Baby, It's Cold Outside: An Enemies to Lovers Holiday Medical Romance Read online

  Baby, it’s Cold Outside

  Kimberly Kincaid

  Baby, It’s Cold Outside © 2019 Kimberly Kincaid

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Series Information

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Series Information

  BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE

  A Remington Medical holiday novella

  By Kimberly Kincaid

  1

  “Jusssst hear those sleigh bellzzz jingling, ring-ting-tingling toooooooooo…”

  The drunk decked out in full Santa regalia hiccupped in loud punctuation to his serenade, and okay, yeah. That settled it.

  Sofia Vasquez fucking hated Christmas.

  “Alright, Mr. Freemont,” she said, tapping her way through the results of the toxicology report she’d ordered when he’d stumbled into Remington Memorial Hospital’s emergency department an hour and a half ago, complaining of—wait for it—dizziness, nausea, and an upset stomach. “The good news is, your tests don’t show anything serious. The bad news is that your blood alcohol level is high enough that you’re probably going to have a killer headache tomorrow morning.”

  “But my head feelzzz fine right now,” Fake Santa assured her with a look of bleary-eyed confusion. “’Cept for the spinning. Whoa. Maybe all that eggnog was a badddd idea.”

  Turning roughly the color of the Grinch, he gripped the rail on the gurney, and Sofia grabbed a second emesis basin to match the one the nurse had provided him with upon check-in. She’d learned the better-safe-than-puked-on lesson on Day Three of her internship. Since that had been fifteen months ago…yeah. If she was going to have to change her scrubs, there had damn well better be a good trauma involved. Preferably with a nice six-hour surgery on top. Upchuck need not apply.

  “I’d say that’s a yes,” Sofia told him as he tried for some deep breathing, strategically maneuvering herself out of range of his bourbon-soaked exhales. “Next time, go lighter on the holiday cheer.”

  His brow furrowed beneath the fuzzy white brim of his Santa hat. “Where’s your Christmas spirit?”

  An image of her Papi’s face, bursting with pride in the glow of the multi-colored lights from their tree as she’d opened her acceptance letter to Remington University’s medical school, flickered through her mind’s eye before she could cage it.

  I knew you would do it! Top of your class, full honors! My daughter. Doctor Vasquez…

  When Sofia got to the part of the memory where tears had formed in his dark eyes, she forced herself to stop. “Guess I’m fresh out. I’ll have a nurse give you an anti-emetic to go with your IV fluids, and we’ll monitor your vitals here in the ED until you’re feeling better.” No way was she turfing him anytime soon with a BAC like that. He could get hurt—or worse, behind the wheel. “There’s a call button on the remote if you need anything. And no more eggnog for a while.”

  He mumbled something about the naughty list under his boozy breath as she pivoted on the heel of her Danskos and walked out of the curtain area. The memory of her father still lingered, the reality that it had been their last Christmas together sticking in her ribs like shards of glass. So she spent her holidays hating the holidays, so what? It was better than faking her way through a whole bunch of merry and bright, which had never been her thing, even before her father’s car had been crushed by that drunk driver’s pickup truck. Nope. She liked the unfiltered truth, thanks.

  The unfiltered truth was that she was hungry.

  Making her way to the nurse’s station, Sofia nailed her focus back to the here-and-now. She ignored the twinkling lights and the paper garland boasting blue and silver dreidels strung over the front of the counter—she was completely in favor of both diversity and inclusion, hating all December holidays with equal fervor—and tapped an update into Mr. Freemont’s chart.

  “Marcus, let’s get Mr. Freemont in Curtain Three some Zofran and monitor his vitals,” she said to the nurse covering the night shift with her. “If he’s lucky, he’ll be passed out cold in a few minutes, but I don’t want him tossing his Christmas cookies before that.”

  Or after. Aspirating vomit from the man’s windpipe was so not on her agenda.

  “’Tis the season,” came a wry, male voice from behind her, and Sofia turned to give her fellow resident, Parker Drake, a smile to match.

  “For overindulgence, overspending, and over-idiocy,” she replied. She’d admit that in the beginning of their internship, she hadn’t liked Parker much. Not that she’d been here for a popularity contest, but for Chrissake, at the time, he’d had one hell of an advantage over the rest of them. He’d been a seasoned paramedic, he’d already completed nine months of an internship before going all round two with their current run-through, and he’d been married to—and divorced from—their general surgery attending, AKA, Sofia’s mentor.

  The fact that Parker had gone and recently remarried Charleston Becker after they’d made amends last year made the situation only slightly better.

  “You’re in a chipper mood,” Parker said, having long-since figured out that Sofia lived her life footloose and filter-free.

  She let one shoulder drift upward beneath her white doctor’s coat. Talking about her aversion to the holidays? Also not on her agenda. “The night shift just started. I’d like to stay in these scrubs for at least a little while before someone trashes them.”

  “And here I’m happy to be out of my scrubs.” Charlie sidled up beside Parker, whose face lit up like the twenty-foot Spruce gracing the hospital’s lobby at the sight of his wife.

