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  Dr. Dan

  Copyright © 2019 K Webster

  Cover Design: All by Design

  Photo: Adobe Stock

  Editor: Emily A. Lawrence

  Formatting: Champagne Book Design

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About This Book

  K Webster’s Taboo World

  Dedication

  Note to the Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  K Webster’s Taboo World: Cast of Characters

  Acknowledgements from K Webster

  About the Author

  Books by K Webster

  Lauren will do anything besides face reality.

  Her truth won’t set her free because it’s too busy hunting her.

  It chases her into the ER more often than she can count.

  Dr. Venable is hell-bent on finding answers for his most frequent hospital visitor.

  Even when his stunningly beautiful patient is difficult and resistant.

  He’ll uncover her pain because he wants nothing more than to heal the sassy young woman.

  Long nights.

  Rising temperatures.

  Feverish needs.

  They spend more time than ethical on their quest for answers.

  His position. Her age. Nothing will keep them apart.

  Not until they get what they came for.

  Love may not be a cure, but they’re going to test it anyway.

  K Webster’s Taboo World

  Welcome to my taboo world! These stories began as an effort to satisfy the taboo cravings in my reader group. The two stories in the duet, Bad Bad Bad, were written off the cuff and on the fly for my group. Since everyone seemed to love the stories so much, I expanded the characters and the world. I’ve been adding new stories ever since. Each book stands alone from the others and doesn’t need to be read in any particular order. I hope you enjoy the naughty characters in this town! These are quick reads sure to satisfy your craving for instalove, smokin’ hot sex, and happily ever afters!

  Bad Bad Bad

  Coach Long

  Ex-Rated Attraction

  Mr. Blakely

  Malfeasance

  Easton

  Crybaby

  Lawn Boys

  Renner’s Rules

  The Glue

  Dane

  Enzo

  Red Hot Winter

  Dr. Dan

  Several more titles to be released soon!

  Thanks for reading!

  K

  Matt—love you, honey.

  and

  Lauren—you’re a fighter and an inspiration.

  I’m proud to have created a character in your honor.

  Note to the Reader

  Dr. Dan is a complete standalone. However, if you want to learn more about the other characters in this book, you should start with Enzo and then read Red Hot Winter. Those two books will give you deeper insight into Daniel’s and Lauren’s characters.

  Hope you enjoy their story!

  Click cover to buy!

  Daniel

  St. Patrick’s Day

  “I’ll wash your car,” Morris says, waggling his brows at me.

  Right.

  Evan Morris—Brown County Hospital’s playboy—doesn’t wash cars. He pays people to do that shit for him. If I gave in, he’d pay one of his groupies to do it. Negotiating with Morris takes a helluva lot more calculation on my end. A car wash is too damn easy and he knows it.

  The bastard smirks, his blue eyes flashing with mischief. He’s fifteen years my junior and I always wonder if I was a smug little shit back then too. I don’t remember being a spoiled brat at thirty and I certainly didn’t sleep with half the staff at BCH.

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I eye him with scrutiny. Silver spoons can’t buy muscle mass much to Morris’s annoyance. I may be just shy of my forty-fifth birthday, but I annihilate when we go to the gym together. His blue eyes flicker to my biceps that are bulging against the fabric of my baby blue scrubs, causing him to stand a little straighter and to fluff his pretty-boy blond hair that women seem to fumble all over themselves to touch.

  “My car is fine,” I start, one corner of my lips lifting. “But yours…”

  “You can’t borrow the 911.”

  I shrug my shoulders as though I don’t care. “Fine, you get the next broken nosed belligerent asshole from Blarney’s Bar who’ll puke up green beer all over your pretty shoes.”

  Morris hates puke.

  For an ER doctor, that’s a problem.

  “I hate you, man,” he grumbles.

  “Aww, why do you hate Dr. Venable?” Chrissy, an ER nurse and one of Morris’s newest bedroom conquests, asks him.

  He flashes her an easy smile, but I can tell it’s not genuine. From what he told me at the gym last week, he fucked and ran because she was clingy as hell. Serves him right. When you sleep with your coworkers, that shit will bite you in the ass eventually.

  “We were betting on who gets to deal with the next drunk patient. If he lets me take his car home tonight, then I’ll take them.” I shrug and Morris glowers.

  Chrissy grips his elbow. “They just brought in a new patient. I’d give him the car for the night,” she warns. “Wasted partygoer. Possible alcohol poisoning.”

  Which means green puke.

  “Fine,” Morris grumbles. “Greenie is all yours.”

  “And so is your new 911 Carrera S model. I’m taking her for a spin tonight,” I tell him with a victorious grin as I walk backward down the corridor. “I’ll pick her up in three hours for our date. Don’t wait up for her.”

