Second Chance with the Surgeon Read online

  Can healing his ex-wife...

  ...also mend their marriage?

  When occupational therapist Jillian Keyser breaks her wrist, the last thing she wants is treatment from her ex-husband, Conor McCarthy. But as he is a leading orthopedic surgeon, she knows she needs his help! As she is forced to live again with the man who broke her heart, they discover a new understanding. With their connection as strong as ever, will the Christmas lights over New York shine on their relationship for a second time?

  Conor eased her down onto the sofa.

  “You feel like sitting for a while? Or do you want to lie down in bed?”

  “I feel okay. Just groggy. But I want to wake up, not go to sleep. Once I’m feeling more alert, you can head on home. Or back to work, probably.”

  “I don’t have any surgeries or patients to see this afternoon. And I canceled a meeting I had scheduled, so I’m all yours.”

  Or he had been...once.

  But for today, at least, he had this chance to be there for Jillian in a way he hadn’t during their marriage. Although at the same time he somehow needed to keep a cool head and an emotional distance. Except looking at her now, with her arm in its huge cast, her hair all messy and her expression a little vulnerable, he wanted to scoop her into his arms, sit on that sofa and hold her close. Kiss her face and stroke her hair until she relaxed against him.

  Dear Reader,

  At a writer’s conference I attended a couple years ago, I listened to a popular author speak about her writing process. One of the things she recommended was that if you have a life event that impacts you, use it in a story. So, after I broke my wrist and had to have surgery on it in February 2018, experiencing how horribly inconvenient it is, I decided to take that author’s advice in this story!

  After the failure of his brief marriage, workaholic surgeon Conor has realized he shouldn’t plan to commit to anyone again for a long time, if ever, since he knows he isn’t good husband material. His ex, occupational therapist Jillian, would agree that he isn’t, since he was never around! But she’s also come to see she had baggage of her own that helped their relationship speed toward divorce, and has vowed to address her own insecurities before she ever considers another relationship.

  Except, when she breaks her wrist, circumstances force the two of them together again. Will they see that perhaps their convictions about themselves and each other aren’t entirely true?

  I hope you enjoy this story.

  xoxo Robin

  Second Chance with the Surgeon

  Robin Gianna

  Books by Robin Gianna

  Harlequin Medical Romance

  Doctors Under the Stars

  His Surgeon Under the Southern Lights

  Christmas in Manhattan

  The Spanish Duke’s Holiday Proposal

  Royal Spring Babies

  Baby Surprise for the Doctor Prince

  The Hollywood Hills Clinic

  The Prince and the Midwife

  Midwives On-Call at Christmas

  Her Christmas Baby Bump

  Flirting with Dr. Off-Limits

  It Happened in Paris...

  Her Greek Doctor’s Proposal

  Reunited with His Runaway Bride

  Tempted by the Brooding Surgeon

  The Family They’ve Longed For

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Thank you to Dr. Ray Kobus for putting my wrist back together again!

  Also, thanks to the wonderful occupational therapists who helped me take it from useless, post-surgery, to close to normal. Kathy, Janet, Paula and Heather—you all are fun and fabulous! I would have expected to be thrilled walking out the door of the therapy clinic for the last time after three months of visits, but knowing I wouldn’t be seeing you anymore made it bittersweet. You all are the best! xoxo

  Praise for

  Robin Gianna

  “The story captures your attention from page one with beautiful prose and a captivating heroine who you instantly fall in love with.”

  —Goodreads on Baby Surprise for the Doctor Prince

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM THE DOCTORS’ CHRISTMAS REUNION BY MEREDITH WEBBER

  CHAPTER ONE

  “DOWN! DOWN, HUDSON. DOWN!”

  Apparently the dog decided he didn’t need to take her seriously because she was laughing, and he enthusiastically licked her face. She gave up for a moment and hugged his big body. How was it possible he’d grown so huge, when the shelter had guessed he’d be about average-sized? She was pretty sure that average-sized dogs couldn’t slap their paws on your shoulders in greeting, but then again she’d known he was special the second she’d met him.

  “You’re such a good boy. I’m happy to see you, too.” She grinned and shoved at his paws to take a quick step sideways—only nearly to trip when her other dog, a Yorkshire Terrier not much bigger than a city rat, bit down on her pant leg.

  “No snagging my pants with your little dagger teeth, Yorkie. Off. Off, please!”

  She yanked her leg loose and the slight unsteadiness of the movement didn’t embarrass her anymore, the way it had when she’d been a child and even for a long time after she’d had surgery as a teen. Growing up with her legs different lengths hadn’t exactly helped her fit in with the crowd, and had invited the kind of nasty teasing bullies were infamous for. Good thing those days were over. Now most people couldn’t even tell she’d been a misfit for much of her life.

  She crouched down to give Yorkie a hug, too, and the rambunctious greeting from her pups made her smile. Nothing like the unconditional love of dogs, was there? You didn’t have to worry whether they really wanted to be with you, or were disappointed in you, or embarrassed by you. They just loved you, period.

