LOST IN THE WIND
FINLEY CREEK: DISASTER Book 1
CALLE J. BROOKES
LOST IN THE WIND
Copyright © 2020 by Calle J. Brookes
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All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For information contact:
www.callejbrookes.com
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Book and Cover design by C.J. BROOKES
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First Edition: 2020
REED: 06052020
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Epilogue
Also by Calle J. Brookes
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
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-ROBERT FROST
1
DR. NIKKIE JEAN NETORRE felt like the biggest fool when she walked into the Barratt County Hospital, her bloodied hand wrapped in a cartoon-owl-printed kitchen towel. The towel had been a housewarming gift from her friend Jillian when she’d bought her small house just inside the Barratt County line.
Jillian had so helpfully pointed out that Nikkie Jean resembled that owl. With the mud-brown hair, hazel eyes, and prism-laced glasses plus contacts, she couldn’t deny it. When she blinked, she probably did look like a cartoon owl.
Now she was just a bloody owl. A bloody, stupid one. Had it not been her dominant hand that she had injured, Nikkie Jean could have set the stitches in her own wound. Stitching herself up would have been a wee bit difficult. She’d stopped before she’d compounded the stupidity.
Barratt County Gen was closer to her new home than FCGH, the hospital where she spent most of her days. She’d never been to this smaller hospital before.
No time like the present.
Nikkie Jean stepped up to the intake desk and said excuse me to the man bent over the desk, rifling through a drawer, muttering and cursing.
Well, Nikkie Jean said it to his back.
He spun. Glowered.
Nikkie Jean took a step back. She hadn’t expected this particular glowering giant. “Dr. Holden-Deane! I…”
Nikkie Jean looked closer at the behemoth of a man in front of her as the scowl deepened. Well.
She had just left Rafael Holden-Deane ninety minutes ago at FCGH, when he’d excused the surgery department from a meeting he’d called to address an upcoming surgical department audit. Every file, every report, every lab request, every bill, every supply request going back ten years. The COM was being thorough. No real surprise; people had died because of hospital lies lately. Rafe was now responsible for cleaning up those messes. He’d just need a really big broom for it.
The man glowered down at her. Not that surprising; Rafe was usually glowering at someone. She tried to stay out of his orbit when he looked just like this.
Nikkie Jean looked closer.
This man’s eyes were darker, harder, and even more terrifying. That made her take a step back.
Rafe was almost a big softie under his hot warrior exterior. She doubted she’d ever be able to say the same about this guy.
“You have me confused with someone else. May I help you?”
She blinked up at him—Dr. Rafe Holden-Deane was at least six foot six with three-feet-wide shoulders—and she was a ninety-eight-pound, barely five-foot small fry.
Dark hair, the eyes so brown they looked black, and the slightly olive skin tone. The muscular body of absolute perfection. Check, check, check, and check—this guy had all that, too.
That was kind of hard to miss. Nikkie Jean hadn’t missed admiring it at all a time or two with her own boss.
She might have a no-doctors policy for her personal life, but that didn’t mean she was blind. She pulled her glasses off her face and rubbed the rain off them as best she could one-handed. Just to make certain she wasn’t seeing something that just wasn’t there.
Nope.
She might be half-blind—at least without the glasses, anyway—but she wasn’t wrong. The hair was possibly a little longer. A little shaggier than her neat-as-a-pin boss. Wilder. Far more untamed.
This guy looked like…power. Strength. Threat.
He could ride a dragon easily. More than that, he’d tame one without breaking a sweat. The scar over his eye was definitely different. It was noticeable and gave him a sexy pirate look.
No, she wasn’t wrong completely. It wasn’t Rafe, but
it sure looked like him.
Rafe didn’t have a dragon tattoo on one strong arm. And maybe, maybe Rafe’s arms weren’t quite as well defined.
The doctor standing in front of her was a dead ringer for the FCGH chief of medicine. Freaky. “I…I’m sorry, but you look just like my boss at FCGH. Dr. Holden-Deane. Enough to be his identical twin.”
Here fishy, fishy, fishy. She wanted information. She’d take it right back to Jillian—Rafe’s wife.
If possible, his expression darkened even more. Yeah, he really did resemble her cantankerous boss right down to—almost—the last eyelash. Except maybe his eyes were just a shade blacker. Which was impossible—they had to just be dark brown. Nikkie Jean was staring but well…she stared at Rafe sometimes, too.
The way one would a very handsome, very beautiful, very dangerous beast.
“Is that why you’ve come here today, Miss…”
“Dr. Nikkie Jean Netorre. And no—” He had her there. Most definitely not. Her hand was really starting to hurt, too. Time to get back down to business; Nikkie Jean had things to do tonight. “I came here because I have…this little problem here. And I need stitches. Barratt County is closer to my home than FCGH. I figured the sooner the better. And the less my people at FCGH get of me, probably the better. There was a tiny issue of one thousand containers of chocolate pudding being delivered today that I may or may not have been responsible for. I’m hiding from the head of surgery until he settles down. He’s doing a shift in the ER tonight to keep from getting rusty.”
And she didn’t want the people at her hospital hovering. Hovering was something she wasn’t exactly used to.
Cherise would practically coddle her, Wanda would make her cookies, and Lacy and Jillian would personally take care of the wound. She’d feel grateful and stupid and…weird. Embarrassed that such a fuss was being made. Nikkie Jean had survived thirty years without being hovered over. She wasn’t comfortable changing that now. She held the bloody owl up for him to see. “I could have dealt with it myself, but it’s my dominant. I can’t set the stitches. And…it’s really starting to hurt.”
