- -
- 100%
- +
Could or would he ever let himself fall in love?
Yes, Michael had thought about what might happen if he ever did, thought about what kind of woman would be attracted to someone like him.
Of course he’d be lying to himself if he said his injury didn’t bother him—but that wasn’t the reason he’d avoided any number of women who’d made advances on him these past months since he’d come to work as a ship’s doctor. God knows, he wasn’t a saint when it came to that part of his life. Wasn’t even close to it. Yet right now getting involved in any manner wasn’t right—not when he had so little to offer someone else.
But Sarah… she was different. Someone who intrigued him. Someone who captured his interest and held it. Someone so sexy and yet so vulnerable he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to have a woman like that in his life for a little while, maybe even forever. He hadn’t meant to look, hadn’t meant to go any farther after he had. Just look at him, though, all caught up in thoughts he simply didn’t need to be having. Sarah was on his mind in ways he didn’t want and couldn’t control.
Now that her children have left home, Dianne Drake is finally finding the time to do some of the things she adores—gardening, cooking, reading, shopping for antiques. Her absolute passion in life, however, is adopting abandoned and abused animals. Right now Dianne and her husband Joel have a little menagerie of three dogs and two cats, but that’s always subject to change. A former symphony orchestra member, Dianne now attends the symphony as a spectator several times a month and, when time permits, takes in an occasional football, basketball or hockey game.
Recent titles by the same author:
A BOSS BEYOND COMPARE
ITALIAN DOCTOR, FULL-TIME FATHER
A FAMILY FOR THE CHILDREN’S DOCTOR
THEIR VERY SPECIAL CHILD
BY
DIANNE DRAKE
With all my heart I dedicate this book to Jason, and all
the brave ones in the battlefield, wherever it may be.
CHAPTER ONE
THE sound of laughter wafted though the walls of Sarah’s cabin. People in the hallways were anxious to get underway, were planning the holiday of their lives, with expectations of fun and adventure on this cruise. Not only expectations, but so many dreams were invested in a few simple days. They would eat all the marvelous foods fixed by the gourmet chefs on board. See new sights they’d only seen in picture books. Make new friends. Visit the various ports and come away with gifts and mementoes of the wonderful time they’d had on this cruise—things they wouldn’t think of buying back home—like hideously large straw hats and brightly colored plastic gecko lizards. Memories to last a lifetime.
But for Dr Sarah Collins, none of that was going to happen. Staring out the porthole, she sighed the same sad sigh she’d been sighing for months now. It never changed, no matter where she went or what she did. It simply never changed.
Continuing with the task of tucking her clothes into the closet and tiny bureau, she wondered about taking part in some of the shipboard activities, then immediately wiped that out of her mind. Sure, it was a holiday, just like the last one had been and the one before that. Thanks to a conservative lifestyle while she had been a practicing doctor, and a lucrative sale of her part of the medical practice after she’d decided not to practice medicine any longer, her life had been a succession of holidays this past year, skipping, without thought or too much planning, from one to another, like she hadn’t a care in the world.
Quite the contrary was true, though. That’s all she had—cares, memories, sadness. Which was why her life had turned into a series of events requiring no commitment. What better way to avoid reality than by going on holiday? Over and over again.
This was her first cruise, though, and she wasn’t sure why she’d chosen it. It was so…populated. Hundreds and hundreds of people. Planned activities. Normally, she stuck to herself. A self-guided foot tour of Paris was perfect as no one paid any attention to a single woman passing her days wandering the streets, tourist sights, museums, and her nights tucked into a cabaret corner, spending all evening nursing one or two glasses of wine, listening to the cabaret singer spill out her own version of the blues. In those moments she felt a connection to the singer, understanding how life had a way of slapping you down the way the singer was depicting in her words. But all too soon the night and the music would end and Sarah was on to the next day, next destination. A rental car to see the castles of Scotland, where no one took a second look at a solitary tourist passing though. A hike through the Canadian Rockies and bicycling up the coast of Nova Scotia. Both very nice, and quite solitary.
