Title: Won’t Feel a Thing
Author: C.F. White
Series: St. Cross #1
Release Date: December 19th 2017
Genre: Contemporary MM Romance
BLURB
It takes more than a doctor to mend a broken heart.
Ollie Warne is fresh out of nursing school and working his
dream job as a pediatric cardiology nurse at St Cross Children’s Hospital,
London. He wants to start the new year free of personal heartache after his
track record of falling for the wrong man--his New Year’s resolution is to live
a life of carefree liaisons from now on.
He immediately meets Jacob, father of one of Ollie’s
patients and a man harboring more guilt and past demons than even Ollie, which
is saying something...
Their growing attraction makes it hard for Ollie to keep
his distance, but he has to. Not only do the ethics of his profession demand
it, but Ollie is entangled with another man--a predatory doctor who has a huge
personal and professional stake in Ollie’s life.
Ollie risks more than his job by getting involved with a
patient’s father--and much more than just the success of his New Year’s
resolution, something that was supposed to ensure that, this time, he won’t
feel a thing.
Find Won’t Feel a
Thing on Goodreads
EXCERPT
“You want my opinion?”
“Yes.”
“My honest opinion?”
“Yes,” Ollie repeated. “Please.”
“Brutal honest opinion?”
“Yes. ”
“Even if you don’t like it?”
“Even if I never want to talk to you again.” Ollie took a
sharp slurp through the straw of his smoothie and winced, his glasses tipping
to the end of his nose. “Until tonight, anyway.”
“Then leave well alone.”
Ollie sighed. He sucked up another mouthful of his daily
fruit and veg intake, flicked back his blond hair that had lost its vigor after
a twelve-hour night shift, and glanced away from Taya’s wide brown oval eyes.
The eyes that signified she meant every damn word. Bitch.
“Told you.”
Taya freed her dark, waist-length hair from its curled bun
and stroked it over one shoulder. She wrapped the band around her slender,
dark-skinned wrist, then sipped her dainty cup of pink hot chocolate. The blue
edges of her lips, caused by the freezing weather, were subsiding back to their
usual reddish tinge with each guzzle of the pink cream and rainbow of chocolate
candies scattered over her ridiculous, sickly concoction.
She hadn’t even an offered a spoonful to him. Twelve hours
straight on night shift clearly meant she needed the sugar all to herself.
“He’s not worth your time, your worry, or your respect.”
She clanged the cup down onto the glass surface of the table, pulled her winter
trench coat over the scrubs she hadn’t bothered to change out of, and reached
for her packet of menthol slims.
“Neither are they.” Ollie pointed to the cigarettes.
Taya glared across the table. She unhooked the top of the
packet, took one of the white sticks between her teeth, and lit it with her
pink lighter. Blowing the smoke into the freezing cold air, she waved her hand.
“We all have our vices, Oliver.”
Ollie stuck his middle finger up. He slapped it back down
and shoved it into his jacket pocket. It was freezing, and Taya had to bloody
sit outside the corner coffee shop in order to smoke her way out of the trying
night shift. She was right. Everyone needed their vices, especially with what
he and Taya did for a living. He sighed.
“I think he needs patience.”
“He’s got plenty of those.” Taya pointed her two fingers
clutching the death stick at Ollie.
“Har fricking har. Patience with a c.”
“He’s a c all right.” Taya took another drag. At Ollie’s
glare, she sighed and rested her elbow on the table top. “What? He is.”
“I think you may be the only female in the entire hospital
who doesn’t like him.”
Ollie slurped the dregs of his raspberry-ripple smoothie
and shivered. He should have gone for a hot drink, but it was hard enough to
sleep during the day as it was. Caffeine would only make it infinitely more
difficult.
“That’s because I know him,” Taya replied.
“Urgh. Not you too?”
“Ew.” Taya grimaced around her cigarette. “No, thank you.”
Ollie leaned back in the chair. He waved a hand to waft
away the smoke drifting into his face. To give her some credit, Taya was trying
to blow it out of the side of her mouth to avoid him, but the icy-cold January
breeze from the earlier sleet downpour blew it straight back. Ollie zipped up
his puffer jacket, folded his arms, and jiggled on the cold metal chair.
