The Wife He’s Been Waiting For

by Dianne Drake

  Even thinking about that now was dangerous because it put her in a mood to be reckless, and if there was one thing she wasn’t, it was reckless. She could be. Maybe she even wanted to be, but recklessness led to other things. A brief, sexually satisfying affair might have been just fine.

  But she wasn’t wired that way. She knew it. For her, anything less than full commitment with all the trimmings simply didn’t work. Although, with her history, full commitment didn’t work out so well either.

  So, skipping any embarrassment that might have normally occurred at such wanton abandonment of everything she’d worked so slavishly to keep in order, it was best to hold Michael at a distance now. Put what they had into its proper perspective, rationalize it into what it was—a moment of lust—and let it go at that. Oh, and be grateful to know that part of her was still alive. She’d figured it was long dead. After Kerry, then Cameron, she’d wanted it to be dead. Willed it away to a dark, dusty corner, never to surface again.

  Sarah was happy it had surfaced, however, because this was the first time she’d felt normal in so long. Now that she knew she was relatively fit in those ways, however, it was time to ignore it all again. Time to steady herself with a deep breath, hold her head up high, and get on with her life…whatever that was.

  So now not only was she avoiding Michael, she was avoiding all their usual places. There was no point in being around him, even though she wanted to see him. Which was why she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. No need to put herself into a situation where she might accidentally bump into him, when it was just as easy to avoid him altogether.

  On a ship this large, after all, avoidance was fairly simple. Which was her reason for being there in the first place—to make her life simple by taking a detour around everything that adversely affected her.

  So now here she was, all alone on the promenade deck, going for a stroll on a perfectly beautiful evening. Being alone wasn’t such a bad thing, really, even though the people around her did make her uneasy, all those couples on romantic interludes, walking hand in hand, stealing the occasional kiss, embracing in hidden alcoves, doing what couples should be doing on a night such as this. The sounds of happiness off in the distance added to the ambiance—lively music filling the empty spaces, laughter bubbling through the air, both coming from the people enjoying themselves at the formal dance being held in the grand ballroom this evening.

  She’d received an invitation to attend, with a little note tucked inside telling her that the ship had a limited number of escorts available for those who were alone on the cruise. In her fantasy, the invitation was from Michael, but in reality the stamped scrawl on it was a fuzzy blue duplicate of the captain’s signature, probably put there by one of the ship’s office staff and never even seen by the captain himself. “For the best,” she murmured.

  Sarah strolled casually along the railing, looking out into the water at the reflection of the ship’s twinkling lights dancing off the gentle waves made by the ship as it glided along its way rather than watching other people doing the things she was, surprisingly, envious about. She should have flown back home. That chance came up earlier today, yet she hadn’t even so much as flinched when the announcement had been made. Now she was wondering why she’d stayed here, given her troubling proximity to Michael. Perhaps it was that she had to be somewhere, and on board a cruise ship was as good a place as any.

  Or maybe it was because of Michael? Something to do with her growing attraction?

  No, that wasn’t it. Absolutely, positively, could not be! He was handsome. Had a nice personality. He was an outstanding doctor. Wonderful, amazing kisser. But all those things combined weren’t enough to sway her over to the side she so arduously resisted—the side where she found herself solidly involved with someone again. Been there, done that, twice now, and she couldn’t go back. Sure, she was an emotional wreck over the choice she’d made to stay unattached in every way, because she loved being involved. Loved everything about it. But once with Kerry, then a second time with Cameron…

  Sarah truly didn’t believe in the third time being the charm, which was why she was a mess now because, deep down, she really did want to give that third time a chance. But being a mess was easier because the only pain was self-inflicted, which was much easier to endure than what she already had.

  “Did you know you’ve become quite famous?” A bright, chirpy voice from behind her interrupted her thought. “People are talking about what a brave thing you did to help that little boy, the way you put your life on the line to save him.”

  Sarah spun around to face her admirer, not because she wanted any kind of a conversation with the woman but because she wanted to be polite. “I wasn’t really brave. I think I just did what anybody would have done under the circumstances.” What her natural instincts had led her to do.

  “Well, from what I’ve heard, there weren’t a lot of people stepping up to help, Sarah. And you were the one who went under that bus and stayed there when they had to move it off him. I’d say that’s risking your life.”

  The woman looked vaguely familiar, but Sarah couldn’t quite place her. “Do I know you?” she asked. “Have we met before?”

  “We haven’t been properly introduced, but I suppose you could say we met that day in the elevator, when you nearly fainted in my arms and Dr Sloan caught you. My name is Martha. Martha Grimes.”

  Now she remembered. The lady with the big, purple hat.

  “I heard mention that you were a doctor,” Martha continued. “That explains why you did what you did for that child. Even though you’re trying to be modest about it, it’s in you to be brave like that, to help somebody in distress. I know how it is. My husband was a doctor and he’d have done the very same thing you did.”

  “A doctor,” Sarah murmured, still trying to be polite to Martha yet not really in the mood for conversation.