Then this. To be honest, she couldn’t explain what had gotten into her, booking a cruise. Two weeks long at that. Maybe it was the boredom factor finally creeping in, or her lack of companionship these last months. Normally she was a very social person, loved being around other people. Maybe that’s what was getting to her—the isolation. Or maybe she’d just run out of ideas and this had seemed easy.
Whatever the case, she was here, in a tiny little cabin with sparse amenities, not sure about her decision. For her to find all the amenities a cruise offered, she’d have to leave her cabin and mingle with the other passengers, and while that did seem appealing, it was also more frightening than anything she’d taken on in the past year.
Just thinking about what she was about to embark on caused Sarah’s hands to shake, made her break out in a cold sweat.
Damn, it was happening again.
The walls were closing in on her. The ceiling inching down. Room spinning.
Deep breath, Sarah. You know what it is.
Gripping the edge of the bureau, she hung on praying for the feeling to pass. This had been a stupid, crazy idea! Even entertaining the notion that she could endure two weeks on a ship was totally insane. Yet here she was, getting ready to set sail, and having another panic attack over it.
Breathe, Sarah. One more deep breath and you’ll be fine.
Two weeks of this, either cooped up and alone or mixing with so many people that even the thought of it nauseated her.
Another breath. You can do this.
It hit her all of a sudden. Once they set sail she couldn’t get off. Bad thought. Wrong thought. Her pulse was racing now, her breaths so shallow her lips were tingling.
“Got to get off.” The urge to run was hitting her so hard and violently it nearly choked the breath out of her. She had to get off. Now! Couldn’t wait. Forget the clothes, they were only clothes. They could be replaced.
Sarah bolted for the door, fumbled the latch with shaking hands, then finally threw it open, looked first to the left, then to the right to get her bearings. Elevator…to the right, she thought. She had to get there. There was still time. Had to be enough time. She hadn’t heard the all-ashore warning, had she?
Running hard, zigging and zagging in and out of the other passengers on their way to locate cabins, she did make it to the elevator and managed to squeeze in just as the doors were about to shut. “Excuse me,” she gasped, wedging her way between a buxom older lady smelling of gardenias and wearing a large purple hat that took up enough space for two people and a hard body in a white uniform she didn’t care to investigate. “Could I just have a little more room?”
Too many people crammed in, too many different cloying perfumes, too many voices… “More room, please,” she begged again, just as the elevator started to spin. Not literally. She knew that. It was her head spinning. Damn, she’d meant to eat something this morning…last night.
Stupid! She was a doctor. She knew better. But she recognized a good case of low blood sugar when she felt it, and she felt it. As soon as I get off the ship, she promised herself. She’d go and find the closest little café to the dock and have herself a decent meal. Except the claustrophobia left over from her panic attack combined with the wooziness of her hypoglycemia were conspiring to bring her to her knees. As the elevator dinged its way from deck to deck, without anyone getting off, she was glad for the crowded conditions now as there was no way she could make it to her knees.
But her body was trying to make her collapse. Voices getting louder…smells stronger…ringing in her ears. Head spinning…no place to fall except into the immense bosom of the purple hat lady or into the hard body behind her.
In the end, the decision wasn’t Sarah’s to make. As the elevator jolted to a stop on yet another deck, her head took its last spin and she sank directly into the arms of the hard body, who had the good sense to hold her up until everybody was off the elevator. Then he scooped her up into his arms and carried her out.
She was vaguely aware of him, vaguely aware that she was babbling something incoherent. She knew that she wanted to get off the ship and go someplace where she could be alone again. But all the vagueness lasted mere seconds, then nothing. Sarah had passed out in the arms of a stranger.
“Everybody, out at the next stop,” Dr Michael Sloan ordered, as the dark-haired woman slumped against his chest. She wasn’t unconscious yet, but he’d bet his medical license that would be the next thing to happen.
He’d noticed her when she’d got on. Pale, nervous. Panicked look on her face. Or maybe frightened. Whichever it was, she’d squeezed in and the instant the doors had shut he’d noticed her breathing. Shallow, rapid. All indicators of someone who didn’t want to be there. Panic attack, maybe. Or someone in some kind of real physical distress. Then she’d gone and slumped into him, right into his arms, like she’d had it planned, and now the only thing he could do was hold onto her until they could get off. Then he’d take a look, see what the problem was.
