Dr. Single Dad - A British Billionaire Romance (Billionaires of Europe Book 6) Read online

  Dr. Single Dad

  Holly Rayner

  Contents

  Dr. Single Dad

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  First Time Lucky

  Introduction

  1. Josie

  More Series by Holly Rayner

  Dr. Single Dad

  Copyright 2018 by Holly Rayner

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Even with the gel comfort insoles in my shoes, my heels ached. Fifteen hours on your feet would do that. I was supposed to be off at four, but Ashley had the flu and Liza had a death in the family, so I'd volunteered to pick up the slack. The overtime pay definitely sweetened the deal.

  Plus, I liked working late enough to see the patients in the morning. I stopped into their rooms several times throughout the night, of course, but no one wanted to talk at two in the morning. But, by ten, I brought the kids who were well enough to eat Jell-O cups to hold them over until breakfast at eight. And for the kids who weren't well enough to eat, I had sticker packs. Their smiles made my job worth it, and I didn't get to see their smiles working the night shift.

  “Is it strawberry?”

  I bent down to hand a cup to Alice. She’d been in the hospital for two weeks while we tried to get rid of the infection in her lungs. It was her longest stint in a few years, and she was eager to leave. Unfortunately, with cystic fibrosis, she’d be back eventually. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.

  I nodded. “Isn’t it always? I know what your favorite flavor is.”

  She grabbed it from my hands and peeled off the aluminum lid.

  “Sugar-free,” I mouthed over Alice’s head to her mother, who was looking bleary-eyed on the cot next to her daughter’s hospital bed. Sarah gave me a sleepy smile and slipped her feet out from under the blankets and dropped them on the cold linoleum floor.

  I’ve always felt bad for the parents of the children on my ward. The kids are the ones who are sick, and they obviously deserve my attention, but they are doted on day and night by everyone—doctors, nurses, family members, friends. The parents are the forgotten ones in the equation. Of course, almost all of the parents I’ve ever met love their children beyond words and are solely focused on getting their child well, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard to miss work and social functions to sit in the hospital with their child.

  The hospital can often feel separate from the outside world. While you’re there, it feels like life pauses. But it doesn’t. Life carries on, and for the parents of children who are terminally ill, they have to learn how to balance hospital life with outside life, and taking care of their sick child while not neglecting their healthy children. In moments when they think their child isn’t looking, I see the stress of it all on their faces. So, it’s my goal, every day, to lessen their burden.

  “How is your pain feeling this morning, Alice?” I asked as she slurped a big glob of Jell-O into her mouth. “On a scale of—”

  “One to ten, I know,” she said, rolling her little eyes playfully. “I’m a two.”

  “Just a two? That’s great.” The night before, she’d said she was a six. After hours of coughing up phlegm, her muscles were sore, and her throat hurt. Most adults would have said they were a nine, but Alice was tough.

  She nodded. “No coughing yet today, and my mom gave me a back massage a little bit ago that helped.”

  I smiled at her mom and then back at her. “Well, you have the world’s best mom.”

  Alice agreed with a firm nod, and her mom reached across the small gap between their beds to tug on a strand of her daughter’s red hair.

  “Well, I think having a super nurse like Nurse Jess helps a lot, too. Huh, sweetie?”

  Again, Alice agreed with a smile and I winked at them both.

  “I bet I can go home today,” Alice said excitedly. She tucked her knees underneath her, sitting up in her bed, one of her pillows tumbling to the floor and knocking her IV line.

  I bent to pick up her pillow, hating that I couldn’t agree with her. That I couldn’t celebrate with her. I’d spoken to the doctor the night before, and Alice had a long way to go before she could leave. Her white blood cell count was still too high, and her lung function wasn’t where the doctor wanted it to be.

  “Let’s just wait and see what the doctor says, okay?” her mother said, squeezing Alice’s shoulder and pulling her blankets over her legs.

  I changed out her saline and antibiotic bags, erased my name from the dry-erase board, and wrote the name of the day nurse who would be there to take care of her for the next twelve hours.

  Then, I did the same in the next ten rooms—handing out treats, asking for a pain number, and changing the name on the dry-erase board. It was monotonous, but it was how I’d ended all my days for the past ten years, and I now found the routine quite therapeutic. It was the only routine I could count on, as a nurse. The rest of my shift couldn’t be predicted.

  I stepped into the last room and was met with a wall of a man in front of me. I jumped back, startled, and then realized it was Mr. Peterson, Henry’s father. He held out his hands to apologize.

  “Sorry,” he mouthed, wincing a bit. “He’s asleep.”

  I peeked around Mr. Peterson’s shoulder and saw Henry asleep in his bed, thin hands folded on top of the covers.