  “A very good doctor. Gone a year now. It was so sudden. He hadn’t been sick a day in his life, then all of a sudden…”

  Martha’s voice was positively sad, and in the light shining down on them from one of the lanterns hung along the walkway Sarah could see the woman’s eyes pooling with tears. Her heart went out to Martha because she, too, knew the pain of loss in the same deep, personal way.

  “What kind of doctor was he?” Sarah asked gently.

  “Obstetrician.” Martha’s voice was filled with pride as she fought back the sniffles. “I was his office nurse, helped him deliver babies until I started having babies of my own.” She swiped at a stray tear trickling down her cheek. “Now here I am, on a cruise my husband and I should have been taking together, only I’m with the Ladies’ Purple Hat League. We do gardening in public areas to make things beautiful. Planting purple flowers…” She started getting tearful again, and fumbled through her purse for a tissue. “Purple pansies and petunias our specialty.”

  “Purple flowers, like your purple hats,” Sarah said sympathetically.

  Martha laughed. “You can’t miss us, can you? We do tend to stick out wherever we go.” She was still dabbing at tears, sniffling again and biting her bottom lip to keep from crying harder. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m new at this…at being alone. It’s not easy being all by myself after forty years of marriage.”

  Yes, that was something Sarah understood all too well. Married to Kerry only a little over a year, she’d wept for months after he’d died. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to lose the person you loved after forty years with him. Poor Martha. Yet she was getting on with her life through her Purple Hat League, which was more than Sarah could say for herself. It was commendable, not that she’d ever don a purple hat herself, but she did admire Martha for what she was doing, fighting her way through while her heart was still breaking. “Look, would you care for a ginger ale? I know this nice little lounge…”

  Before she could finish, Martha pulled Sarah into her ample bosom and practically squeezed the breath out of her. Ten minutes after that and they were
tucked away in Sarah’s favorite booth, sipping ginger ale and chatting like old friends. Well, one old friend and one woman who wasn’t saying so much. But Sarah didn’t have to say much around Martha, and Martha didn’t seem to notice. Even so, she truly could have done a lot worse for a companion. Martha Grimes was a pleasant, if not overly talkative woman, and she actually seemed to enjoy the karaoke singer, who was doing a particularly agreeable job.

  Twenty minutes of ginger ale, chat and karaoke had passed before Sarah saw Michael approaching her. Maybe it was a good thing she had Martha here with her tonight, because he looked especially attractive in a well-worn, faded pair of blue jeans that hugged him in all the right places and a cream-colored cableknit sweater that accented everything she liked accented in a man. “Michael,” she said, giving him a cordial nod, even though her pulse was racing when he stepped up to the table.

  “Sarah,” he said, just as cordially. He glanced at Martha, turning on a much broader smile for the older woman.

  Sarah made the proper introductions, explained that Martha was one of the ladies in purple hats, then let Martha launch into her explanation of why they wore purple hats and what kinds of flower varieties they planted, while Sarah sat back and observed Michael…her observations first coming as a woman but then as a doctor when she noticed that he seemed particularly tired tonight, and that his limp was far more pronounced than before. The doctor in her took over completely as he stood there awkwardly, listening to Martha ramble on and on. It wouldn’t be proper to ask him how he was feeling, even though she was tempted, because that could signal involvement and that was the last thing she wanted, especially after what had happened two nights ago. But he was a doctor, too. If he needed help, wouldn’t he get it?

  Silly question. Doctors were the worst when it came to getting help for themselves. Cameron came to mind in that category. He had been an excellent doctor, her medical partner actually, and someone whose skills and decisions she’d trusted implicitly. Yet when his symptoms had started, he’d written them off as fatigue. Fatigue! Weeks and weeks later, it had been discovered he’d had a well-progressed case of leukemia. That was the one single experience that had taught her how the worst patient of all was a medical doctor. Especially a doctor diagnosing himself the way Cameron had done. So it was only normal that she didn’t have much of an expectation of Michael paying attention to what was going on with himself. Yet it wasn’t her place to get involved, even if she was bothered by the way he favored his right leg, shifting his weight off it then back onto it, and wincing slightly as he did so.

  “Michael, I, um…” she started, but was interrupted by Martha scooting her way out of the booth. The karaoke machine had just become available and Martha was on her way to have a try at a Beatles classic. As she breezed by Michael, he finally sat down next to Sarah. “She seems nice enough,” he said in a lackluster voice, keeping quite a distance from her.

  “She’s lonely. Widowed only a few months, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. I don’t think planting purple flowers is very fulfilling for her.”

  “It’s nice that you’ve befriended her.”

  His voice was so stiff it was almost unrecognizable. After convincing herself that what had happened at Evangeline’s was nothing to be embarrassed by, was it possible that Michael was embarrassed? “Not befriended so much as I do sympathize with her. My husband died a few years ago, and I know how it feels to be so…alone. Not knowing where you’re going or what you’re going to do. It’s frightening. You spend half your time hoping no one will notice you and half your time praying they will.”

  Michael looked shocked by Sarah’s admission…properly shocked. “I didn’t know, Sarah! I’m…I’m sorry.”

