THE LAST HANDOFF

Seven months separated. Seventeen minutes every morning. Neither of them has taken off the ring.
Kara Lindholm owns the night at Alder Reach Medical Center. She's the hospitalist the nurses call when a patient looks wrong before the monitors agree, and she likes a shift with a hard ending. At 6:43 every morning, she hands her patients to the day attending.
The day attending is her husband. Derek Salgado has lived alone in their townhouse since Kara asked for space. He still answers on the first ring, still stays late to finish the call nobody asked him to make, and still knows which number she'll worry about before she says it. They trust each other with every patient in the hospital. What they can't do anymore is talk about the marriage.

Then Carol Heskett arrives just before midnight, short of breath, sharp-tongued, and insisting she's fine. Carol has a failing heart, a husband at home who needs more help than she will admit, and a habit of coming back. Every readmission stretches the handoff. Kara starts staying past seven. Derek starts arriving early. And the careful distance they've kept begins to give way on a rain-streaked glass walkway above the service road.

To keep their patient out of the hospital, they'll have to face the question they've been handing back and forth for months: whether loving someone means staying, or letting them choose.

The Last Handoff is a slow-burn, emotional second chance romance about a married couple, set in a Pacific Northwest teaching hospital. Expect closed-door heat, no cheating, and a guaranteed happily ever after. It's Book 1 of the Alder Reach Medical series; every book follows a new couple and stands on its own.