Healing the Single Dad's Heart

She leaned her forehead against his, trying not to let her emotions overwhelm her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry you thought I was still living my old life. You caught me changing the picture on my phone that night—but didn’t give me a chance to tell you that.’ He pulled his phone from his back pocket and turned it around so she could see the screensaver. Her breath hitched. It was them, on the bridge at Hoàn Ki?m lake, laughing and joking together. ‘This is how I hope we’ll be for the next fifty years,’ he said huskily.

She looked up into those green eyes. ‘Just fifty?’ she teased.

He closed his eyes for a second. ‘However many we’re blessed with.’

Now it was her turn to get it. And she did. He was accepting they’d take whatever time they had. Through his health or hers.

She ran her finger down his cheek, feeling his stubble under her fingertip. ‘So...’ she smiled ‘...about this date, how soon do you think your mum and dad will get here?’

* * *

‘Dad!’ Regan shot through the door, making them spring apart, laughing.

‘Ooh!’ he said, looking at them both, then putting his hands on his hips. ‘Dad, were you kissing the girl?’

Joe laughed and swept Regan up into his arms. ‘I was trying to. What’s going on?’

Regan looked serious, as if he was trying to be grown up. ‘I have a message. You missed Grandma and Papa video-calling. They said to let you know that they’d be here in three days and you need to find them somewhere to stay.’

Joe turned to Lien and raised his eyebrows. ‘Three days?’

She wrapped her arms around them both. ‘Sounds perfect to me.’ And she kissed him, keeping her arms around the family that she loved.

* * *

Look out for the next story in The Good Luck Hospital duet

Just Friends to Just Married?

And if you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Scarlet Wilson

Tempted by the Hot Highland Doc

Island Doctor to Royal Bride?

Locked Down with the Army Doc

Resisting the Single Dad

All available now!

Keep reading for an excerpt from Just Friends to Just Married? by Scarlet Wilson.

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Just Friends to Just Married?

by Scarlet Wilson

CHAPTER ONE

THE SHRILL OF the phone cut through the dark night.

Vivienne Kerr fought her way free of the tangled sheets, her brain desperately trying to make sense of the noise. Was she on call? Was this a home delivery?

By the time she reached for the phone she was shaking her head. No. Definitely not on call. Not tonight. She’d been on call for the last three nights in a row. This was her first night off.

Or maybe it was morning. Maybe she’d slept for more than twenty-four hours and was late for her next shift...

Her eyes glanced at the green lights of her clock. Three thirty-seven. Her heart sank. Nope. She definitely wasn’t late, and no normal person would phone at this time of night—not unless it was bad news.

She picked up the phone, sucking in a breath as if, in some way, it would protect her from what would come next.

She was practically praying that this would be a wrong number. Someone looking for a taxi, or someone with crazy middle-of-the-night hunger pangs that could only be filled with some kind of takeaway food, or even a drunken call from some guy she’d previously given her number to. She’d take any of the above.

‘Hello?’

For a few seconds there wasn’t really a reply.

Every tiny hair on her bare arms stood on end. She swung her legs from the bed and sat bolt upright. All her instincts were on edge. Her stomach clenched.

‘Hello?’ she tried again.

There was a noise at the end of the phone. She couldn’t quite work out if it was a sob or a choke. ‘Viv.’

The voice stopped, as if it had taken all their effort just to say her name. She’d recognise that voice anywhere.

‘Duc?’ Panic gripped her. Her best friend. Where was he working now—Washington? Philadelphia? She moved into work mode. The way she acted when ever

ything that could go wrong at a delivery did go wrong.

Take charge.

‘Duc? What’s wrong? Where are you? Are you okay?’

Every tiny fragment of patience that she’d ever had had just flown out of the window. Duc. As she squeezed her eyes shut, she could see his floppy brown hair and soft brown eyes in her head. Duc. They’d met at a teaching hospital in London while she’d been a midwifery student and he’d been a medical student. No one could have predicted how much the crazy, rootless Scottish girl would click with the ever cheerful, laughing Vietnamese boy.

It was fate. It was...kind of magic.

A clinical emergency had floored them both. A young mother with an undiagnosed placenta praevia. Both had only been in the room to observe. Both had had no experience of a situation like this before. The mother had haemorrhaged rapidly, leading to the delivery of a very blue baby. Both Vivienne and Duc had ended up at either side of the bed, squeezing in emergency units of blood at almost the same rate as it appeared to be coming back out of the poor mother. It seemed that every rule in the book had gone out of the window in the attempt to save both baby and mum.

By the time things had come to a conclusion with mum rushed to emergency surgery, and baby rushed to the NICU, Duc and Vivienne had been left in the remnants of the room, with almost every surface, them included, splattered with blood.

Vivienne had done her best to hold it together. And she’d managed it. Almost.

Right until she’d reached the sluice room to dispose of aprons and gloves. Then she’d started to shake and cry. When the slim but strong arms had slid around her waist without a word, and Duc had rested his head on her shoulder, she’d realised that he had been shaking too. He’d known not to try and speak to her. He’d known not to ask her if she wanted a hug. He’d just acted, and they’d stood there, undisturbed, for nearly five minutes, cementing their friendship for ever.

But now? Fear gripped her chest. Duc hadn’t answered.