  “All right, I know you two are bored after being stuck in here all day. But working the early shift means I’m home early today! Plenty of time for a walk before it’s dark.”

  The word walk incited yipping and excitement as Jillian walked the six steps it took her to get to the tiny bedroom in her New York City apartment, where she’d barely managed to squeeze in a double bed and a small dresser. It was an apartment that hadn’t been designed to hold two dogs—especially one nearly the size of a motor scooter.

  Familiar pain and regret stabbed at her heart when she thought about why she was living there instead of in the much more spacious apartment she and the pups had lived in before. The place they’d shared with her ex-husband until, after barely a year, their marriage had disintegrated. The place she’d heard through the grapevine he’d sold in order to move into an even bigger penthouse apartment in an even more exclusive area of the city. A place she’d fit into even less than she had before.

  But there was no point in thinking about that anymore, was there? Her short marriage was over and done with.

  From the first second her eyes had met her ex-husband’s she’d felt as if the ground beneath her feet had shifted. It had been an earthquake like nothing she’d experienced before and she hadn’t been able to escape.

  It had taken only two dates for her attraction to morph from starry-eyed to head over heels in love wit
h the man, and they had eloped into a dizzyingly fast and wonderful wedding even as her worried inner voice had told her all along it was too good to be true. She had always known, deep inside, that she wasn’t the kind of woman who could measure up to being the wife of a man like super-surgeon, jet-setting, workaholic Dr. Conor McCarthy.

  Unbidden, a vision of his dazzling smile, his messy thatch of blond hair and his heartbreakingly handsome face came into her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing all that sexiness to go away. The fact that she just might have to see it for real every day made her stomach physically hurt.

  How could she face having to work with him again?

  Last week her boss at Occupational Therapy Consultants had told her she had to go back to the company where she’d met and worked with Conor, and the horror of it had made her feel so woozy she’d had to sit down. Apparently OTC was shifting its focus to work exclusively on lower body therapy, instead of hands and wrists, which meant she had to transfer back to HOAC, the hand and arm orthopedic center owned by Conor. She knew that seeing him all the time would rip off the scab on her heart that was still healing, and she feared it might start bleeding all over again if that had to happen.

  Escape was the only answer, and she prayed the job interview she had set up for next week in Connecticut would get her out of New York City and away from Conor. Housing there would be a lot cheaper, too, which would mean a bigger place for her and the dogs. And, while she’d miss the city and her friends, a move there would be a good thing.

  At least she hoped it would be good. But, regardless, there was no way she could work again at the place where she’d have to see and sometimes share patients with Conor McCarthy.

  She drew in a calming breath. No point in worrying about it this second.

  Banishing all those scary thoughts from her head, she quickly changed from her work clothes into leggings and sneakers and a snug jacket. It was a surprisingly nice day for December in New York City, and she planned to take advantage of every moment of it before gray skies and cold and snow blanketed the city. To enjoy every minute of this crazy and wonderful place before she had to move away.

  When the dogs saw the leashes in her hands their tails wagged so hard their entire rear ends wagged along with them, and Yorkie briefly danced around on his short back legs, helping her smile again. At least she still had these two. The two puppies she and Conor had chosen together at the shelter the very first week after their honeymoon.

  Her heart pinched all over again at the memory of that day, and of their seemingly idyllic perfect days together until it all had fallen apart.

  “Come on, you two!” she said, practically jogging them to the elevator in her hurry to breathe in some fresh air and banish the depressing thoughts that seemed stuck on repeat. “It’s warmer today than yesterday, so this walk will be a nice long one. Happy about that?”

  Tongues hung out in doggie smiles as they moved out to streets still lit by the low evening sun and all walked briskly toward the park, a few blocks away.

  When they turned the corner they came face to face with two black dogs almost as big as Hudson, accompanied by a small elderly man. Normally Hudson and Yorkie were good around other dogs, but the second the other two saw her animals they growled and bared their teeth, which sent Yorkie onto his rear legs, barking furiously back.

  “It’s okay. Okay, guys,” Jill said.

  She turned to see if there was any way they could quickly cross the street. But traffic streamed through the green light, and just as she was tugging the dogs around the light pole to head in a different direction, the aggressive dogs lunged.

  Hudson leaped away, pulling Jill with him into a stumble, and Yorkie rushed under his legs toward the other dogs.

  Trying to firmly plant her feet, she felt a slight feeling of panic fill her chest as she worked to get her two dogs reined in. She could hear the man shouting, see him trying to control his dogs, but her two had got their leashes wrapped around the light pole, and as she tried to unwrap them she was yanked off her feet.

  In one split second she went from standing to slamming onto the hard concrete, catching herself with her right hand, and the moment she hit the sidewalk she cried out at the intense pain radiating up her arm.

  Damn it! Squeezing her eyes shut at the searing pain and the reality of the situation, she clutched the leashes with one hand and knew, just knew, without a single doubt, that her wrist was broken. How was she going to handle her dogs now?

