Melting The Ice Queen's Heart

His kiss had been like nothing she’d ever experienced. It had made her melt. And if it had been anyone but Gavin she would have taken it a little bit further.

Since their stolen kiss and her panicked reaction to it she’d tried to get her mind off it. Only she couldn’t. All she thought about was the feel of his lips against hers, his stubble tickling her chin, his tongue in her mouth, his fingers in her hair.

Her knees knocked and she felt herself swooning like some lovelorn heroine in a romance novel.

She’d been berating herself for walking away, and she couldn’t face being alone in her apartment reliving that kiss over and over again. So she went back to work on Monday instead of taking the rest of her time off. Janice didn’t even question her early return to work. Virginia often came in on her days off.

Truthfully, Virginia didn’t want to admit to her or to anyone else that she just couldn’t stand the oppressive loneliness of her apartment and Gavin invading her dreams, her thoughts, her every waking moment.

One kiss had made her realise how lonely she was.

Dear Reader

Thank you for picking up a copy of MELTING THE ICE QUEEN’S HEART. I don’t think authors can ever truly express how much it means to us that readers like you enjoy our stories.

MELTING THE ICE QUEEN’S HEART is set in one of my most favourite cities of the world: San Francisco. My grandmother had a painting in her dining room of the Golden Gate Bridge. I used to stare at it for hours on end. It’s now in my home.

I always wanted to go to San Francisco, and in 2008 at a Romance Writers of America conference I had that chance. It was amazing, and I knew I had to set a romance in that city some day.

This story is about two stubborn surgeons who have never wanted a family of their own because they’ve both lost someone they cared about deeply and it has made them afraid to love.

Yet somehow love always finds a way, and even the most stubborn man can melt a heart of ice.

I hope you enjoy MELTING THE ICE QUEEN’S HEART. I love hearing from readers, so please drop by my website www.amyruttan.com or give me a shout on Twitter @ruttanamy.

With warmest wishes

Amy Ruttan

Born and raised on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario, AMY RUTTAN fled the big city to settle down with the country boy of her dreams. When she’s not furiously typing away at her computer she’s mom to three wonderful children, who have given her another job as a taxi-driver.

A voracious reader, she was given her first romance novel by her grandmother, who shared her penchant for a hot romance. From that moment Amy was hooked by the magical worlds, handsome heroes and sigh-worthy romances contained in the pages, and she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.

Life got in the way, but after the birth of her second child she decided to pursue her dream of becoming a romance author.

Amy loves to hear from readers. It makes her day, in fact. You can find out more about Amy at her website: www.amyruttan.com

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is dedicated to one of my best friends, Diane.

You are so strong and my awe and admiration of you is so much I can’t even begin to explain it. Love you.

And to a great friend, Chris. There are friends you make who you feel like you’ve known your whole life in just a few short moments upon meeting. You were one of them.

My family and I miss you every day, Mr. Baxter.

Table of Contents

Cover

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“WE HAVE A state-of-the art facility here at Bayview Grace and we’re staffed with some of the top surgeons in the country.” Dr. Virginia Potter gritted her teeth, but then flashed the board of directors and investors the best smile she could muster.

She hated this aspect of her job, but as Chief of Surgery it was par for the course. She’d rather have her hands dirty, working the trauma floor with the rest of the emergency doctors, but she was used to schmoozing. Earning scholarships and being on countless deans’ lists had helped her perfect the fine art of rubbing elbows. It’s how she’d got through school. Her childhood certainly hadn’t prepared her for that.

Still, Virginia missed her time on the floor, saving lives. She still got surgery time, but it wasn’t nearly as much as she used to get.

This is what you wanted, she reminded herself. It was career or family. There was no grey area. Her father had proved that to her. He had spent more time with his family instead of rising up in his job and because of that and then an injury he had been the first to be let go when the factory had moved its operations down south. Virginia had learned from that. To be successful, you couldn’t have both.

It was the values her father had instilled in her. To always strive for the best, go for the top. Again, that was a sacrifice one had to make. It was a position she wanted.

To not make the same mistakes in life he had. Keep a roof over your head and food on the table. That was what she had been taught was a mark of success.

Others have both. She shook that thought away. No. She didn’t want a family. She couldn’t lose anyone else. She wouldn’t risk feeling that pain again.

“I’d really like to see the hospital’s emergency department,” Mrs. Greenly said, breaking through Virginia’s thoughts.

Anywhere but there, her inner voice screamed, but instead Virginia nodded. “Of course. If you’ll follow me?”

Why? Her stomach felt like it was about to bottom out to the soles of her feet. Virginia had planned to steer clear of the emergency room. There were so many more “tame” departments at Bayview Grace.

