M.D. Most Wanted

M.D. Most Wanted
Marie Ferrarella

From the moment she was rushed into Blair Memorial's emergency room, Dr. Reese Bendenetti's famous new patient had turned his solitary life upside down. For the first time, this dedicated surgeon was beginning to wonder if healing others might not be fulfillment enough….London Merriweather's world of wealth and privilege could not have been more foreign to him. Yet, as he came to know the vulnerable woman behind the glittering facade, he longed to bring her into his world.But a crazed killer was stalking her–and before Reese dared to dream of a future with her, he had to make sure she lived to see tomorrow….

“Where’s your bodyguard?” Reese asked. “Isn’t this where he bursts in, whisks you behind the door and slams it in my face?”

“His job is to protect me from kidnappers, not people I choose to be with,” London told him. “I still have some say in my life.” She walked into the elegant apartment, flipping on the lights. Reese followed her in. “I made it clear that he’s to perform his ‘duties’ tonight at a distance. Besides—” turning around, she watched him close the door “—I told him I’d be safe with you around.”

Reese wasn’t altogether sure about that.

He picked up a strand of her hair. The softness unsettled him. Aroused him. “And what’s to keep you safe from me?”

She raised her eyes to his in a clear invitation. “Who says I want to be safe from you…?”

M.D. Most Wanted

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA

Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

To

Dr. John G. Miller,

who answers all my questions,

and

is the perfect example of everything

a doctor should be

Contents

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 1

There were some days that Reese Bendenetti felt as if he just hit the floor running.

This was one of those days.

He’d been up, dressed and driving before he was fully awake. Normally punctual, Reese was running behind, thanks to an asthmatic alarm clock that had chosen this morning to make a sound more like a cough than a ring when it went off. The sound had barely registered in his consciousness, and he’d fallen back to sleep only to jerk awake more than half an hour later.

When it came to getting up, Reese had been cutting time to the bone as it was, setting the clock to give him just enough leeway to shower, shave and have breakfast—provided he moved at a pace that could easily be mistaken for the fast-forward speed on a VCR.

That had been before his fateful early-morning encounter with the “little alarm clock that couldn’t.” Consequently, the shower had lasted all of two minutes, his hair had still been wet when he’d gotten behind the wheel of his ’94 ’Vette—the single indulgence he allowed himself—and his face was fated to remain untouched by a razor until he could find some time at the hospital in between rounds, emergency room patients and whatever else the gods chose to throw at him this morning.

Eating was something he couldn’t think about until he came within coin-tossing distance of a vending machine at the aforementioned hospital, Blair Memorial.

Reese knew he only had himself to blame. No one had made him become a doctor, no one had told him to go into general surgery or to specialize in internal medicine. Those had been his own choices. His mother, bless her, would have been satisfied if he’d become a part-time sanitation engineer. As long as he was happy—that was her only criterion. Rachel Bendenetti never placed any demands on him, only on herself.

But healing was the only thing that did make him happy. It was in healing others that Reese felt as if he were healing himself, renewing himself. Building a better Reese Bendenetti.

He never quite understood why, he just knew that making someone else’s life a little better, a little easier, always managed to do the same for him.

That was why whenever Lukas Graywolf, a cardiac surgeon, returned to the reservation where he’d been born and raised, Reese always volunteered to go along with him and provide services to people who would otherwise not be able to afford them. The way he saw it, the rewards were priceless. It had never been about money for Reese.

He’d been enamored with medicine ever since he’d applied his first Band-Aid. Almost twenty-five years later he could still remember the circumstances. After calling him a name, Janet Cummings had turned and begun to run away, only to trip on the sidewalk. She’d scraped her knee badly and it had bled. Without hesitating, he’d run into the ground-floor apartment he and his mother were living in at the time, gotten a Band-Aid and peroxide out of the medicine cabinet—the way he’d seen his mother do—and run back outside to come to Janet’s aid.

He never stopped to think that she deserved it because she’d been nasty to him, all he could think of was to stop the bleeding. Watching him, Janet had stopped crying. When he was finished, she’d shyly kissed his cheek.

Reese remembered lighting up like a Christmas tree inside. Janet had been six at the time. He’d been almost seven.