“You nearly done?” He nodded to the half-full cup of
violently pink chocolate. Taya blew another puff of smoke into the air, stubbed
out the remains of her cigarette, and downed the rest of her drink, leaving a
foam mustache on her top lip. She licked it away. “Yeah. Home to bed, miss the
snowfall, back at eight. You?”
They scraped back their chairs, and Ollie tucked a
five-pound note under the ashtray for the servers. Anyone willing to come
outside and serve drinks in this weather should most definitely get tips, even
if his measly nurse’s wages were probably far less than those of the coffee
baristas working this part of London.
“I should go see my dad,” he replied.
Taya linked her arm in with his, curling her slender
fingers around his quilted sleeve. Checking both ways along the crossroads
lined by independent boutiques, high- class restaurants, unconventional cafes,
and health-food shops, she steered him across, narrowly missing a black cab
speeding over the miniroundabout. The glass-enclosed bus stop’s bench
overflowed with waiting passengers, so he stood, waiting, jiggling on his
freezing toes within his inappropriate-for-the-weather slip-on loafers, and
checked the time on the electric board for when the next bus was due.
“How’s he doing?” Taya asked.
“Good days and bad days.” Ollie sighed. “Keeps calling me
Tilly.”
Taya tried to hold in the chuckle but failed miserably.
Ollie didn’t mind so much. A good sense of humor was always best in these
situations, not to mention their line of work. He pulled Taya in closer. It was
fricking freezing, and snowflakes fell from the overcast sky. How would he get
back to work later that night? London came to a standstill if even one flake
hit any mode of public transport. Him living in the other end of the city—the
cheap end—would make it all the more difficult to travel across town.
On occasions, where there wasn’t a downfall, he would have
cycled in. But that was out of the question with the ice on the roads. And the
fact he hadn’t woken up in his own bed last night. Ollie shuddered at the
memory.
“Right.” Ollie bounced to keep warm while awaiting the
number 252. “It’s January. So that means New Year’s resolutions. What’s yours?”
“Quit smoking.”
“Good luck.” Ollie meant it.
Taya stuck out her tongue.
“Well, we both know mine—”
“Which you broke last night.” Taya was a bitch like that.
“I don’t believe New Year’s resolutions should start until
the second week of January.” Ollie rubbed his hands together, digging Taya’s
arm into his side, and wondered why he hadn’t thought to bring gloves. Ah, yes,
he hadn’t had any where he’d been before his shift started. He wasn’t allowed
to leave any trace of his existence there.
“Riiight, ” Taya said. “So that means from today, you’ll
be steering clear of arsehole men?” “Sadly, no. Unfortunately, I will no doubt
encounter many of them in my time without realizing until it’s too late.”
“Amen.” Taya saluted.
Ollie wasn’t sure what the salute was about. But he wasn’t
particularly religious, so maybe that was how it was done in church these days?
Or temples, considering Taya’s family were Hindu. “So what is your resolution,
then?”
“No baggage,” Ollie replied.
“Baggage?”
“Yep,” Ollie confirmed.
GIVEAWAY: Win an ebook copy of Won’t Feel a Thing
About the Author
Brought up in the relatively small town in Hertfordshire,
I managed to do what most other residents of the town try and fail. Leave.
Going off to study at a West London University, I realised
there was a whole city out there just waiting to be discovered, so much like
Dick Whittington before, I never made it back home and still endlessly searches
for the streets paved with gold; slowly coming to the realisation that it is
mostly paved with chewing gum. And the odd bit of graffiti. And those little
circles of yellow spray paint where the council point out the pot holes to
someone who is supposedly meant to fix them instead of stare at them endlessly
whilst holding a polystyrene foam cup of watered down coffee.
Eventually I moved from West to East along that vast
District Line, and settled for pie and mash, cockles and winkles, and a bit of
Knees Up Mother Brown to live in the East End of London; securing a job,
creating a life, a home, a family.
Having worked in Higher Education for the most proportion
of my adult life, a life-altering experience brought pen back to paper, having
written stories as a child but never having the confidence to show them to the
world. Now embarking on this writing malarkey, I cannot stop. So strap in, it’s
a bumpy ride from here on in.
Thank you for posting xx
ReplyDelete