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For the last two books I’ve written I’ve had the good fortune of working with other talented authors to build a more complex world than you can normally cram into a short category-length book, and I have to say it’s positively addictive. Not just the group brainstorming—which is terribly fun—but even better the knowing that I can send a half-coherent email in the middle of the night to double-check something without worrying the recipient will think me crazy. Before this year I would never have guessed how much fun it would be to drag other author’s characters into my book, and I must say I might have been spoiled by the experience… I hope you enjoy Enzo and Kimberlyn’s story, and I hope you will grab the other three in the New York City Docs quartet and follow the rest of the brownstone gang through their last year of surgical residency. Wishing you health, love and happiness
Amalie
There’s never been a day when there haven’t been stories in AMALIE BERLIN’s head. When she was a child they were called daydreams, and she was supposed to stop having them and pay attention. Now when someone interrupts her daydreams to ask, ‘What are you doing?’ she delights in answering, ‘I’m working!’ Amalie lives in Southern Ohio with her family and a passel of critters. When not working she reads, watches movies, geeks out over documentaries and randomly decides to learn antiquated skills. In case of zombie apocalypse she’ll still have bread, lacy underthings, granulated sugar, and always something new to read. Surgeons, Rivals…Lovers Amalie Berlin To my real Cousin Karen: 1. Sorry about the spelling change… 2. Thank you for all your support and enthusiasm for my books! 3. Childhood would not have been the same without you in it. Xoxo, Duh
Table of Contents
THE SOUND OF screeching tires stabbed Dr. Kimberlyn Davis’s ear. One by one every one of her major muscle groups seized, stopping her cold on the Manhattan sidewalk, tensed for impact. One burst of sound, then another and another—rubber on asphalt, metal on metal—her every heartbeat shuddering in time with each bone-rattling sound. Teeth gritted, she twisted toward the street in time to see a body arcing through the air, arms and legs flailing for purchase in the already warm morning sun. A man. A motorcyclist. He tumbled, rolled and came down chest first on the grille’s edge of a still-moving black SUV. The second impact tossed him back—a human pinball thrown and battered far more than flesh and bones could stand. Her clamped jaw held back sounds she couldn’t control enough to stop, a whimper that burned like a roar—searing her throat and blazing a trail down her chest to the still-bothersome scar that would forever mar her cleavage. She should’ve run when she’d heard the first sound of squealing tires. Away from the danger. But she had taken an oath. Before the cascade of car horns died off, before the vehicle he’d flown into had even managed to stop moving, Kimberlyn forced herself to start. One stiff step, then another, each step loosening her muscles and allowing the next to come easier, faster. Off the curb. Onto the street. Within three paces she was running. Moving cleared her mind. One act of willful defiance in the face of her fear, her memories, let the next one came easier. “Someone call 911!” she shouted over her shoulder.
Please, don’t be dead.
She kept her gaze before her long enough to plot a course, then through the windows of every car she passed en route to the man. She’s okay. They’re okay. Awake with head laceration. Okay. Okay. Of course this was how her first week in New York should start. By the time she reached the motorcyclist he was wholly beneath the SUV and several feet from where he’d landed. Dragged by the front bumper. The driver looked stunned through the shattered glass. He had a gash on his chin and another smaller cut above his left eye, but he was awake, moving… Over the past year she’d gone from running from accidents to running toward them—but it always felt wrong. Even the times she’d come on the scene after the carnage had been wrought, her very soul had vibrated with the wrongness of it. Wrongful
