightening, I slid along the wall, trying to get out from behind the door while pulling it toward me at the same time. Just as I was almost clear, there was a noise and the door slammed into me, hitting me in the chest and forehead. My head hit the wall behind me and I yelped.

  “What the hell?” A masculine voice penetrated my ears as I blinked, confused. The stretcher rushed passed at a dizzying speed, and a man with brown hair looked back at me as he ran.

  For a moment, time stood still as I managed to bring his tan, rugged face into focus. He had soulful blue eyes that widened at me. His well-defined jaw was lined with stubble, and his mouth was open, saying something.

  His face was all I could focus on as a rushing sound filled my ears. That gorgeous, masculine, handsome face was a sight to behold.

  At least until it went all blurry.

  Then the world went dark as I slid to the floor.

  Owen

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, doctor?” The red headed nurse had curves in all the right places—including her predatory grin. I hadn’t missed the emphasis she’d put on the word anything.

  “No, that’ll be all, um, Jillian.” Her name tag was right over her breast, and her smile widened when I looked at it. It would save me a lot of trouble if the hospital would tattoo people’s names on their foreheads. It was much safer to look at foreheads.

  Not that I was averse to female company, but I wasn’t use to said company being so blatant. I’d dated a few of my colleagues during my time at Doctors Bridging Worlds, but that had consisted of stolen kisses in
between crises. The occasional hookup. And every once in a while, a genuine weekend getaway. In the field, there wasn’t time for coy looks and flirtatious touches. There wasn’t time for much for anything at all.

  Consequently, I was unused to women fawning over me at every turn. Sure, I knew there’d been an article in the newspaper, but I hadn’t expected to be treated like a local celebrity. Then again, Taylorsville had approximately 15,000 people, so the threshold for being big news was probably pretty low.

  So yeah, I wasn’t used to multiple women coming onto me in a short period of time—but I wasn’t exactly against it, either. Someday, when I had adjusted to being back in the world of hot and cold running water and sleeping without checking your bed for poisonous insects, I was pretty sure I’d be grateful for the opportunities presented here at the hospital. But right now, I just wanted to get through my first day back.

  The morning had started off promising, with the exception of the young woman I’d concussed in the hallway. I’d had a brief glimpse of honey-colored wavy hair and wide, startled green eyes before they rolled back in her head.

  That should’ve been a sign right there that this day wasn’t going to go well. I’d arrived early, the sound of sirens jolting me into alertness better than any cup of coffee would have. Before I’d even sat down to fill out the damn HR forms, I’d already performed my first surgery here.

  But that was this morning. This afternoon had passed so slowly that I was beginning to wonder if time had stopped. No new traumas. No cases assigned to me. Nothing to do besides fill out the endless paperwork. And I couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was because of Greg.

  I hadn’t seen him yet, which was a little surprising since it wasn’t a huge hospital. Well, it was a lot bigger than the ones I’d worked in overseas, but not so big that I wouldn’t run into my old friend. And rival. And now, apparently, enemy.

  When my Uncle Max had told me about the job opening, my first thought was of my old friend and whether he’d want me here. But Max, the only Hawthorne still on the board of Hawthorne Memorial, had assured me that that was all water under the bridge.