Departments with Attendings who were more polished and less dangerous to her senses.

Bayview Grace’s ER Attending was the quintessential bad boy of the hospital.

She led the investors and the board of directors towards the emergency department and tried to think back to the posted schedule and whether Dr. Gavin Brice was scheduled for the day shift, because even though Dr. Brice was a brilliant surgeon he and the board of directors didn’t see eye to eye.

Maybe he’s not working?

Oh, who was she kidding? He was always working and she admired him for that, except this one time she wished he wasn’t so efficient.

Virginia had been the one to push for them to hire Brice. They hadn’t been impressed with his extensive CV. The board had wanted a more glamorous, “citified” surgeon. Not one who’d gotten his hands dirty and lived rough.

“It’s all on your head, Dr. Potter. If Dr. Brice fails, you fail.”

The threat had been clear.

At first Virginia had been nervous, because hiring Dr. Brice had put her job on the line, but then she’d realized she was being silly. His work with Border Free Physicians, practicing surgery in developing countries around the world, was an experience in itself. His survival rates were the highest she’d ever seen.

There was no way Dr. Brice would not succeed at Bayview Grace.

She’d see to it, but the board still wasn’t impressed with him.

His survival rates were still high. Topnotch, in fact, but Gavin was unorthodox and a wild mustang on the surgical floor.

He had no patience for surgical interns. No patience for anyone really.

Gavin followed his own rules when it came to practicing medicine. He was the perpetual thorn in Virginia’s side.

Please, don’t be on duty. Please, don’t be on duty.

The board of directors and their investors headed into the emergency department.

“Get out of the way!”

Virginia just had time to grab Mrs. Greenly out of the line of fire as a gurney came rushing by from one of the trauma pods.

Speak of the devil.

Gavin Brice was on top of a man, pumping an Ambu bag and shouting orders to a group of flustered interns.

“There’s no time, he has a pneumothorax. We have to insert a chest tube.” He climbed down and handed the operation of the manual respirator over to a resident.

Oh. My. God. Did he just say what I thought he said?

“Dr. Brice,” Virginia called out in warning.

Gavin glanced over his shoulder and didn’t respond, effectively dismissing her presence. “Get me a 20 French chest tube kit.” One of the interns ran off.

“Dr. Brice,” Virginia said again. “Think about what you’re doing.”

The intern returned with the chest tube kit, handing it to Dr. Brice as he finished wiping the patient’s side with antiseptic. “Ten blade.”

Virginia gritted her teeth, angered she was being ignored. She spun around and gauged the expressions of the board members. Most had nasty pallors. Mrs. Greenly looked like she was about to pass out.

“Dr. Brice!”

“I said ten blade! Have you actually studied medicine?” he barked at an intern, ignoring Virginia.

She stepped towards the gurney. “You can’t place that chest tube here, Dr. Brice. Take him to a trauma bay or an OR, stat!”

“Dr. Potter, there are no rooms free and I don’t have time to mince words. As you can see, this man has sustained crush injuries and has pneumothorax from a motor vehicle accident. He could die unless I do this right here, right now.”

“I really think—”

Gavin didn’t even look at her as he cut an incision in the man’s chest and inserted the chest tube. “Come on, damn you!”

Virginia watched the patient’s vitals on the monitor. It didn’t take long before the man’s blood pressure and systolic regulated and for the fluid to start to drain through the silicone tube.

“Great. Now we need to clear an OR, stat.” Gavin shot her a look. One of annoyance. He shook his head in disgust as the trauma team began to wheel the man off towards the operating rooms, his hand still in the patient’s chest.

All that was left in his wake was a spattering of blood on the floor from where he’d made the incision to insert the tube.

Virginia rubbed her temples and turned to the board and the investors. “Well, that’s our ER. How about we end this tour here and head back to the boardroom?”

It was probably the dumbest thing she’d ever said, but she didn’t know how to recover from this situation. In her two years as Chief of Surgery this had never happened to her before. She’d never had an emergency play out in front of the board in the middle of a tour.

Investors had never had to watch a chest tube be inserted in front of them before.

The stunned members nodded and headed out of the department, except for Mr. Edwin Schultz—the tight-lipped head of the board. Another thorn in her side. It was no secret that he thought the hospital was bad from a business perspective. He was the one holding Bayview Grace back, because as far as Virginia was concerned, Edwin Schultz wanted to drop the axe on her hospital.

“Dr. Potter, I’d like to speak with you about Dr. Brice in private.”

