Every day was crazy in the Baltimore General ER. Some days, it was merely batshit. Others, it was coked-up honey badger.

Today qualified as full-on HB level.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Dr. Emerson McKay chanted as she carefully navigated an intubation tube down the throat of a kid who, in no version of this world, should be lying on a hospital bed. “Someone page Dr. Zopher!” He was the best trauma surgeon in the hospital.

“Done,” Susan, one of Emmy’s favorite nurses, said as she finished hanging packed red blood cells and inserting a line into the boy’s arm.

Although David Hernandez had been breathing—barely—when he was brought in, things had degraded as soon as he was transferred off the stretcher. A gunshot to the chest would do that to a person, especially someone who didn’t weigh in at more than eighty pounds. The boy’s brown skin tone had leached away to a sickly yellow, and now he was completely unresponsive.

Once she had the tube in, Emmy tried to staunch the flood of blood coming from the entry wound in the boy’s chest. They’d found no exit wound, which meant a bullet was still lodged in that little body somewhere. “He needs to get to the OR now.”

But with her years of professional experience and the heavy feeling in her heart, she knew it wouldn’t matter. He still wasn’t breathing and blood was raining from his chest, down the bed, and onto the floor.

“Dr. McKay, he’s gone.” Susan said in a soothing tone, one a person might use with a wounded animal.

Emmy’s hands stilled and she took a shuddering breath. A glance up at the clock and she said flatly, “Time of death, 2207.”

From out in the hallway came a flurry of crying and fast-paced Spanish and English. “Mijo. Where is my Davido?” A wailing woman not much bigger than the boy on the bed came bull-charging into the room, pushing aside hospital staff twice her size. She took one look at her son, and it was if all the bones in her body were suddenly yanked out.

Emmy caught her before she hit the floor, smearing bloody handprints all over the woman’s shirt. “Someone take her and any other family members to an empty room. I’ll be out to talk with them in a few minutes.”

Then she took a last look at her doomed patient and gently closed his eyes. “Lo siento, Davido.”

In the staff restroom, Emmy ducked her head to keep from looking at her reflection while she was cleaning up. But it didn’t require a mirror to tell her that her normally neatly braided hair was like cotton candy during a North Carolina summer, sticking to her face and neck even though it was February and in the thirties outside.

She smoothed it back, but the motion didn’t make her feel any steadier about talking with David’s family. It didn’t matter how many times she’d broken news like this. It never, ever, became easier.

She couldn’t blame her hair for resisting.

She wanted to ditch her composure, too.

But working in the ER didn’t afford her that luxury. She had to stay calm when others were chaotic. Stoic when others were unsettled. Detached when others were dying.

Screw detachment.

What she needed was a few minutes of lose-her-shit. But that couldn’t happen even if she didn’t have to face a devastated family, because there was no place private enough tonight. Every bed was filled, and someone might walk into the break room or medication room if she was indulging in an emotional meltdown there.

“Breathe,” she whispered to herself as she strode out of the restroom and caught Susan’s eye.

“I put them in that little alcove near room one. That was the best I could do.”

Unwilling—ever—to look down on the family, Emmy sought out David’s mother and knelt to take the woman’s hands. “Mrs. Hernandez?”

“Si. Yes.” The words came out on a moan of pain.

The man beside her said, “I’m Manuel Hernandez, David’s father. My son, he will be okay?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez”—Emmy looked directly into their faces—“we did everything we could, but David’s injuries were too severe. He died.”

The woman’s grip on Emmy’s hands was downright painful, but she didn’t flinch. The pain was the least she could bear when these people had just lost their son. When Mrs. Hernandez finally released her and collapsed against her husband, Emmy rose and said, “I’m so very sorry.”

She rounded the corner out of their sight and used the wall to brace her body as she closed her eyes. Just a quick second. She could allow herself that.

“You should never say ‘I’m sorry’ to the family.” The sound of Oliver’s faint Boston Brahmin accent made Emmy’s back tense. “It implies fault.”

She opened her eyes to face him. Somehow, his dark good looks and lean body always took her by surprise. Handsome was too pedestrian a description for Dr. Oliver Amory. He looked as if he’d just stepped off a runway showcasing the newest in medical fashion. Crisp white coat, glossy black loafers, and a Burberry plaid tie secured with a double Windsor knot. Never a single because that would’ve thrown off the symmetrical perfection that was Oliver.

“No, it implies empathy,” she tried to say without injecting her tone with a sharpness that would spur a debate. “What brings you to the hospital this time of night?” As the hospital’s chief of staff, he kept fairly normal hours. And she knew for a fact that he wasn’t on call.

