Love By Accident

By Sara Hooper

Marie is a focused young doctor who’s headstrong and independent. When she meets Keith, a smart, tough-minded cop with a body she can’t keep her eyes off, circumstances get in the way of their love.

He’s not like anyone she’s been with before—can they get past their issues and finally be happy?

Length: 18,740 words
This is a black woman white man interracial romance novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sara Hooper
• Release date: Apr 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310306327

Book preview

Love By Accident

Sara Hooper

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Sara Hooper

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

In A Rush

The Date

Passion

Cracks Begin to Show

Painful Memories

Love Renewed

Sweet Summer

About the Author

In A Rush

Everything lurched. The cars around the screaming ambulance, the couples crossing the streets, the heaving masses of revelers on each corner. Keith could only watch as these scenes popped into focus for an instant and then receded into blurs. Just get there. Get to the damn hospital!

Keith sat, nerves frayed, joints aching, in the back of the ambulance where the paramedics attended to his partner, Sheldon, who’d been cut down with a bullet in an alley off Clinch Avenue. It was funny: cops like Keith and Sheldon, Knoxville’s protectors, saw the underbelly no one else saw. At least no one but the junkies and criminals they spent their lives chasing. Everyone else sat on the sidewalks sipping their lattes, sashaying arm in arm from pub to pub, young professionals and university students, all so innocent and oblivious. The city wasn’t exactly riddled through with crime, but there was enough of it.

And all it takes is one bullet. The crack. The low, deep groan of shock and pain from Sheldon. And the world they were protecting was reduced to a dizzy blur outside an ambulance window. Past the heart of downtown they roared into the hospital’s circle drive.

Keith strode alongside the gurney as his long-time partner was hustled into the ER. Keith’s blood began to boil as soon as they entered—these stethoscope clowns were running all over the place. The board listing all the incomings—ingestion, cardiac arrest, bullet wound--was full. Gurneys were everywhere in crazy angles like shopping carts at the market.

This is a police officer! Keith shouted, though he wasn’t sure to whom. He patted the shoulder of a short woman in scrubs walking by.

My buddy was shot in the line of duty, he said. He’s hit in the leg and time’s not stopping for him.

Officer, we’ll work just as fast as we can, the woman said. She was mechanical, almost emotionless. Keith could tell the words duty and officer didn’t mean much to her. Everyone was a big slab of meat to her, a line on the big white board.

Doctors. They got paid six times what Keith did and had never seen the barrel of a gun pointed at them. They’d never burst into a heroin den not knowing what was waiting. They were the mop-up crew. Sure, they were smart, they’d studied hard in med school. They cared about people just like Keith did. But they were smug, a bunch of joggers with their cute little shoes, always brand new, always lecturing people on how they should be just like them, having little avocado wraps for lunch, broiled chicken for dinner, a side of rice, a handful of cashews for dessert. Skinny little guys who didn’t do anything to build the muscles they’d studied in med school. And one of them, Keith’s ex Amanda had dropped him for. An Ivy League type who read poems by someone called Rilke.

Sheldon didn’t even get a room, just a slot behind a crappy curtain. Several nurses—who knew what their rank even was—hooked him up to some machines to get his vitals. There was a lot of doctor jibber-jabber about a lot of stuff, but no real action.

Keith asked and asked again, each time told that a team would operate on Sheldon just as soon as they could but that the whole staff was occupied—that was the word they used.

Finally, they wheeled an unconscious Sheldon into a room where he’d see the trauma team. Keith had to wait outside. He was pointed in the direction of a hallway outside the main intake area. It was quiet there, with those classical-type paintings on the wall. Keith wasn’t sure how he felt about peace and quiet. He was just as comfortable in shouting and mayhem.

He and Sheldon had started on the force at the same time and had been partners for six years. They were each other’s first partner after the initial one assigned to rookie cops. First you get a grizzled old veteran who wants to show you who’s boss, and then you get paired with another third or fourth-year officer, an equal. The two of you get a chance to develop and grow together, to have the training wheels off and do some real officer work. Together they were one of the most effective teams on the force. They’d successfully taken down a team of professional burglars a couple of years before. They’d been aggressive yet patient, clever and resourceful. It had gotten both of them positive notice around the force.

Keith had been the best man at Sheldon’s wedding, and Sheldon would reciprocate when the time came for Keith. He’d been slated to be the best man at Keith’s wedding before Keith’s fiancée broke things off. He’d at least served as a nice drinking buddy during