Читать книгу The Wife He's Been Waiting For - Dianne Drake - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

“SO, WHAT do you want, Doctor? What do you really want?” She was a little flattered by his attention, actually. It had been a long year avoiding everybody with whom she’d come into contact, and there were so many nights when she would have enjoyed a dinner companion, a male companion especially. No strings attached, separate checks, light conversation, going their separate ways at the end of the meal, of course. Someone to share a little space with her at the same table, someone staving off the appearance that she was so pathetically alone.

She wasn’t antisocial, even though it appeared she was. Just cautious these days, as getting involved came easily to her. Easily, but with such a high price…costly mistakes she was bound to make again if the occasion arose. And she simply didn’t trust herself to do otherwise, which was why she kept to herself now. “Did you follow me here, or do you moonlight as a waiter when you’re off duty in the hospital? Are you serving up syringes of penicillin by day and dry martinis with a lemon twist by night?”

He laughed, raising his hand to signal the waitress. When he caught her attention, she gave him a familiar nod, then scurried off to the bar. “Some might think that’s the same thing, one cure being as good as another. When you’re on holiday, a ship has amazing opportunities, with so many things to do. But when you’re on a ship for your employment as well as your living space, those opportunities are pretty limited and the space gets rather small, the longer you’re confined to it. I don’t fraternize with the guests in the planned social activities, don’t date them, don’t play shuffleboard with them, don’t serve them drinks either. Most of the time I try to keep to places where there aren’t so many people hanging around. Keep the separation between crew and guests intact. And right now this seems the place to do it.”

“Sounds…dull. So many things to do, and here you are with me, probably the one and only avowed antisocial passenger on board. Not very interesting at all, Doctor. Not for a man who could have other choices, if he so wishes.” She glanced at the waitress who was giving him an admiring appraisal, then at a table with three well liquored-up women, all of whom had that same look for him. It seemed the good doctor did have his opportunities if he cared to take them. “A number of other choices,” she said.

“If you want those choices.”

“And you don’t?” She arched a curious eyebrow. “That surprises me.”

“It surprises me too, sometimes. But it avoids a lot of complications in the long run and who needs complications when you can have all this?” He pointed to the karaoke singer standing under the dim blue light on the postage-stamp-sized stage, singing his off-key heart out.

“Sounds like a been there, done that to me. Once burned, twice shy, or something like that.”

“It’s that obvious?” He said that with a smile, but that wasn’t at all the impression she was getting from him. There was something deep, something disturbing in his voice. Some sadness, maybe? Or wistfulness? It was a hauntingly familiar tone, and one she recognized from her own voice when she wasn’t trying so hard to mask it with something lighter, something less truthful, the way Michael was trying to do. Something compelled her to hear his voice again, to elicit that emotion from him once more, but as she opened her mouth to speak, the karaoke singer hit a particularly loud, startlingly sour note that caused even him to sputter, then giggle an apology into the microphone—but not quit singing.

Michael cringed visibly, and this time the smile that spread to his face was genuine. “You can see why there aren’t so many people around here.”

The moment was gone. It was too late to try and discover something she had no right to discover. “Well, I think earplugs are a good remedy,” she said lightly, shaking off the building intensity and finally relaxing into the moment between them a little more. His motives seemed innocent enough, and she did understand how this was a good place to come if you were seeking solitude on a crowded ship—nice, dim room, secluded entryway making it easy to overlook, perfect low-key ambiance, comfortable booths arranged intimately so they gave the seeming appearance of aloneness. This one in particular, tucked in behind a column, was especially private, which was why she’d chosen it. For a moment it crossed her mind that this might be Dr Sloan’s regular booth for all the same reasons she had taken to it. “Or maybe he could do with an adenoidectomy.” Meaning the removal of the little piece of tissue located where the throat connected with the nasal passage. Often adenoids were the cause of nasal congestion, thick breathing or, in some cases, a nasal-sounding voice.

Michael shot her a curious look. “You know what an adenoidectomy is? I wouldn’t think that’s too common a term.”