  “Sorry!” the man said breathlessly.

  Jill blinked up at him and could see the light had changed. Thank the Lord he was now hurrying across the street, putting distance between her dogs and his. Gingerly, she rose to a sitting position and frowned down at her already swelling wrist.

  A woman leaned over her, grabbed the dogs’ leashes and finished untangling them from the pole and each other. “You okay?”

  “Maybe not.”

  Shaking now, Jill struggled to get her bag unzipped to fish for her phone. Then she realized she had no one who could come and get the dogs while she went to an ER or to urgent care. Not her OT friends, who never answered their personal phones when they were working. Not her parents, who still lived in her home state of Pennsylvania, nor her sister, who lived in New Jersey and was out of town for work.

  And not Conor. Not anymore.

  “I need to get home.”

  “I’ll help you with your dogs. You live very far?”

  “No. Just a couple blocks. Thank you... I... Thanks so much. I’ve hurt my wrist and the dogs might be hard to handle on my own.”

  “Happy to help. Come!” The woman gave a quick tug on the dogs’ leashes and they both dutifully came to stand quietly next to her.

  “You’re obviously an experienced dog-handler,” Jill said, trying to smile. “And at this moment my guardian angel, I think.”

  “Ways to be a guardian angel don’t come by too often, so you’re making my day. Except that you’re hurt, which I’m sure sorry has happened,” she said. “I’m Barbara Smith. You need help getting up?”

  “No, I... I’m okay.”

  Using her good hand to awkwardly push herself to her feet, Jill knew she was definitely not okay, and prayed it was a simple break. Nothing that would require surgery or weeks of the kind of therapy she helped her own patients with.

  But, looking at the odd angle of her wrist, and the fact that it was already discoloring, she had a bad feeling she wouldn’t be that lucky.

  “Then show me where you live, dear, so you can get that wrist looked at.”

  “It’s just a couple blocks north. I’m Jillian Keyser, by the way.”

  “I’d say it’s nice to meet you—but the circumstances aren’t very nice, are they?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  Pain still radiating up her arm, she held it protectively against her stomach as they walked the few blocks to her apartment building. She didn’t feel much like talking, which worked out fine because Barbara kept up a cheerful monologue about dogs and the city and the parks she often took her own animals to.

  Beyond glad to finally get her pets inside the door, Jill turned to her guardian angel in the flesh. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help. Truly. I... I’m not sure what I’d have done if you hadn’t been there when it happened.”

  “No thanks necessary. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.”

  “Thank you again.”

  The door clicked closed. Jill drew several steadying breaths before she struggled one-handedly to get the dogs fresh water, then debated what to do next.

  The surgery center she’d worked at before her divorce had some of the best hand and wrist surgeons in New York City. One of them being her ex-husband. She’d been at her job at OTC for ten months, which had given her some idea about the other surgeons out there, but the truth was she
felt more comfortable reaching out to someone she knew well. Someone she knew would fit her in right away for an X-ray, and who wouldn’t blab about it to Conor McCarthy if Jill asked her not to.

  She grabbed her cell phone, drew another deep breath, then dialed HOAC. The awkwardness of doing it made her think about how hard it was going to be to function with only one usable hand. Her years of working as an occupational therapist had told her a lot about how handicapping it was, but she had a feeling that having her own struggles would be eye-opening.

  “Hi, this is Jillian Keyser. I used to be a OT there. Hey, Katy! Yeah, long time no see. Um...can I speak with Dr. Beth Crenshaw? Believe it or not, I’m pretty sure I’ve broken my wrist.”

  * * *

  “Looks like a fairly light surgery schedule today,” Conor McCarthy said to the two other orthopedic surgeons in the men’s locker room as they changed into scrubs.

  “Yeah. Glad the snow and ice season is coming. It’s good for business,” Bill Radcliff joked.

  Conor couldn’t help but chuckle, knowing Bill was kidding. “Don’t let your patients hear that, or it’ll be all over social media how you like to see people slip and fall so you can fix them up.”

  “It’s an unfortunate reality that our jobs entail being there for people after they hurt themselves, and my patients love me for it.” Bill grinned. “Always confounded, though, by the folks who decide to take up running in the winter, instead of getting into the groove while the weather’s nice. Wouldn’t you love to know what percentage end up falling and breaking something?”

  “Yeah...”

  The mention of runners made Conor think of Jillian, which sent all amusement from his chest, leaving it feeling hollow. A vision of her slender body in running tights or shorts that showed her shapely legs immediately came into his mind, along with her beautiful smile and the cute messy bun she always wore her hair in when she ran.

  He’d loved seeing that bun bounce as she ran out the door almost every day, probably trying to make up for not being able to run for so many years. She’d told him that after the leg-length discrepancy she’d been born with had been surgically repaired in her teens, running had been the first thing she’d wanted to do. He’d always admired the hell out of her for her determination to overcome what some would have thought a handicap.