CHAPTER ONE

      “NEW YORK IS at a standstill. Bridges and tunnels have been closed. What a great last-minute Christmas gift from old Saint Nick. NYPD are advising if you don’t have to go out, don’t. New York hasn’t seen a blizzard like this since the late seventies...”

      Ella shut the radio off. She didn’t know who had left it running on an annoying Christmas music channel, but at least the radio host had it right—there hadn’t been a blizzard in New York City like this in quite some time.

      And she knew that without listening to some awful music station, because her aching feet were a grim reminder of what heavy snowfall did to people. She’d just wrapped up eight hours on the ER floor and since Charles Davenport said that everyone was to stay put because of the blizzard, she was stuck here.

      At least the hospital was more prepared for a brownout this time. Well, in theory. Ella would believe it when she saw it. Charles had electricians and system specialists working on the new generators to make sure they didn’t fail, like the old ones had.

      Still, the storm raging outside was a doozy.

      It wasn’t like it was anything new, the storm that was, it felt like it had been storming for months on end, but the meteorologists were calling this storm the worst of them all. Ella was skeptical. How could this storm be worse than the last one? In reality, she thought probably the weatherman was exaggerating and it would be nothing.

      But since the new shift couldn’t get in, it meant that she was still on duty, even though she had just worked a long one.

      Not that Ella minded in the least bit. It meant she could avoid the obligatory family dinner where her mother would lament her lack of having a husband and providing her with grandchildren.

      Which was all her parents ever thought she was good for.

      “By the time I was your age, Ella, I was married with three children,” her mother had droned on. “If you’d smiled more during your coming out, you would probably have a husband by now.”

      Yeah, because smiling more would have helped the men she’d been forced to smile and flirt with change their minds about a short, awkward, ugly duckling in god-awful designer dresses that her mother had picked out for her.

      All those society functions had done was reinforce her desire to stay single and become the best damn trauma surgeon on the eastern seaboard.

      Which, working under Charles Davenport’s tutelage, she was fast becoming. Being snowed in and forced to work while her mother’s tedious society Christmas function was taking place was just perfect.

      So Ella relished her moment of freedom, far from her mother complaining of her perpetual state of single life, and settled down to enjoy a nice cup of coffee in the empty staff lounge while there was a lull between patients.

      Ella sighed as she propped up her aching feet. The lights were off and the heavy snow that was blanketing Manhattan gave a nice calming, glow outside.

      And she couldn’t remember the last time that Manhattan had been so completely covered in snow. It was nice. She liked the snow. She liked the magic of Christmas on her own. It was her mother who made Christmas painful.

      So she didn’t mind working an extra shift.

      This was heaven to her. She’d catch a few winks of sleep before she headed back down to the emergency room.

      “There might be some mistletoe in here!” The lights were flicked on and Ella squinted at the blinding light she was not prepared for.

      “What in the heck...?” she asked as she sat up.

      Two nurses in Santa caps were standing in the doorway of the staff room, blushing.

      “Oh, Dr. Lockwood, we’re so sorry, we didn’t know that anyone was in here!”

      Ella rubbed her eyes and was still seeing two large spots as she sat up. “It’s okay. I’m just a surgeon, I don’t need my eyes anyway.”

      Stacey, one of the trauma nurses, chuckled as she began rooting through a box labeled “Christmas Decorations” in the corner. “Again, sorry.”

      “What’re you looking for?” Ella asked, annoyed that her solitude had been broken.

      “Mistletoe,” said Carol, the other nurse. “We just have some down time and since we’re stuck here we thought we would have some kind of Christmas fun.”

      “Aha!” Stacey shouted, producing a very fake-looking piece of plastic mistletoe. “It’s not real, but it should do the job just the same.”

      Ella just shook her head. “You two have fun with that. Who are you going to kiss anyway?”

      Carol and Stacey were always scheming to land themselves rich doctors as a potential mates. They were Manhattan Mercy’s version of her mother. They also schemed to set other people up, but mostly themselves. Carol and Stacey’s targets were wealthy doctors, preferably attendings over interns.

      “Dr. Zac Davenport!” Carol practically squealed like a schoolgirl. “He said he’s never been kissed under the mistletoe before.”

      Ella rolled her eyes and snorted. She could almost guarantee that Zac Davenport had been kissed under the mistletoe before. It was probably just a ruse to get a kiss from a couple of pretty nurses.

      Zac Davenport was a playboy, and a handsome one at that. Sure, he’d aged since he’d come home from his last tour of duty, but it had made him even sexier. The boyishness had melted away to a hardened man, one who seemed to hide pain behind those Davenport blue eyes.

      Maybe no else saw the pain he was trying to hide, or how jumpy he was, like when the corks were popped at the wedding a couple weeks ago, but she saw it. She saw the change in him, because once upon a time she and Zac had been close.

      Although she thought they’d been closer than maybe he did.

      Still, she was always a sucker for those blue eyes.

      Eyes that had at one time caused her to go weak in the knees and melt. There was a change in his, but Ella seriously doubted there was much of one. Slime was still slime.

      You kissed that slime before too.

      She’d done more than kiss that slime. She’d given a piece of herself to him, a piece of her heart, and then he’d crushed it with his cruelty.

      Ella was going to say something else when Zac entered the staffroom. He didn’t see her as she hurriedly stood up, but her heart skipped a beat at the sight of him. She felt her knees weaken, her pulse start to race and her palms grow sweaty. He’d been here a couple of weeks, but she’d tried to avoid him as much as possible. Not to be on duty when he was.

      Apart from the odd blip, it had been working up until now.

      Suddenly she felt like that dumpy, awkward girl in the lime-green dress. And she didn’t like that much. It was exactly how she’d felt when he’d spoken to her briefly at Charles’s wedding.

      She’d thought he was off duty. He was supposed to be on the next rotation and part of the staff that couldn’t get in. What was he doing here?

      “Merry Christmas, Dr. Davenport,” Stacey squealed as she ran up to him, holding the ugly fake mistletoe over her head and kissing him on the cheek. Carol snatched it from Stacey’s hand.

      “Merry Christmas.” And Carol kissed him on the other cheek.

      “Uh, Merry Christmas...” he said stiffly.

      Ella snorted. He didn’t know their names. That wasn’t surprising. They were only two of the trauma nurses in the department he worked in, why should he know their