Free Winning Back His Doctor Bride by Tina Beckett Page A

we’re going to have to do it under anesthesia. It’ll take a couple of hours, and I’d feel better if you stayed overnight.”
    Her eyes widened. “But Allen—”
    â€œWill be fine. And if you’re lying to me about his part in this, then you need to wise up and put some distance between you. Do you want him doing this to someone else?”
    â€œHe won’t. I know he won’t.”
    That was the closest to an admission he was going to get. “How do you know?”
    She shrugged an overly thin shoulder. “I just do.”
    Because he’d told her he was sorry? That he’d never do it again? He could remember his father promising the same thing to his mother after each infidelity.
    Maybe Allen—unlike Michael Rothsberg—meant it. After all James meant it when he said he wasn’t having children. And so far he’d kept that promise. But life was full of unknowns. He hadn’t expected Cindy to claim she was pregnant and force him into a decision he’d never expected to make.
    He sighed and shook his head. “I want you to think about something while I set up for surgery. If that cut had been three inches lower, we might not be talking about restorative surgery. We’d be fighting to save your life. Next time you might not be so lucky.”
    James took that “next time” philosophy to heart in his own life. He always, always used protection, no matter how insistent his current partner was that she was clean and on birth control. You never knew what someone was capable of.
    Like Cindy.
    Or his father.
    The bastard.
    Evidently Patricia was opting to learn about personal failings the hard way. As difficult as she was as a patient, he didn’t like knowing someone had purposely tried to destroy her life. And for an actress, a maiming slash to the face was to strike at the heart of how she made a living.
    But who knew what went on in the heads of some of these celebrities? He certainly didn’t claim to know his famous parents, whose public meltdowns had probably kept half the tabloids in America in business. His mom’s repeated stints in rehab had probably done the same for the other half. He barely had contact with them anymore.
    â€œThink about it,” he urged.
    Patricia’s chin wobbled, and her hand went up to the gauze pad covering her damaged cheek. “I will.”
    A muscle contracted in James’s jaw. “What do you want us to do if he comes to visit?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Her eyes closed for a second. “Can I decide that after I wake up from surgery?”
    â€œYes.” It was the best he was going to get for the moment. “I’ll put a no-visitors order on your chart.” Which he did even as he spoke, pushing a button on his tablet and checking the appropriate box on Patricia’s chart, quickly typing what he wanted done and when. The tablets were connected to a central system that would flag the next available surgical suite and reserve it, along with his team. Then he called Damien and asked if he could come in and give him a second opinion.
    The other surgeon promised he could be there in twenty minutes.
    While he waited, he gave Patricia a local injection of lidocaine with epinephrine to numb the wound and slow bleeding and flushed the area with saline, examining the edges of the laceration with his magnifying headset. Thank God, she wasn’t dealing with full tissue laceration as the wound didn’t penetrate the mucosal or muscle tissue, but it was deep enough that he would have to do the repairs in layers. He mentally calculated fifty stitches on the surface and absorbable suture material inside the wound.
    He noticed that as she’d talked, that slight defect in her speech had cleared up. Maybe it had been caused by stress, rather than nerve damage.
    A knock on the door pulled him from his work and he sat up, tipping the loupes to the top of his head. He