Resisting the off limits.., p.1
Resisting the Off-Limits Pediatrician, page 1
What are you doing, Char?
Her gaze shifted to John, who had made it to the order counter and was oblivious to her gaze. The woman taking his order was giving him lots of big smiles while twirling a strand of her hair. Even at this distance, it was obvious she was flirting.
Charlotte could see the appeal. John was a strong, attractive man with a no-nonsense vibe that could make a girl feel a bit invincible by his side.
Was that what she was doing too? Flirting a little with her attractive, vigilant colleague?
She paused to consider that scenario, then felt a rush of heat as she realized it was true. She had one simple rule when it came to romance on the road, designed to keep her career intact and her reputation stellar. No. Dating. Coworkers. As a travel doctor, she needed excellent recommendations to secure her next assignment. She couldn’t afford loose ends, bad breakups or misunderstandings in this line of work.
So John could keep that stacked body of his on his side of the clinic, because romance was not in the cards.
Dear Reader,
Greetings! I’m thrilled to share my debut novel for the Harlequin Medical Romance line!
John and Charlotte’s story was inspired by the real-life doctors and nurses who care for homeless teens. Whether they work in a strip mall clinic, mobile medical unit, or by strapping on a backpack and working on foot, I knew these doctors deserved their own love story!
Welcome to the Sunshine Clinic, where John heals the homeless teens of Seattle. Gaining guardianship of his spirited niece has forced John to hire Charlotte, a beautiful locum tenens pediatrician, until his life settles down.
Charlotte is equally resentful at being stuck in Seattle to settle her absentee father’s estate. Life has taught her to trust adventure over love, so she’s fighting her attraction to the brooding, sexy doc with everything she’s got.
They’re both deeply committed to living life on their terms. If it weren’t for an accident that forces Charlotte to share her home with John and his niece, maybe they would have escaped love’s healing touch.
Then again, when two people are meant to be together, love always finds a way.
I hope you enjoy John and Charlotte’s journey to happily-ever-after!
Love,
Kate
Resisting the Off-Limits Pediatrician
Kate MacGuire
Kate MacGuire has loved writing since forever, which led to a career in journalism and public relations. Her short fiction won the Swarthout Award and placed third in the 2020 Women’s National Book Association writing contest. Medical romance has always been her guilty pleasure, so she is thrilled to publish her first novel with Harlequin’s Medical Romance line. When she’s not pounding away on the keyboard, Kate coruns Camp Runamuk with her husband, keeping its two unruly campers in line in the beautiful woodlands of North Carolina. Visit katemacguire.com for updates and stories.
Resisting the Off-Limits Pediatrician
is Kate MacGuire’s debut title for Harlequin.
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
This book (and my heart) is dedicated to Patrick. Thank you for believing in me. Love you...Always.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM ONE MONTH TO TAME THE SURGEON BY CAROL MARINELLI
CHAPTER ONE
SANDY WHITE BEACHES as far as the eye could see... Early-morning sea-kayaking adventures... An elegant evening at the world-class opera house.
Charlotte thumbed through the images on her social media feed. She knew her friends meant well, but every photo of their amazing vacation in Sydney, Australia, was like an icepick to her heart.
Thunder cracked overhead as she waited in line for her rental car. No sandy white beaches here, thank you very much. Instead, she was stuck in her former hometown of Seattle, Washington, right in the middle of one of its legendary rainstorms. She took one last longing glance at her missed vacation before closing her social media feed. That was enough torture for one day.
Every few years she and her friends—all traveling doctors like her—planned an amazing trip to take a break from their locum tenens medical assignments. For their first trip they’d gone to Bora Bora. Then came Madrid, Rome, and Singapore. These trips, along with her doctor assignments, were captured in her travel blog, GypsyMD. She had a small but loyal group of followers who loved her work-hard-play-hard lifestyle as a locum tenens physician.
But the Sydney trip had been the hardest to plan. More of her friends were finding partners, getting married, and settling down with full-time permanent jobs. None of which interested Charlotte, but it sure did make it harder to get enough people interested to justify the expense of the Sydney trip.
Just when she’d solved that problem, her life had taken an unwelcome detour. From out of the blue, a man claiming to be her father’s estate attorney had called her.
“It’s important that you come to Seattle,” he’d said. “There are some matters related to your father’s estate that must be settled.”
Your father.
Two words that sounded so foreign to a girl who’d grown up without one. Once upon a time, when she was much younger, she had daydreamed about her missing father. Was he a rock star who spent every night in a different city? Or maybe a navy captain, steadfastly determined to protect her country’s borders? Or a reclusive mountaineer who climbed the world’s most treacherous peaks and slept in a yurt?
