Falling For Her Wounded Hero. Marion Lennox

      A debt repaid...with love?

      Tom Blake helped Tasha Raymond through a heartbreaking loss eighteen months ago—so when she learns he’s been devastatingly injured she’s determined to repay the debt by helping him in return.

      Working with the handsome GP stirs up a storm of emotions, but Tasha has no intention of truly getting close. The playboy’s devil-may-care attitude is the last thing she needs! But then the wounded doc’s kindness proves too much temptation for her heart to resist...

      “I need to get over the hurt.” Tasha was trying her hardest to keep this conversation grounded. “Like you. You’re improving every day.”

      “I’m not talking about physical hurt. It’s the other hurt that stays with us. Watching my father break my mother’s heart... Watching your husband betray you... Watching Emily die...” And then he stopped.

      There was a long, long silence. She couldn’t break it. She didn’t know how.

      And then... “Tasha, I’d really like to kiss you.”

      This was a bad idea. Her head knew it, but somehow tonight she’d passed the point where her head was in control.

      The night. The pain she’d just tried to express. His pain.

      Tom...

      She’d never spoken to anyone as she’d just spoken to Tom. She tried to hide her pain, not put it out there for anyone to see.

      Only this wasn’t anyone.

      Tom was her friend. He was the man she’d gone to when she was in trouble. He was a colleague, someone who’d helped her, and she could help him back. A man who’d suffered a cerebral bleed.

      He was all of those things, but above all he was Tom.

      Dear Reader,

      I’ve recently moved to a small coastal village where the sand squishes between my toes, where the waves are a gentle background murmur, and where I lie in bed at night and listen to the foghorns of ships as they head off into the unknown. And as I get to know my new home I’m realising that many of its residents are here for a reason. This place can be wild, windswept and awe-inspiring...or it can be calm and breathtakingly beautiful. Either way, it seems a place for healing.

      The thought of such healing is what’s inspired Falling for Her Wounded Hero. My heroine has lost her baby, and my hero has suffered life-changing injuries in a surfing accident. They’re both doctors, but they can’t heal themselves. Not alone.

      But for the last few months my dog and I have walked my beach, over and over, until I’ve worked out how their strength, their hope, their love and their laughter, combined with the support of their wonderful seaside community, can finally let them find their future.

      Enjoy,

       Marion Lennox

      Falling for Her Wounded Hero

      Marion Lennox

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       Praise for Marion Lennox

      “This is a wonderful book, full of the trademark warmth, soul-searching and cheer Marion Lennox brings to all her books.”

      —Goodreads on From Christmas to Forever?

      Contents

       Cover

       Back Cover Text

       Introduction

       Dear Reader

       Title Page

       Praise

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       Extract

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      THE SURF OUTSIDE his surgery window was calling like a siren’s song. Sunlit waves were rolling in with perfect symmetry. Dr Tom Blake had been watching them between patients, crossing his fingers that his list for the afternoon stayed short.

      It did. Cray Point was a small town tucked away on a peninsula on Australia’s south-east coast, and almost without exception its residents loved the ocean. On a day like this, only the most urgent medical problems replaced the call of the surf.

      Which meant Tom could surf, too.

      ‘That’s it,’ he called to his receptionist as he closed his last patient file. ‘We’re out of here.’

      ‘One more,’ Rhonda called back. ‘A last-minute booking. Mrs Tasha Raymond’s here to see you.’

      Tasha Raymond.

      A tourist? Something easy, he hoped, and headed out to usher her in.

      And stopped.

      The woman was sitting at the far side of his waiting room. She was close to thirty, he thought, and very pregnant. She had the exhausted and shadowed look he sometimes saw when pregnant women had too much to cope with—toddlers at home, too many work commitments, or a deep unhappiness at the pregnancy itself.

      She was small, five four or five, and fair skinned,