Read Online Winning Back His Doctor Bride by Tina Beckett - Free Book Online Page B

miss much of anything. His arm came from beneath his head and he snagged her wrist. “Hey. Are you sure you’re okay?”
    â€œYes.” Her voice betrayed her, though, even at a whisper.
    â€œMi.” He eased out of the bed, leaving Leo asleep, and his hand moved from her wrist to the hair falling over the left side of her face, coaxing it behind her ear. The soft touch made her shudder. Before she could move away, though, his fingers continued from her ear, curling around until they reached her nape. He paused.
    Then his head came down, lips brushing against hers in a soft kiss that broke her heart.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he murmured. “For everything.”
    Sorry.
    An admission of guilt but nothing else.
    A word rolled through her, bouncing around like a giant ball that had been trapped in a small room for far too long. There was no exit unless she made one. But, try as she might, her pride wouldn’t allow her to ask the one question that had haunted her for six long years: why?

CHAPTER FOUR
    J AMES   FELT   AS   if he’d been kicked in the skull by a donkey.
    Exhausted, and with a pounding head to boot, he’d been forced to take a couple of painkillers. Something that went against the grain, after dealing with his mother’s addiction problems. Problems that had probably contributed to Freya’s own addiction to controlling her food. Thankfully, his sister had overcome those issues and was now leading a happy, healthy life.
    He paused outside the door to the exam room, bracing himself for his “emergency” patient, Peggy Smith, better known as Patricia Stillwell, award-winning actress. It was always an emergency, it seemed, whenever she stepped into his office. With raven hair and thick dark lashes, she’d been compared to Elizabeth Taylor on several occasions.
    She also won the award for being his most difficult patient, obsessed with maintaining an ageless appearance that was not realistic. He’d talked her out of many a procedure, using a computer manipulation program that showed her what the results would be. And when putting up before and after images didn’t work, he then resorted to showing her what she would look like ten years down the road. So far it had worked, but he knew the day was coming when she would no longer be willing to listen and would start demanding he comply. When that day came, he would refer her to another doctor.
    He was pretty sure she wouldn’t go quietly but would trumpet some ugly rumor about him to the tabloids to make him pay. She’d done it with her primary care physician when he’d refused to prescribe her a heftier dose of sleep aids. That doctor had wound up in the divorce courts by the time Patricia had finished with him.
    It was just as well that he had nothing to destroy as far as romantic ties went.
    He pushed open the door without bothering to look at the chart. The sight that greeted him, however, was not Patricia Stillwell, petulant actress. It was the tearful, scrubbed-clean face of a terrified woman.
    Holding a bloody towel up to her cheek, she looked devastated. And slightly out of it.
    James did flip open the chart at this unexpected turn of events. “What happened?”
    â€œI...slipped...in the shower.” Patricia’s voice was uneven. Not slurred, exactly, but there was an odd tremor to it. “Cut my cheek a little.”
    He punched the button for the nurse. Unlike what he would have expected from the actress, she didn’t once mention her appearance or ask about scarring. That made him even more uneasy.
    â€œWho brought you in?” He’d seen no one waiting in the hallway, not even her current love interest who was also an A-list actor.
    â€œAllen.” Patricia wouldn’t quite meet his gaze. “But he had a casting call and had to drop me off at the back entrance to the clinic.”
    Another warning flag began fluttering in his head. Allen