CHAPTER ONE

      HE STOOD NAKED and felt the water splash over him. Eyes closed, arms raised with his hands splayed above him on the porcelain tile, Brett Ackerman dropped his chin to his chest. Water pressure that was fine for cleansing wasn’t strong enough to wash away the tension knotting the muscles along the back of his neck.

      He stood there, anyway. Planned to let the hot water run out and then to remain in the cold for as long as he could take it. His pain was his own fault. He’d been out too late after several grueling days of work, flying back and forth across the country twice.

      He’d been celebrating. Ten years since he’d sold the dot-com he’d started his junior year in college. A decade of his life had passed, and here he was. Standing alone in the walk-in shower in his elegant, historical, two-story walk-up across a quiet street from a flowered lot that led to the ocean beyond.

      He owned the house. The lovely two acres across the street. And another house down the street, too, that was split up into bed-and-breakfast-type rooms that were all rented on an extended-stay basis.

      He owned them both, and lived in this one, alone.

      Just as he’d walked home alone from the quaint neighborhood pub on the corner in the wee hours of that Tuesday morning in September. Where he’d celebrated by nursing two cocktails over a period of several hours and playing video trivia games with anonymous opponents.

      His life was on track. Exactly as he’d planned.

      And that fact was worth celebrating.

      His cell phone peeled, an urgent sound partially muted by the shower. It was only seven. He wasn’t due at the Americans Against Prejudice board meeting in LA until nine. His unscheduled tour of the home office facilities would follow immediately after. While the other board members were at lunch.

      His phone continued to ring. Brett continued to stand under the shower—remaining strong against the temptation to pick up—stubbornly determined to relax.

      As a nonprofit regulator—a self-made position that in ten years had grown into something approximating a national Better Business Seal of Approval designed to assure nonprofit donors that their monies were not being misappropriated—he was currently sitting on more than fifty boards around the country.

      The phone fell blessedly silent, and Brett lifted his face to the soothing heat sluicing over him. Enjoying the moment.

      Then his phone started to ring again. Shit. He’d made it through the first summons, but there was no way he could ignore a second, right on the heels of the first. At seven in the morning.

      So much for a little naked relaxation.

      * * *

      ELLA WALES ACKERMAN, RN, the brand-new charge nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital—a newly completed facility just outside Santa Raquel—was in the unit’s nursing office early on that Tuesday morning, going over charts and checking her email before her shift began. The thousand-bed facility had only been open a few weeks, and already they had thirty patients in their fifty-bed unit.

      Thirty babies fighting for their lives.

      She read chart notes from the night before. Saw that the little “ostomy” guy had coded again, but was stabilized. His liver was shutting down due to the nutrition they were forced to give him intravenously until they could do the surgery that would put his stomach back together. If they couldn’t keep him stable, get him well enough to tolerate the surgery...

      He was stable. They’d do all they could for him.

      “Ella?” She glanced up as Brianna Wood, one of her nurses, a twenty-eight-year-old transfer from San Francisco, stopped in the office doorway. “I know you aren’t on the floor yet, but I just wanted to let you know, we got word an hour ago that a new patient’s coming up from Burbank sometime this morning. A two-pound, six-week-old girl. I don’t know the particulars yet, just that she’s in a warming bed and breathing on her own.”

      “Let’s put her in D-4,” Ella said. The pod was their least crowded and also one that, so far, had no patients with ventilators. They talked about the attending physician and waiting for orders, and then Ella asked, “So, did you talk to him?”

      Brianna had been planning to ask her boyfriend to move in with her. Which meant leaving his job as a nuclear medicine technician in San Francisco to relocate to Santa Raquel. The long-distance relationship wasn’t working out well.

      “Yeah.”

      “And?”

      “He said he’d see...”

      The woman wasn’t crying, but Ella could almost feel the effort it took Brianna to keep her emotions in check.

      “You thinking about going home, then?” She’d hate to lose her. Not only were they still staffing, Brianna was a damn good nurse, too. But if she would be happier...

      “Absolutely not. I love this job. And if he’s not sure now, my moving back isn’t going to make him any more so.”

      There was a lot Ella could say about the importance of having a life beyond the man you loved, but she was the woman’s boss. And admittedly jaded where men were concerned. “He could change his mind.”

      Brianna shrugged. “Maybe.” She looked hopeful