Taming Her Navy Doc Read Online Free Page A

him in his nightmares, her face was the balm to soothe him.
    A nameless, angelic face tied with a painful moment. It was cruel. To remember her meant he had to relive that moment over and over again.
    And then, as fate would have it, a stack of personnel files had been piled on his desk about a month ago and he’d been told to find another general surgeon to come to Okinawa. Her file had been on the top as the most qualified.
    It was then he’d had a name for his angel.
    Erica.
    As he thought about her name, she came into view, walking quickly toward an SUV which was pulling up. He thought he adequately remembered her beauty, but his painful haze of jangled memories didn’t do her justice.
    Her hair wasn’t white-blond, it was more honey colored. Her skin was pale and her lips red. Her eyes were dark, like dark chocolate. She was tall and even taller in her heels. He was certain she could almost look him in the eye.
    She walked with purpose, her head held high. He liked that about her. Mick, his old commanding officer in the Navy SEALs Special Ops, had told him a month after his amputation that the surgeon who’d removed his leg wouldn’t back down. Even when Mick had tried to scare her off.
    He’d been told how his surgeon had fought for him to get the best medical care he needed. How she’d sat at his bedside. She’d seen him at his most vulnerable. Something he didn’t like people to see.
    Vulnerability, emotion, was for the weak.
    He’d been trained to be tough.
    He’d been in Special Ops for years, even though he’d started his career just as a naval medic like Erica.
    And then on a failed mission in the Middle East they’d become cornered. He’d thrown himself in front of a barrage of bullets to save Tyler from being killed. Bullets had ripped throughhis left calf, but he’d managed to stop the bleeding, repair the damage and move on.
    Only they’d been surrounded and they’d had to resort to the old sewer system running under the city to make their escape and meet their transport.
    The infested and dirty water was where he’d probably caught the bacteria which had cost him his leg, but it was his leg or his life.
    For a long time after the fact, he’d wanted to die because he couldn’t be a Navy SEAL any longer. He’d almost died. Just like his twin brother, Liam, had on a different mission. He remembered the look of anguish on Liam’s wife’s face when he’d had to tell her that her husband was gone. It was why Thorne wouldn’t date. Seeing the pain in Megan’s eyes, the grief which ate at her and her two kids… It was something Thorne never wanted to put anyone through. It was best Thorne severed all ties. He wasn’t going to stop serving and it was better if he didn’t leave behind a family.
    And it was his fault Liam was dead and that Megan was a widow. One stupid wrong move, that was what Thorne had done, and Liam had pushed him out of the way.
    Liam had paid with his life and Thorne would forever make penance for that mistake.
    Thorne had enlisted in the Special Ops andwas accepted as a SEAL. It had been Liam’s passion and Thorne planned to fulfill it for him.
    And then he’d lost his leg saving another.
    He didn’t regret it.
    Though he was ashamed he was no longer in the Special Ops. When he’d taken that bullet for Tyler he’d been able to see Liam’s face, disappointed over another foolish move.
    Thorne had returned to serve as a medic ashamed and numb to life.
    He wasn’t the same man anymore, and it wasn’t just the absence of his leg which made him different.
    At least he still had surgery. When the assignment to command the general surgery clinic in Okinawa had come up, Thorne had jumped at it—and when he’d seen that Erica, a highly recommended and decorated surgeon in the Navy, was requesting reassignment to Okinawa Prefecture, Thorne had wanted the chance to know more about the woman who’d taken his leg and saved his life.
    Had she?
    His mother didn’t like