Page 1 of A Very Merry Matchup
PROLOGUE
’Twas three months before Christmas and all through the hospital, not a patient was sleeping, not even Ivy’s patient Beau
Ivy
Dear Ivy,
I was hoping to see you again before I headed back to Iowa, but unfortunately I had to get on the road sooner than expected.
Anyway, just wanted to say thank you SO MUCH for all the wonderful care you’ve given Beau. I’ll always credit you as the nurse who saved his life. (I know you’re shaking your head right now, but you did save his life. YOU DID! Plus you saved mine.)
When that doctor came out to the waiting room that first night to tell me Beau had stroked out the entire right side of his brain, my heart stopped. Absolutely stopped! If you hadn’t rushed out to the waiting room when you did to explain that the doctorhad mixed up his patients, I can assure you that it never would’ve restarted again either.
I suppose looking back I should have suspected something was off when the doctor asked me if I was Beau’s daughter. I like to think at fifty-six years old I still look good for my age, but having a twenty-seven-year-old for a father would be quite the stretch, wouldn’t it? Obviously I wasn’t thinking straight that night. (And neither was the doctor!) But what are the odds that there would be two patients named Beau on the unit at the same time, one of them over a hundred years old? (Now I’m wondering if I should be offended the doctor assumed I was that patient’s daughter. If he was delivering bad news, couldn’t he at least have tried softening the blow by asking if I was this extremely elderly patient’s granddaughter?)
Anyway Ivy, I just wanted to say how absolutely grateful everyone in the family is for you... and remind you once again how absolutely single Beau is...
So single. So very single. And so very handsome, too, wouldn’t you say? (I know you’re shaking your head again, but I bet you’re also smiling right now, aren’t you?)
Now if I understood right, you said your travel contract at this hospital ends sometime in December. So I was thinking that if you don’t have plans for Christmas (I’m sure you do, but you can’t blame a mother for trying) you should come visit us in Nolly Grove, Iowa. We’d love to have you. Especially since you’re pretty much already a town celebrity for saving Beau’s life. (Shake your head all you want, but you did! You totally did!)
I wrote our address and my phone number below if you need it. (Fingers crossed that you’ll need it!) I’ve been praying for years that Beau would bring a special girl home for Christmas. Maybe this is the year!
All my love,
Cecelia Wall (Beau’s mom and your hopefully someday mother-in-law)
After skimming over the address, I lower the letter in my hands, unable to hide a small smile as I meet Beau’s blue-eyed gaze peering back at me from his hospital bed. “I’m starting to think your mom loves me more than my own mother does.”
“What can I say? You leave an impression.”
Yeah? Well, so does Beau Wall. As a six-foot-four MinorLeague baseball player who looks like a young Robert Redford straight out of my grandma’s all-time favorite movieThe Natural, how could he not?
Impressions aside, he’s definitely not what I’m looking for, even if his mother is doing a stellar job at wooing me.
“Good thing I remembered to give you that note,” says Beau, tugging his neck brace away from his square jaw. “Mom said she’d kill me if I forgot.”
“And I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop messing with that neck brace.”
“For being an innocent patient, I feel like I’m getting an awful lot of death threats here.”
I fold up the letter from Beau’s mom and place it in the back pocket of my scrub pants as I fight a giant yawn and try to remember why I came into Beau’s room in the first place.
Problem is, at three in the morning I have trouble rememberinganything—like why I took on a travel contract that requires working night shift hours in a hospital outside of Chicago when I need sunlight and sleep to feel human. Or why I already agreed to work extra shifts every week until this contract ends.
Ugh. How is this my life right now?
After rubbing my tired eyes a couple seconds, I snap my fingers and point at his monitor, finally remembering why I came into Beau’s room. “One of your tele leads came off.”
And I suppose I remember why I took on this terrible night shift contract for thirteen weeks too. Because I promised my best friend Lucy that I’d take Christmas off, my first Christmas off in eight years, so I could spend it with her and her family down in Bugle, Tennessee. This travel job ends at just the right time. Pays great too. I’m doing this for Lucy.
Lucy.
My gaze snaps to Beau, taking in his shaggy blond hair, good-natured grin, athletic build, and all-around aura of charm as I adjust the blood pressure cuff around his muscled bicep. Why didn’t I think of this right away? My matchmaker instincts obviously don’t function at full capacity on night shift either. “I just realized I know the perfect girl for you.”
“About time you figured it out.”
“She’s a nurse named Lucy.”