  He scratches at his jaw with his middle finger, discreetly flipping me off. I laugh before turning and striding along the squeaky linoleum floors on a mission to meet my next patient in triage. St. Patrick’s Day is one of our busier days in the ER. Not as busy as Independence Day or New Year’s Eve, but it’s up there. Anytime you have a holiday that loosely revolves around drinking, it means you have more careless people getting themselves into all sorts of shit.

  But I love my job. Can’t complain. I never settled for anything less than the constant excitement of what the emergency room brought in. It varied from sickness to mangled and barely breathing car accident victims. Each time the double doors open and the EMT rushes in, it’s a surprise. You don’t know which skill you’ll utilize that day. I’m not sure I’ll ever move into surgery or oncology or become a general practitioner. Doing essentially the same thing day in and day out is boring. Besides, if I had settled into a specific field, I would’ve probably n
ever met my daughter.

  Less than a month ago, a girl walked in looking just like a woman from my past. It was eerie as fuck. Eerie enough that I boldly asked for a paternity test. Turns out, I am the father of an eighteen-year-old girl. And now she lives with me. As strange as it was staring at someone with my same jade-green eyes, it also filled a hole of longing. I’ve been married to my career for so long, but I’ve never settled to build a family. For nearly a month now, though, I’ve been given a daughter and it’s incredible. Scary as fuck that I’ll somehow mess up this parenting gig, but also cool as hell.

  “Dr. Venable,” Lin greets, a chart in hand as she bounces up to me.

  Lin is barely five feet tall and is built like a child. She may be a nurse, but she’s smarter than Morris. And she’s never climbed into bed with him, which makes her smarter than the rest of the staff. I like working with Lin because she knows her shit and doesn’t goof around.

  “Possible alcohol poisoning?” I ask as I scrub my hands at a sink. “That’s what Chrissy said.”

  She rolls her eyes, her chin-length black bob bouncing at the exaggerated movement. “No. The patient says she had one glass, so it’s not alcohol poisoning. Chrissy doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  I frown as I dry my hands. “Rohypnol?” Wouldn’t be the first time I had a roofied patient.

  “No,” she says quickly. “She’s aware and can move. More dizzied and dazed than anything. Her blood pressure is 177 over 116.”

  “Age?” I bark out, already sliding into urgent doctor mode.

  “Eighteen.”

  A flash of panic startles me. Now that I have my daughter, every time a patient comes in with the same age, I worry I’ll walk in and find her. The thought of losing her when I just got her is scary as hell.

  “That’s too high. Name,” I grunt out.

  “Lauren Englewood.”

  The relief is brief that it isn’t my daughter, Jenna, but the desire to help my patient soon becomes my sole focus. I snag a couple of latex gloves and slide them on before pushing the curtain away to assess my patient.

  Her eyes are closed when I enter the room. Pale flesh. Damp blond hair. The young woman is listless and breathing heavily.

  “Lauren,” I say as I reach her side. “I’m Dr. Venable. How you doing there?”

  She flutters her eyes open, revealing intense brown eyes. My gaze skims over her face as I assess her. A few freckles dot her flesh under her eyes and over her nose. Her cheekbones are high, giving her the look of so many of those magazine models who litter the hospital waiting room. I drop my focus to her lips, looking for discoloration. They’re not blue or purple indicating something respiratory. Just full and naturally red.

  “Lauren?” I ask.

  “I’m fine,” she breathes out.

  I arch a brow at her. “If you were fine, you wouldn’t be here. My nurse tells me you only had one drink.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could it have been tampered with?”

  She swallows hard. “No, I made it myself.”

  “Did you feel this way before or after you consumed the drink?”

  “Before,” she murmurs. “I had a headache, but my brother, Landon, was having a party. I didn’t want to ruin it.”

  Using my stethoscope, I begin listening to her heart. It’s steady, but I still want an EKG to be sure. High blood pressure on a patient this young is worrisome.

  “You have a headache now?” I ask as I pull the instrument away.

  “Pounding, yes,” she admits. “And my side hurts.”

  I loop the stethoscope around my neck. “I’m going to press on your abdomen. Let me know if you feel any pain or pressure.”

  She nods and I push against her over her shirt. Her brows furrow, but she doesn’t wince.

  “Is it uncomfortable?”

  “I just feel really full.”

  “I’d like to get a urine sample to run a full analysis—”

  “No,” she cries out, her hand gripping my wrist. “I mean, I’m fine.”

  “Again, Lauren, you’re not fine. You wouldn’t be in triage if you were.”

  She lets out a frustrated huff and sits up. “See, fine. My dad is out of town and my brother is wasted. I just want to go back home. Give me some Tylenol or whatever. I’m sure it’s just a migraine.”

  “A urinalysis could rule out some things like urinary tract infection or kidney infection. I’d like to run those tests to check for blood in the urine. With your high blood pressure and what you’re describing with your abdomen, I want to rule it out.”

