Rather than doing the smart thing and backing away from him, she took a step forward. “Roxie,” Luke said, his voice low in warning. “Be sure before you start something you’ll regret later.” “I’m not starting anything,” she said, and knew it was the truth. “I’m finishing it. Call it closure, call it once more for old time’s sake…call it whatever you want. I’m going to call it the goodbye kiss I never got.” Working methodically when her hands wanted to shake and her pulse wanted to race, not even entirely sure what had gotten into her, Roxanne slipped off her gloves. Then she got him by one lab coat lapel in each hand and used that purchase to rise up onto her toes as his eyes went dark and her own blood heated. He moved as she did, and they met halfway. And kissed goodbye. JESSICA ANDERSEN WITH THE M.D.…AT THE ALTAR? TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND ABOUT THE AUTHOR Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say ‘hi’! Books by Jessica Andersen HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE 911—AT CLOSE RANGE* 928—RAPID FIRE* 945—RED ALERT 964—UNDER THE MICROSCOPE 982—PRESCRIPTION: MAKEOVER 1005—CLASSIFIED BABY 1012—MEET ME AT MIDNIGHT 1036—DOCTOR’S ORDERS 1061—TWIN TARGETS 1068—WITH THE M.D.…AT THE ALTAR? CAST OF CHARACTERS Roxanne Peterson—After giving up relief medicine for a place to call home, Rox never expects to find herself handling an outbreak in her hometown of Raven’s Cliff…or needing the help of the man who broke her heart. Luke Freeman—The hotshot toxicologist has his dream job leading a CDC outbreak team, but this is the first time he’s been called on to handle a town overrun by both an outbreak and a two-hundred-year-old curse. Will his toughest case yet cost the life of the woman he once loved? Perry Wells—The mayor wants the best for the residents of Raven’s Cliff…or does he? Bug Dufresne—Luke’s teammate may be key to figuring out what is making the town’s residents sick—and why some of them simply become ill while others become murderous. Patrick Swanson—The chief of police is fighting a losing battle against a serial killer, a missing woman and a deadly outbreak. Maybe the town truly is cursed. Theodore Fisher—The eccentric businessman has offered to lift the curse by restoring the old, burned-out Beacon Lighthouse. How is he connected to the mysterious caller pressuring the mayor to sell him the property? May O’Malley—When Luke’s teammate becomes ill, he’s forced to face some hard truths about himself…and his past. The Seaside Strangler—This fanatic killer believes that sacrificing a woman to the sea gods lifted the town’s curse five years earlier. Now he must kill again to save Raven’s Cliff. The well-dressed man—He keeps an injured, unconscious woman in the caves beneath Beacon Lighthouse. What is he after? Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jessica Andersen for her contribution to The Curse of Raven’s Cliff miniseries. Contents 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 One Overtired, overworked and frustrated beyond belief, Dr. Roxanne Peterson pressed her cheek to the cool glass door of her small-town clinic. Even after nearly seventy-two hours of fighting the mysterious illness that had overtaken isolated Raven’s Cliff, Maine, she still couldn’t believe her town was in the throes of a deadly outbreak. And it was her town, whether or not the intransigent locals accepted her as one of them rather than a newcomer. She’d chosen this place, these people, despite the seaside town’s remote location, nearly perpetual over-cast gloom and the curse that supposedly haunted the area. Honestly, she’d chosen Raven’s Cliff partly because of those things, and because her years of relief medicine in third-world countries had made her want to settle down somewhere, amidst people who needed her. She’d never expected to be thrust back into desperate working conditions in Raven’s Cliff, fighting a mysterious deadly disease with too little help and not enough equipment or supplies. Yet that was exactly what was happening, she thought on a long sigh, looking through the glass door of the clinic to the world beyond. It was pitch-black and raining outside, and thick fog made it difficult to see the shops lining the main street of the seaside town, which led to the town square on one side, the boardwalk and fishing docks on the other. In past years, even this late on a rainy night, a few locals and tourists would have been window-shopping, exclaiming over the moored fishing boats, or leaning over the cliffside railing to catch a faceful of sea spray from the breakers that pounded the rocky Maine coastline. There was nobody out tonight, though. Not with death stalking the streets of the quaint fishing village in the form of a strange disease…and what it made its victims become. The locals were calling it the Curse, referring to a local legend about the town’s sea-captain founder. Rox didn’t put much stock in curses, but the disease certainly had terrifying consequences. Some patients became seriously ill. Others went psychotic. Thinking of the things that’d happened over the past few days, Rox shivered as she stared out into the rain. During her five years in medical relief work, she’d seen her share of infectious outbreaks and environmental poisonings, yet she couldn’t detect any pattern in this disease. The townspeople were getting sick without apparent rhyme or reason, with symptoms that didn’t match any known disease and had so far proved impervious to the broad-spectrum antibiotics and antivirals she’d tried in the way of treatment. At the moment she was fighting a rearguard action with supportive, symptom-based therapies. Worse, she didn’t have enough manpower to do the work that needed to be done. Her two full-time staff members had been among the first to get sick, and the other local doctor, who filled in for her when she needed help, was out of the country. Worse, the local hospitals—the closest of which was some forty miles away—were refusing to take patients from Raven’s Cliff, and had barred their doctors from entering the town. She couldn’t blame the hospital administrators for their decision. In fact, she supported it. With only one road leading into the town, and the only other access from the sea, the town was eminently suitable for a lockdown quarantine that would keep the disease from escaping and spreading to other portions of the state, while the experts worked to identify, contain and cure the disease. Unfortunately, she was currently the only expert in town, and she was running out of steam. She was working flat-out trying to keep her patients alive, treating individual symptoms rather than the illness itself because she had no idea what was causing a flu-like disease in some patients, and violent rage in others. Were the townspeople infected with something? Were they being poisoned? Was it some sort of allergin? An environmental toxin? She had no idea, and she was nearly dead on her feet trying to keep up with the work.