She’d tried. But stopped. So here she was. At Barratt County.
FCGH’s country cousin.
Nikkie Jean took her first real look around.
Barratt County looked like the hospital she had just left. Only smaller. Even the wall decor was the same.
“It’s like FCGH in here, in miniature.” With the Holden-Deane clone in the middle of the intake desk glaring at her, it was like she’d entered the Twilight Zone. Freaky.
“I believe we share the same decorator.” He beckoned to a nurse. “Chloe, take Doctor—”
“Netor-uh. Pediatric surgical resident. I’d shake hands, but…well…” She did not want to touch him. Touch a tiger wrong and he’d bite off your hand.
“Take Dr. Netorre into exam room one. I’ll be with her shortly.”
“Sir?” the nurse shot him a questioning look. No kidding. The COM usually didn’t treat patients in the ER.
It must have been Nikkie Jean’s lucky day.
“I’m filling in for Curtis tonight.”
“Of course.”
Nikkie Jean obediently followed the young nurse, surprised the Rafe clone hadn’t bitten the nurse’s head off yet for questioning him.
She thought about him to distract herself from the inevitable. Nikkie Jean hated the thought of metal instruments going through her skin. A weird hang-up for a surgeon to have, but she had it nonetheless. No problems with metal in other people’s skin, but her own? Nope.
Probably from when she’d been sixteen and an inept phlebotomist had left her with a three-quarter-inch scar across the back of her hand. That metal needle ripping through her flesh…Nikkie Jean shuddered mentally at that memory.
She was a big wimp. And she knew it. Another reason she’d chosen the neighboring hospital over her own.
So her friends didn’t see her turn into a big baby.
She’d been in exam rooms millions of times now. No big deal. She’d spent thousands of hours in exam rooms and hospital rooms—on both sides of the equations. She could deal.
She’d never like it from this side, though. Being vulnerable like that to other people. Nope. She’d never liked that. Far too many bad memories.
She distracted herself with thoughts of the man she’d just found—first chance she had, she was going to text Jillian about the pirate with Rafe’s face.
She’d always had a thing for pirates. Something about the rebel had always appealed to her.
Too bad she wasn’t into other doctors, though.
Dr. Caine Alvaro glared at the little feminine tornado as she followed Chloe into the exam room.
She hadn’t said anything he hadn’t heard before.
Eventually, he would have to address the source. He wasn’t an idiot. He’d seen photos of the man she had said he resembled. The man had been all over the news a few weeks ago.
Caine had known about his brother for seven years—a year before his father had thrown it in his face that he had a twin of his own out there. Before the old bastard had died six years ago from too many years of booze and stupidity. Known who he was, where he was, and what he was doing.
Caine could have found him at any time.
What he hadn’t known was what he was going to do about it. He’d spent six of those years in the military, paying for medical school the hard way. Six weeks ago, he’d taken the job in Value, Texas, after spending a year in Abilene and a year in Amarillo. He needed the peace of a small town again. To see children running, shrieking with laughter.
To see his children making the roots he’d never had. In the cities, he’d been so busy with working, he’d had little time for his children. They’d spent more time with sitters and his uncle than they had with him. He hadn’t liked that.
Caine was hoping to change that in a smaller setting. A smaller hospital meant more of a life for him with the people who mattered most.
Caine wanted to spend more time with his family. The last two years since his wife’s death had gone by in too much of a blur for him. He wanted time with his children.
This woman wasn’t the first to mention his resemblance to the man now running FCGH. There were several physicians on staff at both hospitals, as well as several nurses who did part-time work at both locations.
Caine and his brother’s paths would cross eventually. Of that, he had no doubt. It was just a matter of time. Their paths would cross, but he wasn’t about to seek it out himself.
He had other problems to worry about. Like medical-billing fraud rumors going back years. Not to mention HIPAA—the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act—violations they were still investigating.
He wasn’t lost to the irony—he’d spent the last seven years avoiding even thinking about his mother’s family and the brother he knew was out there.
Only to end up less than forty minutes away, working the same damned position—for the same damned medical group.
Fate obviously had plans for him.
Caine had never let fate dictate his future. Far from it.
He hadn’t appreciated being stared at like he was a damned monkey in a circus, either. She had blinked up at him like he was a mirage she was trying to make certain was real. He scowled again and tossed the file he had been studying on the counter for JoLyn to put away.
He’d deal with this Dr. Netorre himself and then get her out of his hospital and on her way back to the larger, better, more wonderful world of Finley Creek Gen.
And Dr. Rafael Holden-Deane.
Then he’d forget all about her and how she’d somehow brought the wind in with her.
He stalked into the exam room as the woman was giving Chloe her pertinent medical history. She spoke clearly, with the tiniest bit of an East Coast accent. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, long brown streaked with honey and stick straight. She wore dark-pink-rimmed glasses that made her hazel eyes look far too b
ig for her face. There were Disney characters on the glasses. Caine looked closer to confirm it. Yes. Tinkerbell, to be exact.
It fit.
She moved. Constantly.
She barely came up to his shoulder. Maybe. She may have been even shorter than that. Five feet or so. Maybe one hundred pounds. He listened as she gave her birthdate again for their records.
Thirty. She’d just had her thirtieth birthday a few weeks ago.
She didn’t look it. He would have put her far younger, had she not said doctor earlier.
Dr. Netorre pushed the glasses up her small nose, and he was struck by how thick the left lens was. Most surgeons had near perfect eyesight. This one didn’t. “How well do you see?”