by Dianne Drake
She prayed that would be the case as she climbed those stairs again, then pushed open Michael’s bedroom door. “I could say something trite like accidents happen, or there was no way you could have known what would happen, but I won’t because your pain goes too deep for that. But what I will say, Michael, is that what happened to you changed you to the very core. I’m not sure you were ever as bad as you think. We all change, get touched by the world in ways we didn’t know we could. Maybe you were selfish, staying behind to take a nap. I don’t think you ever could be selfish, but I wasn’t there so I really can’t say. Or maybe it’s more a case of you being too hard on yourself. Whichever it is, the Michael Sloan I know right now isn’t the one who existed back then, and the one I know now isn’t selfish. He’s a caring, generous man who loves medicine, and has the pure heart of the five-year-old who wanted to save those people on the freighter. What counts…the only thing that counts…is that you make your life matter for something good.”
He laughed bitterly. “I’m damaged goods,” he said.
“So am I, but you’ve made me realize that damage can be repaired, or at the very least turned into something better. I know the guilt you’re feeling over losing your men…your friends. God knows, I have had my share of loss. But as doctors we know better than most that there are some things we just can’t control. That includes death. Even though I know I let Kerry down, I don’t think he ever thought I did. Cameron, too. And your men…if they knew you the way I’ve come to, I don’t believe they would have thought you were letting them down.”
“But it doesn’t matter what they thought, does it? I did let them down. However you look at it, I did.”
“That’s how you look at it, Michael. But what I see is a very brave man who would have given his own life to save them.” She walked slowly to the large picture window where he was standing. His back was turned to her as she slipped her arms around his waist and laid her head against him. “We’re our own harshest judges, aren’t we? You blaming yourself, me blaming myself.”
“Sometimes we have to be.”
“But there’s a time to let go. There’s got to be because I always wanted to love again, in spite of not believing I really could. You know, that little speck of hope hiding deep down inside. Then I met you, Michael, and the little speck grew, which really scared me because it’s so much easier to live within the restrictions we set for ourselves than step outside them. But everything about you made me want to step outside them. The heart has such an amazing capacity for expanding and changing, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe it does,” he whispered, “but that’s not going to change things between us.”
She hadn’t expected this to be easy, but she wasn’t giving up. “No, it’s not. I love you, and I know you love me.”
“Look, Sarah, regardless of how I might feel about you, I didn’t want to meet you. Not yet.”
His voice was softening, taking on the gentle qualities she expected from Michael yet still fighting them. But she wasn’t going to approach him again. This time he would have to come to her. “And I didn’t want to meet you. Maybe not ever. But there’s one unavoidable thing we have to face here. We met, Michael. And we found each other over and over on that big cruise ship, even when we weren’t trying to.”
“At the wrong time.”
“Or the right time…the time we most needed to meet. And be together.”
“But I can’t.” He finally turned to face her.
“Why not?”
“I was engaged once, and…”
“And she walked out on you after your injury?” It had been a wild guess, but the answer was in his eyes. “Do you really think I’m that shallow?”
“Not shallow. Duty-bound, maybe. But not shallow.”
“Believe me, that night in Evangeline’s had nothing to do with being duty-bound. And I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.” She drew in a steadying breath, still in for the fight. “That’s not me, Michael. You know that’s not me.”
“Maybe I do, but the life I’d planned for myself is gone and there’s nothing left in its place. That’s where I am, Sarah. In a place where there’s nothing. I want to be a doctor. That’s never changed, even though I’ll never be a military surgeon again. But I don’t know how I’m going to work it out, and I don’t know where. Until I do, I can’t bring someone else into that uncertainty. Can’t bring you. You deserve better.”
“Even if that someone else wants to be there with you? Because I do, Michael. I don’t know where my life is going either, but wherever it goes, the only thing I know for certain is that I want you to be there, in it. I don’t even care about the rest of the details. What I want is you, any way I can have you.”
“You are stubborn. Of course, I knew that the first time I set eyes on you…the way you defied doctor’s orders about your hypoglycemia.”
“Not so much defied them as adjusted them to suit my needs.” She smiled. “The way I’m trying to adjust you to suit my needs.”
“How can we do this, Sarah?”
“Together. That’s the first step, and maybe the only one we should take right now. I think we’re good for that much, Michael. One step at a time, one day at a time.”
“I do love you, you know. Every time I’ve said it, I meant it.”
“I know,” she whispered, on the verge of tears again. She desperately wanted to run into his arms, but she wouldn’t. She’d made every move toward him she knew how to make, bared her soul, allowed Michael into places in herself no man had ever touched, but now it was time for him to want her. She’d taken that first step toward him and now it was his turn to take that same step toward her, so she stood her ground, even though it was very difficult. “And I love you, too.”
They stared at each other for a moment, with all the longing of two broken hearts in their gazes. Yet Michael didn’t go to her, and she wondered if he would. She still did believe she’d let Kerry down when he’d needed her the most, the way she’d also let Cameron down. Both in different ways, yet both with so much pain. Now she was beginning to wonder if Michael thought that she would let him down, too. Nothing intentional, nothing planned, but an accumulation of all her inadequacies.
Maybe it was time to go. Maybe the character flaw that Michael had convinced her wasn’t a flaw really was after all. And he saw that. “I, um…” she began, then stopped. This time she’d said everything. There was nothing remaining and she had no regrets as she’d told him everything in her heart. Drained her soul dry. After that, there was nothing left to do but to go, and leave Michael to figure it out on his own.
She didn’t want to leave him because she feared he would be glad she’d taken the easiest way out. Yet she couldn’t stay. Not any longer. So, without another word, she turned and walked through the bedroom door, then down the stairs, each and every one of her footsteps leaden. Halfway to the front door she heard the faint click of the bedroom door upstairs, and a large knot caught in her throat. He’d shut her out, and she’d never get back in. Ten more steps and she’d be out of his life for ever.