  “I appreciate it. But you couldn’t have known because it’s nothing I bring up in the course of normal conversation. You know, Hello, my name is Sarah Collins, and I’m a widow. It makes people uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do or say around you, and they feel embarrassed or awkward because they’re unsure about what’s proper under the circumstances, so it’s best left private, I think.” It was something a man who’d had his tongue down her throat should know, however.

  “How long were you married, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Just over a year.”

  He nodded, the way people usually did when they heard the story. However, most of them prodded her for more information about Kerry’s death, asked tacky questions, made insensitive comments like Well, thankfully you’d only been married a year. It would be so much harder on you if you’d been married longer.

  “I know words really are never enough, but I am sorry, Sarah,” he said again, at the same time Martha hit an operatic note in a range the Beatles had never achieved and people in the lounge spontaneously jumped to their feet, applauding her. “I do have some idea what it’s like going through what you did, and I know it’s not easy, no matter how long you were married. Losing someone you care about…someone you love—is hard. Cruel. It hurts on so many levels, and I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that.”

  “Thank you. It was quite a while ago, but I do know how difficult it is to get over it, which is why I thought Martha needed a friend tonight. She’s not doing so well yet, and she shouldn’t have to be by herself.”

  “Your husband. Was he a doctor?”

  Sarah shook her head. “An engineer. He built bridges. Had quite a good reputation for it, actually. In fact, I met Kerry on a bridge. I was strolling, totally absorbed by the sights of the river down below, and he was strolling, looking at ways to overhaul the bridge, totally absorbed by the support structures. He literally bumped into me—the movable romantic force meets the immovable scientific one, we always said. I discovered his melanoma…on our honeymoon.

  “Was it metastatic?” Cancer that had spread.

  She nodded, amazed by how easy this was. What was it about Michael that made this so easy when telling other people had always been so difficult? “Stage four.” Meaning severe. “It wasn’t diagnosed in time, unfortunately. We did everything possible, he had every treatment. But the different things we tried couldn’t keep up with it. In the end, the cancer spread to his bones, then to his lungs within a matter of a few months. Kerry’s oncologist thought it had probably been there a while, but by the time I discovered it, it was already too late.”

  “They do go unnoticed much of the time,” Michael said, taking hold of her hand and giving it a squeeze.

  “Yes, they do,” she said simply. That much was true, but a fiancée should have noticed it some time during their six-month relationship and subsequent two-month engagement. It had been a tiny speck just under his armpit—but she hadn’t seen it. New love, with all its excitement and urgency, didn’t really have much to do with physical exams, and with so many other wonderful places and sensations to explore, she’d just never looked there. Not until their wedding night, after they’d made love for the first time as husband and wife. Totally satiated, Kerry had lain back on his pillow, his hands cupped behind his head, grinning at her with all the contentment in the world, and she’d seen it. There were no words to describe what she’d felt at that moment. How could there be words to describe what, as a doctor, the newly wed wife had known she’d found? “Well, it looks like our diva has left the stage,” she said, deliberately changing the subject as Martha headed back to the table, taking a bow every few steps of the way as the people in the lounge continued to applauded her.

  Michael took that as a hint, and pulled away from Sarah.

  “You don’t have to go,” Sarah said, disappointed that he was. He was easy to talk to. Easier than anyone she’d ever known in her life, and that included the two men she’d loved.

  “I’m afraid I do. It’s been a long day. Two of my medics are sick and I only stopped here to grab a sandwich to take back to my cabin. I’ve got to be back on duty in four hours and I need to get some sleep. Any other time…” As he stood, he brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Any oth
er time, Sarah,” he said on a wistful sigh, then turned away.

  “Can I help you?” she cried out impulsively as the karaoke revved back up with a duo intent on butchering a ballad. “Can I help you in the hospital?” Volunteering for medical duty hadn’t been her intention, but she was worried about Michael. He needed more than four hours of sleep, and his limp as he left the table was even more pronounced than his limp toward the table had been a few minutes earlier. “I can do, well, whatever you need me to. Lab work, general checks, anything. I’m not busy, and I could…”

  He turned back to face her. “I appreciate that, but we’re fine so far. We still have adequate coverage with the staff we have, even if we’re putting in longer hours.”

  “Longer hours, and you’re not looking good, Michael.” There, she’d said it, even though she hadn’t meant to. But it had just popped out. “You look…tired.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind as Heidi, the waitress, wiggled her way up to him and handed him a white paper bag with his sandwich in it. He thanked her, said goodnight to Martha, who’d climbed back into the booth, then he took a long, hard look at Sarah, but said nothing. All he did was smile, then walk away.

  “Nice-looking man,” Martha commented. “Downright handsome. You two are friends? Maybe even something more? A shipboard romance, perhaps?”

  “We met that day in the elevator, when I collapsed in his arms. That’s the extent of our relationship,” she lied, even though they’d met in some fashion, personal or impersonal, almost every day since then. Was that enough to call him a friend? Was their volatile chemistry enough to call it something more? The fact that she rarely revealed that she was a widow to anybody, including Martha, and it had been so easy talking about it to Michael probably did make him a friend. She’d admit to that much and draw the line there, because one step over it put her back at Evangeline’s, and that was something she really didn’t care to explore further.