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      “I’d like to come up,” he told her quietly once he turned off the ignition.

      She realized that it was more a question than a statement.

      Nika made her choice—as if she could say anything else. “I’d like that.”

      Damn? what was he doing, Cole silently demanded, bewildered. He was asking for trouble, for complications, for things he had no time for and didn’t want. Complications that inevitably aroused feelings.

      And yet…

      And yet there was something about her, something that made him feel alive, that connected him to a world he’d long since walked away from.

      He’d forgotten he could actually feel anything.

      He’d voluntarily been on the outside for so long, he’d come to believe that was where he belonged. Beyond that, he lived and breathed in a rarified zone that allowed his heart to function, to beat and oversee blood being directed to all his vital organs. But feel? His heart wasn’t capable of doing that.

      At least, it couldn’t before.

      Now, he wasn’t so sure.

      And a large part of him resisted things changing, resisted finding out that his heart could do anything beyond beat.

      But the temptation of Nika’s mouth drove his resolutions out of his head, propelling them into a zone that was packed away out of the light of day, a darkened no-man’s-land.

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      Dear Reader,

      Here we are revisiting that excellent New York City hospital, Patience Memorial, and its evergrowing Doctors Pulaski. It’s Veronika’s turn to find love amid the prescription pads. Nika first meets Detective Cole Baker when he rescues her from a trapped elevator. But his motives are not as noble, since she is Cole Baker’s ailing grandmother’s physician.

      Their paths cross again when Cole is sent to investigate allegations that an Angel of Death is “helping” senior-citizen patients breathe their last breath. As fate would have it, the first suspect he needs to clear is Nika. What he doesn’t count on is that the soft-spoken, blue-eyed geriatrics specialist finds a chink in the armor he has around his soul and burrows her way in, making him realize that isolating himself is not the best way to go through life.

      I hope that you find this latest installment of The Doctors Pulaski enjoyable. If you do and have missed any of the other stories, there are six other books awaiting your reading pleasure.

      As ever, I thank you for reading and, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

      Love,

      Marie Ferrarella

      The Doctor’s Guardian

      Marie Ferrarella

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MARIE FERRARELLA

      This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA^® Award—winning author has written more than two hundred books for Harlequin Books and Silhouette Books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

      To Kathleen Creighton,

       with deepest sympathies.

       The heart recovers,

       even when we don’t want it to.

      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

      Epilogue

      Chapter 1

      She didn’t have time for this.

      Doctor—she adored the sound of that—Veronika Pulaski, “Nika” to her family and friends, was one of those people who’d been born making lists. Tons of lists. Different lists that were applicable to nearly every aspect of her incredibly fast-paced life. Long lists that helped keep her on track.

      Nowhere, not even remotely, on today’s extra long list was the entry: get stuck in the hospital elevator this morning.

      Yet here she was.

      Stuck.

      And getting more frustrated by the minute.

      There hadn’t been anyone riding up with her when the elevator car—which was definitely in need of renovations—had come to an abrupt, teeth-jarring halt in between floors. Consequently, there was no one to talk to, no one to help take her mind off the predicament, at least for a few minutes. There wasn’t even annoyingly distracting piped-in music that her cousins had told her there once had been.

      Nothing but the ticking of the clock in her head as it waved goodbye to the minutes that were tumbling away one by one. Minutes that she was supposed to be spending in the Geriatrics Unit.

      This was actually supposed to be her day off. Her first day off in a little more than two incredibly busy, exhausting weeks. But she had opted to come in. No good deed went unpunished, she thought as she stood there, willing the elevator back to life. It remained frozen in place.

      So much for a career in telekinesis.

      The hospital’s Pediatric and Geriatric Units were desperately short staffed. They were that way not because the missing staff members were sick, but because they could potentially be sick.

      The problem was a new strain of flu that was currently making the rounds, a particularly resilient strain that had already taken quite a toll on the population since its appearance on the scene nearly a month ago, cutting down far more people than was usual in these cases. The vaccine that had been created to prevent it had only met with marginal success. And, as usual, the very young and the very old were particularly susceptible to the illness.

      The fear was that any of the staff who hadn’t contracted the flu yet might be on the verge of coming down with it, or could be, at the very least, unwitting carriers. As a result, only those staff members who had already had the flu—dubbed the Doomsday Flu by some supremely insensitive, brain-dead media reporter because of the number of deaths associated with it in a short period of time—were allowed to work in either Pediatrics or Geriatrics.

      As luck would have it, she was one of them.

      Nika had come down with a rip-roaring case of the flu before any statistics had even been available about the disease. When it had suddenly caused her knees to buckle and her head to spin, sending her falling into her bed, Nika had been miserable, but she really hadn’t thought anything about it. This, to her, was all part of being a doctor who dealt with an entire range of patients every day.

      As it turned out, she’d contracted it from one of the patients in the Geriatric Unit. That patient had passed away a little more than twenty-four hours after being admitted into Patience Memorial. But

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