But that hadn’t been the real her. This was her. This life was hers.

And she couldn’t do this with Reed.

Her father was losing confidence in her as the head of the clinical trial team and several surgeries that week hadn’t gone well.

It was either success in her career or love. Not both. Never both.

The sinking feeling in her stomach made the realization of what she had to do that much harder. She didn’t want to end things with Reed. That’s why she was avoiding him. Hoping somehow she’d come up with a way to make a relationship work.

“Dr. Sheraton to emergency.” The call over the intercom was far too familiar this past week. With the weather getting colder—more snow and ice storms—and Christmas parties leading to more drinking and driving, she’d had six emergency operations that week.

One patient hadn’t made it. Struck by a drunk driver on a crosswalk, the twenty-year-old college student had suffered internal injuries far too severe to save him. Devastation on the boy’s mother’s face when she’d delivered the news had broken her.

From now on, she was returning to her “no contact with the family” policy. What good did it really do? Hearing from Erika that her son wouldn’t be there for the holidays had changed nothing for that poor woman. She’d still lost her son.

Slowly, her defensive walls were going back up. She needed them. She should never have taken them down.

She checked her watch as she rode the elevator to the first floor. Six thirty. Her evening was only beginning. A blizzard raging outside predicted a busy night for her.

When the elevator doors opened, she saw Reed standing in the emergency room.

Obviously not hurt.

And looking so unexpectedly amazing, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a thick, thermal bomber jacket, his dark hair cut a little shorter but the scruff at his jawline was now almost a full beard. She stood frozen.

The elevator doors began to close again and he reached forward to stop them, entering the small space. “Hi.”

His familiar cologne immediately filled the space and she held her breath. “Hi.” She knew she’d mouthed the word, but no sound came out.

He took her hands in his and stepped closer. “Hi,” he said again.

She looked down at their hands. His touch was real. His smell was real. He was really there. Not a hallucination from sleep deprivation.

“God, you look even more gorgeous than I remembered,” he said. “And hot in this lab coat.” He grinned, but the attempt to ease the awkward tension was lost on her.

She still didn’t move. Him there in her space. Him in her reality was messing with her tired mind. “What are you doing here?” she finally said.