If Only, I Had the Courage to Love Again — B.L. Wilson

Beth Evans, after a failed relationship, is looking for a date. She tries a forward approach with a woman she finds attractive and practically accosts her on the street. Beth babbles about nothing and everything in her efforts to impress the woman, while the object of her desire, Joan Riley, wants to escape from the crazy motor-mouth. Beth feels embarrassed that she bothered Joan and does not even join her friends in the bar they are hanging out at for the evening. She stays in the car and encounters Joan yet again, and again, the chance meeting does not go well. The story should end there, but it doesn't. Fate or just plain bad luck throws the two women together again. An ambulance whisks Beth's daughter Pamela, the victim of a hit and run accident, to Saint Sebastian's ER unit. Dr. Joan Riley becomes her trauma surgeon. As Pamela's doctor, Joan has the opportunity to peek into Beth Evans' life. She likes what she sees, but she is too relationship-shy to do anything about it. If only she could overcome her hesitation, if only she had the courage to love again…