Page 20 of A Very Cheeky Christmas

I just stare at him because this man… this man is everything.

“Max, you don’t have to do it that way at all and I wasn’t trying to overstep anything, I just—”

I cut him off with a kiss. Then I proceed to kiss the hell out of him. Finally, I pull back, when we’re both breathing hard.

“I thought you were upset,” he says.

“No. I was just shocked. No one has ever gone out of their way to help me before.”

“That’s what being partners is all about,” he says.

“Then I’m going to love being on your team.”

epilogue

Maxine

a few years later…

“Dr. Briggs, you have a walk-in patient in room three.”

I look up to see Lori, the receptionist with her head poked in my office door. I nod and finish chewing my bite of grape salad. After swallowing a sip of iced tea, I nod.

“Emergency?”

Lori chuckles. “Not exactly.”

“Oh, hell. Can’t wait to see this one.” I stand and round my desk.

Being the main doctor in a small town is never boring, I’ll say that. No, we don’t get all the drama that you get in a big city emergency room, but I’ve removed barbed wire from some surprising body parts.

And we do have a small supply of rattlesnake anti-venom we keep in stock for emergencies. Because out in these wild hills of Texas, things happen.

Doc West and I share a practice now. He’s the pediatrician and I’m the general practitioner. Since he already had an established practice, it was perfect for me to slide right in. Plus they hadn’t had a general doctor in town for a while and many of his patients had grown up.

I rap my knuckles on the door of room three then open it to find my husband sitting up on the table and our two year old daughter standing on his thighs.

“Mommy!” she squeals when I walk in.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

Andrew points vaguely to his throat. “She karate chopped me and I think she might have broken my trachea,” he says in an exaggerated hoarse voice.

I roll my eyes. “She’s two, Cheeks. I doubt she could break anything.”

“She’s freakishly strong,” he grumbles.

“So she throat punched you and you came to see me for an exam?”

“Yes. It really does hurt.”

I grab my daughter off the table and turn her around smooshing kisses all over her face and neck. I open the door and tell her to go to Miss Lori’s desk and ask for a sucker. Then I remind her she has to sit still while she has it.

When I turn around and close the door behind me, I give my husband a look.

“You need me to examine you, baby?” I lock the door and walk towards the table. “If you wanted to play doctor, you could have just asked.”

“I was being serious, Maxine.” He scrapes his hand over his face and looks up at me with blatant lust darkening his features. “But dammit, sweet thing, now you’ve got me all hard.”