“Of course,” Virginia said, rolling her eyes when his back was turned. She opened a door to a dark exam room, flicked on the lights and ushered Mr. Schultz inside. When she had closed the door, she crossed her arms and braced for a verbal onslaught of tsunami proportions.

“What was that?” Mr. Schultz asked.

“A pneumothorax. The chest tube insertion probably saved the man’s life.”

“Can you be certain?”

“If Dr. Brice hadn’t have performed that procedure, the patient would’ve certainly died.”

Mr. Schultz frowned. “But in the middle of the ER? In front of the investors and other patients?”

“It wasn’t planned, if that’s what you’re implying.” Virginia counted to ten in her head. Her whole body clenched as she fought back the urge to knock some common sense into Edwin Schultz’s addled brains.

“I didn’t say it was, Dr. Potter.” He snorted, pulling out a handkerchief to dab at his sweaty bald head. He folded it up again and placed it in his breast pocket. “I’m suggesting that maybe you should have a talk with him about the proper place to perform a medical procedure.”

She wanted to tell Schultz that sometimes there was no time to find a proper room or an OR in trauma surgery when a life was at stake, only that wasn’t the diplomatic way and she’d worked so hard to become one of the youngest chiefs at Bayview Grace, heck, one of the youngest in San Francisco at the age of thirty. She wasn’t about to give that up. Job stability was all that mattered.

Her career was all that mattered.

“I’ll have a talk with Dr. Brice when he’s out of surgery.”

Mr. Schultz nodded. “Please do. Now, let’s go take care of the investors because if they don’t invest the money we need, the emergency department will have to be cut.”

“Cut?” Virginia’s world spun around, her body clenching again. “What do you mean, cut?”

“I was going to speak to you later about this, but the hospital is losing money. Many members of the board feel that Bayview Grace could make a lot more money as a private clinic. The emergency department is the biggest detriment to the hospital’s budget.”

“We’re a level-one trauma center.” And they had just got that distinction because of two years of her blood, sweat and tears.

Mr. Schultz sighed. “I know, but unless we get the investors we need, we have no choice.”

Virginia cursed under her breath. “And how do you feel, Mr. Schultz?”

“I think we should close the emergency department.” The head of the board said no more and pushed past her.

Virginia scrubbed her hand over her face.

What am I doing?

As a surgeon, she wanted to tell Mr. Schultz what she thought about shutting down Bayview Grace’s ER, but she didn’t. She held her tongue, like she always did, and her father’s words echoed in her ear.

“Don’t tick off the boss man, darling. Job security is financial security.”

And financial security meant food, home and all the necessities.

Virginia wanted to hold onto her job, like anyone did. She wouldn’t wish a life of poverty like she’d endured as a child on her worst enemy.

So she was going to hold her head up high and make sure those investors didn’t walk away. She was going to make sure Bayview’s ER didn’t close its doors so the people who worked in trauma didn’t lose their jobs.

Though she respected Dr. Brice and his abilities, she knew she had to rein him in to keep control of her hospital.

She just didn’t know how she was going to do that, or that she really wanted to.

“Where’s the family?” Gavin asked the nearest nurse he could wrangle.

“Whose family?” the nurse asked, without looking up from the computer monitor.

Gavin bit back his frustration. He knew he had to be nicer to the nurses. At least here he had them.

“Mr. Jones, the man with the crush injuries who had the pneumothorax.”

The nurse’s eyes widened. “In the waiting room. Mrs. Jones and her three teenage sons. They’re hard to miss.”

“Uh, thank you…”

The nurse rolled her eyes. “Sadie.”

“Right. Thanks.” Gavin cursed inwardly as he ripped off his scrub cap and jammed it into a nearby receptacle. He should really know her name since he’d been working with her for six weeks, but Gavin couldn’t keep anyone’s name straight.

Except Virginia’s.

It wasn’t hard to keep her name straight in his head. The moment he’d met her, his breath had been taken away with those dark brown eyes to match the dark hair in a tidy chignon. She was so put together, feminine, like something out of a magazine, and then she spoke about all the rules and regulations, about everything he was doing wrong, and it shattered his illusion.

No wonder the staff called her Ice Queen. She was so cold and aloof. There was no warmth about her. It was all business.

The woman was a brilliant surgeon, he’d noticed the few times they’d worked together, but she was always slapping his wrists for foolish things.

“It’s not sanitary. Legal is going to talk to you. The hospital could get sued,” Virginia had stated.

In fact, when he had a moment, he planned to discuss the functionality and the layout out of this emergency department with her and the board.

It was horrendous.

When he’d been working in the field, in developing countries, everything he’d needed had been within arm’s reach, and if it hadn’t been then he’d made do with what he’d had and no one had complained. No one had talked about reprimanding him.

