The Wife He's Been Waiting For

The Wife He's Been Waiting For
Dianne Drake

A bride for Dr Sloan Dr Michael Sloan’s brilliant surgical career ended after he was badly injured. Sheer strength and determination got him through, but scars run deep. Now, as a ship’s doctor, he can avoid emotional entanglements. Until a beautiful passenger falls into his arms…Dr Sarah Collins has taken time out to travel the world and rebuild her shattered confidence. The attraction between her and the gorgeous doctor is instant – and while Michael shows Sarah she still has abilities to heal, this caring, beautiful woman makes Michael believe that he is, most definitely, a man worth loving.

Could or would he ever lethimself 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

THE WIFE HE’S BEEN WAITING FOR

BY

DIANNE DRAKE

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

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.”