She’d only taken five of those ten, however, when he called to her. “Sarah, don’t go!”
She held her breath, without turning to face him.
“I don’t have any answers,” he said. “I know you’ve never let down the people you think you have…”
“And you didn’t let down your men.”
“But it’s going to take more than words to convince either of us, isn’t it? Knowing it on the surface and feeling it in the heart are entirely different.”
“Survivor’s guilt,” she said. “Both of us. It happens. The one who doesn’t die experiences guilt over it as part of the way they deal with it. I don’t know how to get through it, Michael.”
“Together,” he whispered. “We have to get through it together.”
“Together.”
“I don’t know how it’s going to work out, Sarah. The only thing I do know for certain is that I want you the
re with me when it does. More than that, I want to be there with you. Can you accept all the other uncertainties that go with it?”
She nodded. She couldn’t speak now as tears flooded down her cheeks. But she heard him walk down the stairs and cross over the wooden floor, and by the time he reached her and pulled her into his arms, she was certain of only one thing among the many things she still wasn’t sure of. She loved Michael Sloan. Nothing else mattered.
Third time was the charm. This was where she was meant to be.
“I love you,” he whispered. His entire body relaxed as he held her.
So did hers as she clung to him for dear life, happy and contented. Finally, after so long, Sarah had found her life again, and it was with Michael. Only Michael… “I love you, too.”
“You should look at this,” Sarah said, tossing the medical journal across the bed to Michael. Things were getting better. They moved forward in small steps each day, always together. She still carried her guilt, so did Michael, and with each other’s help they were coming to understand the nature of their guilt and help each other through it. It was amazing how much lighter the load was when it was carried by two. In the rough moments they worked through it together. In the good moments it was perfect.
Being married to Michael was everything she’d ever hoped for. And more.
“You read enough medical journals for the two of us,” he grumbled, pulling the sheet up over his head. He’d been off duty for the grand total of an hour and he wasn’t anywhere near ready to wake up. Especially since he’d had more than his fair share of cruise overeaters come into the hospital the night before—overeaters like Mrs Grimaldi, who’d made a light snack of a pound of shrimp, a lobster, and half a chocolate cake. “But you’re going to tell me about it anyway, aren’t you?” he groaned.
“It’s about a little clinic in a country near Thailand. They’re doing remarkable things for victims of landmines and other similar traumas.”
That caught his attention, and he finally turned over. “So…”
“So, they’re expanding. Opening an amputee clinic specifically for children. Predicting great things, according to the article you don’t want to read.”
He reached over, trying to grab it away from Sarah, but she held it out of his reach and waved it at him just to taunt him. “If you want it, you’re going to have to pay for it,” she teased.
“And what kind of payment would the lady like in exchange for a used journal?”
“I think you know what I want,” she purred, dropping the magazine on the floor next to the bed. She slid down her pillow just enough so that when Michael came sailing over her to grab the journal, she was able to do a little grabbing of her own. “There’s really nothing else to read,” she whispered in his ear, as she turned ever so slightly on her side and raised her leg over his hip. “And since I don’t have to be on duty for another two hours, I thought…”
He was instantly aroused. She could see it, the way she could see the eagerness in his eyes right now that was there for something other than her. Smiling, she slid on top of him just a bit more. “I do have something to tell you,” she said as he let the journal fall back to the floor.
“Right now, I’d rather you show me…” Before he’d finished the sentence, Sarah pushed him all the way over on his back, then straddled him. In a flash, he reached up under the T-shirt she always wore to bed, one of his, to find her breasts. “Just like that,” he growled, as she wiggled out of the shirt. “That’s exactly what I want you to show me.”
“I have something even better,” she said, leaning over him until her breasts were in his face. He had only started to nibble when she pulled back and thrust a piece of paper at him she’d grabbed off the bedside table.
“It had better be sexy,” he warned, giving her an exaggerated scowl.
“Well, not so much sexy as satisfying, I think.”
That piqued his curiosity enough that he grabbed the paper. The instant he laid eyes on it, she sucked in a sharp breath and held it.
The words on the paper were brief, and after less than half a minute he turned to look at her. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
“Yes, for starters. It’s everything we want, Michael. Everything we’ve talked about these past couple of months.”
“They want us to run the children’s amputee clinic?”
She nodded. “After I saw the posting this morning I e-mailed them, just to enquire about the position, nothing else. While you were still on duty. They e-mailed back within an hour, wanting more details about us, then made the offer a little while after I told them who we are. They said they checked our credentials, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, and if we’d like a job with little pay, long hours, lots of hard work, and more satisfaction than we could imagine…”
“And how long were you going to keep this from me?”
She smiled. “Just long enough to write this…” She handed him another piece of paper from the bedside stand. This one was handwritten, from herself to Michael. It was a letter of resignation from her position as ship’s doctor, giving him two weeks’ notice. The reason stated was that she was going to work with her husband in a little clinic near Thailand. “I think Martha will probably come along as my nurse, if I ask her,” she said. “And I’d suggest you ask Ina along as your nurse, if you know what’s good for you.”
A sexy grin slid to his lips. “You really think you know me so well that you can anticipate my decision, don’t you?” Both letters in his hand fluttered to the floor as he rolled over to face her. “Don’t you?”
Laughing, Sarah snaked her hand around Michael’s neck. “I do. And just to prove it, I’m making another decision right now that you’re going to love.”
“Anything you want to tell me about?”
She pulled his face toward hers. “I’d rather show you.”
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
First published in Great Britain 2008
Paperback edition 2009
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Dianne Despain 2008
ISBN: 9781408907580
Table of Contents
Cover
Excerpt
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Copyright
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