CHAPTER ONE

      ER PHYSICIAN DR. DANIELLE STEVENS crossed the parking lot toward the employees’ entrance of St. Mary’s hospital in downtown Vancouver with the sneaky feeling that her life had been cursed. If she didn’t know better she would swear it was Friday the thirteenth and the universe was having fun at her expense.

      She’d woken to rain—not exactly an unusual occurrence in Vancouver—and then discovered her shower was on the fritz and the water pipes were making alarming noises. Of course that meant she’d have to forgo her showers until she got someone to check it out. If that hadn’t been bad enough, she’d been out of coffee because she’d forgotten to stop at the supermarket and stock up on the basics. Basics like coffee, peanut butter, cheese curls and hair conditioner. Which meant not only was she caffeine-deprived, she was also starving and having a hair day from hell.

      Then she’d found an unwelcome gift—a half-chewed bird missing its head—courtesy of her neighbor Hilda Frauenbach’s cat Axel.

      Yuck.

      And, because her car was still in the workshop, she’d had to hotfoot it ten blocks in the pouring rain.

      Good times.

      Good times that were bound to continue rolling because although today might not be the thirteenth, it was Friday. And Friday nights in the ER could only be described as the second level of hell, because by the end of the work week any good sense people might have decreased in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol they consumed.

      Trying to ignore the sneaky feeling that her life was unraveling, Dani felt her hip vibrate and paused to dig her phone out of her shoulder bag.

      Thinking it was her mechanic, with yet another lame excuse as to why her car hadn’t been fixed, she swiped irritably at the screen only to discover a Facebook notification inviting her to check on what Richard Ashford-Hall the Turd—oops, the Third—was doing in Cabo Mexico.

      She took great pleasure in deleting the notification with a decisive jab. “No,” she told the screen firmly, ignoring the sick, shaky feeling she usually got when Richard’s name was mentioned. “I do not want to see what that sick, cheating rat-fink bastard is up to now, thank you very much.”

      And frankly, she had even less interest in seeing with whom he was doing it. She just hoped the woman knew what she was getting herself into.

      She hadn’t but that chapter in her life was closed.

       Thank God.

      She just wished people would stop reminding her of how stupid, naïve and trusting she’d been—or how fabulous her life could have been if she’d been prepared to stay married to a serial liar, a habitual cheater and an all-round spoilt man-brat.

      She shivered as memories of her marriage assailed her. She’d rather be living on a houseboat that was falling to pieces with questionable plumbing, eating peanut butter and cheese curls for the rest of eternity than be back in the vipers’ pit that was the Ashford-Hall family.

      Heck, she’d rather be dealing with Axel’s unsuspecting gifts than having to deal with spoilt, entitled rich boys and their creepy friends.

      Noticing there was a voice message from the mechanic, Dani accessed it, grimacing when, “Hey, Sweetness!” emerged loudly. She quickly turned down the volume before someone overheard. “Listen, it’s about your car. Are you sure you don’t want me to contact a friend who can give you a good deal on a trade-in for this wreck? I’m sure we could work out some kind of payment arrangement,” he said.

      His voice was heavy with insinuation that made her skin crawl—double yuck—and reminded her of the men belonging to the super-elite club her ex had belonged to.

      “Besides, there’s a whole bunch of frayed wires that I’m having a hard time identifying and there’s more rust here than an old tug boat. Call me. Anytime.”

      Annoyed, she called the mechanic back and got the workshop’s answering machine because the work week had already ended. Damn.

      “This is Danielle Stevens,” she said firmly. “Negative on the trade-in and the intro to your friend.”

      She was pretty sure the guy had illegal contacts, and she had no intention of acquiring stolen property. She might want to do things as cheaply as possible but buying a hot car wasn’t one of them.

      “Just fix my car!” she yelled. About to disconnect, she added a better late than never “please,” because her mom had taught her that people tended not to respond positively to rudeness.

      Drawing in a lungful of air, she held it for a couple of seconds before slowly expelling it along with her irritation.

      There. Look at her being all Zen and going with the flow.

      Okay, so maybe she wasn’t going with the flow so much as dealing. Besides, it wasn’t like dealing was anything new. So she was going to be without her car again this weekend? No big deal. It just meant she’d be walking the gazillion blocks to the marina after her shift. She’d done that before and survived too. It had been in her student days but she was still young, right—if thirty could be called young—and she was pretty sure a six-hundred-mile walk was good for her.

      Besides, hadn’t she noticed just yesterday that her jeans were getting a little tight? This way she could get that much-needed exercise she was always promising herself without having to give up peanut butter or cheese curls.

      It would be good for her. Great, even. Unlike the two years she’d spent as Mrs. Ashford-Hall. Two years she could never get back. Two years—make that three—she would give anything to erase from her memory.

      Muttering about the questionable heritage of the entire male race—car mechanics, landlords and ex-husbands especially—she stepped out from behind a line of parked cars just as an SUV roared past, hooting at her, the dumb woman not looking where she was going, and drenching her with a lovely mix of dirt, rainwater and God knew what else in the process.

      She gave a gasping shriek and lurched backward, arms windmilling frantically as she stumbled over the uneven surface of the road. The next instant she collided with the bumper behind her and went down like a felled cypress.

      Knocked from her hand, her phone went one way and her shoulder bag the other, spilling its contents across the asphalt.

      Stunned, and spluttering with shock at finding herself sprawled in the road, Dani closed her eyes for a dozen rapid heartbeats, wondering what the hell she’d done to deserve this day. She felt movement in the air around her and opened her eyes to see a pair of concerned moss-green eyes looking down at her from about a foot away.

       Whoa. Where did he come from?

      Pretty sure she wasn’t dead, she blinked up into a face so ruggedly beautiful it might easily have graced the silver screen—or her most private fantasies if she hadn’t been taking a kind of permanent hiatus from the entire male race.

      Even so... She couldn’t prevent her fascinated gaze from taking in a high, broad forehead surrounded by thick dark glossy hair, high cheekbones, strong nose, square jaw and a firm, masculine mouth perfectly framed by a couple-hours-past-five-o’clock shadow.

      The stubble gave his square jaw a toughness that suggested he was Alpha to the bone and didn’t care who knew it. For a split second she had an overwhelming urge to reach out and trace his sculpted mouth, maybe feel that rough, obvious sign of masculinity...but that would just be the shock talking.

      Her fingers tingled, as though she’d given in to the impulse to touch his jaw, and it took another couple of beats to realize he was talking.

      “You okay?”

      The