  Usually, I had to wake up patients to check their vitals and adjust their medications regardless of whether they were sleeping or not, but I’d been in to see Henry just an hour ago. The chemotherapy was making him nauseous, so the little bit of food his parents had been able to get him to choke down had come right back up.

  “My shift is over, so I just need to change the board,” I whispered, pointing to the whiteboard in the corner.

  He turned sideways and let me pass. His wife was sitting in the chair next to the bed, a book open in her lap, though she wasn’t even pretending to read it. She was staring at Henry’s face.

  I waved to her as I left, but instead of waving back, she stood up and followed me into the hallway, her husband just behind her.

  “This is normal, right?” she asked, hitching a thumb over her shoulder towards her son’s room. “The getting sick and not eating?”

  I nodded. “The chemo will make him seem much worse, but that’s just it doing its job.”

  Mr. Peterson huffed out a small laugh. “It all feels so backwards. For my kid to be throwing up in the hospital and that to be a good sign…”

  Mrs. Peterson rubbed a hand down her husband’s arm, squeezing just a
bove his elbow. He smiled down at her, but there was no joy or happiness there. I recognized the expression as one shared between people who couldn’t do anything else.

  The Petersons thanked me for helping them through the night and then slipped back into Henry’s room, going back to watch over their incredibly unwell son with the small comfort that it was “normal.” Mr. Peterson’s expression was the same one my parents had worn when my brother was in the hospital. They had smiled in that blank kind of way when the doctor had told us that my brother’s addiction was up to him to get under control. We could be there for him, but we couldn’t make the decision for him.

  Greg’s overdose had been normal, according to his doctors. A lot of addicts overdosed after rehab. He’d gone cold turkey in his rehab program, so when he got out and used again, his tolerance was lower than he realized. He almost died. The only reason he didn’t was because his roommate got off work early. He found Greg slumped over on the couch, a pill bottle on the table in front of him.

  That wasn’t normal. It certainly didn’t match the picture I had of my brother—the boy with messy brown hair and a big, cheesy smile. When we got to the hospital, he was unconscious and pale, shadows pressed beneath his eyes like stage makeup. He looked half-dead. Not normal.

  I’d viewed the scene from two perspectives: as his sister, and as a nurse. On one hand, I thought of all the overdoses I’d dealt with when I’d worked in the emergency department for a few years. I thought of the sad, broken people I’d helped bring back to life, and those who were too far gone. I always gave each patient my all, but at the end of the day, I’d shake my head at the idea that people would choose to treat their bodies this way. That they would pump themselves full of poison for a high.

  But, on the other hand, I saw my baby brother hooked up to machines and an IV. I knew Greg had made the same choices, but try as I might, I couldn’t lump my little brother in with those addicts. His circumstances were different, right?

  When Greg moved in with me, his drug counselor told me how likely a relapse was. He told me that Greg would fight his addiction every day for the rest of his life. It was heartbreaking news, and it took everything in me not to push the counselor out of my house and slam the door in his face.

  I knew the parents of children on my ward had to feel the same way about me, sometimes. They probably wanted to push me from the room when I told them we’d have to up antibiotic dosages or they’d have to spend another night in the hospital or when I kicked the child’s friends out because visiting hours were over. I hated being the person to deliver bad news, but I would rather be the person to do it than someone who didn’t care as much as I did.

  It was the same way with Greg. As much as I wanted to pretend everything was fine, I would rather be the person he could depend on than have him crash with a friend who wouldn’t look out for him.

  I resisted the urge to grab a coffee on my way out of the nurse’s lounge. I knew it would only keep me awake once I got home, and I wanted to spend every possible hour I could sleeping.

  “You finally leaving?” Ciara asked, grabbing a patient’s file from the organizer in front of her and handing it to a passing nurse without a word. I loved the way the nurse’s station ran like a well-oiled machine.

  “I might fall asleep in the parking lot,” I joked. “I think my feet are bleeding.”

  Ciara groaned in sympathy. “I have four more hours before my shift is over. Next time Ashley leaves us in the lurch like this, she better have the plague.”

  I laughed and waved as I slid my identification badge through the card reader and the double doors opened. “I’ll see you all after I’ve had ten hours of sleep.”

  “Better make it twelve just to be sure,” Ciara yelled after me.

  The longest part of each day was the walk to my car in the back of the hospital lot and the drive home. And today, it would be even worse because of one simple reason: rain. Boston was my favorite city in the world, but the traffic was a nightmare—especially this close to the start of the work and school day—and rain seemed to bring out the worst in most drivers. They either drove too quickly, making it unsafe for everyone, or they drove much too slowly, acting as though they were crossing the Red Sea rather than a puddle. It would be forty minutes, at least, before I made it home.

