CHAPTER ONE
DR. LEVI FIELDING wrapped his arms around Nurse Madison Swanson, positioned himself just right, and gave a hard thrust. Then another. Nothing.
The food that had lodged in her throat didn’t budge.
In the universal choking signal, she grasped at her neck, her rising panic emanating off her tiny body.
She couldn’t breathe.
Knowing the hot July sun wasn’t the cause of the sweat forming on his brow, Levi’s own fear whipped through him. His heart jackhammered against his ribcage, interfering with his ability to breathe. He gave a hearty heave, hoping he was dislodging whatever she’d choked on and didn’t break her in half in the process.
“Oh, Dr. Fielding,” one of the hospital picnic attendees implored, fanning her pudgy red face with all the theatrics of a true Southern belle from more than a century before. “Save her.”
He was trying. Ignoring the small crowd gathering around where he’d rushed to Madison’s rescue, his every cell tuned into the woman he held. He performed the Heimlich maneuver yet again, knowing that if this didn’t work he’d be opening her airway via an emergency tracheotomy.
At a picnic at the local park in downtown Angel Creek, North Carolina.
Which meant he’d be using something rudimentary to jab into her airway. Probably the barrel of an ink pen. Or if he couldn’t find one, he’d have to make an incision with, what? A plastic knife? What he wouldn’t give to have his doctor’s bag. His brain raced ahead, planning to do whatever was necessary to get life-giving air into Madison’s lungs. Somehow, he would save her. He had to.
At his powerful thrust, she sputtered, whatever had been in her throat flying from her mouth.
Levi said a prayer of thanks. For numerous reasons. The foremost being he preferred pretty little Madison Swanson alive and breathing. She was a great nurse. The best. But even if she hadn’t been, a nurse choking to death at a hospital picnic while surrounded by medical professionals—what kind of message would that send to the community where they worked?
Gasping and coughing at the same time, her hand went in front of her mouth. He turned her, assessing that she was indeed taking in air, that she was going to be okay. Tears streaming down her heart-shaped face, she lifted her heavily lashed green eyes to his.
The ground shifted beneath Levi’s feet.
Her expression gutted him, left him feeling as if something had lodged in his throat. Something hard, full of emotion, and unrelenting, something that would require more than the Heimlich to rescue him from.
Damn. That was exactly the same varoom that had hit him when he’d first met her. When he’d thought he’d met someone worthy of settling into a relationship with.
Then she’d come at him like a heavy truck, which hadn’t been at all what he’d been looking for. The last thing he wanted was to get involved with an overly forceful woman. Been there, done that, liked it, but the time had come to grow up.
After his last encounter with his father, he’d turned over a new leaf, decided he was ready to quit playing games, that he wasn’t “a chip off the ole block”, and would settle into a relationship, see where that took him.
He’d initially thought Madison would be that woman, but he’d overheard her telling another nurse that she played the game as well as any man, that she wasn’t looking for commitment, just a good time.
He’d known right then and there that no matter how attracted he was to her, he needed to keep his distance. But that hadn’t dulled his reaction to her. Not one bit.
So he’d avoided her as much as possible.
Today, there’d been no avoiding.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he began, wondering at how his knees wobbled like a newborn foal’s and why he wanted to wrap his arms back around her. This time to hold her close and assure her she was going to be okay, that he’d never let anything happen to her.
Totally insane. Outside of work, he barely knew her.
Only a few weeks before he’d have thought Madison’s enlightened outlook regarding sex exactly what he wanted. But his father had cured him of that attitude. He’d actually wondered if his reaction to Madison might partly be because he’d decided he was ready for a new phase in life. A more settled phase than his former playboy ways. Not marriage or happily-ever-after, but something more permanent than he’d been willing to commit to in the past.
If the thought of falling into old habits, his father’s habits, didn’t disgust him, he’d have been all over Madison Swanson. Figuratively and otherwise.
Drawing his attention, her chest expanded and relaxed in jerky breaths. Her fingers trembled as she swatted at the moisture on her cheeks. She looked in shock. As if she might pass out at any given moment. Or burst into full-fledged sobs.
An odd spasm tightened his chest.
“We should run to my office and shoot a few X-rays to make sure I didn’t crack anything. That last thrust was a bone-crusher.”