As the doors parted, the dozen or so people crammed into the elevator started to file out while he kept a tight hold on his new patient. He’d never before had one drop into his arms the way this one had. In fact, he couldn’t recall that he’d ever had any woman swoon like this, whether or not she had been sick. Too bad this one was sick, because he liked the way she smelled. Fresh, something fruity, he thought as the last three people left, leaving him enough room to lead her through the doors.
Yes, he definitely liked her scent. It wasn’t the heavy, sickly sweet scent of expensive perfume he smelled so often on the ship. Turning in the direction of the doors, he prepared to exit. “Now, somebody, please hold the door open for me.”
The woman with the monster purple hat wedged her ample body in the door opening to prevent it from closing as Michael started to assist his patient through the elevator doors, but after two steps her full weight sagged against him and he had no other recourse but to pick her up and carry her out.
“Get off,” she mumbled at him. “Want off…now. Have to…off…”
“We are. Right now,” he replied. “We’re getting off right now.”
“Got to go… Can’t stay…”
“That’s right. We’re going to my office,” he replied, as she tucked her head against his chest. “I’m the ship’s doctor and I think I need to have a little look at you to see what’s going on.”
“Want to go…please, let me…”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you back to your cabin once I’ve given you an exam,” he said, already deciding she might be in the throes of hypoglycemia. That happened a lot. People got excited about the cruise, then forgot to eat. The next thing that happened was their blood sugar whacking out. It wasn’t uncommon and usually very easy to fix. “When was the last time you ate something? Do you remember?” She looked particularly frail, he thought, and a good several pounds under her ideal weight. Pretty, though. Add another ten pounds and she’d be voluptuous. For a moment he envisioned her looking vibrant—her face with some color in it to better contrast with the raven black of her hair, her dark brown eyes filled with something other than anguish. The more he studied her, the more he was taken by her beauty.
Then she shifted in his arms, laid her hand on his chest and for an instant he felt a tingle, which immediately snapped his attention back to his professional assessment of her. Without a test, hypoglycemia was still his first call. That’s what he had to keep his mind on, that he was carrying a patient to his office, not a beautiful woman to his bed.
Although it had been a long time since he’d had a woman there, no matter how she got there—walking on her own, carried in his arms, or somersaulting.
“Too loud. So many people…” she mumbled, snapping him back once again. “Don’t want to—”
“Can you tell me if you have low blood sugar?” he interrupted, his voice rather stiff and husky. “Have you ever been diagnosed with a condition called hypoglycemia?”
Instead of answering, she merely sighed, then snuggled in a little more. And snaked her arm up around his neck, causing another tingle to skitter off the tips of her fingers and run down the full length of his back.
Michael cleared his throat heavily, like that would clear away the tingle. “Have you been diagnosed with…” He tried again, but her other arm went up, and now what should have been a simple hold on a patient looked more like a lover’s embrace. But only for a moment, then both her arms went limp and her hold on him vanished.
His patient had fainted again.
Sarah finally opened her eyes, squinting into the overhead exam light, before she twisted her head to the side and opened them fully. Where was she? Why was she here? “What’s that?” she asked, spotting the IV stand with its bag hanging next to the bed, not yet realizing that it was anchored into her arm.
“Sugar water,” came a voice from the other side of a blue-and-green-striped curtain. “Your blood sugar was low so we’re giving you something to bring it back up to normal.”
Curtain, hard bed… She glanced around as the surroundings started making sense to her. Medical equipment. Now it was all coming back. Panic attack, hypoglycemic episode. She’d gotten into the elevator. It had been crowded…she did remember that much. The perfume, the large woman with the purple hat. Then she’d keeled over, hadn’t she?
An involuntary moan slipped through Sarah’s lips as her recall returned in full and she remembered collapsing straight into the hard body’s arms. Now here she was in the ship’s hospital. As a patient, though. Not as a doctor.
“We did a little test,” he continued.
