Legally Yours due at the end of the month, then we party!!!

To tease you along, I'm including another excerpt from Remember Me.

I'm also collecting prizes for uour Valentines Day launch party!! As soon as I have a minute I'll start taking pictures and get them up here for you to drool over ;o) There were some great after-holiday sales, and my blog buddies get to reap the rewards.

It's crunch time for Legally Yours, so the next few weeks will be sparse out here. But don't give up on me, you won't want to miss any of the great info coming your way. I'll be updating the website contest page, giving you one final Remember Me excerpt some time next week, and chatting about all the ways you could win something fun in February as we party on to celebrate next month's realease of The Perfect Daughter. Have I thrown enough titles at you, LOL!!

I liken this last part of the writing process to studying for finals in college--and yes, I spent weeks preparing for the beasties. And even if you didn't, I bet you know what I mean. Things are finally starting to make sense, and the harder I work, the better the big picture gets. The more likely I'll ace the thing in the end.

So, there won't be much but hard work for me the next few weeks. That, and hanging with my friends out here when I can. Let me know what you're doing, so I can keep up. And I'll get a newsletter out in early February to return the favor. Lots of exciting stuff to report, so hang in there.

Here's the third of four exceprts from Remember Me. If you haven't read any of my teasers, scan the last few weeks to catch up! We finally get to see what Robert's thinking (Robert, by the way, has a small but important roll in Legally Yours, and you're going to love him!!)

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"Finish prepping her," Neurosurgeon Robert Livingston demanded, his gaze lowering to his patient's now-relaxed features. "I want to be in there looking for bleeders in five minutes."

As she was intubated and prepped, he studied the portable CT scan's the ER had captured on their latest high-tech toy.

Atlanta Metropolitan Hospital was on of the first ERs in the country to use the technology. A coup for the hospital, the city, and the state of Georgia for that matter. All Robert had cared about when he'd pushed his Chief of Staff for the funding was being able to diagnosis traumatic brain injuries before symptoms could be detected externally.

Case and point--the gravely-injured woman who'd been frantically trying to crawl off his operating table.

Their Jane Doe's skull hadn't been shattered by whatever had struck her--a pipe or something smaller, had been his guess after examining the size of the external contusion. Her skull was primarily intact, but cracked. The CT scan revealed bone fragments and lesions that could be life threatening if they weren't dealt with. And dealing with them, even delicately, would increase her risk of the kind of complications that could permanently debilitate her. But he had to stop the bleeding. Remove debris that might cause a clot or out-of-control pressure and swelling.

Then all there'd be left to do was wait, and hope.

It will be okay...

Trust me.

He'd been out of his mind to promise her anything. Every person in the operating room had frozen at his unprofessional lapse. He would place her odds of a full recovery around 50/50 at
this point.

But she'd been frantic. Terrified. Desperate. And he'd fallen into those expressive brown eyes--taken her hand, even though it had destroyed his sterile field. In the face of fear like hers, any man would have promised anything, no matter how unlikely the follow-through.

Well, unlikely or not, Robert was going to get her through this.

"I have to re-scrub." He turned away as his surgical intern stabilized the patient's head, covering everything but the shaved area around the injury with sterile dressings. "We open her up in two minutes."

It had been drilled into him in med school that his patients' problems outside the hospital were beyond his control. So were the many possible complications they faced during recovery. But in his OR, the control was his. And he was good at what he did. The best in the state, tops in his field nationally. He lost very few patients, and his were some of the most critical cases the ER saw.

And, damn it, he wasn't losing this one.

He turned on the taps and began to lather up. Breaking the seal on a fresh brush, he scrubbed from his nails to his elbows. His fingers clenched at the memory of the feel of her hand trembling in his. The strength that had fueled her desperation to run, even though she was weak from heavy blood loss.

In that moment, he'd been willing to do anything to protect her. To defend her from whomever had hurt her.

The brush clattered to the floor.

Damn it!

He opened another from it's sterile tray.

Focus, man.

Get it together.

He was her doctor. She was perfectly safe now, and it was the police's job to keep her that way. He'd said what he had to, to calm her enough for his team to finish prepping for surgery. He'd have said the same thing to any patient in her emotional state.

The rationalization fell flat. He scrubbed harder.

He'd never before promised a patient anything. And he'd have promised this one much more. Whatever it took to ease the panic consuming her so completely.

You have to help me get out of here...

He shook his head. Began to rinse, fingers up, so the sterile water washed the soap downward, away from his hands.

Time to work his magic, then send her on her way. To patch her up, so she could go wherever she so desperately needed to go--before he became even more irrationally attached to helping her get there.