  The only thing worse than my exhaustion was my hunger. I’d eaten a microwavable meal six hours into my shift, but that seemed like forever ago. As I pulled onto the highway, I prayed Greg hadn’t eaten my leftover taco from dinner the night before. Then, I wondered what kind of life I was living that a reheated taco and crashing in bed was enough to make me deliriously happy.

  Rain pelted my windshield and the truck ahead of me spit a fine spray of water up, making it nearly impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me. I flipped on my blinker and changed lanes, hoping to get around the truck, only to find myself stuck behind two cars and a school bus. But before I even had time to groan to myself, the bus took a sharp turn towards the shoulder of the road.

  The cars in front of me swerved into the left lane, but there was no opening for me. I could either go into the ditch on the right or get in an accident on the left, and with the school bus sitting perpendicular to my lane, going straight was no longer an option. So, I slammed on the brakes.

  My tires squealed to a stop on the wet road and I winced, preparing myself to be rear-ended, but miraculously, the pile-up never came. I turned around and saw the car behind me was pulling off to the shoulder of the road and the cars behind it were merging into the left lane and going around us.

  Satisfied my car wasn’t going to be turned into a metal accordion, I focused my attention on the school bus. The back tires were still on the road, but the front tires were sinking down in the mud of the ditch. Through the foggy back windows, I could see the outlines of little heads bobbing around.

  Without another thought, I navigated my car over behind the bus, grabbed my black nurse’s bag from where I always kept it in the backseat, and ran through the rain to the bus. As I got closer, I could see the metal lamppost bent angrily and resting on the hood of the bus.

  “Oh, thank God,” a man said when he noticed the first aid bag I was carrying. “I want to help, but I have no medical training.”

  “Call 9-1-1,” I said as I moved around the bus to the driver’s side door.

  I rested my bag against the tire well and knocked on the glass. The driver was an older man with thin gray hair and soft jowls. He opened his door.

  “Are you injured?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what happened. The wheel got away from me. I couldn’t control it,” he said, shaking his head and intermittently turning around to look back at the kids.

  “Are you injured?” I repeated, slightly louder this time.

  He looked at me as though seeing me for the first time and shook his head. “No. No, I’m okay.”

  “Okay, great,” I said with a smile I hoped was comforting.

  “I need to get the kids off the bus,” he said, beginning to stand up.

  “No!” I waved my hands at him, drawing his attention back to me. “We can’t have all of these kids walking around on the side of a highway. Keep them on the bus until emergency services arrive. Is anyone injured?”

  Armed with a task, the bus driver seemed to pull himself together. He stood up and called back to the children, asking if anyone needed any attention. All at once, I could hear kids shouting back about sore necks and spilled pencil cases.

  “Is anyone bleeding?” I asked.

  The bus driver relayed my question and a small line of children made their way to the front of the bus, standing in front of the driver.

  I stepped into the bus. There was a dull roar of voices and excitement, but mostly, I saw shocked faces and teary eyes. I smiled, wanting to keep them all calm.

  “Hey everybody,” I said loudly, though I was mainly focused on the children lined up in the center aisle, assessing injuries. I saw some bloody
knees and a few scrapes on elbows and hands. Nothing major. “The police will be here really soon to make sure you all get where you need to go, but for the moment, I’m going to take care of you.”

  “Who are you?” a little boy in the front asked. His bottom lip wobbled, and I knew he was holding back tears.

  I knelt down in front of him and opened my bag, letting him see the stethoscope, bandages, and antibacterial swabs inside. “I’m a nurse.”

  I learned the boy’s name was Deonte, and he hopped up into the front seat of the bus and held up his legs to me as I cleaned them off with alcohol wipes and bandaged him up. Next up was a little girl named Braylee who explained calmly that she had fallen out of her seat and into the aisle when the bus swerved, scraping her elbow on a metal screw. It had ripped the sleeve of her white sweater and she was worried her mother would be angry.

  “Your mom will be so happy to know you’re safe that she won’t care a bit about your sweater,” I reassured her as I crisscrossed two pink bandages across the gash.

  Then, a little boy with a mop of bright blond hair stepped up. He was the last in the line, but had the most severe of the rather mild injuries—a cut just above his eyebrow. Blood was dripping down his face and his hands were bloody from trying to keep it out of his eyes. Remarkably, he seemed perfectly calm, though he looked no older than ten.

  “What’s your name?” I asked as I helped him into the seat.

  “Jamie,” he said, managing a small smile.

  “Well, Jamie, it looks like you have a little cut here. It looks worse than it is, though. Just some clean-up and a bandage and you’ll be good as new.”

  “I know,” he said, kicking his legs against the seat, hands folded in his lap.

  “You’re very brave,” I said as I rubbed an alcohol wipe against the cut. I knew it would sting, but he only barely winced. “Most people are scared of blood.”