  Surprise took a whack at Sofia’s sternum. “You’re not on tonight?” Seeing Charlie’s name on the schedule had been the only reason Sofia hadn’t groaned outright at having been stuck with the night shift three weeks before Christmas.

  “Nope,” Charlie said, her expression matching Parker’s. Freaking newlyweds. “I wheedled Mallory into switching with me.”

  Sofia revisited the urge to groan. The only thing worse than being on the night shift at Christmastime was having to do so under Emmett Mallory’s supervision.

  She blanked her expression to keep her disappointment/dismay far from her face. She was twenty-seven years old. Capable and smart, not to mention tough as hell. She could spend a damned night with Dr. Cocky. Figuratively, of course.

  “Oh.” She tried on what she hoped passed as a smile as she looked at her mentor. “Lucky you.”

  “Shit,” Charlie murmured, her tone turning apologetic. “I’m sorry. We were going to go over the notes from that colectomy tonight to help you prep for your boards. I totally forgot.”

  Sofia shook her head, her haphazard ponytail swishing over the back of her shoulders. “That’s okay,” she assured Charlie. Yeah, she’d wanted to review the very cool surgery Charlie had let her assist on last week, and hell yeah, she wanted to prove that she was skilled enough to pass her board certification exam so she could assist on a dozen more just like it. But bulldozi
ng the attending physician’s night off was a piss-poor way to make that happen, not to mention being a pretty big dick move. “I’ll just use tonight to catch up on case studies and we can hook up later this week.”

  “We usually get a ton of slip-and-falls in the winter. You could always ask Mallory to go over some procedures if you want to stay on your toes for the ortho section,” Charlie offered brightly.

  “Or I could stick myself with a thousand pins,” Sofia was tempted to say. Instead, she went with a good, old-fashioned lie. “Great idea. I’ll think about it.”

  Parker pushed off of the nurses’ station, his gaze traveling toward the exam rooms. “Actually, I think I just saw him finishing up with a patient.”

  “Awesome,” Sofia said through her teeth, and shit, she needed to get out of here before Dr. Cocky showed up and one of the Dr. Drakes mentioned a study session. “Well, you two have a great night. See you later!”

  Sofia was halfway down the hall before either doctor could point out that she was headed in the complete opposite direction from the exam rooms. Okay, fine, so hiding from Mallory was probably a teeeeeensy bit cowardly, and shying away from challenges wasn’t her usual MO. But he’d seemed to have it out for her from the start, always pointing out her (admittedly) less-than-stellar ability with regard to orthopedics cases, and—worse than yelling at her, or even giving her a negative review with their Chief of Staff, Dr. Langston—he teased her. Not meanly or when anyone else could hear, but still. She’d never once felt like a competent doctor when she’d been assigned to Mallory’s service, even though she had to bust her butt triple-time to do everything he asked of her.

  God, Sofia hated being bad at ortho more than she hated being bad at anything else. And she definitely hated Mallory for making her feel stupid with all of his tricky questions and overconfident smirks.

  No. Scratch that. She would hate him, if she wasn’t so busy being inexplicably and wildly attracted to him even though he never failed to give her a hard time.

  Sanctimonious ass.

  God, he had such. A fantastic. Ass.

  “Idiot,” Sofia mumbled, keeping her pace brisk and her head down so no one would catch her blush. Mallory might have a seat more sculpted than a fucking Michelangelo, and holy hell, that dimple on his jaw (just the one, but sweet Jesus in the manger, it was enough) that flashed every time he smiled was downright criminal. But he was A) a cocky jerk, B) one of her immediate superiors, and C) she was here to become a doctor, not play doctor.

  Her career was all that mattered. No matter how spectacular Emmett Mallory’s ass was.

  She’d promised her father she’d be the best doctor in Remington, and she was damn sure going to keep that oath.

  Rounding the corner by the elevator bay, Sofia finally caught a break. The doors to the middle car were open, and if she hustled, she’d be able to hop on and escape a run-in with Mallory, for sure. If he caught sight of her, even without the suggestion from either Dr. Drake, he’d surely pin her down and ask all sorts of obscure questions about how to recognize congenital hand deformities, and honestly, she really did want to dig into those surgical case studies Charlie had promised to review with her.

  “Hold the elevator!” she called out, lunging into the open space.

  And bumped smack into Dr. Cocky himself.

  “Dr. Vasquez. What a surprise.” The corners of Mallory’s mouth curved up into a borderline smirk that said he wasn’t surprised at all, and damn it, how could any one person’s luck be so craptastic?

  “Dr. Mallory.” Since she had no choice but to get on the elevator or make it really freaking obvious that she was avoiding him—which would probably only tempt him to park himself in her line of sight for their entire shift—she stepped inside. Pressing the button for the third floor, she crossed her arms over her chest and prayed for the next thirty seconds to pass quickly.

  No dice. “Kind of lucky that we’re both on shift tonight,” he said as the doors trundled shut, and Sofia barely bit back her shock.

  “Lucky? How’s that?”

  He arched an inky black brow. “I’ve got to prep for an ACL reconstruction scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Since knee injuries often require surgery, I’m sure you could use the review.”