Oliver’s flash of a smile should’ve revved up Emmy’s hormones, her heart. After all, he was the man she shared a bed with, at least when their schedules lined up. But tonight, his polished self-confidence did nothing to alleviate the churn in her stomach or the regret in her soul. “I came to see you, of course.”

“Oliver, we’re slammed. Have been all night even before the Hernandez boy, and I’m buried under a stack of paperwork.”

His smile didn’t waver as he took her elbow and led her into the center of the ER where the staff computers and long community desks sat. “Don’t worry. This won’t take long, and then you can get back to things.” He waved an arm and called out to the staff within hearing distance, “Everyone over here. I need your attention for a few minutes, people.”

As usual, they heeded the self-assured tone in Oliver’s voice and gathered around the counter Emmy and Oliver were standing behind. Once they were obediently lined up, Oliver reached into the pocket of his monogrammed lab coat and withdrew a box.

A blue box. One that had Tiffany & Co. printed in black across the top.

What felt like glass shards pierced Emmy’s already shredded stomach. That wasn’t… He wasn’t… He couldn’t be…

But Oliver pulled a black box from inside the blue one, lifted the lid, and said, “Emerson Louise McKay, be my wife.”

No bended knee. No flowery words. No declaration of love. Hell, it wasn’t even a question.

Just a statement that he expected her to obey like the ER staff who had unquestioningly listened to him.

As Emmy stared at the six-pronged platinum solitaire, no words came to her. Her mind was a void.

Until it filled with pictures of the past.

Another ring. Another time. Another man.

When Cash Kingston had asked her to marry him, he’d only been eighteen, but he’d been everything Emmy had ever wanted in a man. Except he’d lacked one thing. One very important quality. Motivation. A hunger for more.

A crowd—a hundred times the size of this one—had gathered around. After all, the Mountain Springfest was one of the biggest events in Western North Carolina. That day, Cash was wearing a smile and the Levi’s she’d saved up for to give him for Christmas. He certainly didn’t lack for an audience. He tugged her up on the temporary stage, dropped dramatically to one knee, and offered her forever.

And she just stood there, the yes she wanted to say held back by the no she needed to say. The reality of her rejection slowly seeped into Cash’s beautiful brown eyes and they turned muddy with sorrow and betrayal. The onlookers grew restless and uncomfortable, their whispers and speculations whipping through the gathering like a sudden wind.

Cash was nothing if not proud, and he came to his feet with a self-confidence that few young men could’ve pulled off. He flashed a smile at the crowd. No one but Emmy seemed to realize it wasn’t real. Cash’s genuine smile always brought out the sexy groove in his left cheek.

And he said, “It was just a joke, y’all. Remember, this is April Fool’s Day. And this ring, it’s just a piece of crap I got from a machine at Hoffman’s Grocery.”

He tossed it in the air, but Emmy caught it before it could fall to the stage floor. She squeezed it tightly enough to leave a circle embossed on her palm.

Cash hopped off the platform and into the crowd. Still playing a part, he turned to reach for Emmy’s hand as if to help her off the stage, but she slowly shook her head and stumbled away to trip down the rickety stairs at the back.

By the time she’d gotten her breath and composure back enough to look for him, he’d disappeared. The next day, she went to his house, only to be informed by his younger brother Shep that “Cash doesn’t want that cheap piece of shit and said to keep the damn ring.”

At home, she’d carefully placed the white gold circlet inset with a trio of diamond chips into the shoe box filled with her silver high heels, the ones she’d worked so hard to afford. The ones she was supposed to wear to the senior prom. Only now she had no date, and when prom night came, apparently Cash was out partying down at Deadman’s Creek with some of his buddies.

And when she heard he was so hungover the next day that he’d blown off the SAT test, she knew she’d made the right call.

Cash Kingston had no drive to be anything but a small-town boy. And Emerson McKay wanted the world.

Shouldn’t the expensive engagement ring Oliver was holding out to her now feel like the world?

“Emerson?” Oliver prompted. “Did you hear me?”

Emmy swallowed. “Let’s take this into the break room. We need to talk.”

Oliver’s expression transformed from mild to stormy. “There’s nothing to discuss,” he said, tone even. Too even. “Take the ring.”

“Don’t make me do this,” she tried to whisper so no one else would hear.

“Take the goddamn ring.” He thrust the box closer to her, and it demanded all of Emmy’s self-control not to flinch away.

