Heart Trouble Read Free

new one.”
    If he wasn’t mistaken, she blushed. “Seriously? A woman has never said the thought of you packing heat is a huge turn-on? What’s wrong with the women you’ve dated?”
    For one thing, none of them were anything like you . He grew somber, studying her incredible smiling face. The desire to get closer to her was palpable, both physically and intellectually. “You want to get out of here? Go grab a cup of coffee someplace quiet, so we can talk some more?”
    Her pretty lips parted to reply. Unfortunately, that was when all hell chose to break loose.

Chapter Two
    A woman’s piercing scream broke through the din of the bar. People pushed and shoved, trying to get closer to the action or farther away from it. The bar’s staff came out of the woodwork to get the excited horde of partiers under control.
    “Somebody please, help us!” a female voice shouted. “ Please! Oh God, he’s not breathing!”
    Erin froze in the commotion, then turned to look for Tess, the shouted plea for medical help like a bucket of ice water dumped over her lust-fogged head. She didn’t have time to analyze that she had indeed been thirsting for more of Sean, the smokin’ hot cop.
    Sean grabbed her arm when she started to enter the agitated crowd. “Erin, wait. It’s not safe to go—”
    She peeled his fingers from her bicep, flirty vixen persona floating away like smoke. “I’m a doctor.”
    His mouth opened in surprise, then closed, an unnamed emotion darkening his features as he stared at her face intently. He must’ve believed her though, because he began pushing his way through the crowd, barking at people to get out of his way as he pulled Erin along behind him.
    “Erin!” Tess shouted, kneeling in the chair at their table so she could see over the thick sea of people.
    “Let’s go,” Erin ordered with a wave of her hand, her medical training superseding everything else.
    They reached the man lying on his back on the floor of the bar. Erin pushed the onlookers back and dropped to her knees, ignoring the biting grit of sand and God only knew what else grinding into her flesh. The tight dress rode farther up her thighs, and she was probably flashing part of her ass, but modesty took a backseat to necessity.
    “My name is Erin Taylor. I’m an ER doctor at Baptist Hospital. Get this crowd back now. I need the music off and the lights on, and somebody damn sure better have already called 911!”
    A low murmur vibrated through the thick mass of bodies. Staff forced them back, the music died a quick death, and bright halogen lights flashed on, temporarily blinding everyone.
    Erin focused on her patient.
    The guy looked to be in his early thirties, pale as cotton, and unconscious. When Erin pressed her fingers to his throat, he had no pulse. She immediately started chest compressions.
    “Tess, check to see if they have an AED.” Tess scrambled off to do as Erin asked. “Sean?” she said.
    “Talk to me, Doc,” he answered, bending down near her shoulder. She found it strangely comforting that he was still close by.
    “Get these people out of here. Threaten to shoot them, arrest them, whatever you have to do.”
    “Handled,” he said in a stern cop voice.
    Behind her, Sean took over, and the shuffling of feet followed among the grumbling of people wanting to watch someone die before their eyes.
    Tess came running back. “No AED.”
    “It was worth a shot.”
    Everything around Erin moved in slow motion as she tried to force life back into the young man. Too young to be lying there dying on the dirty floor of a bar. A pretty girl paced beside them, tears streaking down her ashen cheeks in sooty tracks, her hands clasped together in front of her mouth as she pleaded with God to save…
    Erin blocked out the sound of her voice in order to concentrate.
    Fate sure had an odd way of fucking with her. One minute she was encapsulated in a bubble of lust, feeling almost high just by breathing the same air as someone