Her comment had been too medical, especially when she was trying to hide from everything that connected her to medicine in any way. But sometimes it just slipped out. Natural instincts coming back to haunt her. Well, that was a mistake she wouldn’t repeat. “I don’t suppose it is common but a friend of mine had it done,” she lied. It had been a patient of hers, so in the longest stretch of the word maybe that hadn’t been a lie after all. “Opened up her nasal passages quite nicely, helped her stop talking through her nose, breathing easier….” Too medical again. “You know. Whatever goes along with that kind of surgery.” Sarah watched, out of the corner of her eye, to see if he believed her, which apparently he did because he turned his attention to the waitress who was on her way over to the table with a soda and a sandwich. She placed them on the table in front of him, bending much too close for anything other than what she had in mind, which had nothing to do with serving him food, practically slathering him with a come-hither smile. Of which he took no notice.

Most men, having it flaunted in their faces that way, would at least look, but Michael Sloan did not, which made Sarah wonder all the more about him.

Michael and the waitress chatted for a another moment about someone who worked in the business office—she still showing the same interest in him while he showed none in her—then when the waitress had decided that she was wasting her time she scampered away to wait on a another customer. That’s when Michael returned his attention to Sarah. “It’s like a little city here. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.”

Like the waitress who knew what Michael wanted even though he didn’t have to order it? Briefly, Sarah wondered how much business the waitress and Michael knew about each other, and if his lack of a show of interest in her had been for appearances only. She was young, blonde, built the way every good plastic surgeon wanted his surgical enhancements to turn out. Of course, he’d already denied involvements or, as he called them, complications. Still, a man like Michael…good-looking, smart… She wondered. “The same way it is in a hospital,” she said, trying to sound noncommittal.

“Do you work in a hospital?”

Damn. She’d slipped again, when she’d promised herself she’d be more careful. Twice inside two minutes. Something about him eased the tension right out of her, made her feel almost normal again, and she was going to have to be very careful around him. “No, but I like to watch those hospital shows on television. They’re very…realistic. Make you feel like you’re really there.” Ah, the lie of it all, but the look of mild amusement on his face told her he’d bought her rather impaired explanation.

He chuckled. “Real life wrapped up in an hour, minus time out for commercials, once a week. Everybody gets cured or killed at the end, don’t they? Or falls in love and lives happily ever after. Well, you are right about one thing. Gossip prevails in the hospital, too. Sometimes it can get so bad it’s like it takes on an existence of its own.”

“Which you can’t live without?” she asked.

“That might be putting it too strongly. Personally, I can live without it quite nicely, like I can live without a good cup of strong, black coffee if one’s not available to me. But for some people a little good gossip can start the day off with a bang, the way a good cup of coffee can.”

“If you indulge,” she said. Somehow, she didn’t see him as the type.

“Which I don’t. In the gossip, anyway. Can’t say that I’d turn down a good cup of coffee, though.”

She was glad he’d redeemed himself with that one because she didn’t want to picture Michael Sloan as petty in any way, and gossip could be so petty. Being the brunt of it herself over her break-up with Cameron Enderlein, she knew. “So why did you choose a cruise ship?” she asked, knowing she probably shouldn’t get that involved. But it seemed right to her. The mood between them was pleasant enough, his company nice. And she desperately missed companionship, not only in a personal way but in a medical one. It had been such a long time since she’d talked medicine with anybody, and while this wasn’t going to go into any medical depth, it seemed harmless enough on a superficial level. An encounter with someone from her own profession was stimulating. Then, after tonight, she’d get lost in the ship’s crowd, and he’d get busy in the ship’s hospital, and that would be that. So it didn’t matter. “Rather than a hospital or a clinic somewhere, why here?”

“It’s a good job,” he said, this time his voice the guarded one she’d already heard bits of before. “The facilities are excellent, patients are usually pretty nice, and I like the tropical islands. Oh, and the food is great.” He picked up his sandwich and took a bite of something that looked to be a huge Cubano—pork, vegetables, and a whole lot of other ingredients that added up to one large meal between two pieces of bread.

And one large avoidance, too, she thought as she picked at her salad, finally spearing a grape tomato. But what was it to her? If he didn’t want to tell her, she didn’t care. They weren’t friends, after all. They were barely acquaintances.