But in her favorite little-girl dream he was a powerful but despondent king, who used every resource at his disposal to find her. No one would rest, he’d bellow, until his precious, long-lost daughter was returned to her family, safe and sound.
Eventually she’d outgrown those silly daydreams and accepted her fate. Her father had no idea she existed. So when her mother was killed in a terrible car accident, Charlotte had found herself orphaned at thirteen, with no one to claim her and nowhere to go.
“Ma’am?”
A voice behind her shook Charlotte from her reverie. She mumbled an apology and moved forward with the line. Another crack of thunder overhead released a torrent of rain that fell in sheets against the windows of the airport rental car office. This unexpected trip home was getting better by the minute.
An hour later, Charlotte had finished an oversized coffee and made her way to the address the estate attorney had texted her. The rain had let up a bit, and she paused to gather her thoughts before meeting him. Her view of the house was partially obscured by the steep sloped front yard and its landscaped features of rocks and vegetation, all there to protect against the soil erosion and landslides that came with living in one of Seattle’s hilly neighborhoods. The house appeared to be a two-story split-level, with a large fir tree dominating the front yard.
Someone rapped hard on the passenger window, startling her. A small man with a hooked nose and small, beady eyes peered through the window. “Charlotte? Dr. Charlotte Owens?”
She nodded.
“I’m Jeffrey Bain, your father’s attorney.”
She nodded, still taking in the home and its upscale neighborhood. She remembered this neighborhood from her childhood. Located northwest of downtown Seattle, the Queen Anne neighborhood was built on a hill with amazing views of the Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. It was an enclave for Seattle residents who were far more affluent than she and her single mother had been. Once, on a dare, she and a few other teens in her foster care group home had tried trick-or-treating here, to see if they really gave out full-sized chocolate bars, as was rumored. Only one house had.
“Shall we?”
The attorney indicated the house with a short wave of his hand. He seemed to be in just as much of a hurry to get these estate matters settled as she was.
She followed the attorney, navigating the stone steps that climbed the hilly front yard. “You have a beautiful home,” she said, noting the professionally designed garden beds and hand-painted ceramic pots along the walkway, though many of the flowers and plants seemed to be languishing.
The attorney gave her a strange glance over his shoulder. “No, ma’am,” he said. “You have a beautiful home.”
Charlotte stopped in her tracks as her brain scrambled to make sense of his words. She had assumed this was the attorney’s home, because it didn’t make any sense that her father would live here.
“He was just a silly summer fling,” her mother had said, when she could be enticed to say anything at all about Charlotte’s father. “He was never going to amount to much.”
All the questions she’d had as a child about her father were swirling in her mind like nosy summer gnats. The attorney unlocked the door and beckoned her inside where the possibility of explanation waited.
She followed him for a breakneck tour of the five-bedroom home. Architecturally speaking, the house was perfect in form and function, design and style. But the wood floors were dull and t
The tour ended in the kitchen, where the attorney hoisted his oversize briefcase onto the perfect marble countertop, displacing a small cloud of dust. He combed rifled through the files in his briefcase until he found a gray and white folder marked with the emblem of his law firm.
“This is your father’s last will and testament, along with his living trust and other important legal documents for your records. Now, as you may be aware, your father lost a great deal of his wealth due to a series of business failures over the last decade of his life. I’m afraid this home is his only real asset, and he has specifically left it to you.”
No, she was not aware of any of this. And how could he leave his home to her when he didn’t know she existed?
She was about to ask that very question as she thumbed through the legal documents—there were so many! But one caught her attention: Form JU 04.0100 Petition for Termination of Parent-Child Relationship.
Charlotte’s breath went shallow as she withdrew the document and read it slowly. She was a pediatrician, not a lawyer, but if she understood this right her father had signed an agreement with the state of Washington to forfeit his parental rights. Time slowed as she searched the document for his signature.
It was dated six months after her mother had died.
She continued staring at the document, but the words were blurred, and a horrible rushing sound filled her ears as if a massive runaway train was bearing down on her. Had he known about her all along? Or not until Child Welfare Services had contacted him, informing him that he had a daughter? Either way, he’d known she was orphaned when he’d signed his rights away.
She set the pages down and stepped away from the counter, her chest so tight it burned.
So, her daydreams hadn’t been so far-fetched after all. She was the long-lost princess daughter of a quasi-king. But knights had never been dispatched to search for her because the King had never yearned for her return.
Inconvenient. Unwanted. Go away.