He’d been free to do what he wanted to save lives. It’s why he’d become a trauma surgeon, for God’s sake.

If he wasn’t needed in San Francisco, if he had any other choice, he’d march into Virginia’s office and hand in his resignation.

Only Lily and Rose stopped him.

He was working in this job, this suffocating, regimented environment, because of them. He didn’t blame them; it wasn’t their fault their mother had died. It’s just that Gavin wished with all his heart he was anywhere but here.

Although he liked being at home with them. He wanted to do right by them. Give them the love and security he’d never had.

Gavin stopped at the charge desk and set Mr. Jones’s chart on the desk to fill out some more information before he approached the family with news.

“You know that was the board of directors you traumatized today,” Sadie said from behind the desk.

Gavin grunted in response.

What else was new?

Board of directors. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I suppose Dr. Potter wants to have a little word with me?”

“Bingo.” Sadie got up and left.

Gavin cursed under his breath again. “When?” he called after her.

“Ten minutes ago,” she called out over her shoulder.

Damn.

Well, Virginia would have to wait.

He had to tell Mrs. Jones her husband, who’d sustained severe crush injuries in a car accident, was going to be okay.

All thanks to his minor indiscretion over the chest tube insertion in front of the board.

Only he wouldn’t get any thanks. From Mrs. Jones, yes, but from the people who ran this place, no.

It would be another slap on the wrist. Potter would tell him again how he was skating on thin ice with the board of directors.

It would take all his strength not to quit. Only he couldn’t.

No other hospital in San Francisco was hiring or had been interested in him. He didn’t have a flashy CV after working as a field surgeon for Border Free Physicians.

He didn’t make the covers of medical journals or have some great research to tempt another hospital with.

All he had were his two hands and his surgical abilities.

Those two hands had saved a man today, but that wasn’t good enough for the board. The bottom line was the only thing that mattered and it made him furious.

If it wasn’t for the girls, he’d quit.

He couldn’t uproot them. He wouldn’t do that to them, he wouldn’t have them suffer the same life he and Casey had endured as army brats, moving from pillar to post, never making friends and having absentee parents who had both been in the service.

Although he understood his parents now. He respected them for serving their country and doing their duty. He lived by the same code, only he wasn’t going to raise a family living out of a backpack, and because he loved his life and his work he’d never planned on settling down.

He planned to die doing what he loved. Like his father had done.

Working until he’d dropped.

Of course, that had all changed seven months ago when Casey had called him.

Casey wanted stability for her girls and that’s exactly what Gavin was going to give them.

Stability.

He picked up Mr. Jones’s chart and headed towards the waiting room.

Virginia could wait a few moments more and he’d smooth things over with the board. Mrs. Jones, however, wouldn’t wait a second more.

CHAPTER TWO

HE’S GOOD PR for the hospital.

Virginia felt like she was running out of ways to praise Dr. Gavin Brice to the board of directors. None of them were physicians.

None of them understood medicine.

And because none of the board understood medicine she constantly had to explain to them the actions of Dr. Brice; just like she’d done for the past hour.

Virginia rubbed her temples, trying to will away the nagging headache that gnawed her just behind her eyes.

It’d been grueling, but she’d managed to smooth things over. By again reminding them of Dr. Brice’s phenomenal survival rate. It was probably that way because of the unorthodox techniques he used.

Of course, what was the point when the head of the board seemed so keen to shut down the hospital’s emergency department and make Bayview Grace a private hospital? Private meant only for the wealthy.

And catering only to the wealthy made her sick.

When she’d first decided to become a doctor she hadn’t just want to help those who could afford it. It was one of the reasons she’d chosen Bayview to do her intern and residency years. Bayview, back then, had had a fantastic pro bono fund and a free clinic.

The free clinic had been closed two years ago when she’d done her boards. When she’d become chief she’d tried to get it back, but that would have meant dipping into the pro bono money and that money had been needed.

Mr. Schultz had feigned regret, but Virginia had seen those dollar signs flashing in his eyes. It made her feel a bit sick.

Her stomach knotted as she thought about the countless people from all walks of life who came to her hospital. The pro bono budget was dwindling and she wished she could help more, because at one time in her life she’d been in the poorest of the poor’s shoes, getting by on only sub-par medical care.

It was why her sister Shyanne had died.

Shyanne had hidden her pregnancy from her parents, knowing they couldn’t afford to help her with medical bills, but the pregnancy had turned out to be ectopic. Virginia had happened to be home on a school break in her first year of medical school and had kicked herself for not seeing the signs early enough.