  Before Sofia could launch one of the half dozen gee-I-couldn’t-possibly excuses she’d instantly cooked up, the elevator made a horrible, banshee-like noise, then came to a lurching halt.

  “Holy—!” she gasped, her gaze winging upward as her pulse rocketed in the same direction. “What the hell was that?”

  Mallory’s smirk had disappeared as if it had never existed, his brow furrowed over his suddenly intense stare. “I don’t know,” he said, looking up, then pinning her into place with his next words.

  “But I’m pretty sure we’re stuck.”

  2

  Emmett Mallory’s first thought was that surely, he was being recorded by a hidden camera for some sort of evil online prank. His second, which arrived a few seconds later as he realized that he and Sofia were, in fact, temporarily trapped, was that fate must be in some kind of serious ha-ha, sucker mood to stick him in a busted elevator with the one woman who drove him crazy in both the bad way and the ohhhh-so-good way, all at once.

  Sofia Vasquez was a study in extremes, and right now, she looked extremely unhappy.

  “What do you mean, we’re stuck?” Her eyes had rounded like beautiful dark brown saucers, her smart, tart mouth falling open in some combination of denial and disbelief.

  Quick to corral his wits—because, hey, he was an orthopedic surgeon with a specialty in trauma, and he’d definitely seen worse than a jammed-up elevator—Emmett slung on a smile and looked at the elevator panel, then the ceiling above them. “Well, we’re not moving, and the doors aren’t opening, so I’m guessing that means we can’t get out until someone fixes whatever’s wrong with this thing.”

  “I got that part,” Vasquez bit out, and damn, even her frown was pretty. “What I meant was, we can’t be stuck.”

  Do not mess with her, dude. She’s clearly rattled. Do not—“I’m pretty sure we can,” Emmett said, twirling a finger around the elevator’s not-large space, and okay, fine, so he was going to mess with her just a tiny bit. But come on! No one should be so serious all the time. “Because until further notice, it looks like neither one of us is leaving this elevator.”

  Her shock morphed into something more akin to actual panic, and a thought occurred to him that hadn’t before. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

  “What? No,” she said, the worry that had crowded his chest receding as he watched her move to the panel, pressing the already illuminated button for the third floor once, then again. “Come on, come on.”

  After the fifteenth time, she realized what he’d known before the first. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

  Vasquez glared over her shoulder. Yep, she was even pretty when she was mad.

  Shit. He really needed stop thinking about how he’d been quietly yet ridiculously attracted to her for the past fifteen months. She was a resident. Granted, workplace relationships weren’t totally out of bounds at Remington Mem—hell, Parker and Charlie had just tied the knot, with Jonah and Natalie and Connor and Harlow not far behind, and they all worked here at the hospital. Of Emmett’s close friends, only Tess was the not-shacking-up-with-a-co-worker outlier. Still, he and Sofia did work together, and most of the time, for some reason he couldn’t explain, she seemed none too pleased with his company.

  Like now, for example.

  “There’s got to be something…” She trailed off, her expression brightening a beat later. “Aha! Here we go!”

  She jabbed the red emergency button in the upper left corner of the panel, and after a two-second delay, a slightly staticky, definitely concerned voice filtered through the speaker.

  “Hello? This is Bart, from maintenance. Is everyone okay?”

  “Oh, thank God,” Vasquez murmured. Then, louder, “Hi, Bar
t. This is Dr. Sofia Vasquez. I’m here with Dr. Mallory. We seem to be stuck in the elevator. It’s not moving, and the doors aren’t opening. Can you get us on our way, please?”

  “I’m afraid not. There seems to be a maintenance issue with that elevator car right now. It’s nothing dangerous,” Bart assured, although Vasquez’s expression suggested she thoroughly disagreed. Jeez, what was with her hating him so much? “But it might take a little while before we can get you moving. Are there any patients on board?”

  Vasquez blinked at the speaker, as if the words hadn’t quite processed. “No, it’s just the two of us, but…”

  Emmett took a deep breath. “We’ll be okay, Bart. Just do your thing as fast as you can? Dr. Vasquez and I have patients in the ED.”

  “Dr. Langston is aware of the situation,” Bart said. “He said he’ll make sure you’re covered until we can get you out of there.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  Emmett turned toward Vasquez with just enough time to get sucker punched by her glare, which had tripled in intensity. “What?” he asked, his trademark calm slipping by a degree. “We’re stuck, Vasquez. We aren’t in any danger.” They’d gotten on at the ground floor and moved maybe ten feet up, for Chrissake. “Maintenance knows we’re in here, and we can communicate with them if we need to. We just have to wait it out.”

  Crossing her arms over the front of her doctor’s coat-and-scrubs combo, she pressed her back against the wall opposite him. “Maybe we could climb through that access panel or something,” she said, her gaze moving upward.

  Unable to help it, Emmett laughed out loud. “First of all, that panel is a good nine feet above the ground. Secondly, this isn’t an action movie. We’d have no clue what to do once we got up there, and I, for one, am not about to go all Mission Impossible to figure it out when we can just wait for maintenance to fix whatever’s wrong.”