Release Blitz for Won’t Feel A Thing (St. Cross #1) by CF White (excerpt and giveaway)



Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Pride
Length: 64,000 words approx.
Publisher: Pride Publishing

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. Wanting to start the year fresh from personal heartache and his track record of falling for the wrong man, Ollie’s New Year’s resolution is to rid himself of emotional baggage and live a life of carefree liaisons.

But before the resolution can even begin, Ollie is called to care for eight-year-old Daisy Monroe, who’s struggling after heart surgery. Her father, Jacob Monroe, never leaves her side, apart from the times her mother comes to visit.

The tempestuous and somewhat estranged relationship of her parents is cause for concern enough, but the father’s brooding nature has Ollie investing far more time than usual in his Room One patient. Striking up a friendship of sneaking takeaways into the ward, card playing until dawn and the occasional breaking up of domestic fights, Ollie finds himself drawn to Jacob and becomes a friendly ear for the man who’s harboring more guilt and past demons than even Ollie, which is saying something.

The growing attraction makes it hard for Ollie to keep his distance, though he has to—not only do the ethics of his profession demand it, but Ollie is still somewhat involved with another man. One who has a huge stake in Ollie’s life, both personal and professional.

Ollie is risking more than just his job by getting involved with a patient’s father—much more even than the success of his New Year’s resolution, something that was supposed to ensure that, this time, he won’t feel a thing.


Chapter OneNew Year’s Resolutions

“You want my opinion?”


“My honest opinion?”

“Yes,” Ollie repeated. “Please.”

“Brutal honest opinion?”


“Even if you don’t like it?”


“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 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 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.”


“I think he needs patience.”


“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 tabletop. “What? He is.”


“That’s because I know him,” Taya replied.

“Urgh. Not you, too?”




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 would no doubt be 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 cafés and health-food shops, she steered him across, narrowly missing a black cab speeding over the mini-roundabout. The glass-enclosed bus stop’s bench overflowed with waiting passengers, so he stood, waiting, his freezing toes within his inappropriate-for-the-weather slip-on loafers numbing with each passing second, and checked the time on the electric board for when the next bus was due.

“How’s he doing?” Taya asked.


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 when 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 that he hadn’t woken up in his own bed last night. Ollie shuddered at the memory.


“Quit smoking.”

“Good luck.” Ollie meant it.

Taya stuck out her tongue.

“Well, we both know mine—”





“Amen.” Taya saluted.


“So, what is your resolution, then?”

“No baggage,” Ollie replied.


“Yep,” Ollie confirmed.

The gleaming new red Routemaster bus edged along the narrow High Street, bumping over the speed mounds meant to slow the traffic down, which Ollie thought ridiculous as the morning rush-hour pileup tended to last all day in central London. The streets were filled with scuttling people carrying takeout coffee cups, cyclists braving the ice, and the occasional honking of a taxi horn. This time of the morning, most people were trying to get to work and not home from it like Ollie and Taya. He was never quite sure who was keener to reach their destinations.

“I don’t mind a complete arsehole—”

“Obviously.” Taya cut Ollie off with a raise of her smoothed-out eyebrows. That new rainbow hot chocolate had clearly contained one too many e-numbers and sent her loopy. That and the long night shift. Not that she hadn’t been a little bit loopy to begin with.

“Ha ha.” Ollie pushed her forehead. “Like, I can handle a dickhead—”

“We all know.”


“Sorry.” Taya pressed her lips together. She rose up on her tiptoes to check on the bus’s progress but needn’t have worried, as it had traveled all of a millimeter since the start of their conversation. At this rate, Ollie might get home in time to have a shower and come straight back.

“What I mean is—”



Taya shrugged and mimed zipping her lips up.

“What do we nurses say daily?”

“‘No, you can’t have McDonald’s’?”

“Not that one.”

“‘You’re going to feel a little prick’?”

Ollie sniggered. “Not that one either.”

“Oh, I know. It’s ‘Of course I’ll change your TV channel for you—it’s not like I have anything better to do with my time.’”

“No! I mean the big one—‘You won’t feel a thing.’”

Taya nodded. “So?”


“Good luck.” Taya smiled. Bitch.


“Ouch.” Ollie pouted and rubbed his arm.

“Ha!” Taya jumped the step onto the bus.



“Oh, bog off.”

* * * *

Ollie jangled the keys in the lock of his third-floor flat and burst in out of the freezing cold. He slammed the door, wriggled free of his coat and slipped out of his comfortable loafers. Rubbing his numbed hands together, he hurried up the corridor and decided to forgo the shower in favor of sinking under his fluffy down duvet instead.

He stripped out of his jumper and jeans, threw his glasses onto the bedside table and collapsed onto the bed. Grabbing the side of the duvet, he wrapped it around his shivering body, rolled onto his front and made a human sausage roll out of himself. He shut his eyes. Of course, that would be when his house phone decided to ring. He wasn’t going to answer it. That time of the morning, it’d only be personal-injury-claim chasers or some double-glazing salesman. The answer phone clicked on and Ollie’s recorded voice wafted down the hallway into his bedroom.


Ollie chuckled. Until the caller’s voice boomed down the phone.





“Right. You’re not there. Or ignoring me.”

Bright man, this one.

“You left your watch here.”


“I’ve had to throw it out.”


“I’ll get you a new one.”


“Don’t call me back. I’ll see you later.”


The one where he wouldn’t feel a thing.


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