  Her nostrils flare and her cheeks burn red. “I don’t have blood in my urine.”

  I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m just trying to help you. Your blood pressure is through the roof. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

  Lin peeks her head in, waving a urine cup. “Ready, hon?”

  Lauren shakes her head. “I’m not peeing in a cup.”

  Gritting my teeth, I look over my shoulder at Lin. “Sodium nitroprusside. We’ll do a drip to get her blood pressure down along with some fluids. Draw a blood sample and—”

  “I’m fine. Just give me the medicine to make this headache go away and send me home. I don’t know why Winter brought me here in the first place,” Lauren bites out.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell Lauren before standing and stalking out of the room.

  Lin frowns at me. “Hiding something?”

  “Yeah. Due to her age and the fact she was partying, I’d like to say it was the fact she also took drugs, but we won’t know for sure unless she allows us to run the tests.”

  “Can you convince her?”

  “I’ll try. But you know how some people are. We’ll get her in a more stable condition and then we can try and convince her from there.”

  Lin runs off to get the meds and I walk back into the room. I cross my arms over my chest and frown at Lauren. She squirms under my intense glare.

  “It’s my job to want to treat what’s going on with you,” I tell her. “The human body isn’t something that can be ignored when it’s flashing warning signals.”

  Her brows furrow and she tears her brown eyes from mine. “It’s probably a fluke. I’ll go see my doctor if it happens again.”

  I sense a lie in her words, but it’s not like I can force her. I’m about to continue my insistence she gets tested when chaos erupts nearby.

  “Dr. Venable, you’re needed in triage one!” Chrissy calls from beyond the curtain, the frantic edge in her tone indicating I’m about to encounter something bloody.

  Reluctantly, I leave the girl.

  She may not be in a life-threatening situation just yet, but my gut tells me it’s only a matter of time.

  Lauren

  April Fool’s Day

  Sweat beads across my brow as I desperately try to ignore the pain lancing through me. Of all the classes to fall ill, my senior English class with Mr. Hanks is the worst one. Neil Hanks is one of my dad’s closest friends. He’s a tattletale too.

  As though he has access to my thoughts, he pins me with his dark brown eyes. His mouth moves as he discusses archetypes in stories, but his gaze is penetrating. If I know Neil, I know he’ll send a text to Dad before I even leave the classroom. Then, Dad will fly home from Chicago and baby me. More than baby me…he’ll pressure me to see a doctor.

  I swallow hard and try not to come off as though I’m suffering in this hard chair. I hate doctors—even good-looking ER ones. They’re nosy and they reveal things about you that don’t deserve to be learned about. It wasn’t long after Mom was diagnosed by doctors that she deteriorated and died. One moment she was here and happy, the next she looked pretty in her favorite church dress lying in an expensive pearl-gray coffin.

  Absently, I touch my silver heart necklace. It was Mom’s. A Mother’s Day gift to her the year before she died. Now it’s mine.

  The ache inside me no longer belongs to physical pain, but one that comes from the soul
. I miss her every day. Dad has thrown his attention into his career and Landon obsesses over his girlfriend, Callie. That’s how they cope. I’m still trying to figure out how to cope with her loss.

  A wave of dizziness washes over me and I grip the edge of my desk to hold myself steady. Throbbing inside my skull begins pounding in tandem with my heartbeat. I’m soaked with sweat and lightheaded. Closing my eyes, I try to relax but my whole body jerks when I start to slump in my seat. I tense back up and suck in deep breaths.

  “Miss Englewood?”

  Neil’s voice echoes inside my head, forcing me to open my eyes. He blurs and becomes two. A wave of black slicks over my vision, blinding me and dragging me under.

  “Lauren!”

  I wake to find Neil’s worried face searching mine. Several of my peers are huddled around. I’m on the floor of the classroom. God, my head hurts. I reach up to touch my head and Neil shakes his.

  “Don’t. I think you’re going to need stitches. You hit it pretty hard.”

  Hit?

  He pulls away a cloth that’s covered in blood before folding it and then pressing it to my forehead again. I’m embarrassed to be lying in my teacher’s lap with kids staring at me with worried looks.

  “Uh, I’m fine,” I whisper.

  “Where is she?” my brother barks out, rushing into the room. “Holy shit, Lauren!”

  It must be serious because Neil doesn’t even get onto him about his language.

  “Did you call your dad?” Neil, the tattletale, asks.

  “He’s looking for a flight right now but won’t be in until later. Ambulance on the way?”

  Neil nods.

  Ambulance?

  “I’m fine,” I try again, hot tears flooding my eyes. I just want to go home and climb into bed. “It’s just period pains.”

  A few guys make gagging sounds and Landon frowns as he squats beside me.

  “Nice try, sis.”