Anguish uncoiled from deep in her core, its tendrils finding every painful memory of her foster care years that she wanted to forget. How she’d grown up always feeling like an outsider, unwanted and unwelcome. The social workers who’d shown up without warning, giving her a donated suitcase and ten minutes to pack for her next placement. Knowing she would never, ever, find a home of her own. Because everyone knew that families wanted babies, not teenagers.
She squeezed her eyes shut and wished it was ten minutes ago, when she’d thought her painful past was a casualty of fate.
But the petition said otherwise. It said that her father had signed away his rights knowing full well that she would slip into foster care. Shock and hurt quickly gave way to anger. A deep, red-hot rage that demanded to know one thing.
Who does this to a child?
Especially when he’d clearly had the means to care for her.
As if on cue, Charlotte heard the hiss of air brakes. Through the large picture window in the living room that looked out to the street and the Puget Sound beyond, she could see a bright yellow school bus stop in front of the house. Its doors whooshed open and a half dozen kids spilled out, wearing raincoats and rubber boots, whooping with joy as their backpacks bounced with every step that took them back to waiting parents and warm, dry homes.
That could have been her.
That could have been her!
“Why?” she choked out, not trusting her voice to form full sentences.
Why would her father not claim her?
Was there something wrong with her?
She didn’t realize she’d spoken the words out loud until the attorney gently slid the folder from her grasp and thumbed through the documents.
“Here,” he said, pressing something into her hands.
An envelope, its ivory paper thick and expensive. Dr. Charlotte Owens printed on the front.
“Maybe this will explain things,” he said, his tone gentle and sympathetic for the first time since they’d met.
Charlotte stared blankly at the letter, as if she had forgotten what envelopes were for. She felt utterly uncertain about what to do next. She considered the contents of the envelope. Good grief, was this her father’s attempt to explain himself? To make things right? How dare he? He’d had years to write, call or find her. To do something. To do anything! And now he was going to put this on her? Just leave her a letter so he got to have his say while she had none?
The very thought repulsed her so much, it felt like she was holding a snake. She pushed the letter aside so vehemently it would have slid off the counter had Jeffery not caught it first.
“Sell it.” Her voice was flat, but steely, her hands curled into fists.
Jeffrey looked at the letter. “Sorry?”
“The house,” she clarified. “Just sell it and donate the money to charity.”
She wanted nothing to do with anything her father had touched. Why had he even bothered to leave her this house? Was it some kind of torture to make sure she understood all that she had been denied?
She checked her watch and gathered her things. This trip had been a waste of her time. But it wasn’t too late to salvage her vacation. If she was lucky, she might catch a late flight to San Francisco, so she could start the long trip to Sydney the next day. With any luck she’d be able to join her friends by the weekend. She could really use some time on a beach chair with a fruity drink before she started her next assignment as ship physician aboard The Eden, a massive cruise ship that traveled the Caribbean.
“Wait,” Jeffrey said, combing through his briefcase. He fanned a stack of documents before her. Home inspection reports, market analyses, and other incomprehensible paperwork that seemed irrelevant to Charlotte. Until he explained that, despite its desirable zip code and near-perfect facade, the home had been neglected for quite some time. It needed a new roof, there was pervasive mold in the basement, and some structures on the property, like the greenhouse and the pool house, had fallen into such disrepair it was considered hazardous for anyone to enter.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see what this has to do with me.” Charlotte shook out her coat, preparing to leave.
The lawyer tidied the pages into a neat stack before clipping them together. “To be blunt, you can’t sell the home. I mean, you can try, but no insurance company will cover a house with these problems. And without homeowner’s insurance no bank will issue a loan. So, unless you have a cash buyer, this house can’t be sold.”
Charlotte frowned, her mind racing. “So, are you saying I’m stuck with his house?”
The attorney flicked some invisible lint from his jacket. “Not necessarily. You could sell the property ‘as is’ to a real estate investment firm. You’ll only get a fraction of the home’s market value, but you’d be free and clear in a few weeks. In fact...” he rummaged through his seemingly bottomless briefcase “...our firm has an investment division that would be happy to take this property off your hands.”
He pushed yet another document her way.
Charlotte’s heart leapt at the chance to escape. Just one signature and she could join her friends in Sydney, where the steady tempo of the surf would chase her stress away. Warm sun, cold rum, and friendly locals would help her forget everything that had happened here.
But when she saw the offer amount her pen froze mid-air. She knew a steal when she saw one. Even in its current condition, this house was easily worth three or four times what the firm was offering.
So what? You’re going to donate the money to charity. Why do you care?
Maybe that was why she balked. Because this money could do some real good. Charlotte didn’t know much about her father, but if he could live in a house like this and not claim his daughter she doubted he had supported many charities. Selling his home and donating the money might be the first good he’d ever done in his life.