Instead, she grabbed Oliver’s wrist and said to everyone clustered around them, “If y’all don’t mind, Oliver and I would like some privacy.” He actually let her tug him from behind the desk and into a small janitorial closet crammed with mops, brooms, and industrial-sized bottles of cleaner that were supposed to freshen even the most disgusting mess. But all Emmy could smell were bleach and vomit.

Once the door was closed, Oliver snarled, “What was that?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” she demanded. “What kind of person does what you just did? You put me on the spot in front of my colleagues. It was completely inappropriate.” Not to mention completely unromantic. If she had to apply a description to the shit show just now, she’d call it a premeditated ambush.

“You said y’all.” Oliver said in an accusatory tone.

“What?”

“You said, ‘If y’all don’t mind’ in front of everyone. You know how I feel about that backwoods talk.”

This was what he wanted to fight about right now—her inability to rid her personal lexicon of all things Southern? The exhausted, petty part of Emmy wanted to shout out Southern phrases like over yonder, right smack, and might could, which always made Oliver launch into a lecture on grammar redundancy. “You cannot truly think that proposing—no, demanding—marriage in a public place is what any woman wants.”

“People do it all the time at restaurants.”

“Romantic restaurants with wine and candles.”

“You’re more practical than that.” The finger he pointed at her reminded her of a pistol.

Please, no more guns.

“Which is exactly the reason we’re perfect together,” he went on. “I understand you. I understand your work. How many other men can you say that about?”

Not many. But when he put it like that, Emmy realized how cold and pragmatic their arrangement was. And that was what it was—an arrangement. Not a relationship. Not a love match. Something with less spark and passion than a tub of lukewarm bathwater.

“Now,” Oliver continued, “the plan is for a nine-month engagement, long enough for my mother to handle all the wedding details. We’ll get married in November. In Boston, of course. A weeklong honeymoon in Italy should suffice. And then we’ll be back here.”

Because God forbid that he leave the hospital board and CEO alone for too long. They might actually think for themselves.

Why hadn’t she ever realized he would want to manage his marriage the same way? They’d never even discussed children. In fact, they discussed very little. They talked about the hospital, had sex an average of once every two weeks, and when they were in the same bed, they slept back to back.

Not long ago, Emmy would’ve said she was satisfied with that.

Not long ago, she would’ve been lying.

She wanted more than a man who functionally fit into her life. She wanted passion and surprise and fun.

“Of course, you’ll need to stop your little sideline with the state police,” he droned on. “I’ve told you a hundred times it’s too dangerous, and it’s certainly not befitting the wife of an Amory.”

Her medical role with the Maryland State Police Tactical Medical Unit and SWAT team was much more than a sideline. The desperate need for tactical medicine was her entire reason for becoming a doctor, the underpinning of her career. “Are you saying that if I married you, you wouldn’t allow me to be on the tactical medical team anymore?”

“You wouldn’t have time. After all, we’d be expected to entertain more, and hostessing is an art form.”

Hostessing? It might be a source of pride for some women, and more power to them. But Emmy would rather take a breaching ram to the chest than deal with caterers, floral arrangements, and decorators. “No.”

“If you don’t want to handle it all, Mother would be willing to help from time—” he said.

“I mean, no, I won’t marry you.”

“—to time. She knows all the… What did you say?”

Trying to show compassion to the man who’d suddenly reminded her she wanted—no, deserved—more than this, Emmy took the box from his hand and slid it back into the pocket of his lab coat. “You don’t really want to marry me any more than I want to marry you. You think we’re a match because I’m convenient.”

“Untrue. You’re too strong-willed to be convenient. But I abide that because it’s also what makes you a good doctor.”

Maybe she should’ve been flattered that he considered her a good doctor, but it was clear he didn’t consider her an equal. “Then let’s accept the truth. We’re both already married to our work.”

“I selected you, Emerson.”

Okay, that was a little heavy-handed, even for Oliver, but Emmy tried to stay calm. “I choose. My life. My career. My relationships.”

Oliver’s lips flatlined and his nostrils flared. Just once. “You say you’re married to your work? Fine. Then as of now, consider yourself divorced.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dr. McKay, the hospital and I no longer need your services. Pack up your personal items because as of”—he lifted his Girard-Perregaux and studied the watch face—“2259, your contract with Baltimore General is terminated.”

Emmy didn’t say a word as Oliver stalked out of the room, but she thought plenty. Many of them four-letter. At least until she took a breath and realized what this meant she was now free to do.

Go home.