Well, of course he would, she thought, not too surprised by his verdict. This was the hospital and he was a medic of some sort. “How low was it? My blood sugar?”
“Forty-two when I brought you in. Normal values start at eighty, and run all the way up to one-twenty. But you were well under the norm, which was why you passed out.”
She knew all that. Her days as a practicing physician might be over, but her medical knowledge was certainly as good as ever. It had been only a little over a year since she’d quit medicine altogether, and yet she still read the journals to keep up, even though she had no intention of returning to practice again. But old habits died hard, and her love of medicine hadn’t diminished one bit.
Naturally, she wasn’t going to explain all that to the medic. No need to. As far as he was concerned, she was merely another tourist on holiday who’d gone and done something stupid, like forgetting to eat. And, actually, that’s what she was, wasn’t it? The perpetual tourist? “I don’t suppose I’ve eaten anything for a while,” she admitted, almost too embarrassed to say so since she did know better.
“How long ago?” he asked.
He had a nice voice. Soothing. Deep. The kind of voice a patient would trust. “Two or three meals, I think,” she stated, although she was pretty sure she’d skipped maybe one more than that. “I was…uh…excited about the cruise. All the arrangements, last-minute details.” Such a lie. Over this past year she’d neglected to eat as many meals as she’d eaten. Truth was, she had no appetite. She would eat occasionally, but only enough to sustain her, to keep her blood-sugar levels intact. Except this time she hadn’t even done that much, and she was mildly embarrassed for messing up that way. “As soon as the dextro…um, the sugar water is in, can I get off the ship?”
“I’m afraid you were still pretty groggy when the ship set sail half an hour ago. Which means you’re on a cruise now.” Michael stepped out from behind the curtain, stopping at the foot of the bed. “And from the looks of things, you could probably use the rest.”
Handsome man, she thought. Strikingly so. Tall, a little over six feet, broad shoulders, athletic build. Dark brown hair, with eyes to match. Nice smile. But his eyes were…well, she couldn’t tell. They weren’t unfriendly, but they didn’t sparkle. “Believe me, I’ve had plenty of rest.” That was an understatement. She’d had nothing but rest since she’d quit her medical practice.
“You were trying to get off the ship, weren’t you? That’s why you were so frantic in the elevator. You weren’t going to stay and take the cruise.”
“I changed my mind. Decided I didn’t want to…” That sounded like a silly explanation, didn’t it? She’d spent thousands of dollars to book a two-week cruise, then changed her mind minutes before setting sail. It sounded silly enough that he probably thought her addle-brained.
“It could have been the hypoglycemia talking. The lower your blood sugar gets, the more that can alter your thinking. Once you’ve rested up, got a good meal in you, and your blood sugar is staying normal and not fluctuating, you’ll change your mind and start enjoying all the things we have to offer here.”
“Not necessary. I’ll be fine, um… I didn’t catch your name.”
“Sloan,” he said. “Michael Sloan.” He walked around the bed, extending a hand to her. “In case you’re wondering, I’m the one you collapsed onto in the elevator.”
She’d already guessed as much. Somehow she had recognized the hard body, even though this was the first time she’d seen his face. An amazing face. “I’m Sarah Collins,” she said, taking his hand. Nice, soft. Good touch for a doctor…for anybody. “Like I was saying, it’s not necessary for me to stay here and take up your time or your hospital space. I’m fine now. Ready to have the IV out so I can go back to my cabin, since it seems I’m taking a cruise. Or, at least, the first leg of it.”
“Well, my hospital space is your hospital space. You’re my first patient of the cruise and I think I’d like to hang onto you a little while longer just to show the ship’s captain that I’m earning my keep.” He chuckled. “And by the time we’ve reached the first port you might decide that taking a cruise isn’t such a bad idea.’
It wasn’t such a good idea either. “Well, you weren’t the one who started your cruise with such a bang the way I did, were you?” she said, her voice sagging into disappointment. It really didn’t make any difference where she was—on a cruise in the Caribbean, on a camel somewhere in Egypt, in a cyclo in Cambodia. It had all been the same lately. One place after another, and she’d hardly noticed any of it. “But thank you for doing the gallant thing and bringing me to the hospital. I suppose if I had to collapse into somebody’s arms, it was a good thing I chose a doctor’s.”
