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       “ I’m very resilient, Doctor .”

      He looked at her for a long moment, curbing the desire to lose his fingers in her hair. “That sounds like it has a story behind it.”

      She raised her eyes to his. “It does.”

      “But you’re not going to share it,” Georges guessed after a beat.

      “Not tonight.” And then she smiled, adding, “Not until I know you better.”

      They had future stamped all over them. It surprised him to realise that he rather savoured the unspoken implication.

      There were no alarms, no warning bells. Instead, he found himself wondering about the woman beside him. Wondering and wanting to know things about her. Wanting to fill in the myriad of blanks dancing in front of him.

      “Something to look forward to,” he said to her. It earned him another smile. One that seemed to burrow right smack into the middle of his chest.

      To

      Patience Smith

      and

      Gail Chasan

      who make writing

      the pleasure it should be.

       MARIE FERRARELLA

      This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA^® Award-winning author has written over one hundred and fifty novels, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

      Dear Reader,

      Welcome!

      Meet outgoing Georges Armand, a hunky fourth-year surgical resident who is both charming and skilful. Georges comes into our heroine’s life by being a hero. Literally. He rescues both her and her grandfather from a car accident. Then, if that isn’t enough, he performs CPR on her grandfather, whose heart has stopped. He brings Amos’s heart around, but nearly stops Vienna’s because he seems to be just too good to be true. And that, dear reader, is what makes our heroine just a bit leery and keeps her from falling head over heels for the handsome young surgeon. Getting her to intimately trust him, and discovering that perhaps he has finally met his once-in-a-lifetime woman, is the journey of self-discovery Georges finds himself on. With very satisfying results.

      As always, I thank you for reading and I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

       Marie Ferrarella

      Taming the Playboy

      MARIE FERRARELLA

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Chapter One

      The piercing screech of brakes with its accompanying teeth-jarring squeal of tires had Georges Armand tensing, bracing for what he thought was the inevitable impact.

      His breath stopped in his lungs.

      The unpredictability of life was something that never ceased to amaze him. Given his background and his present vocation, the opposite should have been true.

      Georges Armand was the second son of the colorful, exceedingly flamboyant Lily Moreau, a living legend in the art community, both for her talent and her lifestyle. To say that his formative years had been unorthodox was like referring to the Civil War as a slight misunderstanding between two sections of the country. It was true, but a vast understatement. With his mother flittering in and out of his life like warm rays of sporadic sunshine, the one stable thing Georges could always count on was his brother, Philippe Zabelle. The rest of his world seemed to be in constant flux.

      A fourth-year medical resident at Blair Memorial, his choice of career, general internal surgeon, also placed him in that same quixotic mix. It was never so clear to him as during his present stint in the hospital’s emergency room. One moment, life was quiet, progressing on an even, uneventful keel. Then within the next rotation of the second hand, all hell was breaking loose.

      And so it was tonight.

      After putting in a double shift at the hospital, rather than electing to sleep for the hours that he was off duty to do his best to recharge his very spent batteries, Georges decided to go out. He was his late father’s son and loved to party.

      Handsome, with magnetic blue eyes, hair the color of the underside of midnight and a smile that pulled in all living females within a twelve-mile radius, Georges had not experienced a lack of female companionship since the year he turned ten. From the moment he first opened his eyes twenty-nine years ago, he had been, and continued to be, a lover of women. All women. Tall ones, short ones, rounded, thin, old, young, it didn’t matter. To Georges, every breathing woman was beautiful in her own way and each merited his attention.

      For a short time.

      Of the three brothers, Philippe, three years his senior, and Alain Dulac, three years his junior, Georges was the most like Lily, who, by her own admission had said more than once that she had never met a man she didn’t like—at least for a short time.

      Tonight he was off to see Diana, a woman he’d met in the E.R. a month ago when she came in complaining of acute gastrointestinal distress. It turned out to be a case of bad sushi. He prescribed medication to help her along and discharged her. And once she wasn’t his patient, he dated her. Brunette, brown-eyed, Diana was vivacious, outgoing and said she was definitely not interested in any strings to their relationship. She was the kind of woman you could have a good time with and not have to worry that she was misreading the signs and mentally writing out wedding invitations. In other words, she was perfect.

      As he drove his bright red sports car—a gift from Lily on his graduation from medical school—Georges was mentally mapping out the evening that lay ahead. A little dinner, a little dancing and a great deal of romance.

      But all that changed in an instant.

      The horrifying sound behind him had Georges swerving to the right. The nose of his vehicle climbed up against the hillside embankment. The maneuver was just in time for him to avoid being hit by the vintage blue sedan behind him. The latter was not so lucky. The black Mercedes behind the sedan slammed right into it.

      His heart pounding against his rib cage, Georges looked into his rearview mirror. He saw the dark blue sedan spinning around helplessly, like a badly battered pinwheel in the center of a gale. Out of his car in an instant, Georges ran toward the car to see if he could help the passengers.

      It wasn’t the doctor in him that made Georges bolt out of his barely stilled sports car; it was the Good Samaritan, the instinct that had initially been instilled, fostered and nurtured by his mother. But it was predominantly Philippe who’d taught him that standing on the sidelines, watching, when you could be in the midst of the turmoil, helping, was never a truly viable option. Philippe believed in commitment, and Georges believed in Philippe.

      He attributed all his good traits to his older brother, his looks to his mother and his money, of which there was more than a considerable amount, to his late father, Lily Moreau’s second husband, Andre. Andre Armand was a self-made millionaire who owed his fortune to the production of a seductive yet affordable perfume. A scent, despite all her money, that Lily still wore.

      The instant Georges opened the driver’s-side door and was out of his vehicle, he found himself having to flatten his back against it to get out of harm’s way. The Mercedes that had rammed into the sedan and had initiated this lethal game of metal tag now whizzed erratically by him. Had he not jumped back, Georges was certain that he would have wound up being the black Mercedes’ new hood ornament. Or, if not that, then permanently sealed to the vehicle’s shiny grill.

      The figure of a dark-haired, middle-aged man registered at the same time that the vehicle zoomed by him. Blessed with incredibly sharp vision and presence of mind, Georges focused

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