“So what kind of job do you do?” he asked, after he’d swallowed and taken a drink of his diet cola. “Wait…let me guess.” He leaned back in his seat, folded his arms across his chest and studied her for a moment.

Studied her so hard she blushed under his scrutiny. Good thing the lights in here were dim and he couldn’t see her reaction.

“I don’t take you to be a lady of leisure,” he said. “You’ve too much purpose in your eyes.”

If only he knew how wrong he was. She’d been nothing but a lady of leisure for the past year, and there was absolutely no purpose in her eyes. Maybe once, but not any more.

“Am I right?” he asked, when she didn’t respond to his first guess.

Rather than answering, she played his game and busied herself with her soup. If he could indulge himself in a little avoidance, so could she.

“So the lady isn’t going to answer. Which means I’ll have to take a wild guess. You’re too short to be a fashion model, you don’t eat with enough passion to be a chef, this is October, which is the middle of the school year so you’re not a schoolteacher, and you’re too pale to be a professional golfer.”

“A golfer?” She laughed over that one. “Where did you come up with that?”

“I’m a doctor. I saw your muscles when I examined you. Very nice, but not overly developed. I can picture you swinging a golf club.”

“I’ll just bet you can,” she said. “Sorry to disappoint you but I don’t have a golf swing and I don’t play golf. Never have.”

“Well, that narrows the field down, doesn’t it?”

“That ends the field, Doctor,” she said, scooting toward the other side of the booth. This was entirely too enjoyable, and it would have been easy to spend another hour or two here, chatting about nothing and enjoying everything about it. Which was why she had to leave.

“Call me Michael, please,” he said, not trying to stop her from leaving.

That surprised her a little. She’d expected a small protest from him, or maybe even an offer to walk her back to her cabin, which she might have taken him up on. But as she climbed out of her seat, he stood and offered a polite hand to her, then turned and signaled the waitress back over to refill his glass—both with the same insouciant effort. All casual, all impersonal, as was his goodnight to her.

“I want to see you in the morning for a finger stick,” he said. “I’ll be on duty at eight.”

She nodded, offered him a half-smile, and scooted out of the lounge to a popular song being mutilated by a short, round, bald-headed Elvis impersonator who sounded like he needed an adenoidectomy, too.

* * *

She slept in, avoiding the morning finger stick, and when, at nearly ten, she heard a knock on the cabin door, she assumed it was Michael, coming to do her blood work. But she was wrong. It was one of the ship’s medical technicians. Cheery smile, bright face, she was more than happy to poke Sarah’s finger. “It’s a little low,” Paulina Simpson said, showing the monitor to Sarah, who read the blood-sugar result at sixty-five. “You need to eat something,” Paulina continued, fishing some sort of breakfast bar out of her pocket. “Doctor Sloan told me to bring this along, that you’d probably need it.”

“Dr Sloan thinks of everything, doesn’t he?” Sarah said amiably.

“He’s a good doctor. Most of the docs come and go, work a few weeks here and there, but the cruise line likes Dr Sloan because he keeps coming back. He’s reliable. The patients trust him and he does an outstanding job.”

A bit of a crush from the med tech, too? Sarah wondered.

“And he’s received commendations from the cruise line,” the girl went on.

Well, so much praise on Michael’s account was all well and good, but that still didn’t put Sarah in the mood to deal with him. For what it was worth, she felt a little slighted, being passed off to a tech when she’d expected the doctor to come calling on her. “Well, tell Dr Sloan thank you for the breakfast bar, but that I’m doing fine on my own and I no longer require medical attention.”

Paulina arched a puzzled eyebrow, then nodded. “He said you’d say that, so he gave me this.” She handed over a slip of paper.

Sarah took a look at it, then handed it back. “Tell Dr Sloan I don’t need a diet guide, that I’m quite capable of eating what I need, when I need it. But I appreciate his concern.”

“He said you’d say that, too. So…” she pulled a small glucose monitor from her other pocket and handed it to Sarah “…he told me to give you this, so you can check yourself at any time. Although he would like to take a daily reading of his own, just to see how you’re doing.”

