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During the fall months of the year the focus in my house turns to American football. We spend hours watching and discussing it. We even attend games. While the males in my family are concerned with only what is happening on the field, I often think about what goes on behind the scenes. Who takes care of the players? What happens when a player gets hurt? During one of those games I wondered what it would be like if the team doctor was a woman, and how it would be for her to work in that man’s world …
This is just what my character Melanie does in this story. For her, the game of football is a family affair. And when she has to call in an orthopaedic surgeon who cares nothing about the game for a second opinion, the fireworks explode.
I hope you enjoy reading my book as much as I enjoyed writing it. I love to hear from my readers. You can contact me at SusanCarlisle.com.
Susan
One Night
Before Christmas
Susan Carlisle
To Lacey.
Thanks for loving my son.
Contents
DR. MELANIE HYDE stood with the other chauffeurs waiting and watching passengers outside the security zone at the top of the escalators. Overhead the notes of “Jingle Bells” were being piped via speakers throughout Niagara Falls International Airport in upstate New York. She wiggled the small white sign she held back and forth. Written on it was Reynolds.
She was there to pick up the “go-to” orthopedic sports doctor. He’d been flown in on a private jet paid for by the Niagara Falls Currents, the professional football team and her employer. Her father, the general manager, had sent her on this mission in the hope that she might, in his words, “soften the doctor up.”
Melanie had no idea how she was supposed to do that. She would have to find some way because she didn’t want to disappoint her father. Long ago she’d accepted what was expected of her. Not that she always liked it.
Maybe the one physician to another respect would make Dr. Reynolds see the team’s need to get Martin “The Rocket” Overtree on the field for the Sunday playoff game and hopefully the weeks after that.
As club physician, Melanie had given her professional opinion but her dad wanted a second one. That hurt, but she was a team player. Had been all her life. Just once she’d like her father to see her for who she really was: a smart woman who did her job well. An individual.
In the sports world, that orthopedic second opinion came in the form of Dr. Dalton Reynolds of the Reynolds Sports and Orthopedic Center, Miami, Florida.
She’d never seen him in person but she had read plenty of his papers on the care of knee and leg injuries. “The Rocket” had a knee issue but he wanted to play and Melanie was feeling the pressure from the head office to let him. More like her father’s not so gentle nudge.
Having grown up in a football-loving world, she knew the win and, in major-league ball, the money, was everything. The burden to have “The Rocket” on the field was heavy. On the cusp of a chance to go to the Super Bowl, the team’s star player was needed.
She shifted her heavy coat to the other arm and scanned the crowd of passengers streaming off the escalators for a male in his midfifties and wiggled the sign again.
A tall man with close-trimmed brown hair sporting a reddish tint, carrying a tan trench coat and a black bag, blocked her view. He was do-a-double-take handsome but Melanie shifted her weight to one foot and looked around him, continuing to search the crowd.
“I’m Reynolds,” the man said in a deep, husky voice that vibrated through her. The man could whisper sweet nothings in her ear all day long.
Jerking back to a full standing position, she locked gazes with his unwavering one.
“Dr. Dalton Reynolds?”
“Yes.”
His eyes were the color of rich melted chocolate but they held none of the warmth. He wasn’t at all who she’d anticipated. Old and stuffy, instead of tall and handsome, was what she’d had in mind. This man couldn’t be more than a few years older than her. He must be truly brilliant if he was the most eminent orthopedic surgeon in the country at his age.
“Uh, I wasn’t expecting you to be so...young,” she blurted.
He gave her a sober look. “I’m sorry to disappoint.”
She blinked and cleared her throat. “I’m not disappointed, just surprised.”
“Good, then. Shouldn’t we be getting my luggage? I’d like to see the patient this evening.”
With it being only a week before Christmas, he must be in a hurry to return home to his family. After a moment’s hesitation she said, “I don’t know if that’ll be possible. The players may have gone home by the time we get back.”
“I didn’t come all this way to spend time in my hotel room. I have a practice in Miami to be concerned with.” That statement was punctuated with a curl of one corner of his mouth.
He had a nice one. Why was she thinking about his mouth when she should be talking to him about Rocket? The off-center feeling she had around this stranger unnerved her. She worked in primarily a man’s