CHAPTER ONE

      DR. MELANIE HYDE stood with the other chauffeurs waiting and watching passengers outside the security zone at the top of the escalators. Overhead the notes of “Jingle Bells” were being piped via speakers throughout Niagara Falls International Airport in upstate New York. She wiggled the small white sign she held back and forth. Written on it was Reynolds.

      She was there to pick up the “go-to” orthopedic sports doctor. He’d been flown in on a private jet paid for by the Niagara Falls Currents, the professional football team and her employer. Her father, the general manager, had sent her on this mission in the hope that she might, in his words, “soften the doctor up.”

      Melanie had no idea how she was supposed to do that. She would have to find some way because she didn’t want to disappoint her father. Long ago she’d accepted what was expected of her. Not that she always liked it.

      Maybe the one physician to another respect would make Dr. Reynolds see the team’s need to get Martin “The Rocket” Overtree on the field for the Sunday playoff game and hopefully the weeks after that.

      As club physician, Melanie had given her professional opinion but her dad wanted a second one. That hurt, but she was a team player. Had been all her life. Just once she’d like her father to see her for who she really was: a smart woman who did her job well. An individual.

      In the sports world, that orthopedic second opinion came in the form of Dr. Dalton Reynolds of the Reynolds Sports and Orthopedic Center, Miami, Florida.

      She’d never seen him in person but she had read plenty of his papers on the care of knee and leg injuries. “The Rocket” had a knee issue but he wanted to play and Melanie was feeling the pressure from the head office to let him. More like her father’s not so gentle nudge.

      Having grown up in a football-loving world, she knew the win and, in major-league ball, the money, was everything. The burden to have “The Rocket” on the field was heavy. On the cusp of a chance to go to the Super Bowl, the team’s star player was needed.

      She shifted her heavy coat to the other arm and scanned the crowd of passengers streaming off the escalators for a male in his midfifties and wiggled the sign again.

      A tall man with close-trimmed brown hair sporting a reddish tint, carrying a tan trench coat and a black bag, blocked her view. He was do-a-double-take handsome but Melanie shifted her weight to one foot and looked around him, continuing to search the crowd.

      “I’m Reynolds,” the man said in a deep, husky voice that vibrated through her. The man could whisper sweet nothings in her ear all day long.

      Jerking back to a full standing position, she locked gazes with his unwavering one.

      “Dr. Dalton Reynolds?”

      “Yes.”

      His eyes were the color of rich melted chocolate but they held none of the warmth. He wasn’t at all who she’d anticipated. Old and stuffy, instead of tall and handsome, was what she’d had in mind. This man couldn’t be more than a few years older than her. He must be truly brilliant if he was the most eminent orthopedic surgeon in the country at his age.

      “Uh, I wasn’t expecting