Apparently, there was no getting away from Dr Michael Sloan, even when he wasn’t present. If he went to all this fuss over a simple little case of hypoglycemia, she could only image how he’d react to a serious illness. Good doctor, she decided, adding her own silent praise to Paulina’s as she remembered the days when she’d been at least that persistent with her own patients. “Tell Dr Sloan thank you for the glu-cometer, and that I’ll use it. And that if he insists, I’ll allow him to do an occasional test, too.” She didn’t really need it, but who was she to interfere with a doctor doing his duty?

Too bad he was hiding away on a ship, she thought as she unwrapped the breakfast bar. The world needed good doctors like Michael. Of course, she was hiding away on a ship too, wasn’t she? And by most accounts she’d been a pretty good doctor herself.

It was turning into a long day, and the hospital was getting busy. Predictable conditions, the lot of them. Upset stomachs, seasickness, diabetic upheavals from people going wild over so much food available to them. People underestimated their stamina on a ship and he got to patch up the results. It was very different from general surgery, and sometimes he did long for the days when he’d spent his life in the operating theater.

But now… “Take two of these pills this afternoon, and two more before you go to bed. If you’re still nauseated in the morning, come back and see me and we’ll try something different.” He handed the bottle to the fifty-something woman, and watched her leave the examining room, her face a little less green than it had been when she’d come in. “And no seafood for a couple of days,” he called after her, remembering that this particular incident of gastric upset had come after a rather large consumption of lobster for lunch.

He couldn’t blame her, really. Cruises were all about overindulgence. Of course, there was Sarah, who wouldn’t indulge at all. He was willing to bet she hadn’t eaten a thing since her breakfast bar. She was a hard one to figure out. Last night, in the lounge, after she’d relaxed a little, she’d seemed like she had been enjoying his company. He’d certainly enjoyed hers. But just when things had finally slipped into a nice, casual mood, she’d upped and left him there. It wasn’t his place to ask her questions, but he was curious. He saw all kinds of people on the ship. Lonely widows and widowers, people getting over the break-up of a relationship, people pressed with tough life decisions running away for a while to think. And people who were simply on holiday. As for Sarah, well, he wasn’t sure where she fit in. Normally he was pretty good at telling, but he couldn’t get a reading on her. Other than the fact that he liked her, and something about her drew him in, he simply didn’t know.

One thing was certain, though. She didn’t want a personal relationship in her life as much as he didn’t want one in his. That alone made a shipboard friendship seem appealing. “Hello,” he said to his next patient, as he stepped into the examining room to have a look at a casualty of a volleyball game—a soft-looking fortyish man who didn’t exercise at home but who took the opportunity to start once he’d hit the high seas. “I understand you hurt your back? Maybe twisted an ankle, too?”

The man, who was sitting on the edge of the exam table with his bare, skinny legs sticking out from under the sheet draped over his lap, nodded, looking up from his bent-over position. “Guess I’m a little out of shape.” he admitted. “Haven’t played in a while.”

Michael wasn’t going to ask how long that translated into. Instead, he took a look, diagnosed a few strained and sprained muscles and sent the man off to the spa to spend the afternoon in a whirlpool. It wasn’t a precise medical therapy exactly, but why not give the man what he’d come for? Something he didn’t have in his real life.

So, after what seemed like an interminably long day of routine aches and pains, Michael signed the next watch over to the following doctor on duty, a competent general practitioner named Reese Allen, and headed for his quarters. His leg ached a little more than usual, although it shouldn’t, and it was time to get off it for a while. But as he walked down the corridor to his cabin, which was adjacent to the hospital, he changed his mind and caught the elevator up to the sundeck. He didn’t actually get outside much on these cruises, and right now he felt the urge for a little sun on his face. And he knew the perfect place. It was amidships, in a little tuck-away behind one of the bars that didn’t usually go into use until dark. There were a few deck chairs there, maybe three or four, and no one ever lounged there because there was no real view, unless you enjoyed looking at the back bar or the bottom side of the little rise holding the deck chairs with a perfect view of the pool. Good spot, he thought, heading off in that direction. Very good spot. He’d spend an hour, maybe two, go to the lounge and have Hector fix him a Cubano for supper, then…well, nothing came after that. He didn’t make plans, although the thought of a little time spent with Sarah Collins suddenly popped into his mind.