“It was either me or the lady in the purple hat.”
He smiled at her and his eyes flickered into a genuinely little sparkle. Not much, but it was there. Nice eyes, she thought. Nice sparkle, too, although very short-lived. Come and gone in an instant. “So what’s your best guess on how long I’ll be here?” she asked.
“I want to do another blood test in about ten minutes, then we’ll see.”
“Have you done a blood test since the initial one?” she asked, trying not to sound so clinical. What concerned her was that a reading of forty-two wasn’t too far from critical or even near-death in some cases. She recalled a patient at her clinic not all that long ago who’d gone into cardiac arrest at a blood sugar of thirty-five, and couldn’t be revived. Just another reason to quit medicine, she rationalized. Things that should be easily reversed weren’t always what they seemed. One small speck of melanoma should have been easy to remove, easy to treat. A little case of being overtired should have been cured by a couple days of rest.
But what should have been didn’t always happen. Or, in her case, didn’t ever happen.
“Your blood sugar’s seventy now. Good, but not good enough to be up and wandering around yet.”
“Then how about I go back to my cabin right now, go to bed and order something sweet from room service?” That was the easy way to do it, then she didn’t have to be bothered by anyone, including the doctor.
“How about you stay right where you are for another ten minutes, then we’ll decide what you’ll get to do after that?”
That worked too, she supposed. It wasn’t like she had someplace else to go, or anything else to do. And she really did want to prove that old saying wrong, that doctors made the worst patients. It wasn’t her aim to be a bad patient. Dr Sloan was only doing his job and she didn’t want to give him any grief over it. In other words, she wanted to be the kind of patient she used to like treating, so she’d stay there and take his advice. “Ten minutes,” she agreed, then shut her eyes, not so much to sleep as to simply block him out. This past year she’d stayed away from a lot of things—life, commitments, friends—and the one thing she’d assiduously avoided at all costs had been anything medical. Dr Michael Sloan, handsome as he was, standing there with his stethoscope around his neck and a chart in his hand, was definitely medical. And definitely someone to avoid.
Too bad. Something else on her list of things to avoid was becoming involved in another relationship. Two so far, and all she’d done had been to prove what a miserable failure she was. She’d had two wonderful men in her life and the best she’d done in both relationships had been to fail them. Miserably.
So what was the point of even looking, when that’s as far as she’d let it go? Honestly, buying one of those brightly colored plastic gecko lizards the tourists all seemed so thrilled over didn’t seem like such a bad idea for a relationship. At least she wouldn’t let a chunk of red, yellow and green plastic down.
Or kill it.
Well, she wasn’t sleeping. Trying hard to pretend she was, perhaps, but he knew better. In spite of her attempt to even out her breathing, her eyelids were fluttering—a dead giveaway that she was awake and faking sleep.
Michael chuckled as he returned to his office. Something big was bothering her, but he wasn’t going to guess what it was. Wasn’t even going to pry. He was a doctor whose commitment to his patients was only as long as this two-week cruise. He took care of their physical woes while they were on the ship, then said goodbye to them as he welcomed aboard a new bunch. That’s all he was here for—to treat them and leave them—which suited him just fine. So if there was something about Sarah Collins that needed figuring out other than a case of hypoglycemia, he’d leave that puzzle to someone else. Lord knew, he was the last one to figure out anybody…especially himself.
“Repeat a finger-stick in about five minutes,” he instructed Ina Edwards, one of the ship’s nurses. “And let me know what it is.”
“You OK, Mike?” she asked him. “Your leg? Can I get you something?”
Old enough to be his mother, Ina doted on him. And while she meant well, and he appreciated the concern, it annoyed him. He was fine. Perfect. Just dandy. Except people didn’t want to believe that. One war injury and a couple of years later so many pieces of his broken world still weren’t back in place. But he didn’t take it out on those who cared about him. He merely smiled his way through it. People cared. They wanted to show compassion he didn’t deserve, though, considering what he’d done.