It was a wish that came true almost immediately as he rounded the corner to his little tuck-away and found her in one of the deck chairs. Just her. Nobody else was around. She was there, stretched out almost elegantly in the chair, wearing a simple, one-piece black swimsuit that exposed beautiful long legs, even though they were pale. The black of the swimsuit complemented her black hair and the milky color of her skin was a startling, sexy contrast. Sarah had on black sunglasses, through which she was reading…he couldn’t tell what, for sure. It looked like a copy of the New England Journal of Medicine, but she snapped it shut and tucked it into her big straw bag the instant she saw him. It was probably a fashion magazine, he decided as he headed toward her. Or another of the women’s specialty magazines available from the ship’s store.

She tilted her head down and gave him a long, cool glance up and over the top of her dark glasses before she finally spoke. “So, you are spying on me.”

“I admitted it once, and I’m sticking to it.”

“Have you come to do a blood test? You’re so dedicated that you’ll chase your patients down no matter where they’re hiding?”

“I’d like to say yes but, unfortunately, I don’t have my medical equipment with me. I’m afraid I’m off duty right now, too.”

“Somehow, I doubt that you’re ever really off duty,” she said, that cool stare of hers continuing. It was cool, but not unfriendly. More like wary. “You strike me as one of those doctors who lives and breathes his work. Dedicated beyond reason. Otherwise why would you become a ship’s doctor? I don’t imagine you can ever really get away from it here, can you?”

“Actually, I have this little hiding place where I go so I can get away. No one knows about it, no one goes there, except…”

“Me?” she ventured. “Just like I know about your booth in the karaoke lounge?”

“It is funny, isn’t it, how we keep bumping into each other in all the places no one else wants to go? You know, the secluded places.”

“I’m antisocial,” she reminded him with a hint of a smile tweaking her lips. “What’s your excuse, other than you’re spying on me?”

His leg was starting to ache even more now, that dull throb he despised that had never completely gone away, and he really needed to sit down. He hated it when this happened. The reminder, the memories…of so many things he wanted to forget. Damn, he hated it! “My excuse is that I’ve been coming here for the better part of a year now.”

She arched her eyebrows…beautifully sculpted eyebrows. Everything about Sarah Collins was beautifully sculpted, in fact. “Well, then, by all means, you should sit down.”

“And interrupt you?”

“You’re assuming that you being here would interrupt me.”

“Would it?” he asked, summoning every bit of determination he had to fight off the inevitable limp that came when he was tired…fight it off long enough to take the last ten steps toward the deck chair next to her. Gritting his teeth, he took one step, then another. Sure, it was a vanity thing, being self-conscious like he was. There was no disgrace in his disability. But, damn, he had the right to hold onto a little vanity, didn’t he? His limp caused questions, which required explanations. And the whole sordid story, once he’d explained it, brought pity, which he didn’t want. Especially not from someone like Sarah Collins. So he took another few steps toward her, until he finally reached the chair. Then he sat, letting out an involuntary sigh of relief. Two hours off his feet, and he’d be fine. But one thing was sure—those two hours were going to be spent right here. He didn’t have it in him to get up again. So if Sarah stayed, he’d spend them with her, and if she didn’t stay…

“There’s nothing to interrupt,” she said. “I was doing exactly what you intend to do, enjoying a little sun well away from the crowds. Having someone else doing the same alongside me wouldn’t be an interruption.”

“But an intrusion, perhaps?” he asked, shifting to find a comfortable position.

“I don’t think you’re an intrusion. But if that becomes the case, I’ll let you know.” With that, she pushed her sunglasses up again, making her intention not to converse quite clear. Then, out of the blue, “You don’t snore, do you?” she asked. “Because if you do, that’s an intrusion.”

He chuckled. What was it about her that he liked so much? She put up walls, and she wasn’t engagingly friendly either. Polite when interaction was forced on her but remaining at a distance. And so damned intriguing that he didn’t even care if they spent the next two hours lounging next to each other without speaking a word.

The truth was, he liked Sarah Collins.

While she hadn’t been looking for him, not consciously, on some unexplainable level she wasn’t displeased that he’d found her. On a limited basis, Michael Sloan was rather pleasant company. Sarah found herself wishing, just a little, that she could talk in-depth about medicine with him, though. She’d just read a brilliant article in the New England Journal on advances in medication used to treat hypertension, and she would have loved some lively discussion on that with a colleague. But she had to remind herself almost daily that she’d left medicine behind her, then content herself with the void in her life that that decision had caused.

Unfortunately, the passion hadn’t left her, which was why she wasn’t engaging him this very moment. She stayed away from medicine because she could so easily be drawn back.

Although, as a doctor, she had noticed his limp. She hadn’t stared, of course, especially with the way he had been trying so hard not to limp. Male ego, probably. In her experience as a doctor, the one thing she’d learned well was that men preferred to grit their teeth and bear it rather than admitting a weakness. Actually, that’s what had almost killed Cameron. He’d been tired, he’d been losing weight. He’d blamed it on working too much, even though she’d asked him to have himself checked out. And he a doctor! Well, the dreadful truth had turned out to be leukemia. The other dreadful truth was that she should have insisted on him getting checked, then kept on insisting when he’d refused. Even tied him up and dragged him to a clinic, if she’d had to. But she hadn’t. Probably because avoidance and denial had been easier.

Luckily for Cameron, his ending turned out to be a happy one in so many ways. He’d beaten his cancer, found a perfect wife and now they had a family.

It seemed, though, that the good doctor lying next to her right now was much the same as Cameron. Too stubborn, or too large an ego…she didn’t know which. But it was on the tip of her tongue to say something to him. To ask him what was wrong, and if he’d sought medical attention. Which was none of her business. Still, he’d shown a sufficient amount of pain to someone with a trained eye, and whether or not she was calling herself a doctor these days, she was concerned. “Do you ever get time off?” she asked, not sure how to broach the subject without seeming too medical about it.

“Between cruises. A few days here and there.”

“Nothing sustained, though? Maybe a few weeks where you can go and treat yourself to some real rest? On one of these tropical islands where we’re going to stop on the cruise, perhaps?”

“Social worker,” he said.

“What?”

“Last night, I was trying to figure out what you do. My guess right now is social worker. You show just the right amount of concern for other people’s concerns, which would make you a very good social worker.”

“Well, I’ll take that as a compliment because I admire anyone who has the dedication to be a social worker but, no, that’s not what I do. And I’m not a librarian either, if that was going to be your next guess.”

“I might have. I’ve always thought librarians have a smoldering, secret sensuality about them, which fits you.”

Sarah laughed. “Nothing smoldering in me.”

“But there is, Sarah. It’s there, and you do a nice job of hiding it, which is why you’d make a good librarian. They have that reserved exterior, but on the inside—”

“Let me guess,” she interrupted. “When you were young you had a secret crush on a librarian.”

“Not so secret. Her name was Mrs Rowe, and the way she pinned up her red hair, and those tight tweed skirts she wore…” Michael faked a big shiver. “I used to check out books every day. Big books, adult books that I thought made me look intelligent and old. As many as I could get in my canvas bag, like I thought she believed I was taking them home and reading them every night. I was eight, by the way.”

“So what brought an end to the love affair?”

“After a couple of weeks, Mrs Rowe asked me if I wouldn’t rather have books from the children’s section, then she handed me one about a precocious monkey and told me I’d do better with that than the one on quantum physics I was attempting to check out.”

“She was probably right, unless you were a child genius.”

“Not even close.”

“Then I’d say Mrs Rowe had good insight.”

“And a good figure, too,” he commented under his breath.

Sarah laughed. “Not to be missed, even by a boy of eight.” Which further proved her theory about men. They were not all alike, as some people said, but they were certainly similar in some ways. Even now, as he shifted in his deck chair, she saw a little grimace of pain on his face, yet, come hell or high water, he wasn’t about to admit it.

Well, back to the original premise and she was sticking to it. It was none of her business.

She was still concerned, though.